I wrote this last night, playing Warm & Cool, Dreamtime, and some live Television as I did. Feel free to skip/delete - it's a bit long and very rambling. Just wanted to get it on paper.
Tom Verlaine, nee Miller, 1949-2023.
The other day, I was thinking back to an article I read 15+ years ago that gave the most compelling explanation I’ve ever read for why, as adults, we remain so emotionally connected to the music, books, films and people we first encountered somewhere between the ages of 15-22 or so. In short, the article argued, it’s an impactful age where we are figuring ourselves out as people – what we like, who we like, where we fit in – and as a result everything takes on a magnified significance, both at the time, and in our memories. Things imprint on you more easily at that age. It distorts your perspective later in life.
So I always get annoyed when people say the music today isn’t as good as when they were younger – I think there’s more music out there for you to discover and love than you can possibly hear in a lifetime (and I’d say the same for books, art, film, and people too) – but the fact remains that for me, the summer of 1993 is when I first “discovered” the early New Wave/punk bands (mid/late 1970s) and it remains my favorite era of music to hear and explore, even now. I wore-out the discographies in Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming and Clinton Heylin’s From the Velvets to the Voidoids tracking down as many entries as I could (not always easy in that era, when turntables were becoming scarce but many back catalogs hadn’t transitioned to digital mediums yet). There are seemingly countless artists and bands I discovered then that I still listen to regularly today: Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, the Adverts, X-Ray Spex, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the Mumps, the original Heartbreakers, Patti Smith, the Undertones, the dB’s, the Only Ones, the Stooges, the Modern Lovers… the list goes on and on. But none captured my affections as fully as Television, the brainchild of Tom Verlaine, who put out two albums in the 1970s and a surprise 3rd album in 1992.
I first heard Marquee Moon in that summer of 1993. I bought it the same day as Richard Hell’s Blank Generation, and to be honest, Hell’s album grabbed me much more immediately. It was poppier, punker, and more lyrically arresting. It took a few months, and a few spins, for tracks like “Venus” and “Prove It” to start beckoning me back, over and over. I picked-up Adventure in the fall of that year, and “Glory” hooked me on Television for good. I still love Blank Generation, don’t get me wrong, almost as much as I love Station to Station and Germ Free Adolescents and 16 Lovers Lane and Blonde on Blonde and London Calling and a handful of others – but nothing matches Marquee Moon for me. It is my favorite album of all-time, bar none.
The funny thing was, when I first heard Marquee Moon in the summer of 1993, I didn’t realize I’d missed seeing Television live during their unexpected 1992-93 reunion by just a few blocks! They played Toad’s in New Haven in the fall of 1992 while I was living a block away, and I was regularly seeing other shows at Toad’s at the time. Another reminder that there’s just tons of music out there for you to discover – your new favorite music could be a block away from you tonight and you don’t know it yet. You just need to keep looking and listening.
Over the next few years, I’d hunt down everything Tom had recorded, whether with Television, solo, or for other artists, including things like his work producing Jeff Buckley and True West. In 1995, a cameo by Tom on a new album by an up-and-coming NYC band led me to Luna, which remains one of my favorite bands to this day. In 2000, a namecheck of Tom on a new album led me to the Go-Betweens, another longtime favorite. I picked-up the new Alvvays album last month because they named a song for Tom ("That when you walk away / It's gonna be for good / You were my Tom Verlaine / Just sitting on the hood..."). Countless bands have talked about their love for Tom’s work – U2, REM, the Strokes, the Feelies, Felt, Echo and Bunnymen – the list is seemingly endless. His commercial impact was tiny, but his influence was not.
But Verlaine wasn’t one of these artists like McCartney or Dylan or even his contemporaries David Byrne, Patti Smith, David Thomas, or Deborah Harry, who would devote themselves to music for the rest of their lives. Verlaine pursued a solo career with some enthusiasm in the 1980s, with some excellent solo albums (I especially love his debut, Dreamtime, and 1987’s Flash Light) before the 1992 Television reunion. But after that, there would be only two more solo albums – both released in 2006 – and aside from a track or two here or there, nothing more. He’d still tour with Television occasionally, and they’d play some unrecorded material (there was endless talk of a 4th album; Jimmy Rip said a few years ago that they’d recorded tracks, but Tom never got around to writing lyrics), but his passion for recording seemed to mostly disappear after 1992. He was very much a private person – I have no idea if he was ever married or had kids or anything (he lost a twin brother to substance abuse decades ago, but you’d never hear him talk about it) – and I don’t think he felt compelled to continually hurl himself at the charts, or tour the hinterlands, year after year. At no time in his career did he ever seem like an extrovert, and it’s not hard to find interviews from the 1970s through to the past decade where Tom seems annoyed or hostile with the interviewer. For the last few decades, he has seemed to be content to play the infrequent show, browse the racks at the Strand, and make the occasional guest appearance on a new Patti Smith or Violent Femmes album. As a fan, I used to find this frustrating, but sometime in the past decade I came to respect him for it. He’s given us plenty of music – he’s not obligated to do anything for his fans. His time is his own.
Besides, he already gave us Marquee Moon, a record of almost exactly 45 minutes where not a note is wasted. The rare record I never tire of hearing, despite playing it thousands of times over the years, whether streaming, on vinyl, or CD. I can listen to the guitars interlock on “Friction” all day long. Perhaps Marquee Moon was imprinted on me when I was just 19 - but if there’s a more perfect record, I have yet to hear it (but who knows? I plan to keep listening, just to be sure!) Anyway, after Marquee Moon, Tom didn’t need to do anything else for me, but of course I’m so glad he did.
My quick Verlaine/Television Top 5:
Marquee Moon
Tom Verlaine (1979)
Flash Light
Dreamtime
Adventure
I finally had the chance to see Tom live in 1999, at St Ann’s in Brooklyn, touring his Music for Films show with Jimmy Rip, and then with Television a number of times between 2001-2005, starting with a show in Chicago on my birthday in 2001, an unforgettable night. The last time I saw Television in NYC was in 2005, on their first split bill with Patti Smith since the 1970s; David Byrne and Brian Eno were in the audience with me! The last time I saw Television was in 2014, in Boston. By then, Richard Lloyd had left and been replaced by Tom’s close friend, Jimmy Rip, but the show was just as good, and Tom was the happiest I’d ever seen him on stage (he’s not known for a sunny disposition!) – he clearly enjoyed being on stage with Rip.
While I’ve met and spoken with other members of Television over the past 30 years, I only spoke to Tom once. I had moved to Manhattan in the summer of 1999, and had passed Tom on Bleeker Street (where I lived) just a few weeks after moving in, a quick moment that left me elated for days afterwards. A few months later, I was waiting for friends outside the movie theater on Broadway and 13th (near the Strand, a favorite Verlaine haunt). It was unusually windy that day, with the wind whipping down Broadway, churning-up dust and bits of garbage, as it does in NYC. As my mind wanders, I think, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I saw Tom Verlaine again?” Then, as I’m waiting, looking north towards the Union Square subway station for my friends and squinting into the wind, I suddenly realize that Tom Verlaine – very tall, lanky, unmistakably – is walking south on Broadway, right towards me. It doesn’t seem real – it's almost as if I had conjured him out of thin air with my wishful thinking. He comes to stand next to me, waiting to cross the street, and I find I’m too tongue-tied to speak! But I managed to croak out a few words, loud enough to be heard over the wind. He turns and looks at me. “I just wanted to tell you that I really love your music,” I stammer. Now, Tom is not known for being particularly friendly with strangers (a lot like his relationship with the press), so I wasn’t expecting much. But he smiled, said “Thank you very much,” and simultaneously nodded his head, winked, and pointed a friendly finger gun at me, before crossing the street and continuing down Broadway.
“O rose of my heart, the vision dims
The time is brief, now the shadow swims…”
Thanks for reading.