RE: (TV) Repeated but key interview

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

He's also mentioned Eric Dolphy, as well as 
Ornette Coleman's and Miles Davis's music 
as influences.

From: Musician, Player and Listener, November 1979 
issue (#21) by Chip Stern 

TV: "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.'"

"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 vibratoeffects 
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.
-----Original Message-----
From: Philip P. Obbard [mailto:pobbard@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 4:07 PM
To: tv@obbard.com
Subject: Re: (TV) Leo's Gotta fess-up! You win


--- "Mark G. Ryan" <mgryan@cruzio.com> wrote:
> Too bad the sax clue didn't lead to more information (only played 3 years, 
> no recording or contemporary accounts from pre-Television, and no statements
> by Verlaine as to who influenced him).

I believe Verlaine has said that, as a saxophonist, he was into Coltrane and
Albert Ayler.

--Philip



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