(TV) 'International Musician and Recording World' Article / Friction s olo / Mingus / Verlaine gets Technical

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

Somehow this also never got posted to Keith's site (and it does 
not exist in electronic form anywhere on the internet).  This 
interview is similar in some respects to one Verlaine gave to 
the magazine Guitar World a year later, but it has some good 
new stuff about his solo on Friction' and Charlie Mingus.   

	Leo

>From International Musician and Recording World, September 1980
'Tom Verlaine - The Last Romantic Guitar Hero' by Jim Farber

"There have been two strong dreams in my life but I've never written 
anything about them because it's hard to get across the language of 
dreams."
--- Tom Verlaine

"I'm a bad judge of my own work." 
 --- Tom Verlaine, twenty minutes later

Tom Verlaine's guitar work is the stuff dreams are made of.  
Not that they're ethereal or indefinite or any of those qualities 
we impose on dreams.  Rather, the isolation, the internal 
self-absorption, and the mysterious allure of "the language 
of dreams" is what Verlaine's playing can offer. As lead guitarist 
of Television until their breakup in the summer of '78, and now 
on his own as a solo artist, Tom Verlaine represents the guitar 
hero as romantic figure.  A category all too rare in this age where 
guitar maniacs have to put up with the moronic, fog-cutting heavy 
metal of Van Halen, the reupholstered Latino rhythms of Carlos 
Santana, the excessive repetition of the Outlaws ilk, or loads of 
tired old sixties blues-based hold overs.

Instead, Verlaine's Television gave us hefty doses of purposeful 
six-string work and a band attitude totally centered around the 
almighty guitar.  Sadly, even many of their small cult following 
didn't recognize this.  The problem has something to do with the 
setting.  In late '73, Verlaine formed his first band (with short-term 
member Richard Hell) in order to 'tell-a-vision'; debuting in '74 at 
arty outhouses like Max's and CBGB's.  Playing on the same 
historic bills as the more lyrically oriented Talking Heads and 
Patti Smith in the early days of 'punk', Television's guitars were 
viewed by some as simple backdrops to their symbolist lyrics 
and remote, brooding stage persona while the trendy 'artiness' 
imposed on their scene stole a lot of attention from the real work 
of Verlaine and his more conventional second lead, Richard Lloyd.

And as some downplayed the guitars, others overplayed them. 
Several complained about the long, drawn-out solos, even though 
most of Television's guitar work was brilliantly choreographed.  
If you listen to Television's two albums (Marquee Moon and 
Adventure) or Tom's solo LP (released last September) you'll see 
that, in many ways, everything is a solo and nothing is a solo. 
There are lead lines running through all of the choruses and verses, 
mounting the guitar work vertically, while even in the few recorded 
horizontal moments (like the guitar extension in the song 'Marquee 
Moon') the tones develop in a logical, literary manner; delivering a 
sense of built-up tension as tightly constructed as a top-forty pop 
tune.  Even in the more extended live movements, Verlaine has 
proved to be one of the few guitarists (along with Neil Young, 
Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and others), who can solo for more than a 
few minutes without losing the point.  Of all of them, Verlaine's 
work seems to have the greatest sense of 'telling a story'; of 
bringing you somewhere and coming back with a vividness as 
insistent as a recurring dream.

But beyond tight focus of Verlaine's work, there is the uniqueness 
of his tone; an almost anorexic sound ---thin, piercing, brittle 
and vulnerable.  "I term the sound shiny", Tom asserts.  "You 
can get that with Gibsons.  On the solo record, I used an
Epiphone 'Al Cailoa'.  It's got six switches on it and every one 
makes the sound even thinner."  

Verlaine's sound actually developed somewhat by accident.  
"When I was in high school in Delaware I had a different sound", 
Tom explains.  "I was using an old tape deck--- you take the 
pre-amp out of it, which gives you the same sound I later heard
when I first saw Clapton play live. He had a little thing on top of 
his amp, which I bet was a tape recorder with the pre-amp taken 
out.  A lot of people did that in those days---Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page.  
It gives your guitar a lot of volume before it hits the amp itself.  Then 
the amp distorts it and gives it an edge.  When I got to New York 
my sound changes because I didn't  have any of that equipment.  
The new  equipment I bought in New York was a Fender Jazzmaster, 
which in those days was $95 because nobody wanted 'em.  Now 
they're up to $400, probably because Elvis Costello had his picture 
taken with 'em so many times."

Verlaine labels the new sound he came up with for Television as a 
"cranked up surf sound.  It's basically a combination of Fender surf 
guitars and Fender amps cranked up."  

Interestingly, when Verlaine was growing up as Tom Miller in 
Delaware he claims not to have liked guitars at all.  "In the early 
Sixties I listened to jazz and when a guitar would come over the 
radio I would literally turn it off.  When I heard the Stones, that's 
when I started to like the electric guitar sound.  Also on Dylan's 
Highway 61, Mike Bloomfield's stuff."

'19th Nervous Breakdown' and 'Tombstone Blues' may have 
inspired Tom to trash his sax and piano for a guitar but his 
style developed on a track far outside Bloomfield's or Keith 
Richard's blues-based licks.  Listening to early Television, 
one might more closely associate him with the psychedelic 
San Francisco sound; Jorma Kaukonen with his vibrato 
hooked on speed.  "I never liked San Francisco music", 
Tom counters.  "People associate me with that.  But the 
tones I liked more in those days were The Paul Butterfield 
Blues Band or The Yardbirds live record." 

In terms of the 'lean-and-hungry' aspect of Verlaine's tone, 
one could also dredge up the name of Neil Young.  Both 
Young and Verlaine feature off-kilter lines, emphasizing 
convoluted reconstructions or extensions of the main 
themes in their solos.  Yet Verlaine is not as culturally 
rooted as Young.  While Young's lines are pure mythic 
Americana (ironic for a Canadian), Verlaine creates his 
own separate reality.  One is description, the other 
implication.  "The first Neil Young album that I bought was 
Zuma which I thought was great", Tom says.  "I think he's 
got integrity.  He's one of the few players who does.  His 
live album I like a lot.  The guitars are mixed real loud on 
that album."

In the past Verlaine has had problems getting his own 
guitars mixed just right.  He complains of engineers not 
knowing how to deal with his sound. "On the first 
Television album it took a while for the band to make 
themselves understood.  When we started making the 
first album with Andy Johns, he didn't know what the 
hell to make of it.  He pulled me out into the hall and 
said, 'Is this the Velvet Underground?  What kind of trip 
is this?'  He recorded a few a few tracks and then had 
some personal events so went to California and I finished 
the record without him.  He came back to mix it and he 
finally said the band was a lot like the Stones because 
there's this slight out-of-tuneness to it, and you can't 
polish it up too much or you lose the energy."  

On this debut disc, Verlaine revealed how purposeful his 
guitar work could be right away; in at least one instance 
creating a solo to reflect pre-conceived visual images 
rather than random aural effects.  Verlaine labels his feature 
in 'Friction', "a picture solo.  It didn't have anything to do with 
tonality at all.  There's a Mingus record called Oh Yeah and 
a song called 'Hog Calling Blues'.  It's got trombone players 
making pig noises and others making cluck noises and it all 
sounds great.  It's all just a picture."  

Interestingly, Verlaine reveals some unexpected roots for 
other guitar bits on the album.  While the stuttering riffs 
on 'Marquee Moon' may seem wholly original, Tom claims 
it was reggae rhythms inverted with a guitar version of the 
horn part of James Brown's 'I Feel Good' layered on top.  

On Television's second album, one of the most stunning
guitar riffs is on 'Days'.  It features Verlaine's warmest work, 
plus a passionate vocal with the key lyric 'days be more 
than all we have', to the realm of the spiritual.  The 
captivating main riff in the song has a strange origin. 
"I had read that Wagner would write something and 
then write it out backwards. He'd have violins play 
the main theme backwards. I thought that was interesting. 
And I always liked The Byrds so I asked Lloyd if he could 
play 'Mr. Tambourine Man' backwards.  We took that and 
changed it a little bit and that became 'Days'." 

Unfortunately the kind of magic created on those two 
albums could not last.  Richard Lloyd had personal problems 
as well as ego conflicts in the band, and Tom became 
disillusioned with the drum sound of Billy Ficca.  A bust-up 
was unavoidable but the outcome hasn't been easy for Tom.  
His solo album was completely misunderstood by the LA 
staff of Elektra Records, partly explaining the LP's poor sales, 
and Verlaine had to spend many months battling to change 
labels.  A new deal now seems likely with Warner Brothers, 
but nothing has been finalized.  Then there's the matter of 
finding a new second lead guitar player and that's a Catch-22 
situation in itself.  "If a guy's great he wants to play everything 
himself; he has his own vision", Tom explains.  "And if he's not 
great then who wants to play with him?  It's hard to find 
someone who's talented and has the right attitude."

For now, Verlaine is writing lots of new songs and seeking 
out fresh sidemen.  It should hardly come as a surprise 
that he claims much of the new work is romantic.  While 
so many other guitar 'heroes' offer a shallow macho strut, 
Verlaine has long been delivering the depth and passion 
that befits a true musical hero.  True, this has yet to win 
over the masses, but Verlaine, like his work, always 
emphasizes the ideal.  To him art should always be 
a "higher reflection of life".  You can almost hear the 
crystalline guitar work in 'Venus De Milo' when he says, 
"How high you set your sights is a lot of how your life is 
going to turn out."   

SIDEBAR in same 1980 article /interview:  

Verlaine gets Technical

When it comes to choosing guitars, Tom Verlaine is truly 
long suffering. His favorite six-string is the one that causes 
him the most problems ---- a vintage Fender Jazzmaster 
which offers lots of string buzz, horrible hissing in the 
studio and other troubles to test your faith.  For the string 
buzz, Verlaine suggests taking the bridge out and wrapping 
masking tape around the poles to keep it from rocking.  
And because of the hissing, he says he can't jump around 
while doing a solo in the studio.  You've got to be a certain 
angle to the amp where it hums the least.

Verlaine has less problems with his favorite strings 
(Ernie Bell and Gretsch) and his amps, which since 
the final days of Television have been Ampeg SVTs, 
which he claims, "totally changed my sound.  They 
fattened up the lead guitar so I'll probably use them 
next time in the studio."  On the two Television albums 
Tom used Fender 'Super Reverb' amps, and on his solo 
LP he favored cheap $57 mikes, which he claims, 
"Take more punch. It gives a slappy effect."

Verlaine generally prefers cheaper equipment, asserting 
the main problem with guitarists today is, "They all go for 
those $3000 Les Paul's and Marshall amps.  There's a 
real lack of the individual with that stuff."     
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