(TV) Verlaine interview, Sept 1984

["Joe Thornton" <joe.thornton@gmx.net>]

Greg said that "This list has become more about the culture than the band in
many ways," and I'd say there's a fair bit of culture in this interview.

Some of you might not regard the late lamented secretX as part of the culture,
but she'd certainly be interested in the following...

--JoeT


Hot Press magazine (Dublin),  7 September 1984



UNDERCOVER

Liam Mackey finds Television legend Tom Verlaine in exile in Britain.



The interviewer almost does a double-take when he's introduced to Tom Verlaine
in a pleasant bistro opposite Townhouse Studios on London's Goldhawk Road.



At 35, Verlaines's face is softer and fuller than before, bearing only a
passing resemblance to the gaunt, chicken-headed visage which stared out from
the cover of Television's debut album "Marquee Moon" back in 1977.



Seven years on, the power of that extraordinary record is undimished but as
far as Verlaine is concerned, the Television legend is ancient history now.
Indeed he doesn't even seem to like being reminded of it, noting, late in our
conversation that most interviews he does consist of "the same 25 questions
about Television".



Forewarned, I'd avoided bringing up the subject -- a difficult exercise in
restraint, since I'd count the two Television albums high in any list of the
all-time greats. Only after the taped section of our interview was complete
and we had re-located to Townhouse Studios to call a cab, did Tom seem relaxed
enough to recall certain memories of "Marquee Moon": such as how the record's
producer eventually threw in the towel in despair at Verlaine's quest for an
ever rawer and more elemental sound, leaving, in the end, just Tom and a
tape-op to complete the mixing.



Such single-minded pursuit of a personal ideal has characterised Verlaine's
work since then: he's an artist who knows exactly what he wants and goes for
it uncompromisingly. If Television's achievements have deservedly become the
stuff of legend over the years, it is arguably at the expense of Verlaine's
work since then, a formidable quintet of albums culminating in the forthcoming
"Cover".



The latter comes two years after the magnificent "Words From The Front",
ending a lengthy silence from a man whose creative voice is never
disappointing.





In person, Verlaine is initially guarded, his speaking voice a low near-drawl,
his sentences punctuated by long gaps. It's about 1 p.m. and the man is only
just out of bed -- I can empathise most heartily.



"It wasn't a real expensive record to make, nor was it all that
time-consuming", he says of Cover's long time a-comin'. "The work was just
spread out. I probably could have finished the record a year ago if I'd forced
myself to do it. I didn't see any point really."



For a second, it almost sounds as if Verlaine is weary of putting out superb
records, which are inevitably critically acclaimed and just as inevitably
ignored by the bulk of a record-buying public more concerned with this week's
model.



Is this the Ol' Cult Blues again?



"It's not that that bothers me -- it's just that economic reality being what
it is, how long is a company gonna continue to finance your endeavours? And
even if they do, are they gonna be patronising about it?



"The only thing that bothers me really is that I'd like to be working all the
time -- like, I've written a couple of new songs in the past month and there's
no real money to go out and do 'em whereas if I had a gold record it'd be no
problem to book a studio -- that's the difference."



And Tom Verlaine's alternative vision?



"I think really the only way to do it is to find yourself a place you want to
live and build your own studio. That seems to be the best way to do it."



When I mention John Fogarty, who after Creedence Clearwater Revival folded,
retreated behind closed doors and over a couple of years released two
exceptional records, "Blue Ridge Mountain Rangers" and "John Fogarty", on
which he played ~everything~ himself, Verlaine -- though acknowledging the
achievement -- responds that that approach is not for him.



"I've done a bit of that on this record just because it sort of happened that
way: I happened to be in a place that had a bass guitar so I played bass on
it, y'know? But I'd much rather work live with musicians."



On "Cover" he's accompanied by a couple of old sidekicks in Fred Smith on
bass, Jimmy Ripp on guitar and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums with appearances
also by Bill Laswell (bass) and Alan Schwartzberg (drums).



Do you, as the phrase has it, bounce ideas off other people?



"I don't think that expression means anything (~laughs~). It does if you're a
person who doesn't know what you want, who's just throwing all these things
out all the time. But if you know what you want, you just get on with it and
do it.



"I don't think producers are particularly great. ~good~ producers, I think,
are good for editing your work if you're being overblown about it. I end up
editing a lot of stuff out. Even on this new record I'd edit out more stuff at
this point if I could."



That said, Verlaine has also displayed a predilection for lengthy pieces.



"Yeah, they don't seem long to me but I guess they are. I took two songs off
this record -- one was eight minutes long, the other six and a half. There was
something about 'em, they needed more work."





For the last three months Tom Verlaine has been resident in London, having
left New York because, he says: "I was sick of it -- I've been in one place
for too long and you want to see something else."



To some of us on this side of the pond, the move might nonetheless seem a bit
perverse. After all, isn't the Big Apple the ultimate melting pot, a city of
endless inspiration for the creative artist? What about the Bohemian Cafi and
Loft Society we used to hear so much about?



"Loft society now is people who are making a helluva lot of money," Verlaine
reflects. "A loft costs around a quarter of a million dollars and artists
traditionally aren't people who make a quarter of a million dollars and go out
and buy a loft.



"It's becoming like that in New York. People are more career-oriented, they
get a craft going. There are painters who, if a gallery tells them what to do,
they'll do it, if they think it's gonna sell. There are a group of young
painters in New York whose work I regard as pretty much. ~shit~. It's, pretty
much, do it quick, get it on the wall and go to all the right parties.



"There's no inspiration, it's all career moves, trying to be part of
something. It's like reading about artists when you were a kid and wanting to
be an artist -- rather than having something you can't contain so you let it
out. Or a gift you don't really have any control over. Even just having
something to offer."



The New York music scene according to Tom "hasn't been vital for the last
eight years, if you ask me." Among his own favourite contemporary American
bands he lists Green On Red, True West, and particularly The Violent Femmes,
whose new second album he describes as "very traditional, not a modern or
pretentious record at all -- it was done in about five or six days and it's
got a very live feel to it." This would make it close to the heart of Tom
Verlaine who is self-avowedly not a hi-tech recording artist, preferring to
work with, in Bono's words, the primary colours of bass, guitars and drums.
Here's Tom on hip-hop: "There's nothing mysterious about it. Those drum
machines are played with buttons and that's the sound you get. Once you get in
a studio and see all this stuff, you know where it comes from. To be honest, I
don't think it's very interesting music to begin with. There's always been
dance music around of one kind or another and this is just a bit more
mechanical."



Verlaine is also less than enamoured of much of what's happening in London:
"There's not much to do  -- it's not a really happening 24-hour city," he
observes. "I don't find that the bands have any rapport, not only with
themselves, but with their audience. The way they play on stage is like
they're very isolated from each other. And the audience are just there, sort
of looking on. The younger bands, say 19 to 24 year olds don't seem to play
long enough to know what it's about. They don't have any ~instincts~ for it."



Verlaine's interest in British music is more than academic since he wants to
produce some bands himself. He's already heard lots of tapes, but apart from
waxing enthusiastic about Liverpool band It's Immaterial, doesn't seem to have
been all that impressed.



"Some of the tapes are so funny because you hear people aping the enunciation
of other singers, right to the T as if they were parodying them -- but they're
not. One tape I got had someone singing exactly like David Bowie in his Ziggy
Stardust period. Why pattern yourself on something like that? That's
definitely more prevalent in England than in the States."







Tom Verlaine only came to rock'n'roll after earlier immersions in classical
music and jazz. His discovery of rock'n'roll came via such records as the
Yardbirds' version of the blues classic "I'm A Man" and the Rolling Stones'
"19th Nervous Breakdown". The rise of literacy in rock also had a profound
effected on the poetically-minded Verlaine. In particular, Tom fondly recalls
the release of Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde".



"I can remember my girlfriend saying that Bob Dylan had a double record out
and I said 'What do you mean -- a double record?' She said 'It's two records
in the one pack' and I said 'D'ya mean there's like 30 songs on it?!?' She
said 'No, one is all one song actually' and I said 'This, I gotta hear!'



"The records which to me seem to last the longest have a quality of being
raw," Verlaine adds, "like I still pull out albums by the Velvet Underground,
The Doors, Dylan -- even the 'Desire' album, that song Sarah is a beautiful,
beautiful song."



I tell him that ol' Bob subsequently denounced the song saying 'There are some
songs you'd be better off never to have written' or bitter words to that
effect. Verlaine laughs "That song is so naked that, in retrospect, he
probably feels embarrassed by it."



Clarity, simplicity and raw power are constants in Verlaine's music. As
evidenced by songs from "Venus De Milo" through to "Postcard from Waterloo",
he also has a fine tunesmith's ear, an aspect of his work that has perhaps
been overshadowed by his justly earned reputation as a guitar genius and sound
innovator. The tradition of melodies you can hum in the bath is continued on
"Cover" which is probably Verlaine's most conspicuously buoyant set to date.
In particular there's an instantly memorable track called "Swim", which Tom
seems genuinely chuffed I should single out for mention.



The song opens in a most humorous and cryptic manner with Tom providing a
backwoods-type talkover against African-like guitar and the sound of a barking
dog. Thereby hangs a tale.



At 8 in the morning after an all-night session in the studio, Tom asked the
janitor if he could get his dog to bark while the tapes rolled. No problem
said the janitor proudly fetching his tiny terrier into the studio. Needless
to say, when the crunch came, the dog appeared totally mute. "Eventually,"
says Tom, "the janitor started yelling 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' at this harmless
little eight-inch-long dog, which immediately started barking ferociously!!"



The spoken intro to "Swim" is an excerpt from a book which Tom hopes to have
published. It consists of a series of short monologues -- interspersed with
occasional dialogue -- narrated by a bunch of American characters Tom has
invented, of whom our friend on the "Swim" track is one. He, Tom explains,
lives alone in a caravan in remote territory and "he has these odd experiences
-- he leaves his body, for a lack of a better explanation, and he's always in
the presence of some mythological goddess who's never there physically.
There's a certain pathos to it." And no little humour too, for Tom Verlaine is
an exceptionally droll individual. As for the book itself, Tom reckons he's
got a greater chance of having it published in Britain than in the States
"where they just want to publish books about jogging -- they do that here too
but there is still an interest here in writing, more than in the States."





By now, with our interview well developed, Tom Verlaine's early hesitancy has
long since vanished and he's revealed as a fluent, witty and stimulating
conversationalist. Talk ranges over a variety of subjects including
pre-Christian Irish poetry (a particular interest of his), the writings of
Flann O'Brien and Colin Wilson, and hypnosis -- a subject about which Tom is
eager to learn more, since he was cured through hypnosis of his nicotine
addiction. The methods of the hypnotist in question appealed to the Verlaine
sense of humour. "He just said 'you're going to find this very relaxing and
why not -- you're paying me a hundred dollars to do it.' Well not quite that
stupid or silly but very very unconsciously unmanipulative and unspooky."



More importantly, the hypnosis worked -- Tom hasn't smoked a cigarette since.



"I've had a pack of cigarettes on my desk in New York for a year and haven't
touched one. You have to discover you don't want to do it and then you don't
do it. I mean, I like smoking, I still like smoking -- I just don't do it."



Quitting smoking has made quite a significant difference to his life, he
says.



"When I started smoking I liked it because it deadened my feelings towards
things (~laughs~). It creates a certain mental atmosphere sure, but it does
make you less sensitive because your whole body is getting less oxygen. I've
found since I quit smoking I've been a bit more emotional, I get angrier
easier, I get hurt easier. I realised that when anything emotional hit me
before I reached for a cigarette. It becomes a habit where you don't go into
what you're feeling -- you have a cigarette and just think about other
things."



Finance permitting, Tom Verlaine hopes to tour Britain in the Autumn. Who
knows, maybe he'll even fulfill a long-standing wish to play Ireland too. In
the meantime, prepare to take "Cover".
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