Now we've got that pesky Marquee Moon out of the way. What Television did next....
Not everybody liked Marquee Moon at the time. Or the gigs that Television played to promote it.in America and The UK. But I'd say the main reason why it's held up so well over the last 45 years and is still held up with such reverence by so many is in terms of the influence that it had, which was immediate and profound and continues to this day. Do you like Buzzcocks? Or Magazine? The Fall. Subway Sect. Siouxsie & The Banshees. Echo & the Bunnymen. Blue Orchids. Orange Juice. Josef K. Fire Engines, The Go-Betweens, The Smiths. Mission of Burma. R.E.M., Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, Sonic Youth. Oh alright then U2. That Petrol Emotion. One for Raymond. But Raymond can testify himself on Television's influence on That Petrol Emotion and indeed his own life. They've had an enormous impact on mine. Not just because of their records. But just as much for what Verlaine and Hell chose to do with their lives in the mid Sixties. It's difficult to imagine many of these bands I've just mentioned sounding the way that they did without Marquee Moon frankly. That record had one vast and remarkable influence on music and lives. I really don't think I'm overstating things particularly. I'll stop there but I could go on. And on. And on. Right to the current day. You can still hear young bands every day who owe a considerable debt to Television and not just in terms of their guitar sound. Just flick through your record collection.
Marquee Moon did what it needed to in the UK but not in the States. Here it garnered respectable sales and intense critical praise though some British Punks were confused or else disdainful. 'This isn't Punk Rock' They squealed. 'These aren't the three chords that Mark Perry told us in Sniffin' Glue was all we needed to learn to form a Punk Band and leap onstage so that loads of complete strangers could gob and chuck stuff at us to show us their appreciation. Are you saying it needs to be more complicated than that?' That confusion remained in the UK for a while, particularly among those who couldn't appreciate the full possibility of options that Punk offered them musically or personally and many awaited the opportunity to administer Television, those pseudy serious types who didn't move onstage and had the nerve to seriously think they were French poets, the kicking they so richly deserved, next time they dared to visit our shores
In some ways Marquee Moon has a claim to be the first Post Punk album although of course in 1977 it was labelled Punk. It certainly had a palpable and immediate effect and influence on young Punks who bought it, loved it and decided they wouldn't mind becoming musicians themselves. Musicians who didn't want to just play three chords and shout about how much they hated the world and wanted to make a greater artistic and personal statement. Who wanted an adventure.
Marquee Moon wasn't alone by any means in trying to explore different roads from the pack. All of the important CBGBs bands and many of the significant British bands were trying to do that in their own ways. But MM was fundamentally significant in showing a way out of the 1-2-3-4 cul de sac and make Punk a lasting statement and a genuine opportunity for a change in thinking
If you don't personally care for the record, I'd direct you to a number of records from 1977 and 1978 and beyond that had similar instincts and thank god they did. Richard Hell & The Voidoids Blank Generation, Wire's first three albums, Suicide's Suicide, The first four Talking Heads records, Pere Ubu's Modern Dance and Devo's Q: Are We Not Men A; We Are Devo. Then Slits, The Raincoats and so many others in the following years. They showed there was a different fork in the road from the one Never Mind The Bollocks, The Clash and The Ramones chose. I love those three albums too btw. Television's Adventure? Let's see. I'm not sure. I love a lot of it but it's a slightly tired record in some respects. The band's four year journey from the moment that they stepped onstage at CBGB's in 1974 had taken its toll. On relationships within the band and on the music itself.
Immediately the band toured the States with Peter Gabriel, which seemed an odd move and then elsewhere, but internally, things were fraying. Mostly in terms of the relationship between Verlaine and Lloyd. And the key factor in that seemed to be Lloyd's spiraling drug use.
This is described in detail in Please Kill Me. Lloyd had been a very heavy heroin user since pretty much the start of Television and now his drug use had allowed itself to get completely out of hand and he was doing deals with Anita Pallenberg from the back of limos on Manhattan. During the recording of Adventure he came down with enorcaditis, a drug related heart condition. He was famously photographed in the Beth Israel Hospital with a drip coming out of his arm, an image he later used for the cover of his own memoirs.
Considering these distractions, and the difficulty of following up a record as startling as their debut, Adventure has its moments. But very few of them are Marquee Moon moments. There's a sense throughout that once you've ascended a peak as mighty and astonishing as their first album had and was, and still is, that the only way now is down. Back to base camp. The key feeling you get from it is absence. The absence of Lloyd and the absence of Hell. First Lloyd. To colour in and flesh out Verlaine's ideas fully and give them blood and muscle. To make them breathe. Adventure is telling evidence that Television is just as much about Lloyd as it is about Verlaine, no matter what TV thought.
There are still times throughout the record that are still extraordinarily beautiful of course. These are still the same players. They still have the same basic DNA. But perhaps not the hunger. The friction has gone really. Along with the factor of Lloyd's escalating addiction. Verlaine is a hard taskmaster and perhaps his dictatorial manner had worn Lloyd down as it had Hell. They're carrying a wounded and not fully committed player downhill for this one and it sounds a bit like it. So this feels more like a Tom Verlaine fronted record in many ways rather than a truly group effort. Which Marquee Moon always was. Ficca and Smith are able and proficient bag handlers as they always were. But they lack their spark often here too
That's not to say that's its not very good in parts. Of course it is. But anyone who seriously wants to mount a case that it's a better one than Marquee Moon has frankly got the odds stacked against them here, You might like it more. Easily. But it feels like the thrill has gone. That they sense that it's their last album. At least for another 14 years
I love Adventure regardless. In many ways it feels like their 'day' record, in comparison with Moon's night. There's still some wonderful guitar interplay of course, characteristically wry Verlaine lyrics. Atmosphere. It's paced like Marquee Moon in many ways . Glory sounds a bit like See No Evil. Days sounds a bit like Venus. Foxhole sounds a bit like Friction, except that it's shite, while Friction is transcendental. The riff bludgeons the actual song senseless, There are longer songs where the band try to connect except for that the fact that they don't really remember how to anymore. Their moment has gone. And really, they all know it. In some ways it sounds like a hugely elegaic album. With loads of encores.
There are still some truly great Television songs here. I'd go for Glory, Days, Careful, one of their initial statement songs from their early days, (pretty much Pretty Vacant, without the pretend swearing and great chorus), Ain't That Nothing (which is certainly good enough to go on Moon), and The Dream's Dream which is one of the best end songs of any band's career that I can think of. I still find it incredibly moving. This band was about many things but it was certainly as much as anything about the sound of two guitars playing together as much as anything else. I can think of few better.
Carried Away and The Fire are pretty good songs and moods, but ultimately they sound like Television songs without Richard Lloyd who obviously didn't have the time or medical disposition to work up his parts. So, things that might have ended up on Tom Verlaine solo albums. What was the point of Television without Lloyd. Verlaine should have valued his sparring partners a bit more.
This is a great record but it's not monumental in the way that Marquee Moon was. As I'd say, it hasn't got the spark. The thrill.. Perhaps they lost something when they stopped playing CBGBs on a regular basis. But what I'd say is missing most along with Lloyd is the influence of Tom Verlaine's one true love. Richard Hell. That was everywhere on Marquee Moon. He haunted that record like an actual ghost. He's nowhere here.
Plenty used the excuse of Adventure as a stick to beat Television with though. It was very unlikely that anything would match up to a record as good as their first one, but some got disappointed that they clearly weren't messiahs after all. That they could be predictable and formulaic like everyone also.
Then there were those who had been cynics anyway. Particularly in the UK as they had never conformed to the given Punk script. As for the music press, it was an opportunity for a field day. Most notably for Julie Burchill who I've never got the impression was very much interested in music just like Tony Parsons, her fellow gunslinger in the initial Punk days of NME. They were always on their way to the tabloids sooner or later and wrote their reviews to tailor fit that agenda.
Anyhow, Burchill never liked Television. Neither did Parsons. They slagged them off in the state of Punk book they wrote together The Boy Looked at Johnny and continued to do so thereafter. Parson slagged them off in the NME on their '77 tour with Blondie as the latter fitted better with his leather jacket look and hung out with Johnny Thunders instead, though he might not have taken so much actual heroin.
As for Burchill, she bided her time until the moment that Adventure came out. Then she wrote her trademark poisoned pen review. Did she ever do much else? Dripping with characteristic venom and bile, but precious little actual logic or critical thought, slamming the record to the canvas with a single punch. Or at least in her own mind.
Verlaine was going bald she claimed. Shock horror. He still has a very good head of hair now actually. She called it 'acid-casualty- style gibberish' She grapples with him about knowledge about the French poets. It drags on. It's nasty stuff. It doesn't make sense. Like most of her writing. But it was interesting that the paper chose her to write it. It was time for the backlash.
The band toured the UK again. This time with The Only Ones in support (perfect). But there was a feeling that the die was cast. They toured the States one last time too. Really they lacked coherent record label support from the start. Elektra really never knew what to do with them.
Eventually, after more American dates, they read the writing on the wall, met up and agreed to call it a day. There's no real consensus on the actual sequence of events here. Lloyd maintains the four of them met up together one evening for a meal in Chinatown when there was a full moon hanging over Manhattan. Apparently agreeing that this was a fitting moment for them to bring down the curtain as Moby Grape, (a precedent band for Television in some ways), had done a similar thing a decade before. The others disputed Lloyd's account. It was enough to further fuel the band's legend of mystery and enigma.
And then they were gone.
Extras:
Some Television tunes considered for Adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbI6uxNVeBs
Adventure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Pt5VZxOFk
O Mi Amore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKgyjw478B8
Foxhole on Old Grey Whistle Test. As far as I know the only television performance Television actually made in their initial run.
http://itstartswithabirthstone.blogspot.com/2015/12/julie-burchill-reviews-televisions.html
Julie Burchill's NME review for Adventure
http://itstartswithabirthstone.blogspot.com/search?q=Adventure
A review I wrote of the record some years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment