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Tom Verlaine, TV singer and guitarist, dead at 73 – Rolling Stone

January 29, 2023

Tom Verlaine, singer and guitarist for punk legends Television who created the band’s 1977 masterpiece Moon Marqueedied at the age of 73.

Jesse Paris Smith, daughter of Patti Smith, has confirmed Verlaine’s death following a ‘brief illness’ at rolling stone the Saturday. “He died peacefully in New York, surrounded by close friends. His vision and imagination will be missed,” Smith wrote.

Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine (who adopted his surname from French poet Paul Verlaine), was classmates in high school with fellow punk icon Richard Hell, with whom he would later form his first bands. Arriving on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the dawn of punk, Verlaine and Hell first teamed up for the short-lived act Neon Boys before co-founding Television in 1973 alongside guitarist Richard Lloyd.

Verlaine and Television honed their sound as one of the first performers at legendary punk clubs like CBGB – establishing one of the first residencies there – and Max’s Kansas City. Patti Smith – who once compared Verlaine’s guitar sound to “a thousand blue birds screaming” – was in the audience for one of the first television shows in 1974, and co-starred with Television when the band Patti Smith made their CBGB debut the following year.

Hell would soon leave Television to join fellow punk, the Heartbreakers. With Verlaine and Lloyd taking the reins, the duo developed a guitar sound that fused punk riffs with jazz interplay. After making their recorded debut with the 1975 single “Little Johnny Jewel”, Television released what was their masterpiece – and one of the greatest albums of the punk era – Moon Marquee, the centerpiece of which was the album’s twisted and haunting title track. (The album was, like rolling stone noted in the review, “the most interesting and daring” of a string of 1977 releases from CBGB bands like Blondie and the Ramones, but “also the most unsettling”.)

“When the members of Television materialized in New York City at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgamation of genres: the blackish howl of the Velvet Underground, clever art rock, double-decker guitar carving. propeller from Quicksilver Messenger Service,” rolling stone written by Moon Marqueenumber 107 on our list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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“As exhilarating in its lyrical ambitions as the early Ramones was in its stark simplicity, Moon Marquee always amazes, rolling stone wrote. “’Friction’, ‘Venus’ and the powerful title track are jagged, desperate and beautiful all at once. When it comes to punk references, don’t forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine’s voice and writing.

Classic TV programming will only release one more album in the 70s, 1978 Adventure, before Verlaine embarked on his solo career. As Patti Smith wrote, Verlaine exhibited on her albums “her angular lyricism and sharp lyrical sides, a sly wit, and an ability to shake every chord to her truest emotion”. (Verlaine’s classic TV lineup, Lloyd, bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca reunited for one final album – 1992 Television.)

In 1979, Verlaine released his self-titled solo album, which included the song “Kingdom Come”, recorded a year later by David Bowie for that icon’s 1980 LP. Scary monsters and super monsters. As a solo artist, Verlaine remained prolific over the following decades, seamlessly moving from post-punk explorations to all-instrumental EPs, and from silent film scores to collaborations with Smith and other former inhabitants of the CBGB.

“Tom Verlaine once complained that he never wrote about two of the strongest dreams of his life, ‘because it’s hard to get the language of dreams across.’ It may be, but Verlaine still manages to get closer to solving this problem than anyone else in his medium,” rolling stone wrote on Verlaine’s 1982 solo LP, Words from the front. “As throughout his oeuvre, there is something so inspired yet effortless about Verlaine’s songs that one has to wonder if he was writing them…well, in his sleep.”

In a 1988 interview with rolling stone, U2’s The Edge cited Verlaine as one of his main influences. “I think what I took away from Verlaine was not really his style but the fact that he did something that no one else had done,” he said. “And I liked that; I thought it was valuable.