by Matteo Cruccu
He was 74 years old, with the New York band he brought rock from punk to new wave
Bitter times for rock ‘n’ roll: Following Jeff Beck and Crosby is another essential guitarist of the genre, albeit completely different from the other two. Tom Verlaine, the driving force behind television, a band that left us at the age of 74 with just two albums, Marquee Moon and Venus, revolutionized the American punk scene of the ’70s and propelled it towards new wave. Verlaine died after a short illness, according to Jesse Paris Smith, daughter of Patti. No wonder, because the great singer-songwriter had a brief relationship with him when she was young and with him and the television and the Talking Heads, but Blondie and the Ramones also really dominated the New York scene at the time, around the CBGB Kult Club groundbreaking, in the Village .
Throbbing guitar (like a thousand birds, Patti Smith would have said), equally gruff voice, tortuous, metaphorical, symbolist imaginations in short (Verlaine is a homage to the great French poet Paul), so with Television Tom I bring the sound witnesses from Velvet Underground up to New Wave exactly the 80s, actually passing through: Because as so often back then, the band was a fire that lasted only two albums (the third would have been a later coda, 1993) because at that time the guitarist didn’t exactly have an easy character went it alone with ten albums from 1979, always sought-after but perhaps not so groundbreaking milestones. No one would have forgotten the flare-up, however, which made Television an absolute reference band for rock for decades to come.
January 29, 2023 (change January 29, 2023 | 00:37)
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