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(TV) Tom Verlaine 1979 article-2nd try
Here's the article that turned me on to Television in 1979:
Tom Verlaine by Chip Stern
With influences ranging from the Byrds to Ornette Coleman, guitarist Tom
Verlaine's music with Television was physically immediate, ringing, ironic,
and somehow not of this world. He's the most respected new guitarist to
come along in years, breaking away from the Claptonesque cliches that have
plagued the genre.
There are rock guitarists, and then there are rock guitarists. You're all
familiar with the garden variety type: concussion-level volume, a lot of
flashy notes, maybe a bionic tongue for good measure- but not too much
thought. Some people think they have to play a mile a minute to create
excitement, but in the best rock, as in jazz, the dictum is that if you
can't say it with a few well chosen notes?well?you can't say nuthin'.
As has been pointed out in other places, Tom Verlaine has the courage and
integrity to play simple. With guitarist Richard Lloyd, drummer Billy Ficca
and bassist Fred Smith, guitarist-compose-lead vocalist Tom Verlaine made
Television one of the most precocious, far-reaching rock bands of the '70's.
They were genuine rock modernists. Coupling Verlaine's twisted, adenoidal
vocals and oblique, visionary lyrics with the soaring, elemental tension
between guitarists Lloyd and Verlaine, Television's music was physically
immediate, ringing, ironic, and somehow not of this world. Television
produced two brilliant albums for Elektra before disbanding last summer:
the raw, searching Marquee Moon, and the more textural, reflective
Adventure- the latter a summation of all the best qualities of classic 60's
rock bands, the former more evocative of post-Velvet Underground
experimentation and turmoil. Writing in Rolling Stone, Mikal Gilmore
likened the group's sound to "Ornette Coleman coming through a Rolling
Stone's barrage" and Village Voice's John Piccarella has observed that they
brought a quality of "rural surrealism" to the landscape of urban rock.
Television's final concerts in 1978 at the Bottom Line still reverberate
warmly in the back corridors of my mind- in the final analysis, Television's
lasting impression was of a live band. With all due respect to Jimmy Page
and Jeff Beck, those concerts cemented my opinion that Tom Verlaine is the
finest rock guitarist alive (Jimi Hendrix is, after all, technically dead).
Hearing Verlaine's solo on "Marquee Moon" grow from the recorded version to
his expansive improvisations at the Bottom Line, I had the sensation of
watching someone learn how to talk. His lines had an effortless, unhurried
sense of floatation- a sweet vocal quality to every note-yet there was
something unbearably urgent about his improvisation. Slowly, methodically,
he built bird-like flutters, church-bell hammerings, wrong-is-right vibrato
effects and singing distortion tones to an elliptical, double-timed climax,
rapidly cross-picking notes so that his lines seemed to be going in two
directions at once- like John Coltrane. Certainly Verlaine doesn't have the
rhythmic sophistication or cascading techniques of Coltrane, and many of my
rock-inclined friends derisively compare Verlaine's achievements to the
more quantitative rave-ups of their favorite guitarists. All I can say is,
that for my tastes, Verlaine is among the most natural melodic guitarists
you're likely to hear- his syllables are more interesting than other players
paragraphs.
"There's a theory about the voice, how you voice the guitar, how you bring
out that note" Verlaine mused, thoughtfully choosing every word. "An
instrument is a voice- an extension of your inner self. There's a real
voice inside an instrument that you can bring out. You know, I listen to a
lot of saxophone players and cellists. If you listen to someone like Pablo
Casals you realize that he knows how to breathe with the instrument, which
is the necessity of the horn, and that might have something to do with the
way I approach the guitar- putting something out on your breath instead of
going whango and pouring out a million notes. I played saxophone for two
years- not very well- and that might have something to do with the way I
play guitar. I don't really think that my guitar playing is that different
from a lot of other people, either".
"It is, really," I countered.
"Yeah, that's what people say."
Perhaps the reason Verlaine is hearing something else is that as a youngster
growing up in Wilmington, Delaware he was attracted to an unusual variety of
musics. "I like weird sounds, you know." Verlaine said with a twinkle in
his eye. "I'm a great lover of weird sounds, the weirder the better. As a
kid I liked classical music a lot, then around 1961 or so I had this friend
who had a bunch of jazz records, and I remember that I really fell in love
with jazz. The first guy I really loved was Roland Kirk, especially the
early things with Jack McDuff and Horace Parlan. Then around '64 or '65 I
saw these ESP records advertised in down beat and I thought 'gee these
things look great'. So when my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas
I said all I wanted were these ten ESP records. Well, she didn't know what
they were, so Christmas day I started blasting these Albert Ayler records on
my father's stereo, and they couldn't believe it- it was really hilarious.
Albert Ayler was the greatest thing I'd ever heard, I couldn't get over it.
And my parents said 'do you think you could wait a few days before you play
those records again.' I listened to the early Ornette Coleman Atlantics a
lot, too. I particularly liked his drummer Eddie Blackwell. The way he
tuned his drums you could tell he was really in the sound of the drums; some
of those solos he took on Ornette, God, they were great. I also loved
Coltrane and Eric Dolphy- I still love them. The only trumpet player I
really liked was Miles Davis. Miles in another one of those musicians who
knows how to voice an instrument so it's coming from the whole person and
not just one part."
So how did rock and roll come into all this?
"My brother was buying Motown records and I really liked the way they
sounded. Then he got "All of the Day, And All of the Night" by the Kinks
and "19th Nervous Breakdown" by the Rolling Stones, and those were the songs
that really get me in terms of rock. It was a super kind of aggressive
quality in those records- not a macho aggressiveness or any stupid stuff-
just a real push, a real drive. I also loved the Byrds and Love. The Byrds
just had such a sound. The Band did some nice things, too. Robbie
Robertson is really a special guitarist. Cream and Hendrix were great;
Cream just had such incredible energy; I tried to play some of the things
off of Hendrix's records and I'd get so frustrated because I didn't realize
they were overdubbing. There were a lot of things I listened to, but
so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always
seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so?it's like
they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop
element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's
like 'let's stay away from it because we might cry or something.'"
With all of Verlaine's feeling for music, and his fascination with guitar
(starting in 1966), Wilmington offered little inspiration. "I would just
characterize it as a lack of ambition in any direction- it's just sort of a
place to float, a pretty standard American place in a lot of ways. The
reason I left there is that nobody wanted to do anything. I was just
starting out myself and I wanted to have a band, but it was always 'well
maybe we'll get together Saturday or I've got to mow the lawn Sunday.'"
So Verlaine came to New York City in 1968. "It was a learning experience
for 5 or 6 years of finding out that you wouldn't get in a place where no
one was interested. Everyone here was an individual, with a sense that
they're unique." Verlaine put together an abortive early version of
Television called the Neon Boys. That failing, he went on to perform as a
solo electric guitarist which led to his meeting one Terry Ork, who was to
be something of a patron; convincing CBGB's owner Hilly Kristal to feature
rock and roll instead of country and western music. Television became the
regular Sunday night band, and in a way, progenitors of the whole Manhattan
"new wave" scene which was to give birth to Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking
Heads and the Ramones, to name a few. Original bassist Richard Hell split
to form his band the Voidoids and was replaced by former Blondie bassist
Fred Smith (a subtle type of melodic player, the kind of musician who
provides an underpinning so unobtrusive you don't even notice him unless you
take the time to listen) and the band solidified into a powerful rock entity
albeit an emotionally unstable one. These personal tensions, particularly
between Verlaine and Lloyd, were to tear the band apart just as they were
beginning to peak.
By way of clarification, Verlaine hastened to add, "People have got the
wrong impression about those tensions in regards to our performances.
Friction doesn't play a part in the music once you hit the bandstand. I
can'' presume to speak for the others, but I never felt anything negative
from anyone when I was onstage with Television. When I played rhythm behind
Lloyd, the only thing that concerned me was to push him as hard as I could
so that he'' go beyond what he was capable of and come up with something
new, and vice versa. That's the only thing that mattered."
Still it seems apparent from a listen to the guitarist's solo album Tom
Verlaine that something is missing, or perhaps it's just that something else
is emphasized. In retrospect, it would seem that Adventure was actually the
first Verlaine solo album. Verlaine's concerns on the new album are
primarily compositional and textural- the creation of a multi-layered set of
songs that give Verlaine's lead guitar voice less primacy and electrical
intensity than we'd have liked. Maybe. Personally, I like the relaxation
and increased humor ("Souvenir From A Dream", "Mr. Bingo", and "Yonki
Time"), although Verlaine's recurring fascination with dreams and night, and
his sense of-dare we say-divine mission are much in evidence on "Last Night"
and "Kingdom Come" ("The river is muddy/But it may come clear/And I know too
well what I'm doing here/I'm just a slave of the burning ray?And I'll be
breaking these rocks/Until the Kingdom comes"). The fact that Verlaine
played nearly all the guitar parts reduces the amount of exquisite tension
that occurred onstage with Lloyd- everything is more self-contained. On
"Yonki Time" (written with the help of the famed New Orleans session turtle
Professor Hardshell), amidst the sound of breaking glass and general mayhem,
Verlaine's chorded solo infers the seminal 1930's guitar work of Eddie
Durham and Charlie Christian- it sounds like Japanese reggae. On "Mr.
Bingo" the influence of Ayler, Coltrane and Hendrix is felt in the highly
vocalized guitar breaks, and on "Breakin' In My Heart" the seed pod of
Verlaine's "Marquee Moon" solo has grown into an exquisite small plant. On
the latter two songs and "Red Leaves" Verlaine's achievement is sort of
technicolor Americana, like the perspective of the small-town boy come to
the big city, with all the prismatic irony that implies. Quite plainly this
puts Verlaine in the same quasi-country space as the Byrds, the Band, Neil
Young and the Grateful Dead.
At this suggestion the affable, introspective Verlaine shifts his eyes
slowly in frustration. "I can see the Byrds, the Band and Neil Young?but
the Dead? People are always making that comparison, and I can't see why.
The only Dead song I ever listened to was "Dark Star," because I liked the
relaxation, the way the guitar seemed to float through. But if you listen
to most Dead songs, you'll hear that they favor this one tempo most of the
time, a kind of medium speed. There's a lot more rhythmic drive in my
music, a lot more push, and I ought to know, because I'm doing most of the
pushing. I think it's more like the Stones. Where do you hear country?"
"Certain pastoral overtones on songs like "Glory" and "Days," a kind of
ringing, open sound, " I offer.
"Well, "Days" is just "Mr. Tambourine Man" played backwards, but I don't
hear the Byrds as being country."
I push on. "Perhaps what I hear is that rural sounds transfigured by the
city, a sort of countrified response to the pace and varied pressures- a
kind of enlightened boogie."
Verlaine looks truly aghast. "Boogie! I hate boogie, God, I mean, not the
Chicago boogie like Willie Dixon or Howlin' Wolf, but all those awful white
bands?"
Hmmmmmm, I guess I better change the subject. "Let's talk about your, er,
lyrics Tom. I get the impression from many of your songs that you're a kind
of Christian martyr. Like on "Guiding Light" where you sing "Tell me who
sends these infamous gifts/To make such a promise and make such a slip?Never
the rose without the prick." Or on "Friction": If I ever catch that
ventriloquist/I'll squeeze his head right into my fist."
Verlaine giggles. That's obviously one of his favorite lines. "I don't
like dumb lyrics. By that I mean lyrics where you can't feel that there's a
real person behind it- unthoughtful, sentimental, conditioning type stuff.
And people use the excuse 'well this is rock and roll' so they turn out the
same songs that everybody's heard for 20 years."
"Sometimes I get the impression that you're weary," I interject.
"Of what?" Verlaine gently inquires.
"Life"
He smiles as if to say not really. "If you read the poet Rilke, or if you
really listen to Coltrane?if you're interested in inner directions, Coltrane
would say you have to be able to be alone and go into yourself. It's?it's
really hard for me to talk about lyrics. Some of them are like me trying to
describe something so I'll know what it is, instead of letting it all go by-
so you focus on something to figure out what the hell it is. It's
underneath your daily awareness, so to speak."
"Chirpchirp
the birds
they're giving you the words
The world is just a feeling
You undertook
Remember?"
"Prove It"- Tom Verlaine
Copied from the November 1979 issue (#21) of Musician, Player and Listener
magazine with the permission of no one.
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