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Tom Verlaine’s 15 Essential Songs

From Television through his solo career, the songwriter created enigmatic tidings and cat’s-cradle guitar structures. He died on Saturday at 73.

By Jon Pareles

Tom Verlaine was present at the creation of New York City punk. His band Television held a residency at CBGB in the club’s first years. But his music was never bound by what became punk’s ruling aesthetic of fast, loud and simplistic. Instead, Verlaine’s songs reveled in the open-ended: in improvisations that could spiral out toward free jazz and in verbal enigmas and paradoxes.

Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine — who died on Saturday at 73 — renamed himself after a symbolist poet, Paul Verlaine, and he built his songs around guitar patterns that interlocked like cats’ cradles, intricate but never confining. His music looked back to the not-so-distant days of psychedelia and the Velvet Underground, but it was leaner, tauter, steelier.

His guitar was always clear and focused, whether it was balancing riffs in perfect tandem with Richard Lloyd in Television, clawing concise rhythm chords or arcing skyward for a keening solo. His playing drew on country, jazz, blues, surf-rock and raga; his compositions almost always set up a contrapuntal dialogue of guitars with distinct tones, colluding or contending.

Verlaine’s voice would never be ingratiating enough for a broad audience; it was reedy, yelpy, quavery, a bit strangulated. Yet it was perfectly suited to the sly, cryptic tidings of his lyrics, which might invoke romance, dreams, spiritual quests or the convoluted plotting of film noir.

Television’s 1977 debut album, “Marquee Moon,” still reigns as Verlaine’s most significant work — a signature statement that would become a cornerstone of indie-rock. But through the next decades, he created music that rewards attention to every detail.

Here are 15 songs that demonstrate Verlaine’s tenacious ambition and singular vision.

Television, ‘See No Evil’ (1977)

“What I want I want now/And it’s a whole lot more than anyhow.” That was the mission statement that opened Television’s debut album, with a trilling riff and a warped Bo Diddley beat: new and old, terse and encompassing, absolutely committed.

Television, ‘Marquee Moon’ (1977)

No wonder this was the title song of Television’s debut album: It was a whole musical system and universe. “Marquee Moon” is both architectonic and disorienting, blueprinted and unpredictable. It starts with the two guitars of Lloyd and Verlaine, separated in stereo, syncopated against each other; then, before anyone can get settled, Fred Smith’s bass and Billy Ficca’s drums forcibly move the downbeat. Verlaine sings about opposites — “the kiss of death/the embrace of life” — on the way to a jam that culminates in chiming bliss.

Television, ‘Glory’ (1978)

Spirituality meets flirtation in “Glory.” The music harks back to the metronomic beat, talky verses and major chords of the Velvet Underground, but it has its own twists, as Verlaine’s guitar lines push toward Eastern modes. The glory is in the resonant chords and proud chorus, not whatever happens between the narrator and his partner; the sound suggests the most promising outcome.

Television, ‘Days’ (1978)

With its pastoral, major-key guitar hooks and vocal-harmony choruses, “Days” makes Television’s closest approach to a pop single. Still, it’s no compromise; it radiates an everyday mysticism.

Television, ‘Little Johnny Jewel — Live in San Francisco 1978’ (1978)

“Little Johnny Jewel” extended across both sides of Television’s first single, in 1975, and onstage it would expand even further, into a jazzy, sprawling, exploratory jam that was never the same twice. Its basic riff was blunt — two three-note arpeggios — but all four band members could tease at it, push against it, scurry around it or, as starts about halfway through this 12-minute version, launch a guitar solo that climbs from a lament to a flailing, racing peak. The reaction, at a gig in 1978, was a smattering of applause.

Tom Verlaine, ‘Souvenir From a Dream’ (1979)

On his self-titled 1979 solo debut album, Verlaine welcomed keyboards into his arrangements. The piano chords that open “Souvenir From a Dream” bring a droll but deadpan film-noir tone to the song, which has Verlaine patiently explaining, “Mister, you went the wrong way — I think you better go back.”

Tom Verlaine, ‘Kingdom Come’ (1979)

Over a stalwart march beat, with guitar chords like distant fanfares, a prisoner prays for redemption. Verse by verse, the song moves from despair toward hope.

Tom Verlaine, ‘There’s a Reason’ (1981)

In “There’s a Reason,” from Verlaine’s 1981 album, “Dreamtime,” infatuation feels like being buffeted from every direction by emotions and sensations. It starts with a brusque, seemingly straightforward riff, only to have that riff repeatedly sideswiped by tremolo chords. And when the singer admits, “You’re my thrill, my dear,” the floodgates open and guitars and drums pour in.

Tom Verlaine, ‘True Story’ (1982)

“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Verlaine sings, offering a desperate apology amid a crossfire of guitars and drums — knife-edged single notes, barbed lines, implacable offbeats — that don’t promise any forgiveness.

Tom Verlaine, ‘Dissolve/Reveal’ (1984)

A rhythm workout that turns out to be a love song, “Dissolve/Reveal” is constructed from tiny, pointillistic elements — cowbell and tambourine taps, zinging single guitar notes, brief trickle-down arpeggios, sudden chords on unexpected offbeats, explosive bursts of distortion — that eventually unite in ecstasy.

Tom Verlaine, ‘Cry Mercy, Judge’ (1987)

A brisk shuffle beat drives “Cry Mercy, Judge” while little corkscrewing guitar licks turn up all over the place. The terse lyrics imply a complicated back story, with Verlaine’s voice savoring some well-deserved revenge.

Tom Verlaine, ‘Shimmer’ (1990)

Verlaine never sounded more lighthearted than he did on his 1990 album, “The Wonder.” He gets downright funky in “Shimmer,” stacking up scrubbed rhythm chords, pithy blues licks and tickling riffs as he smirks his way through compliments and come-ons: “Nice new features on your automobile/Maybe I could get a lift uptown.”

Television, ‘1880 or So’ (1992)

When Verlaine reunited Television in the early 1990s, the band seemingly picked up right where it left off in 1978, aiming for the same clarity and suspense. Verlaine’s and Lloyd’s guitars set up “1880 or So” with a calm fingerpicked drone immediately answered by a nervous, leaping line, immediately re-establishing their two-guitar equipoise as Verlaine sings about love and mortality.

Television, ‘Call Mr. Lee’ (1992)

“Call Mr. Lee” hints at a movie plot — “He’ll know the code is broken/Tell him the dog is turning red” — and frames it with gnarled, reverb-laden, Middle-Eastern-tinged guitar lines.

Tom Verlaine, ‘Spiritual’ (1992)

From Verlaine’s 1992 album, “Warm and Cool,” the instrumental “Spiritual” suspends his lead guitar line above a drone. He plays the folky melody as if he’s discovering it for the first time, coaxing out each note, letting it claim its place in the phrase. He returns to it in a lower octave and then a higher one; at the end he lingers over a few notes, hinting that they still hold mysteries.

Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. A musician, he has played in rock bands, jazz groups and classical ensembles. He majored in music at Yale University. More about Jon Pareles

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“A kiss of death, the embrace of life.” — “Marquee Moon”

The notice came in the form of a Facebook post with a broken heart emoji. “Rest in Peace, Tom,” wrote CBGB’s veteran Brooke Delarco. Tom Verlaine (ne Thomas Miller) was gone at a way-too-young 73. 

Comparing it to the New York Dolls’ lack of success outside of New York, I thought “Marquee Moon” would be the album to carry the torch for a commercial breakthrough after the late A&R maven Karin Berg signed the band to Elektra, where they remained for two albums, including the follow-up “Adventure,” released a year later. 

Television’s inclusion of such Nuggets punk prototypes like the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” and the 13th Floor Elevators’ “Fire Engine” in their sets was also enticing to someone of my age, just two years younger than Verlaine. But as rockcrit emeritus Robert Christgau noted, “[‘Marquee Moon’] wasn’t punk. Its intensity wasn’t manic; it didn’t come in spurts.”

My review said something similar, “Television is a jamming band that has more in common with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead or Love than with either the Ramones or the Velvet Underground… T.V.’s style is more post-psychedelic than punk. This music is unthinkable without the LSD experience but, unlike the Dead, it deals (without nostalgia) with the aftermath of psychedelia… what happens to those who have left behind acid, yet remain mired with its contradictions.”

“I understand all… I SEE NO/destructive urges…I SEE NO/It seems so perfect/I SEE NO EVIL!”

I returned to New York City in 1974 from my undergraduate years at Colgate to go for my MFA in film criticism at Columbia, with the late auteurist critic Andrew Sarris. That’s where I first met Charles Ball,  the brother of a friend of a college roommate, and the co-founder of ORK Records with Terry Ork, the manager of Cinemabilia, a movie book store on 13th Street, where both Verlaine and Richard Hell were employees. My first purchases upon returning to New York were Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory” single on Mer, and Television’s two-sided ORK 45, “Little Johnny Jewel.”  That would change my life.

As a film student, I appreciated the movie references in Television’s albums, “Prove It” is a noir detective story whose plot shifts allegiances with each successive verse; “Friction” is about the roots of narrative, the tension between listener and talker, how truth becomes fiction through friction; while album closer “Torn Curtain,” the name of a Hitchcock film, notes how the show must go on, even if the players fatally hesitate, or as I put it, “permitting us a privileged glimpse behind the scenes of an ongoing world.”

By the time of “Adventure,” the handwriting was on the wall: “[The album] takes you, not to places unknown, but to places so familiar they may seem boring.  But as in the films of Max Ophuls (you can hear the Sarris influence here), these familiarities are what we will miss most when we are no longer here. Living in the material world has certainly had its effects on Television; one hopes they continue to function in it rather than proceed to withdraw into an isolated existence — no matter how pristine.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. After jettisoning both Richard Hell and, eventually, Richard Lloyd, two collaborators who were also junkies at one time, Verlaine continued to retreat, releasing the 1992 self-titled album on Capitol, as well as a series of solo efforts. He continued to tour with guitarist Jimmy Rip — who was reportedly by his side with Patti Smith when he passed.

His death comes as a shock — it was so sudden I hadn’t even prepared a morgue piece like I’d done for so many aging rock ‘n’ rollers. Tributes came in from the likes of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Flea, Billy Idol , former bandmate Richard Lloyd, Richard Barone and Patti herself, whose writing about the band in Rock Scene and Creem originally piqued my interest.

“Dearest Tom,” Jesse Paris Smith posted on Instagram. “The love is immense and forever. My heart is too intensely full to share everything now, and finding the words is too deep of a struggle.”

Rest in peace, Tom.  Your work will live on. 

“This case that I’ve been working on so long / So long… This case is closed.”

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Revamped Television Have a New Album in the Can

By Patrick Flanary

Patrick Flanary

An Australian audience will witness a first in October, when Television perform Marquee Moon , their classic 1977 debut, in full at a festival in Melbourne. Meanwhile, 16 songs frontman Tom Verlaine and the band recorded in December 2007 await vocals and mixing, though a release date is still not scheduled.

See Where ‘Marquee Moon’ Ranks on Our List of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

“It might happen before we all die, I don’t know,” Television drummer Billy Ficca tells Rolling Stone of the unheard tracks, recorded over a week in New York. “It’s sort of laying there.”

Until then, those hoping to catch Television’s first U.S. shows in six years – in San Francisco, Athens and Austin, in November – can expect to hear “a whole bag of new songs” in addition to selections from the band’s three albums, says Jimmy Rip, who replaced guitarist Richard Lloyd in 2007. For now, Marquee Moon will be played in its entirety only at the Release the Bats festival in Melbourne, on October 26th. London-based festival promoter All Tomorrow’s Parties approached Verlaine with the idea earlier this year.

“I never thought Tom would do it,” Rip told Rolling Stone in a phone interview from Buenos Aires, where he lives and plays with another band, Jimmy Rip and the Trip. “But every time you try to predict Tom, you’re gonna be wrong. And he said yes.” Verlaine was unavailable for comment.

A handful of dates this fall include stops in New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and the U.K. Those scheduled in the U.S. will be Television’s first since since playing Central Park in 2007. That summer show generated interest among the group to record its first material since the original lineup released its last album more than 20 years ago. They booked the week between Christmas and New Year’s at the now-defunct Stratosphere Sound in Chelsea.

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“As soon as I found out who it was, I was like, ‘Cancel everything, we’re doing this,'” says Geoff Sanoff, who engineered the sessions, noting that Verlaine favored low-powered amplifiers. “It sounded amazing. It was so clean and so crisp. As soon as you set them up playing, they just sounded like Television.”

Yet Rip says he cannot compare the new songs – many of which Verlaine has assigned the working title of “Wingnut” – to anything from Marquee Moon , Adventure or Television . “Tom’s pretty adamant about making a real effort to make something new each time,” he says. “It doesn’t make for super-fast work, but it’s definitely an admirable goal.”

Beginning in 1974, Television honed its act for two years in New York at places like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City before recording Marquee Moon . Richard Hell , who with Verlaine and Ficca formed the pre-Television group the Neon Boys, left Television prior to its record deal and later founded the Heartbreakers and the Voidoids. Lloyd and bassist Fred Smith cemented the Television lineup, and they released their masterpiece in February 1977.

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Though it never sold well in the U.S., the record spent 13 weeks on the U.K. albums chart, based on the success of “Prove It” and the title track. “Marquee Moon” is something of an anti-song, 10 minutes of disciplined disorder, lacking melody and a chorus and brimming with dueling guitar solos from Verlaine and Lloyd. The band recorded it only once.

“I wanted to do another take,” Ficca says. “My bass drum wasn’t anchored down, it was sliding away from me, so I was chasing it with my right foot. But I guess it was good and all. It all worked.”

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Tom Verlaine returns to town, this time with seminal 70s punk band Television

Between the ramones’ primal, two-minute-or-less power chord blasts and talking heads’ herky-jerky attempts at pop, television occupied a unique space.

By Mike Shanley

THE WARHOL: SOUND SERIES presents TELEVISION

Brian Eno once said the Velvet Underground sold a minimal number of albums, but everyone who bought them was inspired to form their own band. The implication is that the band’s ripple effect greatly exceeded industry goals and expectations. By the same token, it could probably be said that Television — one of the original bands to put the late New York club CBGB on the musical map — had a similar impact. 

Between the Ramones’ primal, two-minute-or-less power-chord blasts and Talking Heads’ herky-jerky attempts at pop, Television occupied a unique space. While their peers shunned proper “lead” guitars, Television’s Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd not only soloed, they did it incredibly well. They stretched songs past the 10-minute mark, building in intensity akin to jazz musicians, but in six-string voices that fit in with the burgeoning punk scene. 

“Little Johnny Jewel,” the 1975 debut single, splits a vamp of a song over two sides. Lloyd and Verlaine each engages in a combination of frantic plinking, bluesy bends that touch on Neil Young and — in the second half — a loop that sounds like a spastic version of jazz guitarist Grant Green. While English punks The Clash dismissed the Rolling Stones in their song “1977,” Television wasn’t opposed to encoring with “Satisfaction.” And it sounded much closer to the original than Devo’s rewiring of that classic. Live, the band dug deeper into music history, covering the 13 th Floor Elevators and Bob Dylan. Their close friends, the Patti Smith Group, drank from the same musical well, but the execution was vastly different.

Like any punk band worth its salt, Television released just two albums before breaking up: the astounding Marquee Moon (which even Rolling Stone noticed and included on one of its umpteen “500 Best Albums of All Time” lists) and the intriguing Adventure . Verlaine and Lloyd embarked on solo careers, but the original lineup got back together and released a self-titled third album in 1992. Live performances of their first run appeared in the meantime, building further on its history. A performance in San Francisco from Television’s final 1978 tour shows the group in top form, with songs segueing seamlessly into one another, guitars instinctually weaving together. 

Lloyd left the group amicably eight years ago, replaced by Jimmy Rip, who has played with Verlaine’s solo group since the early ’80s. With original bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca also on board, this local performance has been eagerly anticipated, to put it mildly. Verlaine is no stranger to Pittsburgh, having appeared at The Andy Warhol Museum and the Regent Square Theater in recent years, accompanying films. But this is the first appearance by his band proper.

While Verlaine’s guitar work can be expansive and dream-like, his high-pitched vocals always had a great deal of understatement to them, even while unraveling poetic imagery in songs like “Friction” and “Marquee Moon.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that his offstage manner is similar.

For one thing, Verlaine has more perspective on CBGB, which became something of a mecca to fans before closing in 2006. “To be honest, there’s not a lot of ‘memories’ about that spot,” he says via email. “And I never run into any of the people that played there. I do still see Patti Smith a few times a year … just did a mostly poetry show with her about a year ago. No drums, just guitar and her daughter on keyboards. [It was] very fun!”

Legend holds that Television used to practice six days a week, and the interplay between Lloyd and Verlaine on Marquee Moon seems to justify the claim. “It’s basically a ‘live’ record with the mistakes patched up and some editing here and there,” Verlaine says. “Playing the record live took quite a few rehearsals! There’s a few odd chords I still have not figured out.”

As far as the album being worthy of rock-critic terms like “seminal” or “influential,” Verlaine is also matter-of-fact about it. ‘I never think of it in any context in particular,” he writes. “It seems to get re-discovered by a new generation every 10 years or so. That’s kinda cool.” The new generation of fans, incidentally, has spread to South America, where the band has toured three times in the past few years, as well as Korea and Japan, where it traveled this year.

Television isn’t going to live off its back catalog either. Verlaine says the band has 14 tracks recorded for a new album, although no release date has been set yet. The group also worked up three new songs during a tour of Japan. “That's my favorite place to play now,” he writes. “No one videos the shows on their cellphones or such. They like just listening, so it is a very good audience to play to, [and] to improvise to."

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Television’s Tom Verlaine Changed the Guitar for the Rock Underground

By Jayson Greene

It was the most delicate sound to ever emerge from the CBGB stage. Others stormed, bludgeoned, or wailed, but Tom Verlaine’s guitar crept. His touch was more like that of a zither player, and the  Television frontman did more with one finger of his left hand than most did with a stage full of effects pedals. There was something nearly pitiless in the precision of his fingers—watch the way he wrangles the quicksilver high notes during the “Foxhole” solo from the band’s 1978 show for BBC Four. He seemingly  trapped  notes, agitating and destabilizing them before letting them go. He was capable of a vibrato so expressive it would go from wobbly to piercing within half a second. 

Tom Verlaine, who  died last week at 73 after an unspecified illness, must have cut an odd figure in the burgeoning NYC punk scene—tall, beautiful, unfriendly; unwinding sharp, searching solos amidst the rioters and the squallers. Verlaine's contemporaries—Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Patti Smith—were icons, and in many cases they looked up to Verlaine. Smith hailed him as “a guy worth losing your virginity to,” and Reed supposedly attempted to sneak a tape recorder into one of Television’s sets. Verlaine and Hell, meanwhile, shared the kind of tortured bond more appropriate to lifelong lovers than friends: decades later, after an extended estrangement, Hell still wrote about Verlaine with evident love and sorrow. 

And yet while Verlaine is unquestionably NYC punk royalty—another oft-repeated tale has Verlaine convincing CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to take a chance booking rock bands in the first place—his place in the history of that movement is somehow the least interesting thing about him. Verlaine didn't seem to belong to the punk scene so much as wander through it, brushing shoulders with greats and rubbing off more on them than they did on him. He seemed uniquely a man out of  time , destined to make music that rang out long after the scene quieted.

Television made two records originally, 1977’s Marquee Moon and 1978’s Adventure , each of which was perfect in distinct ways but neither of which impressed enough of the right people to take the band to national stages. Neither album cracked the Billboard 200 in the States or found a foothold on any major radio stations, and so the band just sort of shambled apart. (There was a third and final record years later, 1992’s Television .) They very nearly hated each other, anyhow. 

Those first two Television records spent many long, ignominious years in bargain bins, as easy to find and routinely ignored as Boz Scaggs or later-period Kinks LPs while the mythology of Verlaine's CBGB compatriots like Lou Reed or the Talking Heads only magnified. His solo records, which he released consistently and without fanfare throughout the ’80s, contained excellent, Television-ish rockers like “ Breakin’ In My Heart ” and “ Kingdom Come ” (both from 1979’s self-titled) but they often found homes in those same dollar bins. 

The upside of being a man out of time is that you can never age into the past. Over the next decade, new guitar players kept discovering Verlaine; it’s no surprise that, upon his passing, rock Twitter was a  wailing   mass of  musicians who  cited him as their  founding   spark . Two records, it turns out, is exactly the kind of slim discography that allows for perennial rediscovery: not quite enough to canonize, just enough to be endlessly fascinated by. Wherever you first encountered Tom Verlaine’s guitar—whether it was live, on the CBGB stage at the height of New York’s punk explosion, or years later, from a record bin or a college radio station—his playing stood not just out, but  apart , like a giant lion licking its paws. Few people’s influence spread as far and as wide as Verlaine’s, or as quietly. Somewhere in that tone lurked an idea about the guitar, one that no one had ever formulated quite the same way. 

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By Nina Corcoran

In Verlaine's hands, the guitar became simultaneously ecstatic and private, fit for abstracted wanderings of all kinds. Tall and beautiful as he was, there was something monastic about Verlaine, both in his lifestyle—he famously abstained from drugs in a scene practically defined by them—and in his approach to playing. He would instruct his band members to stop moving around so much during his solos, not because he was peacocking and didn’t want to share the spotlight—as his thousand-yard gaze and diffident manner would prove, Verlaine had no use for the spotlight even when onstage—but because he wanted nothing to break the audience’s concentration, or his own. When he soloed, you got the distinct sense that he was entirely alone, building something up there. 

It was an approach to the instrument that would go on to spread like spider cracks through the American rock underground, from the dBs and R.E.M. to Sonic Youth and Slint to Wilco and the indie rock of the Pacific Northwest in the ’90s. Whenever Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch opens up his songs into amiable, ringing instrumental passages; whenever Spiral Stairs and Stephen Malkmus splash fuzz tones over a Pavement song like kicked-over buckets of paint; whenever you hear a guitar solo that sounds like a thought bubble over the player’s head—you are hearing the sound of Tom Verlaine.

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‘They felt like a possible future’: how Brian Eno and I recorded Television’s first demos

In search of the new, Richard Williams – then an A&R man at Island Records – captured early Television in an office block salsa studio. But Tom Verlaine wasn’t impressed

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W hen Tom Verlaine wrote his great lyric about Broadway looking so medieval , he wasn’t thinking about the rather down-at-heel recording studio in an office building where his band, Television, made their first demos in December 1974. Good Vibrations was the name of the studio and it was a bit of a misnomer, given the way things turned out.

A few weeks earlier I’d been taken by some New York friends to hear Television and another new band, called Blondie, at the Truck and Warehouse Theater on East 4th Street. This was the kind of event on which the Downtown music scene built its 1970s reputation. A decade after Lou Reed had conspired with John Cale in a Ludlow Street apartment, lower Manhattan was still a place where artists could find affordable lodgings in a congenially picaresque environment. New bands performed in front of encouraging audiences comprising poets, painters, photographers, fellow musicians and scene-makers.

For all the unmissable allure of the support band’s lead singer, it would be a kindness to say that on this night Blondie were a work in the early phase of construction. Television were a little further along the evolutionary path and, at that stage, a lot more interesting. Verlaine, standing centre-stage, caught the attention for his anguished vocal delivery and the obvious brilliance of his songwriting, particularly in the one about falling “into the arms of Venus De Milo” and another with the hardboiled exhortation to “prove it – just the facts”. Most of all, at a time when people were wanting short, sharp two-minute songs as a riposte to the sprawling excesses of so-called progressive rock, Verlaine and his fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd revelled in their extended interplay, entwining their lines to create a compelling sonic architecture. On bass was Richard Hell, whose spiked hair and distressed clothes spelled attitude, as did the songs he sang, including Blank Generation and Love Comes in Spurts. On drums, Billy Ficca held the volatile elements together.

I was running Island Records’ A&R department in London at the time and keen to find something new – something that wasn’t wearing denim or glitter, neither prog nor glam. Something that felt different, that felt like a possible future. Television looked as though they could be it, so demo sessions were arranged for December at a studio I knew through connections at Fania Records, the Latin label whose salsa records – by Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco and so on – Island had begun to release in the UK.

Good Vibrations wasn’t a great studio and it certainly wouldn’t have been the optimal place to record Television, but the sessions were only supposed to produce rough demos that I could take back to London in order to convince the company that they were worth signing. To strengthen my case, I took Brian Eno along with me. Two years after leaving Roxy Music, he had released two solo albums and was exploring his options. Like me, he was intrigued by the scene evolving in New York. He had been helpful when I signed Cale and Nico to Island and had shared a concert with them at the Rainbow a few months earlier. The debut album by the Portsmouth Sinfonia, in which he played, had given him a taste for producing. He was also signed to EG Management, who I hoped might take an interest.

We spent two days recording and one day mixing. Five of Verlaine’s songs were laid down – Marquee Moon, Venus, Friction, Prove It and Double Exposure – and none of Hell’s, in hindsight a sign that he would soon be out of the band, although I didn’t know it at the time. When I left with a copy of the master tape, all seemed well.

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Back in London, however, it proved harder to turn my own feelings about the band into something contagious. Very few people at the company showed a positive response to the demos. And Island, back then, was a small independent outfit whose magical success was firmly based on two elements: the ears of the founder, Chris Blackwell, and the collective enthusiasm of the company at all levels, including the sales and marketing staff, who cared about the music as much as anyone else. If you didn’t have one of those factors on your side, you were probably wasting your time.

In retrospect it would have been good to try and bring Television to London so that people could see them, but it might have been a year too early for that. Tom was disappointed, I was disappointed, and gradually we lost touch. Before long he had squeezed Hell out of the band and brought in Fred Smith to play bass on their debut single, Little Johnny Jewel, released on a label created by their patron, Terry Ork . Eventually Elektra signed them and in 1977 they released Marquee Moon, one of the great albums of the era, containing four of the five songs we’d recorded together, re-recorded by the British engineer Andy Johns at A&R studios in New York – also located in an office building just off Broadway, with exactly the beautiful crispness and clarity Tom had been hoping to hear at Good Vibrations.

Eventually the Island tape was widely bootlegged – nothing to do with me, although I did keep a copy – and various versions of the story began circulating, first in interviews and later in autobiographies by Hell and Lloyd. Verlaine told journalists that he had hated the way the demos came out and claimed that EG Management must have played the tape to Bryan Ferry, who he thought had borrowed some of the ideas for Roxy Music’s next album, Siren, released in the autumn of 1975. Close listening reveals no obvious resemblance, but Verlaine was known for his quickness to suspect others. At an early gig he had confiscated a cassette recorder from Lou Reed, who he believed was also planning to steal his ideas.

But it was really the production of the demos that upset Tom, for which he put the blame on Eno. “The whole thing sounded like the Ventures,” he said to Vivien Goldman in a Sounds interview. “It sounded so bad. I kept on saying, why does it sound so bad? And he’d say, ‘Whaddya mean? It sounds pretty good to me.’” Tom might more correctly have blamed me for not realising at the time what a perfectionist he was, and that he wanted perfection even in his demos.

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More on this story

Tom Verlaine: Television’s perfectionist guitar genius always kept punk guessing

Tom Verlaine: a guitar antihero whose sensibility was more classical than Clapton

Tom Verlaine obituary

Tom Verlaine: a life in pictures

Tom Verlaine, frontman and guitarist of US band Television, dies at 73

Television – review

Robert Forster: Venus by Television is the most perfect song of all time

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To mark what would have been Tom Verlaine ‘s 74th birthday today (December 13), we remember the Television seer’s greatest moments…

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“Little Johnny Jewel” (Ork Records single, 1975)

What a strange thing Television’s debut single remains, with spindly guitars, strangled vocals and thudding drums riding a descending bassline into the underground. In the live arena, however, Television would take “Johnny” to ever-ascending heights…

“See No Evil” (Marquee Moon, 1977)

A glorious declaration of independence and ambition, with a churning riff and jagged power chords. “What I want, I want now”, Verlaine demands at the outset, “and it’s a whole lot more than anyhow”. On the ecstatic fade, he announces that he intends to “pull down the future” – and you’re ready to help him do it.

“Venus” (Marquee Moon, 1977)

Robert Forster recently called “Venus” “the most perfect song of all time” – and you’ll find no argument here. Marquee Moon’s second track is positively sublime, a lucid dream brought to life via deliciously intertwining guitars and lyrics that evoke a nocturnal urban landscape: glowing neon, streets wet with rain, unknown pleasures and dangers lurking around every corner.

“Marquee Moon” (Marquee Moon, 1977)

While its 10-minute duration puts it in league with such cosmic counterculture epics as the Dead’s “Dark Star” and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s “East-West”, “Marquee Moon” stands alone. It’s a beautifully oblique tale, American existentialism pared down to three concise verses: “The kiss of death, the embrace of life”. But whatever Verlaine is getting at, it’s best expressed by his questing solo, a Mixolydian masterpiece that builds to a delirious climax.

“Glory” (Adventure, 1978)

Showing off Television’s playful side, the first 30 seconds of “Glory” layer hook upon hook to mesmerising effect. The sound of those chiming guitars would prove inescapable in the years to come, as bands like REM, The Feelies and The dB’s borrowed heavily from Television to create a new kind of alternative rock.

“Days” (Adventure, 1978)

Centred on a hypnotic guitar part conjured from Richard Lloyd’s attempt to play The Byrds’ “Mr Tambourine Man” riff backwards, “Days” is Television at their pastoral best. Ever the contrarian, Verlaine here rejects the nihilism espoused by his former comrade Richard Hell with a hymn to longevity.

“Breakin’ In My Heart” (Tom Verlaine, 1979)

“Breakin’ In My Heart” dated back to Television’s early days (the curious should seek out an awesome 1975 live rendition taped in Cleveland), but Verlaine didn’t take the song into the studio until his 1979 solo debut. It’s a riotous, “Roadrunner”-esque two-chord wonder, with B-52s guitarist Ricky Wilson egging Tom on to one of his most joyous solos.

“Kingdom Come” (Tom Verlaine, 1979)

With a sunny riff that Lindsey Buckingham would be proud to call his own, “Kingdom Come” is one of Tom Verlaine’s high points, a jailhouse lament as powerful as Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”. David Bowie knew quality when he heard it, quickly releasing his own rendition on 1980’s Scary Monsters.

“Souvenir From A Dream” (Tom Verlaine, 1979)

Pounding piano and wiry guitar lines introduce Verlaine’s surreal depiction of small-town America – a dream that edges closer to a menacing nightmare as the song progresses: “Thirty lights in a row/Every one of them green…”

“Always” (Dreamtime, 1981)

Verlaine’s second album Dreamtime is perhaps his most cohesive solo effort – and in some alternate universe, it could’ve been his breakthrough. “Always” certainly sounds like a hit, with a crunchy, Stones-like groove, a lush chorus and a breakneck finish. Verlaine sings “Love remains the best kept secret in town” – as does this song.

“There’s A Reason” (Dreamtime, 1981)

“‘There’s A Reason’ illustrates why Tom may have felt that he needed to disband such a great combo as Television,” says Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate. “It creates a wild world of Tom-upon-Tom-upon-Tom, layering his guitars in a beautiful swirl, like a swarm of bees just set angrily loose from the hive.”

“Words From The Front” (Words From The Front, 1982)

Verlaine had already visited the battlefield in Television’s “Foxhole”, and he went back to war for Words From The Front’s harrowing title track. Over a minor-key dirge, the singer inhabits the persona of a doomed WWI soldier writing home, realising the horrific futility of his position. The tense, mournful instrumental break recalls nothing more than Neil Young’s similarly styled “Cortez The Killer”.

“Days On The Mountain” (Words From The Front, 1982)

An outlier in the Verlaine catalogue. Driven by a metronomic beat, darkly textured synths (or heavily processed guitars?) and haunted, echo-laden vocals, “Days On The Mountain” highlights the songwriter’s uncompromising and adventurous nature. Stretching out to almost nine minutes, it’s a hypnotic trip.

“Swim” (Cover, 1984)

Starting off with a rambling inner monologue, “Swim” blossoms into one of Verlaine’s most gorgeous ballads. His vampiric vocal suggests he isn’t taking the endeavour too seriously, but you get the sense he’s enjoying himself all the same.

“The Scientist Writes A Letter” (Flash Light, 1987)

As one of our greatest guitar heroes, Verlaine’s six-string prowess received the lion’s share of the attention in his obituaries. But he was an exceptional singer, too; unconventional, yes, but absolutely singular. Case in point, you can’t imagine anyone else doing justice to “The Scientist Writes A Letter”, a captivating half-spoken, half-sung reverie. Though naturally it does wind down with a terrific solo.

“Spiritual” (Warm And Cool, 1992)

The all-instrumental Warm And Cool offered an eclectic variety of modes, from throwback workouts to unclassifiable jams. Towering above the rest, “Spiritual” is an appropriately celestial five minutes, as Verlaine meditates patiently on the timeworn melody of “She Moved Through The Fair”. Don’t miss the version with the Kronos Quartet from the Big Bad Love soundtrack.

“1880 Or So” (Television, 1992)

Television’s reunion LP surprised some fans with a more laidback, somewhat groovier version of the band. But it’s a worthy addition to the group’s slim canon. “1880 Or So”, the album’s slinky lead track, features Verlaine and Lloyd’s serpentine guitars tangling over a driving motorik rhythm. That forward momentum is contrasted nicely by Verlaine, as he happily casts his mind back to simpler times in the lyrics.

“Rhyme” (Television, 1992)

Time seems to stop as the lovely, enigmatic “Rhyme” unspools. It’s a hushed performance, somehow both tightly wound and supremely calm, slipstream melodies blending into a steady, minimal rhythm. “Will our vibrations be close?” Verlaine wonders gently as he and the band spiral into a weird dream.

“23 Minutes In Brussels” (Penthouse, 1995)

“It’s not a Verlaine composition per se, but Tom’s extended guitar solo on Luna’s “23 Minutes In Brussels” really tells a story,” says that band’s Dean Wareham . “It made it a whole different song. He recorded those five minutes of lead guitar in one take.”

“The Earth Is In The Sky” (Songs And Other Things, 2006)

Aside from sporadic live appearances with and without Television, Verlaine was a rare presence in the 21st century. But his final vocal album, Songs And Other Things, suggested that he was far from a spent force. “The Earth Is In The Sky” is a highlight, with a guitar hook reminiscent of Richard Thompson and rapturous visions of wholeness in the verses. 

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Free walking tour near Moscow

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