VENUS: The oldest song on Television's Marquee Moon album is about the arms of Venus de Milo. I heard a "true story" about a Greek restaurant owner in Chicago who was loony over this doll. He kept a life-size replica of the armless statue in the middle of his dining room, and had small copies scattered over all the tables. All his life he plowed the restaurant's profits into expeditions looking for the actual missing arms of the famous statu6—this guy was out on two limbs. Naturally, he died without having the pleasure of making their acquaintance, but he lived as a hero in his own dream: he wanted to know what the broad's attitude was! Do those amputated arms beckon? Or repulse? Do they modestly try to cover her privates? The high ones or the low? Suppose she were giving us the invisible finger all these years? Tom Verlaine says: "The arms of Venus de Milo are everywhere. It's a term for a state of feeling. They're loving arms." (I bet they're hugging the head of the Winged Victory.)

ABSTRACTED: (ab.strak'tid) adj. 1. Lost in thought. As a child, Tom Verlaine loved listening to symphonies. Half asleep and half awake, it was like dreaming. In sleep alone one sees such festivals. He sleeps light on these shores tonight. A warrior can tell, all kinds of things from the shadows.

Out of sequence. The shadows are rising. Out of sequence. The shadows begin their assault. In perfect sequence. The shadows embrace him like a brother.

-"The Night" (xii)T.V. "A lot of editing goes on," Verlaine says, "and sometimes a song we drop has a part I'll remember and put in here and it's exactly where it should be. Whatever you did is still around; it's meant to be somewhere. The whole thing of modern art is based on fragments, really. But I don't hear it as fragmented, I hear it as one thing. People who say it's fragmented don't see the whole; it's like they're making a premature decision. The songs are written in a certain atmosphere that gives something to you and that's what you pass along. The lyrics make their own sense."

JUST THE FACTS (Tom Verlaine: guitar, vocals, piano): Bom December, 1949, in Morristown, N.J., seven minutes older than his twin brother. Brought up by middle class parents in Delaware. Took piano lessons for five years, beginning in third grade. In fourth grade, aspired to be a hobo. Always in trouble in high school; knew Billy Ficca and Richard Hell. First rock song to have impact was "19th Nervous Breakdown." Voted Most Unknown in class. Went to college a few months, and split in November, 1967, to drift through parents' home, friend's house in Philadelphia, and then to N.Y.C. by August, 1968, staying with Hell. Has lived in East Village ever since. Formed band with Ficca and Hell in 1971 which broke up after a few months. Played brief acoustic stints around town. Changed name to "Verlaine". Spotted by Richard Lloyd while playing at Reno Sweeney in October, 1973. With Hell, they drafted Ficca from Boston, rehearsed a few months, and played debut performance March 2, 1974 at Town House Theater (capacity: 88). Short on bookings, Tom stumbled on Bowery bar called CBGB & OMFUG and persuaded them to present rock and roll bands. Met Patti Smith in April, 1974, and she championed them in press. Tom played on her privately pressed single, "Hey Joe"/"Piss Factory". Co-wrote and played guitar on "Break It Up" on Patti's Horses LP. Demo tape sessions with Eno December, 1974, proved fruitless. Hell left band and was replaced by Fred Smith. Television released "Little Johnny Jewel" in 1975. Television signed with Elektra July 30, 1976. Marquee Moon released February, 1977. Previous jobs include: bakery; bookstores; sheet metal work; installing furnaces; counting towels and bird-baths in department store; and lying to foreman about broken merchandise.

"There's people who are definitely out to occupy apace that they really ahouldn*t be taking up, and that to me la areal mladlrectton. Tom Verlaine"

The ole warehouse burned furiously, and with it my matches.

-"The Night" (x)T.V.

ARSON: My closest brush with arson came during my first decade when I nearly torched Grover Perdue's back pasture. The field was a haven for havoc, the Edge of the neighborhood, and it was there that we prayed an airplane would crash in flames (no such luck). The fire, I suppose, was a little private rite between us and the sky to conspiratorialize the afternoon. Unfortunately, the situation quickly got too hot to handle, and though we stamped around the edges, the circle was soon expanding faster than we could run around it. Television plays dangerous like this.

The bright cloud and dark meadows. High gloss lipstick kiss. Over the hill the siren and the flames.

—"The Night" (xviii) T.V.

JUST THE FACTS (Richard Lloyd: guitar): Born in Pittsburgh, October 25, 1951. Moved to N.Y.C. at age six or seven. Went through high school in Greenwich Village (good in science). Played drums four or five years in early 60's. "The first time I saw an electric guitar, I knew this was what I was going to play." Bought used Fender Stratocaster from friend for $60 at age 17. Went home to his room, turned up bass amp to 10, and "just made noise," knocking dishes out of cabinets in the kitchen. Fall, 1973, met Terry Ork and arranged to stay in the spare room of his large Chinatown loft. Ork (who knew Hell) tipped him off to Verlaine, who wa§,.playing unaccompanied electric guitar at Reno Sweeney. "I didn't want to go, but one of my strings broke at the last minute and I couldn't replace it to practice, so I said 'Let's go.' As soon as Tom started playing I knew something in his approach was correct. It had humor, it was unpretentious, and I knew I could augment it." Now splits guitar solos with Verlaine about equally. Has photographic memory. First thought upon signing with Elektra; "Well, finally we can start."

TURN TO PAGE 78.

TELEVISION

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51.

NAMES: "Verlaine" just had the right sound to it. It wasn't too soft or too hard. That's really all it is. That Television's leader's initials are T.V. was "purely incidental"; Tom didn't realize it until Hell pointed it but one day. • )

"Hell thought of the name 'Television'," Tom says. "He was really drunk One night and he had this list of about 200 names and he looked around his room and saw his television set and put 'Television' on the bottom of the page. Then he brought it to rehearsal and everybody said, 'This one is really good.' He had all kinds of names; Goo-Goo, The Liberteens..."

JUST THE FACTS (Fred Smith: bass): Fred is from Forest Hills and met Television while he was playing with the Stilettos (now Blondie) sharing the same bill. When the situation with Hell got rocky, Television asked Fred to jam with them and he loved it (he already knew all their songs by heart). Meanwhile, he was having troubles with Blondie, so when Hell left, he was in the right place at the right time. Fred used to play "Motowny" bass (with his fingers) but switched to a pick when he found himself falling behind. Quote: "In some bands a bassist can relax back in the pocket with the drum, but Tom likes the bass to be melodic, so I have to fit notes into some unusual places." First thought after they signed thei$ Elektra contract: "I went to a shoe store and wondered if I could afford to buy another color besides black."

JUST THE FACTS (Billy Ficca: drums): Grew up in Delaware, and began drumming in 6th grade musical assembly. Met Verlaine in 8th grade, played with him sporadically in high school. In early 70's, spent a year in Boston playing "gig music"—soul, boogie, jazz, and originals—including a stint in Bermuda. First thought on signing with Elektra: "It felt good tc have something down on paper."

COOL FIRE: Television does to rock what Stravinsky did to classical music, breaking it into fragments and reassembling it anew. Just as Verlaine's name is a mixture of hard and soft, the music can be challengingly abstract or charmingly melodic. Most of the short melodies, like "Prove It" and "Venus" are sweet and memorable, and their gouging version of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" easily out-dramatizes Dylan's original. The boldness stands out in longer, freestyle numbers like "Marquee Moon" and the unrecorded "Kingdom Come." Ficca's percussion is shifty and unsettling as high winds at midnight. The guitars surge and sputter like live wire dancing with an apprehension for balance. The drums are the tension, the guitars the release; darkness doubles, and lightning strikes itself. Television skirts the Twilight Zorie with dissonance, discords, minor keys, and pinging harmonics. Some of their best notes are the ones they don't play, sudden silences and hesitations that jerk through the air like a crack through a cup. They don't forfeit surprise.

Listen, how night troughs put and hollows itself. — Rilke

SCENES: Although it was Verlaine who first stumbled on the CBGB bar, he feels somewhat detached from the hangout he helped create. "I have a real worried kind of suspicion about any kind of scene. I mean, I like them, but I don't think I could partake of them even if I wanted to—perhaps just out of a desire to be seen more clearly. Most scenes that develop are for mutual selfaggrandizement. We're not a communal band. We see each other when we rehearse and maybe eat dinner a couple times a week, but everybody doesn't have the same ideas and approach to everything. In fact, there are huge differences."

HELL: Verlaine says, "I haven't spoken to him in a year. Every time I read something, he's so mad at me. And I'm so tired of him..."

GOOD & EVIL (T.V.) : "I do think in terms of good and evil, and I don't think everything is so relative. This is this and that is that. Evil comes when people actually believe their points of view to be The Truth. People are led by confidence, unfortunately, so those people that have that much confidence in their points of view find followers. Evil is an attitude that comes over a person who refuses to discriminate-. There was a California expression: 'It's all the same.' Drinking a glass of water or cutting a leg off, 'Oh, it's all the same.' I also think some people are deliberate about making sure you know what they're going through, which I don't really care for. There's people who are definitely out to occupy space that they really shouldn't be taking up, and that to me is a real misdirection."

FILM: Television appears in a silent film by Ivan Krai which was screened once at CBGB. Tom stands like a ramrod digesting lightning. His face is lit with phosphorus, an art nouveau martyr in a platinum print. He rolls his eyes through timid, scarcely begun glances, like a blind man. Tom didn't see it. We walked in just as they were going off the screen, and all he remembers is it was the darkest segment in the film.

PRODUCTION (T.V.): "The studio was falling apart. A&R is Phil Ramone's room and he likes it that way. The room's very comfortable, that's why I wanted to use it, but has a 1961 board with no 'EQ' in it. Andy Johns [the engineer] kept saying, 'How can I work in a place like this?' I had planned to get 10 songs on this record, but I had no idea they were as long as they are. I wanted to get 'Mi Amore' on there, but there was just no way. Why Andy Johns? I liked the sound of Goats Head So up. Then when I talked to him he had no conceit at all. And it worked out that he's performance oriented—he recognized the hot take. He likes the record now that we're done, but the whole time we were doing it he was scratching his head and walking out of the room when I did a vocal. I'd do a guitar solo, and he'd go around the corner to buy a beer. He didn't see us live. In fact, I bet if'he'd even heard a tape of us, he wouldn't have done us."

The red light is heavy. It lies on dusty boots. It crawls up to the knees, it peers into the folded hands. — Rilke

VIOLENCE (T.V.): "I really don't like violence. I hate fights, I avoid them. It just seems so stupid it repels me. I understand breaking guitars onstage, I even kicked an amp to death myself one night, but I don't getany thrill out of witnessing destruction. I'd rather see a guy do it as a joke than do it because of an inability to control his temper. A friend of mine and I tore a typewriter to bits one night, but it was out of fun. Like, 'Wanna see a key?'...Rip!

The violence of exhaustion. Colorful gates crashing on one's faces. The arsonist sleeps.

-"The Night" (xx)T.V.