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(TV) Interview - Old But Interesting



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Sounds (Magazine), April 8, 1978 by Stephen Demorest

As a child, Tom Verlaine loved to listen to symphonies.  Half asleep and
half awake, it was like dreaming.  
Now, with Television, he makes music that reflects the abstraction of one
lost in thought, balancing giddily 
between two worlds.

Television does to rock what Stravinsky did to classical music, breaking it
into fragments and reassembling 
it anew. The percussion is shifty and unsettling as high winds at midnight.
The guitars surge and sputter like 
live wires dancing with an apprehension for balance.  The drums are tension,
the guitars release; darkness 
doubles and lightning strikes itself.  Television skirts the Twilight Zone
with dissonance, discords, minor keys, 
and pinging harmonics.  Some of their best notes are the ones they don't
play, sudden silences and hesitations 
that jerk through the air like a crack goes though a cup.

"The whole thing of modern art is based on fragments", says Verlaine.  "But
I don't hear it as fragmented, 
I hear it as one thing.  People who say it's fragmented don't see the whole
thing; it's like they're making a 
premature decision."  

"Richard Hell thought of the name 'Television' ", Tom says.  "He was really
drunk one night,  and he had this 
list of about 200 names, and he looked around his room and saw his
television set and put 'Television' on the 
bottom of the page. Then he brought it to rehearsal and everybody said,
'This one is good'.  He had all kinds of 
names"  'Goo Goo', The 'Liberteens' ".         

Violence"  "I hate fights, it just seems so stupid it repels me.  I
understand breaking guitars onstage, 
I even kicked an amp to death myself one night, but I don't get any thrill
out of witnessing destruction. 
I'd rather see a guy do it as a joke than do it because of an inability to
control his temper."  

This doesn't mean Verlaine is chicken, though.  "I used to get kicked out of
games for unnecessary 
roughness in school.  In soccer, I was overly energetic going for the ball.
I'd be kicking and kicking 
until the other guy was on the ground.  Same thing in football.  I played
fullback and used to be real fast, 
but whenever a guy came to tackle me I'd get real pissed off -- Who the hell
are you? -- and try to knock 
him down instead of avoiding him."

"I'd be ten yards from a touchdown, but instead of making it in down the
sideline, I'd run right into guys 
and get creamed. I was making great yardage, but I blew it in the pinch.  It
was real stupid, but I 
couldn't get over it.  Finally, the coach just took me out in the middle of
the season."

GOOD/EVIL:  "I do think in terms of good and evil, and I don't think
everything is so relative.  This is this and 
that is that.  Evil comes when people are totally convinced their points of
view are The Truth.  People are led 
by confidence, unfortunately, so those who have that much confidence in
their points of view find followers.  
Evil is an attitude that comes over those, who refuse to discriminate.
There was a California expression: 
'It's all the same'.  Drinking a glass of water or cutting a leg off -- 'Oh
it's all the same.' "

I also think some people are deliberate about making sure you know what
they're going through, which I 
don't really care for. There' are people who are definitely out to occupy
space that they really shouldn't be 
taking up, and that, to me, 
is a real misdirection."

"I do feel like I have a good angel, there's definitely some help.  I  feel
if there's something I really have to do, 
then I can do it -- anybody can get help in the clinch.  I guess some people
don't feel that way, that's probably 
why a lot of people are in jail."

"I don't like to analyze my own work; I do it until it's right, and then
it's gone.  In fact, I think I've developed 
a phobia about putting things on paper that I 'd like to get over.  When I
had a typewriter, I used to write a lot 
more, all sorts of stories, but a friend of mine and I tore it to bits one
night for fun.  It was like, 'Wanna see a
 key? .. Rip!' I haven't gotten one since."

"There's a feeling that goes on between you and your tools, which I never
took seriously until I had all seven of my 
guitars stolen, and had to get used to new ones.  They weren't real
expensive, but they were set up so I could 
play them in a certain way.  At least I got to do one record with them.
Most necks are different sizes.  
Your hand takes all that for granted, but on a strange guitar you get
millions of bad chords.  Your hand keeps 
playing the old neck."

"Some kid showed me harmonics in the 12th grade, and I thought it was the
greatest -- they're all over our 
first record.  Lots of great jazz guitarists can apparently do it really
fast, but I love the sound -- like little bells." 

Verlaine likes his painters abstract.  "Right now I like Charles Burchfield,
who does watercolor landscapes on the 
verge of abstraction, but not quite.  And do you know Albert Ryder's
landscapes?  He lived this completely 
impoverished life in New York, down on West 19th Street.  He had no money,
so he'd break a board off his bed 
to paint on, and he had the cheapest paint so they're all cracked now.  He'd
do one painting on top of another 
for years.  And I like Paul Klee a lot.  In fact, Paul Klee is  probably as
good a painter as Beethoven is a composer."

"I just started to listen to Beethoven last year, and now he really appeals
to me.  It was the same thing with 
abstract painting -- I don't know what it takes, but all of a sudden it
dawns on you.  A lot of people think Beethoven's 
last three string quartets are the greatest music ever written.  From a
certain point of view, they're really perfect, they 
just don't stop weaving.  Bach had that down, but with him it always struck
a certain logic within a person.  
Beethoven, it's beyond logic -- they're like little miracles."

Television appears in a silent black film by Ivan Kral of the Patti Smith
Group, which was screened once at CBGBs. 
Tom stands like a ramrod digesting lightning.  His face is lit with
phosphorus, an art  nouveau martyr in a platinum 
print.  He rolls his eyes through timid, scarcely begun glances, like a
blind man.  Tom didn't see it.  He came into 
the club just as they were going off the screen, and all he remembers is it
was the darkest segment of the film. 

Tom Verlaine and Fred Smith of Television are holed up at Elektra Records on
Fifth Avenue.  Smith is relaxing 
over in the corner, behind a puckish smile and twinkling eyes.  Verlaine,
however, only slept three hours last night, 
and despite his boyish look -- cropped blonde hair and a colourful patchwork
leather jacket -- he seems worn and 
agitated.  In a spasm of creativity, some goon in the Elektra art department
has tinkered with Verlaine's specifications 
for the jacket of Television's new 'Adventure' album, and Tom -- always a
most exact artist -- is quietly furious, sick to 
the centre of his soul.

He's been plagued  frequently bad business in the year since his powerful
band released its startling 'Marquee Moon' 
debut album.  Bickering with Elektra, which wouldn't release the single Tom
wanted.  Splitting from their management 
company, Wartoke, which couldn't account for the proceeds from Television's
English tour to Tom's satisfaction.  
Working short-handed during 'Adventure' sessions when Richard Lloyd, the
brilliant guitarist whose eyes remind one 
of Charlotte Rampling, was laid-up ill for five weeks.

Now Verlaine is correcting proofs of the LP's lyric sheet (more mistakes)
and nervously twiddling his pen.  We get 
along fine but he's no fan of interviews -- one more nuisance.  "I'll tell
ya," he sighs at one point, "I wouldn't mind 
disappearing one of these days." 

"It's hard for me to find something good to read.  I found a book in England
called 'Death And The Dreamer' by 
Dennis Saurat that's divided into three parts.  The first is conversations
with Spanish peasants about ghosts; 
the second is a dialogue with a monk in Italy, who tells the real story of
Jesus Christ; and the third is an 
autobiographical account of his experience while he was knocked unconscious
and pronounced dead during 
a World War II rocket bombing of  London.  Those stories interest me; in
fact, I want to see that cheapo movie 
about returning from death, 'Beyond And Back' ."

"Another good book is The Sands of Karakaroum' by James Ullman, who was
considered a pretty trashy writer of 
the 40s and 50s.  It sounds like a stupid desert novel, but it does have
some grip to it.  It's about westerners, who 
go to this totally desolate, unmapped place above the Himalayas in mid-Asia,
and the black sand and heat and 
local legends alter their consciousness.  The author says he was haunted by
this story for 15 years, and then 
wrote the whole book in one week.  It's like a fever-dream."

Verlaine's taste in records is similarly esoteric.  "I buy them and sell
them the next day, looking for something 
decent. Elvis' guitarist, Scotty Moore, made a good little jam record on
Delwood, but I think it's already a cut-out.  
Actually, I think Bowie's recent records are interesting.  I like to analyze
the engineering aspects because it 
sounds so different.  It sounds true-to-life to me, like the snare drum
sounds real whacky.  I also heard a 
soundtrack by Enrico Marconi[sic], who does them for Italian westerns like
Clint Eastwood.  They're unique, 
some blend between classical and pop without being muzak.  I would bet Bowie
has heard his records too."

Verlaine's favourite disc last year, though, was a 1961 record of music from
the 'Twilight Zone' TV show, by 
Marty Manning and His Orchestra, which Tom rediscovered in his childhood
collection.  "It's an album of really 
neat stuff, and it's impossible to find now.  It's not really spooky, it's
just weird combinations of instruments, 
totally arranged with strange rhythms.  It's pre-synthesizers and
tape-effects."

Verlaine doesn't listen to much new music, although he concedes, "I suppose
it's more interesting than this 
and that.  Actually, it seems like all the guys you'd think could do really
hot stuff don't do it -- like this guy 
Speeding, his record is just a bunch of standard rock and roll licks piled
up."  Then he brightens, "I hope 
Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore do more of that Derek and Clive stuff."

Although Television's material is pretty uniformly humorless, Verlaine
himself is known to have a playful turn 
of mind.  (He recently came across an old envelope full of funny cartoons he
once drew of spherical, 
simple-minded characters.)  High on his reading list these days are some
vintage W.C. Fields filmscripts, 
which he found in a New York bargain bin for a dollar, and which he calls
"first-rate literature."  He also likes 
flying saucer rock records from the Sputnik era, and appreciates comedy
items like 'It's Sick' by the 
Sick-niks from 1958.  "It's totally stupid, like a psychiatrist, who can't
stop burping in front of his patient.  
One side is about 40 bands of one-line jokes.  

The leader of Television does not own a tv set.  "I had an old, battered
one, but when we had too move 
out of our rehearsal loft one day I left it behind.  Only half the screen
lit up anyway."

Tom is obviously fascinated by sound.  He loves to try things out while
recording (an expensive habit), 
which accounts for the distinctive personality of their records.
Television's guitar tones, for instance, 
had their diamond-hard tonal quality enhanced by the studio at Soundmixers,
a large wooden room with 
a floor like a gymnasium where they got a lot of reflected sound bouncing
off the walls.  They spent 
from September to January on the LP and, says Tom painfully, "it cost a
fortune."

"Another reason we have a different sound quality from the standard Les Paul
beefed-up guitars 
plugged into Marshall amplifiers is we don't use Gibson guitars---it's all
fenders and Daneltros.  
I think it gives you more bite and sparkle.  I ended up using the same old
Jazzmaster for almost 
the entire record because I couldn't find another one that would stay in
tune. Jazzmasters are 
traditionally the guitar nobody would play---the pickups don't respond to a
string like the 
Les Paul--but to me it sounds great."  (Richard Lloyd plays the solos on
'Days and 'Ain't That 
Nothin' '; Verlaine plays all the others.)

"I also think we use notes that other rock and rollers don't use in chords.
Like 'Ain't That Nothin'' 
is just a drone G, but over the top are all sorts of 6ths and 7ths traveling
by.  Also the 
arrangements aren't strictly tailored to a voice, like 'You Light Up My
Life.  In fact, on a couple of 
these things, I had no idea of the vocals when we put down the music.
'Carried Away' had 
three different melodies -- it even had three different sets of lyrics --
and this one was the best."

COLLABORATIONS:  "There must be 20 people I'd like to do records with, but
contracts and 
money make it a mess.  It's like a marriage -- you sign a piece of paper for
better or for worse.  
It's too bad you just can't do one song and see how you get along."

POWER:  "I can never read history, but I love hearing stories about people.
Like Nero 
and Caligula -- they were the two comedians of all time.  I came across a
quote something like, 
'History is a big playpen where people ruin each other' -- and it's sad but
totally true.  
People with a certain point of view are granted power by people around them.
Any time 
someone comes on strong, usually there's more people willing to go with him
than 
against him.  It's definitely true in rock and roll.  A group like
Aerosmith, there's no 
content there, it's just coming on strong like they saw somebody else come
on strong 
before them.  The same thing with Kiss."

At its best Television's expressionistic music is taut with an ecstatic
tension reminiscent 
of the absinthe romanticism of The Doors.  They may be the most artistically
ambitious 
band in rock -- grand-mannered, preoccupied, certainly inspired -- and
probably seem either 
pretentious or loaded with talent, depending on how well they capture your
imagination.  
'Adventure' is full of gorgeous, obsessively individual sounds, and seems to
me much 
more accessible than their first album.  The five cuts on side one are
classic rock 
structures; it's the three lengthy cuts on side two that really cut loose
the 
free-form musicianship.  Yet for all their inventive experimenting, there's
fundamental 
hard-on rock and roll in 'Glory', 'Foxhole', and the Stones-ish 'Ain't That
Nothin' '.  
Verlaine's poetic lyrics remain obscure imagistic collages, with certain
echoes from 
his earlier work becoming apparent (folded hands, docks by the water . . .
.).  

Verlaine's favourite track, 'The Dream's Dream', is a lovely trance
instrumental, 
which nearly didn't make it on record.  "I found the basic melody on a
two-year-old 
cassette one day.  We were working five days a week, so we worked it out
over a 
weekend and did it on Monday.  The other title for that was 'Cairo', but
it's actually 
all in western scale, in the key of F.  'Of course, I wish it was 10 minutes
longer."  

The most tortured guitar solo on 'Adventure' is found on 'The Fire'.  Flames
are 
hardly a new image in the Verlaine repertoire.  He wrote of arson in his
poetry 
collaboration with Patti Smith, 'The Night', and remembers: "I used to do a
number 
called 'Horizontal Ascension'.  It was all about a kid, who got a lighter
for his birthday 
and decided to burn things.  He'd go to drug stores and movie theaters, and
when nobody was 
looking -- whoosh! -- he'd burn everything up.  Maybe it's because I'm a
fire-sign, Sagittarius."

"The melody of 'The Fire' is a minor key, but the chords aren't exactly in
that 
key -- they float around it.  And that weird, reedy oboe sound is an
ondioline, a little 
instrument invented by this French guy in the 40s.  It's like an organ, but
it only 
has 24 notes, and when you press the key you can bend it, like a guitar
note.  
I heard one on that 'Twilight Zone' record.  It was listed in the credits
along with 
things like 'the serpent' and 
'bull's roar' --- whatever they are."

The next thing Tom wants to try is an instrument made by Farfisa that 
makes "squeaky little cheapo organ sounds like you hear in Chinese
restaurants."

My photographer, Kate Simon, is sitting on the floor, alternately listening
and 
daydreaming.  She has a wonderful book, 'Dolly On The Dais', which tells the
true 
stories of the women, who modelled for history's greatest works of art.
When I 
mention Verlaine should check out Venus de Milo, Kate says that Liz Sidell 
was the most tragic figure in the book.  Liz Sidell was the model for Dante
Gabriel 
Rossetti's painting, 'Ophelia', which Verlaine is partial to.  I mention she
looks dead 
in it, and a smile flickers across his face:  "Yeah, I can see the charm of
that."  

Television is becoming as renowned for their unreleased material as for
their Elektra 
albums.  'Adventure', in fact, is the title of the one song they recorded
that didn't make it 
onto the new album (it was dropped for reasons of length).  Also axed was
'Mi Amore', 
which Tom regretted not getting onto the first album a year ago.  ("We tried
it for half an hour, 
but it's just too hard a song to worry about getting right.")  Another old
favourite, which 
they never had time to work out right is 'Hard On Love', a ballad that
appears on their 
earliest demo tapes.  'Careful' is the one song from this era that finally
qualified for 
'Adventure' "by popular request."

Then there's Television's celebrated version of Dylan's 'Knockin' On
Heaven's Door'.  
Tom says, "I heard somebody bootlegged that in Paris and put out like a
thousand 
copies -- I'd like to hear it myself."  He's already getting tired of the
song, though 
and is considering replacing it in their set with -- get this -- the country
and western 
melodrama, 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love Come To Town'.  "I'm telling you,
man, 
it's a little stupid, but with a few changes in the lyrics, that song could
be great."  
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