(TV) TV Old Interview in Boston Rock Magazine

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

TV Interview from Boston Rock Magazine, 
Sept./Oct. 1981 by Michael Hafitz

Verlaine projects and Hafitz reflects;  I am
not a historian and I have a memory like a
sieve.  But I think it was the summer of 1975, 
or maybe sometime that fall, when I first went to 
New York to see Television, Talking Heads, 
Ramones, and a bunch of other 'new' bands.  
Pop music, an animal lying dormant for years, 
was then being resuscitated in a new climate, 
revitalized with new attitudes.  I don't know if 
I'm being nostalgic or just redundant, but I 
remember thinking, while watching those bands
that there was only one other place in the world I'd
rather be than in front of a fifteen minute Ramones
set at CBGBs ("What the fuck was that?") or at a 
Talking Heads show in a space filled with artists, 
patrons and even their parents .... and that was 
listening to Television.  

Television was crysalloidial--a special substance 
which formed a true solution to useless wanderings 
of countless  two leads guitar outfits of the day.  
(One could be bashed about by the solo-less 
Ramones and then swelled by the soulful Television.)
Passion and intellect precariously balanced on a
nightmare scale.  Drug riddled lyrics sung in an 
uncomfortable quaver.  And those guitars!  Richard 
Lloyd and Tom Verlaine, no matter what their 
present feelings are towards each other, made 
magic together.  Television was a serious band, 
and you had to take them seriously---or not 
bother at all.

Of course, The American Record Buying Public 
chose  the latter.  After an indy 45, a few twelve 
inchers, and a couple of albums, Television, for 
reasons of this or that, pulled the plug.  

Tom Verlaine's second solo long player, Dreamtime,
is his first for Warner Brothers.  Fred Smith, 
Television's bass player, is on the album and in the 
touring band.  Richard Lloyd has just released a 
single covering two vintage Stones hits, his only 
record since Alchemy.  And Billy Ficca has joined
The Waitresses.

I had wanted to meet Verlaine for years, not out of 
idolatry or hero worship (if I remember correctly my
last was Mickey Mantle) but because a simulated
identification and plain old respect.  Well, 
preconceptions are often as not misconceptions, 
and Verlaine shattered a good deal.

Tom Verlaine:  I want to see what kind of bad review 
they gave me here.  Let's see ... "This guy is flaky 
as shit" (speaking about the review in the last issue
of Boston Rock).  I get really amused when I see 
these things now, good or bad.

Boston Rock (BR):  What have you been doing 
with yourself?  

TV:  I guess it must have seemed like a long time
since the first album, huh?  Some people spend 
two years between records.  I'm always working 
on stuff.  I guess I've just been living my life, sort 
of working all the time, getting ideas ... 

BR:  Boston Rock:  Did Elektra make you even
more wary of this business?

TV:  Well to this day I don't know what
those records sold.  It took a long time to get
off Elektra although it was easy to get another
deal.  I was supposed to do three records for 
Elektra and they didn't want to let me go.  
It took a year to get off.  The latest Elektra 
accounting report said that one cassette has 
sold in Canada in the last six months!  

BR:  Why didn't you turn to an independent 
after that experience?  

TV:  Well, you know we started out with Ork
Records.  Most independents are worse, let 
me tell you.  They're just these guys walking 
around picking your nose blah blah blah ...  
But that's not really fair---Rough Trade's a good one.

BR:  Are you planning any live Television releases 
to file next to the Arrow bootleg?

TV:  That's not a bad bootleg at all.  I'm still trying 
to find out who did that one.  There's close to 200 
tapes floating around.  I know a guy who has a
hundred shows on tape---every show we did in 
New York City except for the first five or six.  I 
doubt I'll do anything.  I'm not crazy about them 
and it's time consuming to sit there and pick the 
better versions, which ones are half way in tune, 
which ones you can hear the vocals on.

BR:  After working with Richard Lloyd for so long, 
have you found it difficult to make the two guitar 
thing work?

TV:  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 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.

BR:  You use a lot of rural imagery in your songs,
drawing on prior experience I suppose, but you've
been living in New York for how long?

TV:  Twelve years.  I'm not aware of drawing on 
anything.  The thing I'm aware of when writing a 
song is talking to somebody.  More than 
anything else it's like communicating with 
somebody, whether they're in the room the 
room or whether they're not at the time of writing.
It's someone specific.  It might not be the same
person.

BR: Are they usually women?

TV:  They tend to be, yeah.

BR:  But not the same one?

TV:  Well it might be the same spirit, but not 
the same person.  I never think about this 
area so that's why I'm probably a bad person 
to interview.  I don't have ready made answers.  
Because I never think about it, I'm either forced
to make up an answer or tell you I don't have one.

I got this theory that in in the bottom line no one
knows how to do anything.  Right now in the 
literary world and in the art world there's a big
emphasis on how you do it.  The people I've 
admired in the past have no interest in how at all.
It's just something they do.  "Where does this 
melody come from?"  There are no answers for it---
it's sort of an ongoing event or something.   

BR:  Some of the recurrent themes in your lyrics, 
water and ships for instance, have strong drug 
connotations for me, a heroin haze or something, 
probably as a result of doing too much Velvets.

TV:  What exactly is a drug song?  I don't associate
with drugs although people who take drugs would 
associate that with drugs.  I don't really use drugs 
much anymore and even when I did take drugs it 
didn't have anything to do with what I was writing 
at all.

I took heroin twice in my life and it was because 
like a year ago I was beat up and this guy kicked
in my rib, you know, so I took it once and it was 
OK .  I took it a second time and it was nuthin'.  
Even as a drug that drug doesn't appeal to me at 
all.

BR:  Do you listen to Neil Young a lot?

TV:  People told me about Neil Young about five 
years ago.  The only thing i knew was "Heart of 
Gold" so I started buying stuff, but I must have 
bought the wrong ones.  Then I heard "Drive Back," 
this electric sort of stuff and then I knew what 
people were talking about---a certain spontaneous
element---and I knew what people were comparing.     
It wasn't someone who learned a bunch of Chuck 
Berry, Jeff Beck, or Eric Clayton riffs.

When I was a kid, I liked "19th Nervous Breakdown,"
before that, five years of very heavy jazz.  Guitar 
didn't interest me at all.  Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, 
Ornette Coleman, that kind of expression.  
I don't draw on that, I don't think, "Oh Eric Dolphy I'm
gonna do ..."  Know what I mean?  You draw on 
your own resources of your own self at any given 
moment.  As far as solos go, you might play one 
very similar to how you did it on the record because
that's the way it happens in a sense.  That's the 
way it sounds good.  And another time you might 
do something totally different.  Sometimes it's 
much worse, sometimes it's much better.

BR:  Why did you choose guitar?
    
TV:  I started playing piano when I was six.  I 
played sax for three years too.  I don't know.  
A person might have some desire to express 
themselves in that musical language.  There 
may be a thousand people who may want to 
do that and there may be a thousand people 
who heard something on the radio and 
wanted to do the same thing and there may 
be a thousand people who picked up a guitar 
because their girlfriend liked the guitar player.

The style is accidental and incidental to yourself.
I don't even know what it is.  And if someone tried
to tell me what it was, I might just walk out of the 
room.  

BR:   A person with your sense of introspection 
would seem to dwell somewhat on the past.  How 
come you haven't written any songs about your 
Television experience?

TV:  Well, first of all, I don't dwell on the past.  In 
fact, I have a real good memory, but the past in 
the sense of what happened  in your life isn't that 
extraordinary from someone else's life.  There's a 
number of people who had someone very close to
them die when they were young which makes them
very much different.  Those people become aware 
of something utterly and completely gone.  I can't 
say that I have the same sense.  I sympathize with 
those people ... .  I find that I meet an awful lot of 
people who've gone through that.  Maybe I attract 
that type, I don't know, but something about the 
last twelve years in New York City ...

BR:  Does the city get to you? 

TV:  Yeah, I went to Maine a year ago just to look 
around.  Of all the places I've been. Maine is the 
most appealing.  Two things, though, winters are
real rough and jobs are hard to find.  But if you're a 
good craftsman, you can make a living.  I don't 
know whether I could be content doing it, because 
I've never done it, but I could easily spend a year or 
half the year there.

BR:  Then what are you doing here?

TV:  I was real anxious to tour again.  Year before I 
could have cared less.  And in December, I want to
play the colleges.  I've never played the colleges 
before and I want to see what goes on there.  I don't 
hear great things are going on in the colleges.      
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