'What's really fun is to write under different names.'
Tom Verlaine
'When you're young, you don't especially think of yourself as being young. You're just alive and everything's interesting and you don't think of things in terms of age because you're not conscious of it.'
Richard Hell
'Prove it. Just the facts,'
Prove It
'I mean some people climb Mount Everest, are they less nuts? People die on Mount Everest - they get frostbite, they come out with no hands, no toes, dead, they get crushed by avalanches. Other people get shot to the moon and blown up in a space shuttle. For what? To float in weightlessness and look back on earth?
So I took things that made you do that without going anywhere. Yes, people died, but was it any more insane than the pursuits that are put on pedestals by ordinary human beings?'
Richard Lloyd, talking to Legs McNeil about choosing drugs in Please Kill Me
Some time in 1973 Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell cut their hair in New York. Shortly afterwards a lot of other people begin to do the same. Even as far away as in London. Then, at some point in 1976 Punk happens. And nothing has ever been quite the same again since. An oversimplification of course. But there's some germ of truth to it, if you're looking to find out the genesis of Punk, both in the States and in the UK. This makes a change from the standard stories about Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten and Iggy & The Stooges playing The Scala in 1972.
Verlaine and Hell, then Miller and Meyers, met in High School in Delaware in the Mid-Sixties. They detected similar urges and drives in each other to break free from everything that was mapped out for them, walked out of the school gates one day, and had a much mythologised adventure together over the following days. Hitch hiking across a number of states towards the Florida border, taunted by rednecks along the way, they worked each other up into a giddy state one night in a remote field in Alabama, started a fire in a fit of youthful rebellion, and got picked up by the local cops, (not the police in the case of Television, definitely 'cops'), and taken back to Delaware. The incident formed a lasting bond between the two, and inspired first Meyers then Miller to relocate to New York in the mid to late Sixties, and plot a future for themselves as outsider poets and then musicians, while keeping themselves going with a series of jobs in bookstores and the like.
Heavily influenced by Nineteenth century French literary aestheticism, which led them to change their surnames in tribute to Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, music began to take precedence over writing as a more natural path towards making the splash and getting the attention they both craved. Verlaine was an able and original guitarist, who gigged occasionally in local venues where Hell attended and supported him as much a stylist and kindred spirit as a friend in the conventional sense. Theirs was certainly a Love / Hate affair given their contrasting personalities. Hell, a full, on upfront, prototype Punk, Verlaine a much more reserved, reflective character with an aloof demeanor and slightly haughty manner. Both seemed to complement each other though, filling in for each others failings and complementing each other's strengths. For a few years at least they were rarely seen apart and must have made an immediate impression on New York's alternative scene. In Hell's words: 'We would go to Max's and be like spies. We were inseparable.' It's worth noting that Verlaine was also actually born a twin, his brother died when he was in his mid thirties, a part of his history that has never fully been explored.
Round about this point, Verlaine taught Hell the basic rudiments of playing bass guitar. Eventually the two became sufficiently organised to lay down some tracks together as The Neon Boys, roping in Billy Ficca a drummer Verlaine had known in Delaware. The tracks, Love Comes In Spurts (a title Hell would use again with the Voidoids), and That's All I Know Right Now, sound like nothing so much as Punk, well before Punk. Trebly, ragged and incredibly uptight, they're clearly not the finished article, but gave a very good idea of what both men would become both musically and in terms of the sensibility they would come to project. Also they give a strong indication of what early Television might have sounded like on record, had they continued to maintain an equally democratically distributed mode of attack and Verlaine not seized almost complete control and ultimately ejected Hell from the band altogether.
From there they proceeded to plan a more long term project by auditioning guitarists as a foil for Verlaine in a proper band. Chris Stein, (later of Blondie), and Dee Ramone were tried out apparently and found wanting. By chance another guitarist, Richard Lloyd, who' had recently arrived in town, saw Verlaine play a solo gig at the recommendation of Terry Ork, who went on to manage the band. He watched Hell, (who of course was along in support), tear a hole in Verlaine's shirt to improve his look. Once he started, Lloyd recognised that his style would complement what Verlaine was doing. Pretty soon afterwards he signed up. along with Ficca, Television was chosen as a name representative of the age and the cast was set.
'I was up on a ladder in front of the club, fixing the awning in place, when I looked down to notice three scruffy dudes in torn jeans and T shirts looking up at me inquisitively.'
Hilly Kristal .
Effectively this is the myth of origin for CBGB's and much of American Punk Rock. The three inquisitive guys were Verlaine, Hell and Lloyd. Other accounts say it was just Verlaine and Lloyd. It doesn't really matter. What does is that they started playing on Sunday nights at the club shortly afterwards, opening the door for others like The Ramones, Blondie and The Patti Smith Group . The scene gathered pretty rapid word of mouth momentum and growing audiences, and spread to other venues over the coming weeks and months while the bands, many of them complete novices when they first hit the stage, started attracting good reviews and record company interest.
Television by all accounts were ramshackle and amateurish when they first started playing CBGBs. Certainly according to Hilly, who never really had many nice things to say to say about about them. But they certainly had charisma:
'Onstage Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine looked like they could blow up at any minute - like they were just trying to keep the peace. Sometimes they'd have a fight onstage. It would be like a Sunday night, there'd only be like fifteen people there, and someone would play something wrong, and Tom Verlaine would start yelling at Richard. 'Ah, fuck you.' And Richard would yell back, 'Don't take it so seriously asshole.'
Duncan Hannah, Please Kill Me
'I thought Television was fabulous. The arms of Richard Hell and the neck of Tom Verlaine were so entrancing that I needed no more, art, music, life, love or poetry to make me happy after that. They were the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. The skin between the two of them... they had the most perfect skin in the world. Tom Verlaine's skin and Richard Hell's skin were in a class like 'God made that and then threw away the skin formula. Then there was Richard Lloyd. Who I fucked.'
Danny Fields, Please Kill Me
The Hell / Verlaine Television are much documented. In print and on bootlegs where there are many, many songs that were never recorded and are well worth hearing. To my knowledge they were only captured on film once. Rehearsing in Ork's loft in their earliest days, a document that remained unavailable for many years. They had a ragged, Garage sound where you could detect elements of The Yardbirds, The Who, The 13th Floor Elevators, (they do a great cover of their Fire Engine on here), other Nuggets bands and the Psychedelic San Francisco guitar scene. A lot less streamlined and orchestrated than the later Television sound. They weren't polished at all which you could say they eventually became. They were probably a lot more immediately exciting. Certainly more recognisably Punk.
I'd say today's recording puts to sleep the myth that Television weren't Punk. Perhaps the argument is not so clear from the point at which Marquee Moon came out. From that point onwards they are playing well, in a way that few of their contemporaries can. They trade in long, extended guitar solos . Not the kind you might expect from The Allman Brothers or The Grateful Dead, but long guitar solos nevertheless. That's not very Punk according to British punks of the time, certainly not those who really like UK Subs and Sham 69. But the Television when Hell was in them have a claim to not only being the first Punk band but also one of the very best as well as one of the most influential and significant. The tension between Hell, Verlaine and also Lloyd that informs their music throughout and makes some of it so very special, is also very, very Punk.
I find this early period of CBGB's so fascinating, at a time when it really had very few punters when it was still deep, deep underground. This was largely because it was in a part of New York, in the Bowery on the Lower East Side that you really didn't want to find yourself in late at night, because it was so run down and frankly downright dangerous, although many of the people there were hobos and homeless and so out of their minds and strung out that you could probably get in and out safely most evenings if you kept your wits about you. New York as a whole was a pretty dangerous place wherever you were in those days. I'm sure you've seen Taxi Driver. Early Television capture a lot of that thrill even though theirs is generally a fictionalised, stylised, almost cartoon version of Manhattan. But they do express that danger. The sense that you're never quite sure what's going to happen next.
There's very little filmed documentation of CBGB's between '74 and '76 so for the most part you're reliant on word of mouth accounts, magazine and newspaper articles and bootlegs, before the bands and artists put out their first records. But it seems like the most incredible place to be that you could possibly imagine. Of living completely and utterly in the 'now'. And having been to New York a few times myself I'd say there's nowhere in the world better suited for quite that kind of utter hedonism.
I could write a lot about that whole thing, but I wasn't there, so you're best referred to the ultimate oral account from those who were - Please Kill Me, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McNeill who interview and get down the front line reportage from those who were. It's my favourite music book by a long way and nails wonderfully exactly how exciting these days would have been if that was the kind of thing that excites you. I found it a visceral experience to read and go back to it every few years. The abiding moral message appears to be, just don't take too many drugs if you want to get through the whole experience intact. Plenty don't. Both Lloyd and Hell embraced the whole drug experience with great relish while Verlaine apparently was always wary of losing control of his senses altogether, though he's been a lifelong nicotine addict, a chain smoker, apparently to this day.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Apparently, what drove a wedge between Hell and Verlaine was firstly musicianship. Hell barely rehearsed and never got much more proficient. Verlaine was harbouring ambitions of something more sophisticated and complex. But there were other factors too. Hell's distractions. increasing junk habit and string of flings with CBGB's scene people. The way he insisted on jumping and goofing around onstage when Verlaine just wanted him to stand still and try to play properly. Lloyd diving into drugs with wild abandon himself. And by all accounts Verlaine's ballooning egotism and difficulty to work with once he started going out with Patti Smith who was immediately entranced by the band, and him in particular. The two groups played together on a regular basis over the next couple of years like sister and brother bands. They had similar preoccupations and literary obsessions and were stylistically complementary. And Patti and Tom fancied each other rotten.
'Patti Smith just came up to me and said,' I want him. I want Tom Verlaine. He has such an Egon Schiele look.' She just told me, 'You gotta get that boy for me.'
It was pretty cut and dry. So I told Tom. He was pretty enamored with Patti as a poet and scenemaker. I guess he knew that she was gonna get signed to a record deal.. Plus, I guess he liked her physically. I mean they had the same kind of body structure.'
Terry Ork, Television manager, Please Kill Me
Television were soon ready to join a record label themselves, although they took a while to actually sign to one. David Bowie, Lou Reed and Bryan Ferry all came down to see them play and were highly impressed, which led to some paranoia on Verlaine's part that the sharks were gathering to steal his sound. One night they had to confiscate a tape recorder Reed had brought into CBGB's with him to record their set. Eventually there was enough interest from Island for them to agree to record with Brian Eno producing, which we're going to listen to today. Some of the songs here ended up on their first two albums, but by no means all of them.
In theory Eno and Television should have been a marriage made in heaven. Producing a record or at least demos to rival those produced by John Cale for The Modern Lovers which only came out years after they'd been recorded and immediately gathered cult status for themselves. I certainly think they're good enough in terms of quality to have merited some kind of release. But it seems Brian and Tom didn't really get on and it certainly wasn't what Tom wanted anyhow and personally I'm glad that he kept Venus, Friction, Marquee Moon and Prove It until he was completely happy with them.
'In the beginning Verlaine was quiet, nervy and a little overawed by Brian's enthusiasm. On the second night he began to assert himself. I realised that he knew exactly what he wanted... On the last night Verlaine pulled me aside. He was unhappy about the way it had gone. He wanted the band to sound professional.'
Richard Williams From The Velvets to the Voidoids
As for me, I like it. In many ways just as much as I like the later Television studio albums. As a devotee I'm happy to hear as many versions of Venus and Friction as I can. These are obviously demo versions but I wouldn't say I prefer the later recorded versions to these. They're products of different bands and in many ways you can hear the seeds of the British Indie sound here. Buzzcocks, Magazine, Subway Sect, Orange Juice. Also an early version of Marquee Moon. They just have a sound and sensibility that I love, pure and simple. Also there are some songs here that were never officially recorded and I can't for the life of me understand why not. Hard on Love for example. That's just fabulous. As for Double Exposure. How catchy and immediate is that. Like the early Who transported from London to the Lower East Side. Astonishing that this wasn't their debut single and Verlaine chose Little Johnny Jewel instead. Lloyd left for a short while over that decision and in some ways he was right to. I love Little Johnny Jewel but Television could have been a more commercial proposition than Verlaine always allowed them to be.
'Tom Verlaine was very priggish; he didn't smoke marijuana, inject heroin and he didn't even drink that much. I think Verlaine was scared of any derangement of the senseless and Hell was just the opposite. He would just luxuriate in it.
Tom Verlaine was a very bright boy, very learned, but there was some tightness within him. He was just so tightly wound. He was always concerned about men coming onto him. I mean he was pretty, but I think he didn't really know what life was about. He had accrued experience books - it was all read and not lived. He was very naive in a lot of ways. As opposed to Richard Hell who had both feet in the ooze.
Hell was definitely the one thinking in subversive terms. Hell was always the one who had the most awareness of what the text was trying to denote. Hell was a boulevard surrealist, groping for the breakthrough, the one grasping for liberation.'
Terry Ork,
I don't think Lloyd brought many songs to Television over the years. I get the feeling he was too busy doing drugs and enjoying the whole experience as much as he could to get round to it. But he certainly brought something to every song, and his contribution was often not fully credited by Verlaine, something that Lloyd resented increasingly over the years. Anyway, he was certainly as much responsible for what was glorious about Television as Verlaine, and Tom was never as good without him. Or Ficca, Hell and Fred Smith for that matter. Tom and his Richeys! Who lived the life that perhaps he'd have loved to live himself, but was either not brave enough or too smart to depending on how you choose to look at it. His Billy. His Fred. He actually considered kicking Ficca out of the band for a while and held auditions with that aim in mind. Much as I love him, he's a strange, contrary and paranoid man. He would have been an idiot to sack Ficca because Billy is just the drummer that Television need. All five of Television's members are semi-miraculously still with us I'm pleased to say. But they're highly unlikely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame any time soon. Even though they deserve to be. They more than likely wouldn't all show up anyway.
Another interesting point. I've been to New York three times so far and always had the most incredibly exciting time there. Much more so than London, where I was raised and spent much of my life. New York is completely charged, everything seems to be at stake and fluid. Especially sexuality. Television is one of the band's where that dialogue is clearly alive. I've never really read anything about that aspect of the band but it's seemed clear to me that there's something going on in that respect. The incredible tension in the band's music. Prove It. I can't prove it Something to think about anyhow. Another pathway to explore for this most fascinating of bands. That subtext is also certainly all over Patti Smith's Horses too. Particularly on tracks like Redondo Beach and Land. Never mind the cover.
What is evident from the song selection of these demos though is that Hell's days in the band are numbered. The alliance that he and Verlaine had formed back in Delaware in High School all those years ago was about to be severed and frankly it was going to be ugly. At the start of the band, he and Verlaine had divided songwriting responsibilities pretty equally. Once Hell's signature tune Blank Generation was dropped too shortly after this , there was nowhere for him to go but out of the band. Onwards from there to The Heartbreakers, The Voidoids and Television Mk II.
Note: The recorded version of the Little Johnny Jewel signature is on the end of this. I'll post this again tomorrow, when we come to talk about that.
Extras:
The Neon Boys: Love Comes in Spurts & That's All I Know Right Now
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ITZ5gTDN30qQaVxGTh5Cq?si=28pGat1ASPyCJyPTWovSfA
Patti Smith writes about early Television for Soho weekly: http://www.thewonder.co.uk/psmith.htm
The Terry Ork Loft Tapes: To my knowledge the only recorded visual documentation of Television when Hell was playing with them. Rehearsing in manager Terry Ork's loft sometime in 1974. I found the text underneath the recording very interesting. The playing is very screechy, at times almost unlistenable and Hell is a very, very poor player. But it's an incredible document. It was kept off YouTube for many years for some reason. Watch in its entirety if you're very brave. I'd suggest dipping in and out to get the general idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srn98FdXI4E&t=272s
Television: The Blank Generation What Richard Hell brought to the table. The anthem of New York Punk, and title track of Hell and The Voidoids 1977 debut album. Much easier to draw a straight line to UK Punk than anything Verlaine came up with. Verlaine was in many ways an aesthete and there was very little of what happened in London between 1975 and 1977 that was really about aesthetics, (early on maybe). :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqsDXmmaEAk
Based on this 50's spoof single which helps you get why Dee Dee Ramone called Hell and Verlaine beatniks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-HlUAOjGE
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