(TV) Another T.V. Interview from the Dusty, Paper Archives (Part 1)

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

MM Mooners, 

This is an even older (Sept. 1979) interview with T.V. from "New York Rocker".  Again,  I think it's quite interesting esp. when he talks about:  his lack of idiosyncrasies, role of a record producer, engineers, recording of first 2 Television albums & his 1st solo, Richard Lloyd, and several other topics.

Also: 
 >"I would have just posted the website (for this interview) so that my typing of the interview didn't take up too much space on this e-mail and subsequent MM List 
> Digest, but after spending several hours trying to find it on internet with search engines, I finally came to the realization that this [specific] interview does *NOT* exist 
> on internet. "

Because of the length of this interview I am sending it in *TWO* installments (it's actually not that long, it's length is partly caused by the necessity of a carriage return  after every separate question and answer.).

The original "New York Rocker" article begins first with a review by Roy Trakin of T.V.'s 1st solo record [I. Introduction]; then follows Trakin's interview.  (I didn't/don't find "Kingdom Come" to be as hilarious as Trakin, but except for this and a few dated "hippy" references, he asks some pretty decent questions during the interview.) 

	Leo 	

NEW YORK ROCKER, #22,  September 1979

"Tom Verlaine Without TV:  The New Season"    by Roy Trakin

	I.  Introduction 

		The break-up of a band, in the wake of our experience with the Beatles and countless others, should no longer be a traumatic event, but there certainly was cause for anguish among local fans when Television decided to call it a day, dissolving the matchless dueling guitars of Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine.  In the wake of "Adventure's" dreamy insularity, it should come as no surprise to the observant that there was room for only a solitary ego in Mr. Verlaine's increasingly obsessive vision.  That "Tom Verlaine",  the initial solo effort by Television's erstwhile mentor, should be such a satisfying album after "Adventure's" apparent warning signs, is a tribute to Verlaine, who retreated into semi-seclusion during this past year, hard at work putting his LP together.

			Verlaine employs different musicians on the various tracks, but the result is unremittingly personal----this is not a your typical post-hippie singer/songwriter with session band support.  In fact,  "Tom Verlaine" is a more accomplished Television album than the band ever got around to creating---certainly up to the considerable quality of their altogether startling debut, "Marquee Moon".  The album opens with a song Television debuted at their farewell Bottom Line performances last July when they went out in a blaze of glory, "The Grip of Love".  Coolly sensual with a razor-sharp double-edge of wit, the song builds on some classic, pulsating Television riffs into a jangly love/hate lament which immediately cuts to ribbons anything on the "Adventure" LP.  Verlaine's multiple, overdubbed guitar parts eliminate Lloyd's upper-register tension yet manage to successfully thicken the texture and enrich the sound.  

		"Souvenir From A Dream" is a marvelous set-piece with some vivid Verlaine conceits and thoroughly human jocularity.  Some guy loses his way on a dark road and ends up in Plattsburg as Verlaine taunts, "Mister, you've come the wrong way."  

		"Kingdom Come" follows, though this is not the old Television number, but rather a redneck prison chain-gang saga in which T.V.  stars as the long-suffering laborer "breaking these rocks, until the kingdom come".  Tom parodies his well-known asceticism here with some hilarious lines like "I'm a slave of the burning rain [sic]."  It's neo-psychedelic revival time, kids, get out those purple tie-dyes!

		The final two cuts on side one show Verlaine simultaneously at his most playful and most down-to-earth.  "Mr. Bingo" sports the blunt lyric, "Thank you, Mr. Bingo, fuck you very much", and the perhaps self-confessional, "I know you're saying  something, Lord, I don't know what."  "Mr. Bingo is a lose-limbed late-night romp in which Verlaine relaxes a bit to fine advantage.  "Yonki Time" is an exercise in general cutting-up and clever punning the likes of which we haven't heard from Verlaine since his "Little Johnny Jewel" period.  Revelatory lyrics:  "I better take out the garbage/We-l-l-l why not?"  Indeed, Verlaine's sense of humor has often been underrated or misunderstood, but here his unique deadpan wit comes across in all its colorful eccentricity.

			The second side is hardly a let-down.  "Flash Lightning" exhibits Tom Verlaine's constantly improving control of vocals, as each inflection or stress adds nuance to the overall performance.  Verlaine sings, "I was torn out by the roots/ And left out to dry/ My head was spinning/ My oh my" with such stone-faced woe that you simply have to crack up.  "Flash Lightning", like many of Verlaine's tunes, is about being touched by an other-worldly experience----it juxtaposes the singer's passivity with a pan-sexual, dynamic view of nature.  "Red Leaves" is a paean to seeing the world through the uncorrupted eyes of a child, with the legendary Deerfrance supplying some winning "la-de-di's".  

			"Last Night" is a no-holds-barred production similar to "Adventure's" "Dream's Dream", building like Brian De Palma's "Obsession" into a vertigo-inducing, surrealistic trip through the eye of a hallucination with a dramatic urgency that propels the seemingly plotless narrative along breathlessly.  Verlaine bleats to the heavens, "Last night a moon came/ She replaced my eyes/ She says your plans undermine you".  A seemless work, "Last Night" flows into a classic ditty from Television's repertoire, the hypo-romantic "Breaking In My Heart", which closes the album in suitably raucous fashion.

			All told, "Tom Verlaine", the album, does not really miss the strong presence of Richard Lloyd as much as Tom Verlaine, the live performer, may. In any case, for me, the biggest loss is the telescopic, unique drumming abilities of Billy Ficca, who has since gone on to play with the tight if unoriginal fusion band formed by a French chanteuse named Sapho.  Lloyd, whose remarks to Ira Kaplan in last month's "New York Rocker" on his excellent rapport with Elektra seemed to mock Verlaine's own antagonism toward the music industry, is wrapping up his own debut album at Bearsville Studio under the capable guidance of Mike Young, who produced the Cars' demos which garnered them a record deal.  Affable and underrated bassist Fred Smith hasn't decided quite yet where he's headed as of yet----he's played on both Verlaine's  and Lloyd's albums and apparently intends to tour with Verlaine.  Where he ends up is anybody's guess.

			Finally meeting with the notoriously reclusive Verlaine after two years of pursuit, I was more than surprised to find him a charming, funny, warm and (yup!!) human cat.  With his rep as a sullen, tight-lipped interview, I expected the worst from Verlaine, but he turned out to be an articulate if somewhat reticent subject.  Over a plate of shepherd's pie at the Glocca Morra, a run-down Irish pub on Third Avenue, we launched our conversation.  There were, of course, moments when Verlaine drifted off into a fantasy world of anthropomorphism and talking stuffed turtles, but he generally attempted to answer my queries straight-forwardly.  He chose his words very carefully, all the while darting his eyes and looking over his shoulder as if something or someone was gaining on him. . . 

	II.  The Interview [Part 1]

	New York Rocker:  Do you think Elektra mishandled the first two albums?

	Tom Verlaine:  I don't think they handled them at all.  The way most record companies run, they just put the stuff out there. . 

	NYR:  You mean they throw everything up against the wall to see what will stick. . . 

	TV:  Yeah, that's like the 1950s' Madison Avenue language.  Actually a lot of stuff's really funny, all those phrases.  There's about five hindered of them, all equally obnoxious.  All record companies are the same.  Make them a lot of money, they're very happy.  And if you don't make a lot of money, if you're lucky they'll give you another chance to break even.  

	NYR:  What's the attitude of your record company towards you?  Do they seem willing to bend over backwards for your idiosyncrasies to try and please you?

	TV:  What idiosyncrasies?

	NYR:  Oh, you know, the eccentricities of being a creative person.

	TV:  What do you think my idiosyncrasies are?  I don't think I have any.

	NYR:  For instance, are you prepared to go out and do a promotional tour to promote this album?  Will you shake hands with  radio promo people and get your picture taken for the trades?  

	TV:  Most of those things you don't have to go out of your way to do.  When you do a tour and a radio, guy wants to talk to you, there's no reason why not to talk to someone who's interested.  There's not that many people you met in life who are interested in you.

	NYR:  You have an image, fostered in the press, of being distant and aloof.

	TV:  I think that's just because I don't go to bars and clubs at all.  I think that's what it boils down to really.  There are a million people who go to clubs and run their mouths off about what they're doing all the time.  Most people don't, in fact.

	NYR:  There was a period when you hung out a lot more, though. Are you shy?

	TV:  (arches his brows in that curious way of his and peers out at me  from the corner of his sockets):  Am I shy?  Is it the look in my eye?

	NYR:  Do you believe that knowledge can be gained through dialogue with another person?  Your work suggests you do not believe in the dialogue method?

	TV:  What gives you that impression?  You never met me before and you're already making judgments.  

	NYR:  Only based on your work and the impression it makes on me.

	TV:  My songs give you the impression that I don't like to talk?

	NYR:  No, but there is a sense of isolation and insularity in your output.  A removal from the day-to-day world and an embracing of private experience.  

	TV:  I think that's looking only at the surface.  I don't see isolation.  If someone is isolated, you probably can't communicate with them.  I don't see myself as isolated.

	NYR:  Well, in your case, the exchanges takes place in performance.  Obviously, you're not sitting up in your apartment singing the songs to the mirror.  Perhaps a million people, either voluntary or involuntarily, have been exposed to the sounds you've created.  You attempt communication, but only through the filter of art.  Actually, I hear a lot more humanity in your new album than I've heard in your previous work.

	TV:  There's more people on this record, I'll grant you that.  There's more physical people on this record.  And that means something. Or it might mean something.  It might even mean something to you, Mr. Tray-kin!

	NYR:  Did you read the piece I wrote in the [NY] Rocker last year on Adventure?

	TV:  Actually, I do remember cracking up about the film director reference.  You got a lot about film in there.  

	NYR:  I mentioned Antonioni. . ..

	TV:  I think Antonioni is one of the funniest directors ever.  I used to go to his films and really laugh.  They were the funniest things.

	NYR:  I sense a kind of inadvertent humor in your music.  There's a certain playfulness going on, especially on the new record.

	TV:  It's as serious as the person listening to it.

	NYR:  Don't people accuse you of being pretentious?

	TV:  I've only heard one person call, me pretentious and he was a guy who auditioned for the band and later became a rock critic for High Fidelity Magazine.  

	NYR:   I imagine no one would call you pretentious to your face.

	TV:  I' m not sure what that word means.  I think it's pretentious to write lyrics like, what's that band, Foreigner.  There's an awful lot of people who don't do things with all of themselves, if you know what I mean.

	NYR:  Does your stuff make you laugh?

	TV:  Nyah.  Sometimes the situation of recording certain things make me laugh.  I mean, I don't sit around and joke with myself, y'know, cover my mouth with my hand and start whinnying.  You' re asking me how I react to my own work, which is like asking me to be schizophrenic or something.  

	NYR:  Do you  have a sales strategy for the record in the marketplace?

	TV:  I don't  look at it that way.  The marketplace.  I really like performing.  I want to play live again.  

	NYR:  Do you have a band together?

	TV:  I got a drummer as of today.  I don't have a guitarist yet and I might get a keyboard player too.  So far, none have worked out.  Fred (Smith) will be playing bass on the tour.

	NYR:   Did you feel, constricted by the band format or did certain players in Television just dissatisfy you?  Was it merely a matter of growth and maturity?

	TV:  I'm such a mature young man.  Astute observation.

	NYR:  Was it a difficult, decision to break up television?

	TV:  It's painful in the sense, you work with people a long time.  I've known Billy (Ficca) for fifteen years.  I just wanted to do something different.  I'm just glad no one in the band took it real personally.  I know Richard always wanted to write songs and have his own group.  He was writing songs he knew weren't quite right for Television.  In terms of the sound they put out.  I don't know how badly he wanted to do them  because he never tried to force them on the rest of us.  I think he knew what would fit in our overall style and what wouldn't.  

	NYR:  Ultimately, Television was your band, wasn't it?

	TV:  I wouldn't say it was my band.  I wrote material for and did a decent amount of arranging for.

	NYR:  Did you produce the new record?

	TV:  I don't want any production credit.  I think producers are overrated.  They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about music or arranging and have no ear for their own doings.  They can't  tell a good solo from a bad solo, stuff like that.

	NYR:  A producer is a trusted outside opinion, isn't he?

	TV"  Yeah.  For some bands, it's important to have one, but I think it's equally important for some bands almost not to have one.

	NYR:  Can you think of someone whose opinion about music you would respect more than your own?

	TV:  I wouldn't mind having a guy behind the board who was real sympathetic to my whole style and sound, which is something Television never found.  Someone who could get the right combination of distortion and twang in the guitar sound which every engineer we ever had dealings with did not understand.  They were used to guys with a Marshall and a Les Paul blasting away into these small microphones with the standard series of things they do or approach.  Billy had a strange way of tuning his drums, for instance.  The [his] whole thing was different.  I think the records capture some of it; I don't think they capture what we could have if the right engineer had come along and was able to get the sound we wanted on vinyl.

	NYR:  Do you play all the guitar solos on the new album?

	TV:  I play all the solos, but there's not a whole lot of  solos.  I didn't realize it until the record was done, but it seems there were more guitar solos on Television records.

	NYR:  In "Souvenir From A Dream", there's a line, "You were living five lives at once."

TV:  "You were living five lives in one."         TO BE CONTINUED IN MY NEXT E-MAIL
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"