Television's Marquee Moon (33 1/3)
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78 Dery (1988); Gerstenzang (2009); Wildsmith (2009).
79 Gholson (1976).
80 Kugel (1977).
81 Savage (2010: p. 85).
82 Hell (2008).
83 Kent (1977b).
84 Strick (1976).
85 Heylin (1993: p. 117).
86 Heylin (1993: p. 118).
87 McNeil and McCain (1996: p. 167).
88 Savage (2010: p. 139).
89 Kent (1977b).
90 McNeil and McCain (1996: pp. 168, 170).
91 Veillette (2000).
92 Kozak (1988: p. 58).
93 Dalton (2001).
94 Wolcott (1976).
95 Kozak (1988: p. 15).
96 Mitchell (2006: p. 39).
97 “Androgyny in Rock” (1973); Kent, (1974b).
98 Harry, et al. (1998: p. 16).
99 McNeil and McCain (1996: p. 172).
100 Rombes (2009: p. 231).
101 Rombes (2009: pp. 88–9).
102 Robbins (2001).
103 Mitchell (2006: pp. 40–1).
104 Swirsky (2003).
105 Jones (1977).
106 Kozak (1988: p. 6).
107 Fletcher (2009: p. 315).
108 McCormack (1973).
109 Christgau (1972).
110 Christgau (1977).
111 Kozak (1988: p. 55).
112 Hermes (2007).
113 Village Voice writer Richard Nusser, in Kozak (1988: p. 9).
114 Miles (1972).
115 “Bowie Knife” (1995).
116 Kozak (1988: p. 2).
117 DeLillo (1973: p. 159).
118 Kozak (1988: p. 3).
119 Bockris and Bayley (1999: p. 102).
120 Smith (2010: p. 239).
121 Green (1973).
122 Charlesworth (1974); Kent (1974a).
123 McNeil and McCain (1996: p. 171).
124 Heylin (1993: p. 129), idiosyncratic punctuation in original.
125 Fricke (2007: p. 383).
126 Smith (2010: p. 240).
127 Feigenbaum (1974).
128 Smith (1974a).
129 Smith (1974b).
130 Noland (1995: p. 584).
131 Baker (1974).
132 Fields (1996: p. 20 [1 Aug. 1974]).
133 Bockris and Bayley (1999: p. 103).
134 Rader (2009).
135 Bockris and Bayley (1999: p. 104).
136 Rockwell (1974).
137 Hell (2001: pp. 39–40).
138 Hell (2001: pp. 39–40).
139 The press release is reproduced in the unpaginated illustration insert in Heylin (1993). For handwritten drafts of these bios, see Richard Hell Papers, Box 9, Folder 622, undated.
140 Fritscher “Introduction” to “The Academy.”
141 Gimarc (2005: p. 13 [6 July 1974]).
142 Valentine (2006: p. 78).
143 Gendron (2002: p. 256).
144 2004 interview in Rombes (2005: p. 53).
145 Lawrence (2009: p. 116).
146 Kozak (1988: pp. 18–19).
147 Ramone (2000: p. 79).
148 Fields (1996: p. 21 [10 October 1974]).
149 Leigh (2009: p. 123).
150 Heylin (1993: p. 176).
151 Fields (1996: p. 21 [5 Sept. 1974]).
152 Fields, SoHo Weekly News, 11 July 1974.
153 Hand-circulated flier, 1974. For a typewritten draft that differs in some details see Richard Hell Papers, Box 9, Folder 594. “The Hunch” was actually recorded by the Bobby Peterson Quintet.
154 Richard Hell Papers, Box 9, Folder 594.
155 McNeil and McCain (1996: p. 173).
156 “Television” (1975).
157 Bangs (1988: p. 266).
158 McNeil and McCain (1996: p. 199).
159 Gholson (1976).
160 Smith (1974a).
161 Smith (1974a).
162 Smith (1974a).
163 Fields (1996: p. 22 [14 Nov. 1974]).
164 According to CBGB.com, the Ramones played a staggering 74 performances, or 37 nights, at CBGB’s between 16 August and the end of the year. Concert listings and ads in SoHo Weekly News suggest that number is hugely inflated.
165 Rader (2009).
166 Heylin (2007: p. 26).
167 Heylin (1993: p. 121).
Down in the Scuzz with the Heavy Cult Figures
There were elements of New York Dolls, Warholian elements, a lot of fifties Beat poetry elements, but [with Television] for the first time I was reacting to it as a rock ‘n’ roll show, as opposed to a be-in, a happening.
— Leee Black Childers, 1988, in Savage, England’s Dreaming Tapes (2010)
No one talked — ever — about the stock market. No one went to the gym. Everyone smoked. Bands did two sets a night. Television jammed for hours at a time. Onstage (and off), Patti could talk like nobody’s business. … Patti Smith and Television and the Ramones and Talking Heads and Blondie were like our own little black-and-white 8-mm. movies that we thought would conquer the world.
— Lisa Robinson, Vanity Fair, November 2002
Television is doing what the Stones would be doing if they were still alive.
— Joel Sloman, Creem
Television’s so-called “Eno demos” are as fundamental to the band’s legend as the story of stumbling onto CBGB’s. At the time, the brush with Island Records hinted that Television would be the band to blow the lid off the local scene, to go where even the Velvets hadn’t and bring New York’s underground into the mainstream. In hindsight, though, the situation also called to the fore creative differences that were emerging between Verlaine and Hell and would result in the latter’s departure from the band that April. Listening to the Island demos today, we can recognize a band that was on the road to Marquee Moon, but one still struggling to pull itself free of influences and downtown predecessors, even as Verlaine also struggled to undo some of the image Hell had so carefully conceived.
Television’s early sets, by most accounts, contained about a 70-30 percent split between Verlaine’s songs and Hell’s. But following the gigs at Max’s in the fall of 1974 Verlaine started pulling Hell’s songs from the set lists. At some point the shifting dynamics within the band spilled into the stage set-up as well. Blondie’s Chris Stein recalled:
I liked Television with Richard. With Hell I thought they were fantastic. … [Richard] used to do this Townshend thing, a whole series of leaps and bounds around the stage. It was more dynamic. Verlaine was on the end and Lloyd was in the middle. Then all of a sudden Verlaine was in the middle and it changed things.168
Hell’s sense that Verlaine was taking control of the band was reinforced by three days near the end of ’74 at Good Vibrations, a Latin-oriented studio that hoped to make salsa the “New York sound” of the ’70s.169 Of the six songs they recorded, only “a lame version” of Blank Generation represented Hell’s output.170 The others, all Verlaine numbers, would show up on Marquee Moon, with the exception of “Double Exposure,” one of their catchiest early songs, though one most showing the Dolls’ influence. Of the other tracks recorded with Eno, two were among Verlaine’s earliest (“Venus de Milo” and “Marquee Moon”) and two were relatively recent compositions (“Prove It” and “Friction”). All but the version of “Blank Generation” would later turn up as the first five tracks of the Double Exposure bootleg LP (1992), which also contained a set of demos recorded later that year at Smith’s midtown rehearsal space.
Before sessions started, Verlaine had been keen to work with Eno, who was the same age as Television’s principals but had already seen substantial success. He was also keen to make a play for an Island contract. The sessions quickly turned sour, though. To Williams and Eno, Verlaine fretted as if the band were laying down masters, not demos, eager to get the exact sound he wanted. Complicating matters, the engineer, who came with the studio and apparently had more experience with salsa than rock, “couldn’t get the hang of the group at all,” Williams said years later.
171 Eno, meanwhile, had picked up on the band’s indebtedness to ’60s garage — there are strong Count Five overtones on these tracks, 5D-era Byrds, too, if only in the guitars — but Verlaine thought the references came off as too literal, more like the twangy surf-rock instrumentals of the Ventures.
To a number the Good Vibrations tracks do refer more overtly to older rock styles than the later versions on Marquee Moon would. “Prove It” contained clever nods to the Latin vibes of early Brill Building girl groups. “Double Exposure” could have been a Dolls cover. “Marquee Moon” hinted at off-kilter reggae in its opening line and a piano part banging below the chorus harkened to the Velvets’ repetitive open fifths. Verlaine’s vocals, too, are still riddled with echoes of Johansen’s snarl or Wayne County’s pout. If the arrangements overall are punchier than the versions on Marquee Moon, driven by the washtub-thump of Hell’s bass, the songs don’t yet have the polish or expansiveness they’d develop over the next eighteen months. Still, the session documents mind-boggling advances over material recorded in Ork’s loft mere months earlier, and despite Verlaine’s displeasure with the sound, Williams and Eno both thought the band was ready to sign. Andy Warhol’s Interview did as well, offering the band a brief blurb set next to a gorgeous close-up of Hell and Verlaine: “Eno just produced a very high priced demo tape for Island Records who are frothing to sign them up, but till now they’ve been Manhattan’s most closely guarded secret. They have a large cult following who wear ripped clothing like Verlaine and Hell and flock to their concerts.”172
Richard Williams imagined they might even move to London, as Hendrix had. But much to his disappointment, Island didn’t bite. Eno also pitched them to his label, EG, but didn’t get any better response. Other versions of the story suggest that Verlaine just didn’t like the tapes and called the whole thing off, even though Williams was well on his way to making the demos into an album.173 By mid-January, word had leaked to Fields: “It’s a shock,” he wrote, “but Television has apparently rejected a bid from Eno and Island Records for a producing/recording deal.”174 Verlaine told SoHo Weekly News that spring that he’d found Eno “an interesting guy, but we just had different ideas of where our music was going.”175 A couple years later he told Melody Maker that Eno’s “ideas were incompatible with mine.”176 They would be better suited, apparently, to David Byrne, whose band Eno would produce in a few years’ time.
Fast on the heels of the aborted Island demos, Television staged a full-force homecoming on the Bowery, playing their first shows there since the previous July: “TELEVISION RETURNS to CBGB’s,” trumpeted ads in the Voice. During January and February Television played over a dozen dates, two sets a night, usually in three-night runs. Kristal’s new “three night policy” would make the club an effective incubator for new acts.177 Over six sets, bands refined material and drew crowds by word of mouth. Blondie opened Television’s January dates. Another half dozen shows in February and March were opened by newcomers Mumps, led by Lance Loud, a proto–reality TV star of PBS’s “An American Family,” who had come out to his Santa Barbara parents on camera. Influenced by the Dolls and drawn to New York by Warhol, Mumps initially belonged to the glitter crowd. Loud carried on a highly publicized affair with Warhol star Jackie Curtis. Within a few months, their drummer, Jay Dee Daugherty, would be whisked away by the Patti Smith Group.178
For most of the past year, CBGB’s had welcomed underground rock on Sundays only. Even at the start of ’75 the Wednesday to Saturday early slots were held by a Celtic folk rock band called British Misfortunes, and the Wednesday late slot continued as a poetry night. In the new year, however, the underground was coming to define the identity of the venue, and vice versa. At the end of 1974, when Ruskin closed Max’s for financial reasons, CB’s gained a corner on downtown rock. Alan Betrock, writing in the SoHo Weekly News, heralded Television’s reappearance as a resurrection.
Betrock’s account of one January show serves as a referendum on Television’s development and on the general scene, giving us a good idea of how things were shaping up down at the club. The selections on the CB’s jukebox — a mix of British invasion, disco, glam, R&B, and psych (the Who, the Hues Corporation, Bowie, and Gladys Knight all coexist, somehow, with 13th Floor Elevators) — anticipates his description of the crowd’s mélange of “styles and leanings.” Blondie’s spirited opening set, which included covers of Tina Turner and the Shangri-Las, added to the heady stew of influences. But “the people came to see Television,” Betrock notes, “and they did not go home disappointed.” Having tightened their sound since they last played CB’s, they now “perform a powerfully hypnotizing brand of music” and have amassed “an endless number of classic originals, including ‘Venus de Milo,’ ‘Love Comes in Spurts,’ and the much requested ‘Double Exposure.’”179
Betrock comments on Verlaine, Lloyd, and Hell, finding the latter “most riveting” on “Blank Generation.” Picking up on the sexual energy Patti Smith had identified the previous year, Betrock celebrates the way their “pent-up energy … spurts out in their music,” especially when songs like “Hard On Love” build to a “masterful climax.” Significantly, though, Betrock positions Television as post-glam but doesn’t specify the nature of their departures from the earlier scene: “When groups like the Dolls, Harlots, and Teenage Lust failed to create much success after huge advance publicity, most people assumed the NYC scene to be dead. But Television, along with such varied units as Patti Smith, Milk ‘n Cookies, and the Dictators prove that New York is alive and well, and predictions of widespread adulation do not seem premature.”180
Television’s local stature was confirmed when they played three shows in March at a new drag venue, the Little Hippodrome, opening for the Dolls, who hoped to stage a comeback under Malcolm McLaren’s management. The Dolls had already played three shows there a week earlier (including a Sunday all-ages matinee “for our high school friends”) and were generating buzz with a new gimmick in which they wore red patent leather in homage to Red China. Television’s three nights with the Dolls were strained by the cold war between Verlaine and Hell. Even so, two weeks later, on the 23rd, the band launched a seven-week scene-exploding stand at CBGB’s with the Patti Smith Group, whose manager had teamed up with Ork to convince Kristal that the unprecedented run would boost CB’s visibility. Playing two shows a night, four nights a week for seven weeks gave both bands the chance to solidify their stage show and gave Patti’s group a chance to gel with a new five-piece lineup that now included a second guitarist, Ivan Kral, lately of Blondie. As Lenny Kaye recalled these shows: “The experience of playing night after night at CB’s kind of hardened us, so that when we played for Clive [Davis of Arista Records] we sounded tight.”181
The spring residency with Patti Smith built on groundwork laid over the previous year and the buzz Smith had generated for half a decade. Patti’s profile was even higher than it had been the previous fall. On New Year’s Eve she participated in a poetry extravaganza at St. Mark’s, reading alongside Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, and John Giorno. A new show at the Guggenheim included Brice Marden’s painting “Star (For Patti Smith),” which placed Smith in a pantheon of musicians for whom Marden had created work, including Baez, Dylan, and Joplin. In February she’d recorded demos for RCA but by the end of March, just as the shows with Television were getting underway at CBGB’s, Fields reported that Smith was on the verge of signing with Arista. (Still, he wanted to know, “why are the labels so slow in grabbing Television? Everybody raves about how great the Velvet Underground was, and here is another great New York band that musically picks up where the Velvet Underground left off.”182)
Patti’s contract arrived at the end of March; John Rockwell announced it in the Times on the 28th, only a day after Fields had hinted it was on the horizon and only three days into the run with Television. Davis signed Smith to Arista, the label he’d founded the prior year, offering her $750,000 for seven albums. She would have full creative control, producer’s ri
ghts, and even a hand in the advertising. Rockwell’s piece gave both Television and CBGB’s their first notices in the Times: “Anyone who wants to see Miss Smith in the ambience in which she has heretofore flourished — the seedy little club — had better hurry on down,” he wrote, noting Television as “an interesting Velvet Underground offshoot.”183 The Velvets comparisons came from all quarters. Fields reported two weeks later, rather cheekily, that Lou Reed, having just returned from a two-month tour of Europe, “wasted no time in checking out Television at CBGB, after he read somewhere” — meaning in one of Fields’s own previous columns — “that they had picked up where the Velvets left off. Lou, of course, was also anxious to hear his dear friend Patti Smith, and was seen grinning paternally as she performed his song, ‘We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together.’” In the same column Fields added that “the real big record executives are just starting to get interested” in Television, “judging from who was [at CB’s] last weekend, and who is expected this one. It is about time.”184