(TV) Verlaine/Lloyd Interplay (snippets from Casey Archives)

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

I thought some (especially those new to list) might find these snippets interesting.

Boston Rock, October 1982: 
BOSTON ROCK:  After working with Richard Lloyd for so long, have you found it difficult to make the two guitar thing work? 
VERLAINE:  Well, I'd add keyboards too if I could afford them, but they're so expensive to lug around.  As far as Lloyd is concerned, I showed him a lot of what to play, you know.  I'm not saying that he's not a really good lead player... I did so much of the arranging for those guitars.  This is only our fifth date so it's a matter of getting used to playing together.  It's also trying to educate somebody as to what you have in mind. "   
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Rolling Stone, 3/20/80, 'Tom Verlaine:  Looking for Life':  "Verlaine who wrote and arranged most of Television's songs left the band because he wanted to play with other musicians.  'It wasn't like working with someone with real give-and-take," he says.  I did sixty to ninety percent of all the arranging on the songs, so a lot of it was showing people [members of Television] parts to play.  Todd Rundgren used to say, It's so much faster to do it yourself---why show someone else how to do it? ' "  
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Fred Smith Interview 197?:  "Television added Fred Smith on bass in 1975.  He had been a fan of Television almost from the first time he heard the it perform.  He liked the challenge of the Television format, he told an interviewer.  'In some bands a bassist can relax back in the pocket with the drums, but Tom likes the bass to be melodic, so I have to fit notes into some unusual places.'  "           
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Musician: November, 1979:   "... Fred Smith (a subtle type of melodic player, the kind of musician who provides underpinning so unobtrusive you don't even notice him unless you take the time to listen) and the band solidified into a powerful rock entity, albeit an emotionally unstable one.  These  personal tensions, particularly between Verlaine and Lloyd, were to tear the band apart just as they were beginning to peak."

"By way of contradiction, Verlaine hastened to add, 'People have got a wrong impression about those tensions in regards to our performances.  Friction doesn't play a  part in the music once you hit the bandstand.  I can't presume to speak for the others, but I never felt anything negative from anyone when I was onstage with Television.  When I played rhythm behind Lloyd, the only thing that concerned me was to push him as hard as I could so that he'd go beyond what he's capable of and come up with something new, and vice versa.  That's the only thing that mattered. ' "
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The Bob, Spring 1993, 'TV Rerun': 
THE BOB:  How hard was it to make the new record?  Was it a painstaking process?  
VERLAINE:  No---it was easy.  I've worked with Fred for, like, 15 years on most of my solo records, and I've known Billy since I was 16 years old.  It took about seven or eight weeks to record, and it was real easy.  That was the fun of it.

THE BOB:  Tell me something about how these songs evolved.  
VERLAINE:  Each song is different.  ..... The song 'Rhyme' was a rehearsal tape I found where we're just playing something for 20 minutes.  I took the best bits out of that. For instance, Richard was playing this melody---he played it once and never played it again, but we took that little melody and made it into a part.  I just arranged these pieces into a format, or song.  ......

THE BOB:  So it sounds like you start the songs, and then they're worked on by the group?  
VERLAINE:  Yeah, Sometimes we're jamming away---maybe Billy starts playing a weird beat and I have something that works on top of it.  Most of the time have a structure, and in some cases some guitar parts that I can play, but I can't sing and play at the same time.  So Richard will play that guitar part and I'll play something simpler to sing to.  And then on the other songs, I'll have a part and Richard will have a part and they both work together.  ..."
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"Back On The Air" , November 1992:
INTERVIEWER (James Rotondi):  You and Richard are very different players, but your sounds coalesce so well. 
VERLAINE:  A lot has to do with rehearsing and plowing through things, pulling this and that out and discussing stuff.  It's usually not instant.  Sometimes it's just a lucky thing where people are playing things that mesh.  But more commonly it's threshing it, you know?  Fred will watch my hands rather than have a chord chart, and with Richard I'll say, "These seem to be the chords at the moment, but we can change them."  All these alterations keep happening until it somehow falls into something that seems to be some sort of style.   

INTERVIEWER:  Did your style partially evolve from playing off Richard?
VERLAINE:  No, I definitely wouldn't say I play off him.  I play off the vocals.  That's where the guitar bits from this stuff happen.

INTERVIEWER:  Then what does playing with Television bring to your material that's not on a Tom Verlaine solo record?
VERLAINE:  I don't know.  [Laughs] It will probably look weird in print, but I don't know.  Maybe it's more jammy or something.  Some of the things on this new record took the approach of playing and then erasing the mistakes, having Richard come up with another part and putting it on later.  Others  are pretty much arranged note-for-note in rehearsal, outside of some solos and some doodads around the vocal.  Each song has a different approach, and the variety of tunes is pretty broad.




	Leo
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