In Search Of Adventure With Tom Verlaine

Source: Trouser Press (May 1978)

By Dave Schulps

Where have they been? What have they been up to?

Well, to start with, there was the recording of their second album, Adventure, in the test pressing stage as of this writing (and probably in your local spin-joint by the time you read this), which kept the band occupied for nearly five months. Prior to that, Television had spent most of their time working in England and Europe, where acceptance has come far easier than in their homeland.

Obviously, then, Television are looking forward to making more of an impact in America after the release of Adventure. Although I was only able to get a couple of listens to tapes of the album, it's apparent that the band have stuck close to the sound of Marquee Moon, proffering refinements in the general direction charted on that album, rather than making any great leap forward into new areas. Still, those refinements should create ample distance to avoid criticisim of Adventure on the grounds of lack of progression. Fortunately, it is the album's first two cuts which show the greatest movement into unexplored territory. Probably in the band's favor is that these are probably the most "commercial" they've ever recorded.

"Glory", which opens the album, is as catchy a song as Tom Verlaine has written, sporting a strong hook which should get it lots of FM airplay. Yet far from sterilizing their sound, the added accessibility of "Glory" does nothing to diminish the gut-level emotional appeal which to my mind made Marquee Moon such an incredibly stunning debut.

"Days", which follows, is something altogether different still. Reminiscent of nothing if not the Byrds circa Younger Than Yesterday/ Notorious Byrd Brothers with its jangling guitars, lilting harmonies, and crisp, clean sound, it too could find favor with radio programmers. It also is as far as Adventure strays from the Marquee Moon "sound".

Next up are two songs TV used to play back in the days they were appearing regularly at CBGB. "Careful" mixes a whimsical chorus with lines like, "I used to have such sweet dreams/Now it's like an air raid," and "Foxhole", which sounded quite horrifying in its evocation of a battlefield, but which Verlaine said he thought was "really funny". Side one ends with a slow, keyboard-dominated number called "Carried Away" on which Verlaine shines on both piano and organ.

Any of the songs on side two sound like they could have come straight off Marquee Moon. Verlaine calls "The Fire" this album's "Torn Curtain", and it certainly does recall that song to a point. "Ain't That Nothin" was originally inspired by someone in rock 'n' roll but Verlaine isn't telling who.

Finally, "The Dream's Dream" is the album's major work, at least lengthwise, clocking in at nearly seven minutes. Structurally, it recalls "Marquee Moon", as it builds on a repetitive guitar figure in much the same way. "The Dream's Dream", though, has an even more beautiful sonar quality than "Moon". Carried initially by the sturdy back beat of drummer Billy Ficca (who turns in another superb performance throughout Adventure), the song builds through a series of stop-and-go guitar blips, harmonics and the usual contrapuntal interplay between Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, until Verlaine comes in with a lengthy solo - also strikingly reminiscent of the one on "Marquee Moon", although he sounds lees frantic and agonized here.

All in all, Television have probably accomplished what they set out to do with Adventure. They have made an album that is not only hauntingly beautiful and uncompromisingly emotional as their first, but which is also more accessible to new ears and, very possibly, radio programmers, who have the power of censoring anything new and different from the airwaves. Let's hope so anyway.

* * * * * *

Tom Verlaine sits by an enormous conference-room table at Elektra Record's New York office, one of those great "boardroom" scenes in movies like "Sabrina" or "Putney Swope". He has been busy coordinating the final mixes of Adventure, which he produced with help from engineer John Jansen, as well as approving the artwork and taking care of various last minute details that accompany the release of any album. Whatever, he gives the appearance of being very much in control of whatever it is that Television are involved in.

When I walk in at the start of the interview, bassist Fred Smith is also sitting in the room, but declines my invitation to join in the discussion. Verlaine is to be the spokesman for the band.

We start off discussing the switch from co-producer/engineers Andy Johns to John Jansen, and whether that move was meant to alter the sound in any particular way in Adventure.

Veraline leans back and expounds: "I just wanted to work with somebody different. It's nothing against Andy or anything. Everybody's got different ways of doing things, so you learn more working with different people. We actually did the basic tracks of the songs with a guy I know at the demo studio, Craig Anderson..."

"Bishop." Smith corrects him.

"Yeah, see I don't even remember the guy's name anymore. That was just to work with a guy who I knew I had some rapport with. Alan Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult told me I ought to meet John Jansen, that he liked the group and he had two months off that he wasn't doing anything. Alan thought I'd get along with him really good. As far as the sound goes, generally, we aim to get a different sound on each song."

Did he feel that he'd accomplished that on Adventure?

"I don't know. To me, every song sounds different on it , but I don't know how much it does to anybody else. To me, the songs themselves don't sound that far away from the material on the last album. There aren't many overdubs on this album, just a little bit of this and that, lots of guitars, some keyboards."

It should've been a quick album to record if that's true. How long did they actually take to record it?

He laughs. "Years. Actually, it took all of Septmember and October, half of November and December, January and a week of February - four, four and a half months."

Why so long?

"Mainly to try out different ideas; different guitar solos, this and that. Some things that got on are first takes and some are fiftieth takes. Some guitar solos were just shot off and they sounded good, others we worked on a little more."

The topic at hand swiches from the album to the band's experiences on their first tours of America and Europe, respectively. How did he assess Television's reaction on the Peter Gabriel tour early last year and why hadn't they toured here since?

"The band wasn't badly received," he comments on the Gabriel tour, "but being the opening act you're playing for somebody else's audience so they're bound not to be really into you. I like to play on big stages, though. I'd rather go out on a big stage than play a club where it's so cramped all the time. Basically, the tour was a no money thing just to go to those towns. We went over better - really, good in fact - in the mid-western towns like Kansas City, where people hadn't heard of us and didn't know what to expect."

What did people who had heard of Television expect them to be?

"We went to a couple of towns where people thought we were a punk rock group or something like that," he chuckles.

Did he feel Television had been unfairly classified as a new wave band, especially in England?

"I don't think they call us new wave over there anymore. They may have before we got there, but they didn't afterward." He pauses in thought for a second.

"We may be new wave, though," he adds, laughing. "We may not be punk, but we might be new wave in a sense, I guess there's something new about us. I don't know what it is though. Maybe it's that we don't use Les Pauls and Marshalls. I think that's the difference, really."

When asked about how successful the band had been in Britain, Verlaine points out that Marquee Moon has sold more records there than it has here - amazing, considering the relative sizes of the countries. The British tour was really successful, as well, he mentions, with sell-out shows every night in front of excited audiences.

Would this mean Television would be concentrating on Europe more in the furture?

"Well, we'll go to Europe 'cos we can make money there. The first time we didn't, but now we can. Plus, I like Europe, too. It's neat to be in a foreign country, to have record company people buy you dinners in Paris. That's the real attraction of it - to go to these great European resturants and not pay for it. Also the audiences - it's so amusing because you know they can't possibly understand what you say. It doesn't matter, though, it's communicating a certain kind of energy that isn't present in that country. It's bringing something that's foreign to them. That varies from country to country. Germany is like what it must be like playing in Alaska or something. It's very, very slow and serious - weird. Places like Belgium and the south of France, Sweden and Copenhagen are really alive. They really love rock 'n' roll, they really respond."

Where were the best gigs to play?

"England was the best by far. Brussels was good. Sweden, too. The west coast of the states was good. Texas was really good - really fun. Texas was like New York in a way, because like a New Yorker you wouldn't call a Texan an example of an American. They're all very individual about what they like and don't care if nobody else likes it. They apparently really love guitar music. I think that's why we went down so well there."

Television has certainly traveled an odd path over the course of the past four years, since they became the first band to play CBGB on a regular basis. At this point they seem to have totally abandoned the Bowery circuit - Verlaine had always had his gripes with the New York "scene", anyway. At this point, they can hardly be considered a "New York band", although they're still based here. Verlaine admits to not having seen a band this year, but doesn't say whether it's because he's too involved in his own projects or he's just decided to abandon the scene. The other members of the band, however, do seem to be keeping a higher profile than TV.

I wonder if the reaction to the band from the public and press in Britain - Marquee Moon, for examle, was Sounds' "Album of the Year" - had not caused Television to become more oriented toward Europe than the States. How does he feel about the press' reaction towards Television?

"It's nice to get good reviews and it's interesting to get reviews that are so bad they're good. Some good reviews are so off the wall that they're funny and some bad ones are the same way, but I've never seen a good or bad review that I thought the reviewer had his head on straight..." He giggles at this statement.

"Seriously, the good reviews and the bad reviews both seem like the reviewers express their own personalities more than they express any general truth about the group - which is fine in a way."

Does he think there are any general truths about groups?

"Well, I think you can write about music in a way that illuminates your audience. There was this classical guy in the 1920s, Paul Rosenfield, who was great. If you read one of his pieces it totally turns you on to wanting to hear a Ravel record. And then when you hear it you know what he was talking about. In rock journalisim, you don't. Also LeRoi Jones, before he changed his name to that African name, used to have a colunn in Downbeat and the way he used to write about stuff really put across what the people sounded like and made you want to hear them."

"There's a piece in the Voice about politics and punk rock. I mean, what is all this stuff? There's a guy smashing 16th note chords - there's no politics in that. There might be a snotty vocal, but you can't be political when you're 17, it's impossible."

So he isn't any more impressed with what's happening in England than he is with what's here.

"I don't really see anything there, either. I heard some of the records - people were giving me records left and right. They all sounded the same to me. The sound was copped from the Ramones and the lyrics, the attitude, were taken from Patti Smith. Not the manic side, but the 'fuck off' side. I know what her style was like at the time she first toured there. I think a lot of people were struck by her attitude - especially bands."

What about Richard Hell's album? Had he heard "Blank Generation"? Considering that the title cut and its author were once part of Television, I figured Tom would've been interested.

He does his best to sound blasé and offhand. "I heard a side of it - or maybe the whole thing - once. I didn't think much of it. There were a lot of old Tom Verlaine chord changes on it, but I don't care 'cause we're not doing them anymore anyway."

"I don't say that out of conceit. I just heard it right away - I don't even think he's aware of it. Actually, I don't care."

Verlaine is obviously not particularly interested in pursuing the subject of Richard Hell and we turn instead to discussing the records he's been listening to, a topic which seems to stir his interest more than anything else we've talked about so far. Verlaine has extremely eclectic musical tastes ranging from early Kinks and Stones, to obscurities like 13th Floor Elevator, through to avant-garde jazzers like Coltrane and Albert Ayler. He's an ace bargain-binner and seems to know where to find all kinds of odd and interesting records - cheap.

"Right now I'm listening to a lot of really weird stuff," he says. "The soundtrack from the TV show Twilight Zone is one. It's really nifty - all sorts of weird effects. What else...a record of dervish music, some modern jazz. I listen to Duane Eddy quite a lot lately. Then there's this Scotty Moore record out on a small record label called Delwood - it just sounds like a jam session album, just really nice playing. The group really turned on to each other. It's all rockabilly stuff. The whole record has a great tone to it."

Does he listen to such a wide range of music in order to widen the spectrum of his own writing? Does he find himself incorporating ideas from them?

"No. It's just a question of finding records that have some real feeling to them. I mean, I can't listen to Boston, I don't think there's a real feeling on those records. I don't get any vibe out of it. Maybe it's me - it's a hit record and it must be getting to a lot of people, but it doesn't grab me."

Thankfully, Television are able to convey the kind of emotion you can't get from Boston or Kiss, etc. They may never make a platinum record (not even a gold one), but there's something in Verlaine's strangled vocals and the truly individual instrumenatl style of the band that makes this band penetrate so much deeper. Life is not always fun, not always easy to take and neither is Television. Ultimately, though, both can be extremely rewarding.

The future?

Says Verlaine: "Well, as soon as we get some money to buy a couple of amps - we had to hock ours - we'll go back on the road. We've gotten a few phone calls from theaters in the US - places in the mid-west. It's basically a question of seeing who calls in and wants to book us. After that, well, I'm sure we'll go back to England."