Tom's Death NY Times

["LeoCasey1" <Leo.Casey1@rcn.com>]

NY Times: Tom Verlaine, Influential Guitarist and Songwriter, Dies at 73
By Gavin Edwards and Peter Keepnews
Published Jan. 28, 2023, Updated Jan. 30, 2023, 12:03 a.m. ET Tom Verlaine
(1949-2023)
?	Obituary
?	15 Essential Songs
?	A Reluctant Guitar God
He first attracted attention with the band Television, a fixture of the New
York punk rock scene. But his music wasn?t so easily categorized.
 
The guitarist, singer and songwriter Tom Verlaine in London in 1977. He
could, his fellow guitarist Lenny Kaye said, ?move from chaotic soundscapes
of free jazz to delicate filigree.?Credit...Gus Stewart/Redferns, via Getty
Images

Tom Verlaine, whose band Television was one of the most influential to
emerge from the New York punk rock scene centered on the nightclub CBGB ?
but whose exploratory guitar improvisations and poetic songwriting were
never easily categorizable as punk, or for that matter as any other genre ?
died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 73.
His death was announced by Jesse Paris Smith, the daughter of Mr. Verlaine?s
former love interest (and occasional musical collaborator) Patti Smith, who
said that he died ?after a brief illness.?
Although Television achieved only minor commercial success and broke up
after recording two albums, Mr. Verlaine had an enduring influence,
especially on his fellow guitarists. (He was also Television?s singer,
primary songwriter and co-producer.)

Tom Verlaine?s 15 Essential Songs  Cntrl+Click to follow link

?Verlaine persisted in playing the guitar while those around him were
brandishing it as a weapon,? Kristine McKenna wrote in Rolling Stone in
1981.

Lenny Kaye, the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, said in an interview
that ?Tom was capable of anything,? adding: ?He could move from chaotic
soundscapes of free jazz to delicate filigree. It wasn?t covered up with
distortion. He had a real sense of the instrument and its expressive
powers.?
 
Mr. Verlaine and the other members of the group Television in 1973. From
left: Richard Lloyd, Mr. Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy
Ficca.Credit...Collection of Richard Meyers

Reviewing Television for the magazine Rock Scene in 1974, Ms. Smith wrote
that Mr. Verlaine ?plays guitar with angular inverted passion like a
thousand bluebirds screaming.? She also declared that he had ?the most
beautiful neck in rock & roll.?

Tom Verlaine was born Thomas Joseph Miller on Dec. 13, 1949, in Denville,
N.J., the son of Victor and Lillian Miller. The family relocated to
Wilmington, Del., when Tom was a child.
He attended a boarding school in Delaware, where he studied classical music
and played saxophone. He was equally influenced by rock bands like the
Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones and free-jazz musicians like Albert Ayler
and John Coltrane.

He ran away from school with a classmate, Richard Meyers (later known as
Richard Hell). ?Our plan was to become poets in Florida where the living was
easy,? Mr. Hell said in an email. Camping in Alabama, they set a field on
fire and were arrested and sent back home.
Mr. Hell soon went to New York and after graduating from high school, Mr.
Verlaine joined him. They wrote and published poetry together; Mr. Miller
renamed himself Tom Verlaine, in tribute to the 19th-century French poet
Paul Verlaine.
 
Mr. Verlaine in an undated photo.Credit...Godlis

Mr. Hell recalled the two friends being exuberant teenagers on Second Avenue
near St. Mark?s Church in the early days of spring: ?As we walked down the
street, we?d start rapidly weaving between the parking meters making buzzing
sounds with our mouths and flapping our bent arms, fertilizing the parking
meters. Tom was often lightheaded and whimsical back then.?
In 1972, inspired by the New York Dolls, they started a band called the Neon
Boys. Mr. Verlaine bought an electric Fender Jazzmaster guitar for himself
and picked out a $50 bass for Mr. Hell; their friend Billy Ficca joined them
on drums.

In 1973 they added Richard Lloyd, a guitarist, and renamed themselves
Television. They chose the name because they had a distaste for the medium
and hoped to provide an alternative. Mr. Verlaine also enjoyed the resonance
with his initials, T.V.

After seeing a performance by Television in 1974, David Bowie called the
group ?the most original band I?ve seen in New York.? However, Mr. Hell?s
emotive, chaotic outlook on music clashed with Mr. Verlaine?s more
controlled approach. Mr. Hell was replaced by Fred Smith in 1975 and later
went on to form the punk band Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
Television signed with Elektra Records and in 1977 released its first album,
?Marquee Moon,? which featured hypnotic guitar work that ranged from
mournful to ecstatic.

 
Television in New York in 1977. From left: Mr. Verlaine, Fred Smith, Mr.
Lloyd and Mr. Ficca.Credit...Godlis

The album contained eight songs, mostly written by Mr. Verlaine, and
showcased two lead guitarists who did not just trade solos but also built
sonic cathedrals out of countermelodies and interlocking parts. Although Mr.
Verlaine was renowned as a lead guitarist, Mr. Lloyd said that his work as
rhythm guitarist was underrated. ?He used to drag me kicking and screaming
through five minutes of solos,? he said in an interview.

Mr. Verlaine?s lyrics (which he sang in a pinched but expressive tenor) were
sometimes poetically abstract, sometimes slyly funny. The song ?Venus?
featured the line ?I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo.?

In 1991, Mr. Verlaine told Details magazine: ?As peculiar as it sounds, I?ve
always thought that we were a pop band. You know, I always thought ?Marquee
Moon? was a bunch of cool singles. And then I?d realize, Christ, this song
is 10 minutes long, with two guitar solos.?

The New York punk scene inspired sonic experimentation in multiple
directions, from the aggression of the Ramones to the tightly wound funk of
Talking Heads to the calloused poetry of Ms. Smith. But no act seemed to
push further than Television.
 
Mr. Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television in performance in 1978. The
band recorded two well-received albums before breaking up but later reunited
periodically.Credit...Stephanie Chernikowski

?Once we all got past tuning problems, we could explore at will,? Mr. Kaye
said. ?Those couple of years where nobody knew where CBGB was, it was a
gloriously experimental time.?
While ?Marquee Moon? received rapturous reviews and now regularly appears on
lists of the greatest rock albums ever made, that did not translate into
significant sales or airplay. ?Shooting himself in the foot was a particular
talent of his,? Mr. Lloyd said of Mr. Verlaine. ?He had a will of iron and
he would say no to big tours and big shows.?
Asked by The New York Times in 2006 to summarize his life, Mr. Verlaine
replied, ?Struggling not to have a professional career.?

Television released a second album, ?Adventure,? in 1978 and then broke up.
The band reunited in 1992 for an album simply called ?Television,? followed
by periodic tours.
The group?s members continued to employ ?an experimental approach,? Mr.
Verlaine told Details. ?It?s like when we started, all falling together from
different angles.?
Mr. Verlaine released nine albums under his own name over the decades, some
emphasizing songs and others emphasizing guitar heroics. Reviewing a
performance by his band at the Bowery Ballroom in 2006, the Times critic Jon
Pareles wrote: ?Mr. Verlaine?s guitar leads didn?t flaunt virtuosity by
streaking above the beat. They tugged against it instead: lagging
deliberately behind, clawing chords on offbeats, trickling around it or
rising in craggy, determined lines.?

 
Mr. Verlaine performing at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan in
2006.Credit...Rahav Segev for The New York Times

He also wrote film scores, including for silent movies by Man Ray and
Fernand Léger, and made occasional guest appearances with the Patti Smith
Group. In 2006 he told The Times, ?I liked recording, but I wasn?t much in
the mood to do it until a couple years ago.?
He was, Mr. Kaye said, ?very much not into the persona of being a rock star.
His legacy is that he was always looking for a new expression of who he
could be.?

Mr. Verlaine leaves no immediate survivors. However, he does leave an
outsize influence on other musicians. The 2022 album ?Blue Rev? by the
Canadian group Alvvays, for example, includes a song titled ?Tom Verlaine.?
In 1981, Mr. Verlaine told Rolling Stone: ?I recently realized that
Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2,
Teardrop Explodes ? it?s obvious what they?ve listened to and what they?re
going for. When I was 16 I listened to Yardbirds records and thought ?God,
this is great.? It?s gratifying to think that people listened to Television
albums and felt the same.?

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 30, 2023, Section B, Page
5 of the New York edition with the headline: Tom Verlaine, 73, Dies;
Influential Musician Who Defied Genres.  

-----Original Message-----
From: tv-owner@obbard.com <tv-owner@obbard.com> On Behalf Of Joe Hartley
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2023 5:48 PM
To: tv@obbard.com
Subject: Patti shares some memories.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/he-was-tom-verlaine

These words are astoundingly beautiful.

He left this world surrounded by people that loved him.  That someone can so
eloquently convey the love they had for someone, how that love was shared
across families, in just a few paragraphs has left me stunned.

--More to come from Leo on Tuesday.
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com  Without
deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
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