JUST FOUND & TRANSCRIBED!
The interview with
Tom Verlaine done for this article
CRAWDADDY
Feb. 1977
TELEVISION: COOL RECEPTION
NEW YORK- Television. A curiously threatening
name for a rock group, conjuring, as it does, the concept
of an electronic device that dispenses immediate musical
images with a cool, detached glare.
Considered one of the most quixotic and vascular of
the second wave of offbeat bands emerging from a wildly
eclectic lower Manhattan music scene, Television's inaugural
album arrives-surprisingly-on the once folk-based Elektra
label.
Elektra was appropriately cautious, signing the group
to a one-year, one-record contract with options, but
with veteran producer Andy Johns (Rolling Stones, Jack
Bruce) at the helm, the stage was set for perhaps the
first thoroughly sophisticated release from New York's
underground rock scene.
Ashen, skeletal Tom Verlaine seems to agree. Sitting
in a storage room in the offices of the Wartoke management
firm (which also represents the Patti Smith Group) the
lead guitarist/vocalist/writer for Television says he
was pleased to sign with the label, having been a great
admirer of Bruce Botnick's adventurous engineering work
for Elektra in the late '60s when "experimental" groups
like Love and the Doors were recorded with meticulous
care.
"Andy (Johns) has a record of getting really decent
overall rock sounds without messing with the arrangements,"
adds the reticent Verlaine. "I just wanted someone who
knows the studio, the technical side. There's no horns,
no strings, no synthesizers, no acoustic guitar on the
album...it's basically an electric guitar record," he
asserts, listing some proposed tracks for the lp as
"Marquee Moon", "Torn Curtain," "Soon," and "Elevation."
Exhausted from a grueling recording/mixing schedule,
Verlaine needs sleep and a bath (there's no hot water
in his apartment). Somehow he summons the energy to
decry the principals in an earlier, unsuccessful studio
foray. While percussionist Billy Ficca sits in an adjoining
room testing a Camco drumset purchased with advance
money, Tom angrily recalls an Island Records-funded,
Brian Eno-produced demo, charging that a British A&R
man took and played the tape "for every fucking artist
on Island." As a result, he believes Roxy Music borrowed
at least a dozen ideas and lyric phrases from the material
for its 1975 SIREN lp.
"In one ear and out of his mouth," Verlaine muses, in
reference to Roxy lead singer Bryan Ferry's alleged
knavery.
Verelaine, 26, is characteristically close-mouthed,
however, on self-description, professing a great reluctance
to detail his past or comment on what critics term his
"Symbolist" writing.
What is known is that Television's present lineup, which
also included Fred Smith (formerly with the group Blondie)
on bass, and Richard Lloyd on rhythm Stratocaster, grew
out of a now-defunct band called the Neon Boys with
boarding school chum Richard Hell, an uneven bassist.
Together they laid the groundwork for the caustic, aggressively
surreal sound that reached fruition with Goo-Goo-now
known as Television. Richard Hell left soon afterward
to form still another since-disbanded group called Heartbreakers
with members of the New York Dolls, and Smith took his
place on bass.
While a solo performer in the Soho-Bowery area, fair-haired,
spectral-eyed Tom Miller donned his artful alias as
a tip of the hat to 19th century French symbolist poet
Paul Verlaine. Tom is a poet in his own write, having
co-authored, on July 4 1974, a small book of verse with
Patti Smith entitled THE NIGHT-now considered a collectors'
item.
"The French edition somehow got the English wrong!"
he complains.
Wehether Television's cryptic brand of art-rock will
catch on commercially remains to be seen, but its colleagues
are hopeful: Alan Lanier of the Blue Oyster Cult produced
the trial tape that helped land an above-ground label.
Behind the steely stares and the flashing images, what
is Television trying to communicate? Possible clues
can be found in the lyrics of "Little Johnny Jewel (parts
1 & 2)" a self-marketed single circulated last year
on the local ORK label:
'Now Little Johnny Jewel
He's so cool
He had no decisions
Just tryin' to tell a vision...'
"Johnny Jewel is how people were maybe 200 years ago,"
says Verlaine. "Back then, when people got up in the
morning, they knew what they had to do to get through
the day-there were 100% less decisions. Nowadays we
have to decide what we want to buy in the grocery store,
what job to take, what work to do. But not Johnny. For
him, it's all right there-it's a freer state, and that's
what my music is looking for.
"To understand Johnny, you should think of William Blake.
He was the same kinda guy."
-George Elliott
(my most successful/last published piece...began to
serve the Muse myself thenceforth)
