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Re: (TV) Sour Grapes / Alternate Ver of Television's Founding?

On 7/24/2011 1:23 PM, Rex Broome wrote:

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Leo Casey<LeoCasey@comcast.net>  wrote:


 From my source(s):
" First the interview videos appear with a happy, relaxed band and then
Richard posts uh this":


http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loo4eh2lGW1qiy0z1o1_500.png


http://i.imgur.com/KKhq3.png


Didn't Richard he say in 2007 that the split was amicable?

He sure seems bitter.


Yeah, this is awful ugly stuff. The worst is the bit where he's slagging
Tom's very earliest material off (his "three little songs" etc.) as if there
was nothing of value there to begin with.  Guess that makes someone a
dumbass for being such a very "faithful organ grinder" for 40 years.
  Actually, that claim of his has been absurd for a long time to begin
with... it's tough to claim faithful membership to a band he's quit at least
three times, and with whom he didn't play between 1978 and 1991, and
super-infrequently thereafter.  But sure, yeah, faithful undemanding
sideman, fine.
I'm a bit dubious about his claim to have formed Television. Maybe he did see Tom and want to form an band with him, and maybe the Neon Boys weren't a going concern at the time, but the fact is, Television was Richard Hell with all three members of the Neon Boys. If I run into Colin Blunstone and tell him "great voice, let's form a band," so he gets Rod Argent, Chris White, and Hugh Grundy to join us, they're not all in my group, I'm joining The Zombies. 



And didn't the story go that Ork got Lloyd to see Tom, who was then
'managed' by Hell?


It seems like Richard's revisionist history is getting further and further
out there and self-contradictory. It's not always easy to parse what he's
claiming (perhaps because of his alleged mental health issues, dunno) but he
seems to be more and more often taking on the mantle of being THE guy behind
the legends of Television and CBGB etc. (whilst simultaneously denigrating
both, which is part of what makes it so hard to tell what POV he's pushing).


The problem is, while a lot of what he has to say about Tom is true-- tuning
fests, a lack of productivity, prickly personality, etc.-- it pushes things
too far to imply that Richard was the prime motivating force behind
Television.  Because Tom's solo albums exist, and to my mind all of them are
clearly extensions of the primary aesthetic of Television, which, I'm sorry,
IS Tom.  Richard could use this to his own credit, because he's so much more
versatile than Tom as a player,
That's the second time this weekend that someone has said this. Or you've said that twice, I forget. Anyway, I don't see that. His solo albums probably cover more ground than Tom's, but as guitarists, I think of Richard as basically a blues rock player who experiments with scales enough to make things more interesting. On the other hand, while Tom's albums stick pretty closely to the Television sound, I think his playing itself covers a large range. He started out with a quasi-rockabilly sound, did some Albert Ayler-influenced noise playing (a style he revisits from time to time), went into a more exploratory, almost jazz, type of soloing (think almost any long version of LJJ or MM), went into a twangy James Bond soundtrack style during the 90s, as well as some country-influenced and atmospheric playing, and from the recent clips, I'd guess he's developing an interest in middle-eastern music, both in his playing and in his sound.
My take on how Television's live shows developed on the last couple of decades is that, while he's interested in these approaches to the guitar, he's not that interested in being a soloist unless he's able to stretch out, so Richard took a lot of the solos before he left and Jimmy seems to be getting a decent amount of soloing time these days. Plus, Richard and Jimmy are good at the fiery blues-rock thing, and that is an exciting sound in live performance, especially on the shorter songs.
Two caveats about the above: I'm not that familiar with Richard's work outside of Television and am happy to reevaluate his playing if someone points me something of his that might change my opinon, and I believe that none of them have shown everything they can do as guitarists on record, or even live. 


I don't think Tom gives nearly as big of a shit about Richard as Richard
wants him to, and that probably just pisses Richard off more.  From a fan's
perspective, Tom's disrespecting Richard by being too dismissive of his
contributions, and that bothers me, too, but who knows, maybe Tom and the
guys just can't deal with Richard's personality (there were rumblings of
such problems during RL's recent tour with Fred and Billy as his band) or
maybe Tom is just a cruel dick who enjoys winding Richard up.  That's maybe
the most frustrating part of these rants: I really tend to think Tom's
basically a dick, so it bugs me on some level to (A) find Richard acting
even dickier, and (B) kind of suspect that his doing so satisfies Tom's
baser instincts, too.  It also changes my perspective to see the Brazil
interviews with Billy and Fred sitting down with Tom and Jimmy, smiling
along to Tom's version of things, none of them keen to delve into the
Richard story... they just don't seem as broken up about the whole thing as
Richard.  Hey, maybe they're doing okay.
I did notice that Tom didn't mention Richard's name, but he did point out that it wasn't Jimmy playing in the video.
I look at Richard's position this way (and this might be a source of some of his bitterness); he's like Dave Davies in The Kinks, John Cale in the Velvet Underground, George Harrison in The Beatles and Mike Love in the pre-66 Beach Boys. They all made important contributions that can get unfairly overlooked in favor of the leader of their group, they might even have been the second most important member of their respective groups, but at the end of the day, all of those groups were very obviously someone else's band, something they've all dealt with with varying degrees of grace. 
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