Television's Marquee Moon (33 1/3) (11 page)
Read Television's Marquee Moon (33 1/3) Online
Authors: Bryan Waterman
When Television re-emerged, it was amidst buzz that record companies were interested in signing them. Fields, announcing that the band would be playing at Club 82 on November 20th and the Truck and Warehouse Theater on E. 4th Street two days later, told his readers to expect “all new songs, and planeloads of record execs from England, where [Village record store owner] Bleecker Bob has been spreading the word about the mightiest of bands.”
163
The Truck and Warehouse show on 22 November was co-billed with the Ramones, who had gained a fast following.
164
For some reason, though, the Ramones canceled, and Blondie took the stage as opening act, Debbie Harry wearing shades and a silver construction helmet. “We’re not the Ramones,” she announced. Their set that night included a cover of Television’s “Venus de Milo.” One audience member recalled Lloyd sauntering on stage in the black Please Kill Me shirt. Then “[w]ild-eyed Verlaine announced their first number: ‘We’re gonna start off with a little ride,’ and the boys lunged into a frenzied rendition of the 13th Floor Elevators’ ‘Fire Engine,’ so incendiary I feared the Truck and Warehouse might burst into flames.”
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Slightly less star-struck was Island Records A&R man and
Melody Maker
columnist Richard Williams — if not quite the “planefuls” of record execs Fields had predicted, still a very important one. Williams had early on, in
Melody Maker
, helped to bring the Velvets to the attention of UK audiences. He had also helped Roxy Music land its first recording contract. At Island he was busily gathering a vibrant stable of avant-rockers, including John Cale, Nico, and Brian Eno. Lisa and Richard Robinson were confident that Television would make a perfect arrow for Island’s quiver and escorted Williams to the venue. Recalling the Truck and Warehouse show years later, Williams said “Blondie could barely function” the night he saw them, but he wanted Television to cut a demo for Island straightaway.
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He even suggested that Eno, prince of London’s underground, should fly in to help him cut the tracks. Though Verlaine later suggested that he had little idea who Eno was, that seems hard to imagine: Eno had gained international name-recognition for his work with Roxy Music, which had ended the previous year with him being squeezed out of the band. At the start of ’74 he’d released his first solo album,
Here Come the Warm Jets
, and he’d just worked on John Cale’s latest LP,
Fear
, both on Island. That summer Eno, Cale, and Nico had recorded a concert album for the label. “[T]he playing was awfully rickety, almost amateurish,” Williams recalled of Television, “but there was something interesting happening, and most of it was vested in the gawky, angular, pained figure of Verlaine.”
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That sense of a narrowing spotlight didn’t bode well for Richard Hell.
75
Fletcher (2009: p. 322).
76
Rose (1977).
77
Anya Phillips, in Bangs (1980: p. 19).
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).
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.’”
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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.”
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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 rights, 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.”
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