Tom Verlaine has passed away. He was 73 years old and, in the ranks of Television, he became one of the most important musicians of that impressive generation of bands and soloists that lit up the New York scene at the end of the 70s: Patti Smith, Suicide, Ramones, Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids… Verlaine and Richard Lloyd were the two guitarists for Television. His crossed rhythms and guitar solos created a school. Then bands like Feelies or Luna picked up the baton.
The news has been confirmed by Brooke Delarco, a personal friend of Verlaine, sound engineer and producer of ‘Ork Records: New York, New York’, a 2015 album that compiles songs from those guitar bands and some that followed them in the city of the skyscrapers. No further information has been circulated at this time. It took more than a decade without recordingalthough in 2021 a record appeared with a 1987 concert recorded in Turin.
French poetry
Before Television there was The Neon Boys, a short-lived combo and some recording in single disc format. It was formed in New York by two young men named Thomas Miller, born in New Jersey on December 13, 1949, and bassist Richard Meyers, born a few months earlier in Kentucky. Influenced by French romantic poetry, Miller changed his last name to Verlaine, in homage to the author of the ‘Saturnian Poems’, and Meyers decided to call himself directly Hell, hell. Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell recruited drummer Billy Ficca. Soon after, a second guitarist, Richard Lloyd, joined and They changed The Neon Boys for Television. They recorded a demo produced by Brian Eno that would come to light in the mid-90s. Hell and Verlaine exploded mutually, the former left the group -to join another incendiary guitarist of the time, Robert Quine, The Voidoids- and was replaced by Fred Smith, hailing from Blondie.
The quartet only recorded two records, but what records! ‘Marquee moon’ (1977) and ‘Adventure’ (1978). The song that gives title to the first album became one of the anthems of the time along with the theme ‘Blank generation’ recorded by Hell in the same year. Urban rock, guitar lyricism, proto-punk, new wave, alternative rock when this term was not yet known… Tracks like ‘See no evil’, ‘Venus’, ‘Friction’, ‘Glory’ or ‘Foxhole’ are the soundtrack of an entire generation. The adventure was short-lived and was completed with an installment of the mythical Roir cassette tapes, ‘The blow up’, released in 1982 and later released on vinyl and CD. There we discovered, apart from powerful live takes of their agenda, the long, beautiful and concentric version they made of Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ on heaven’s door’.
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Television met on several more occasions. In 1992 they recorded a new album, ‘Television’, and more than a decade later they played at Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Meanwhile, Verlaine began an excellent solo career. So did Richard Lloyd. On Verlaine’s records, the guitars are sometimes pure arabesque, sustained, suspended in the air, just like his melodies, with that particular way of singing that he had, like dragging his words. In Lloyd’s, they are more inflamed, more punk.
Jeff Buckley Producer
Verlaine wasted no time and in 1979 he already had his first solo album on the street, ‘Tom Verlaine’; one of his songs, ‘Kingdom Come’, would be covered by David Bowie the following year. Then came ‘Dreamtime’ (1981), ‘Words from the front’ (1982) -which contains one of his best songs, ‘Postcard from Waterloo’-, ‘Cover’ (1984), ‘Flash light’ (1986), ‘ The wonder’ (1990) -with another priceless gem, ‘5 hours from Calais’- and ‘Warm and cool’ (1992). Then came the reunion with his old buddies, two more solo albums and diverse and intense collaborations such as other Dylan versions -‘All along the watchtower’, ‘Highway 61 revisited’, ‘Maggie’s farm’- which, in the name of The Million Dollar Bashers recorded Verlaine, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, John Medeski and Nels Cline for the soundtrack of ‘I’m not there’ (2007), Todd Haynes’ peculiar ‘biopic’ about Dylan. He was also the producer of Jeff Buckley’s second album, which was left incomplete after the singer-songwriter’s death in 1997.