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(TV) Jay's question a few days ago on Verlaine & Ficca
"Tom Verlaine Without TV: The New Season"
NEW YORK ROCKER, #22, September 1979
by Roy Trakin
NYR: Did you enjoy working in the studio more this time than with Television?
Did you have more control?
TV: Yeah, but it has nothing to do with control. It had to do with picking
the right person for the song. I don't like making someone do something
he doesn't want to do. You can't make Billy Ficca play a certain way if he
doesn't want to play that way. I would think, oh, this song would be perfect
for Jay Dee Daugherty. And he'd come in and play and I wouldn't have to
explain anything.
NYR: Was it a difficult decision to break up television?
TV: It's painful in the sense, you work with people a long time.
I've known Billy (Ficca) for fifteen years. I just wanted to do
something different. I'm just glad no one in the band took it real
personally. I know Richard always wanted to write songs and have
his own group. He was writing songs he knew weren't quite right for
Television. In terms of the sound they put out. I don't know how
badly he wanted to do them because he never tried to force them
on the rest of us. I think he knew what would fit in our overall style
and what wouldn't.
NYR: Can you think of someone whose opinion about music you
would respect more than your own?
TV: I wouldn't mind having a guy behind the board who was real
sympathetic to my whole style and sound, which is something
Television never found. Someone who could get the right
combination of distortion and twang in the guitar sound
which every engineer we ever had dealings with did not understand.
They were used to guys with a Marshall and a Les Paul blasting
away into these small microphones with the standard series of things
they do or approach. Billy had a strange way of tuning his drums,
for instance. The [his] whole thing was different. I think the records
capture some of it; I don't think they capture what we could have if
the right engineer had come along and was able to get the sound we
wanted on vinyl.
http://www.marquee.demon.co.uk/artics.htm
http://www.obbard.com/tvlist-archive/0102/msg00041.html
http://www.obbard.com/tvlist-archive/0102/msg00045.html
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