Tom Verlaine’s Brilliant Final Three Records Return to Vinyl and Streaming: Album Reviews
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Tom Verlaine — the guitar virtuoso, cofounder and “frontman” of the pioneering New York group Television, who died last year — might be the most low-key guitar hero in rock history.
If he had only ever released “Marquee Moon,” Television’s galvanizing 1977 debut album, his place in history still would be assured: The album, which brought the sounds of late-period Velvet Underground and the early Rolling Stones into a musical era filled with bloated solos and every imaginable excess, is one of the great guitar albums of all time.
But for all the flash in the interplay between Verlaine and bandmate Richard Lloyd, it remains a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance, the songs and long guitar solos evolving gradually and at their own pace.
That’s actually a decent analogy for Verlaine’s career. As one of the first bands to play at CBGB, Television were lumped in with the burgeoning punk rock movement and were a cornerstone of that scene (Verlaine ran away from home as a teenager with a young Richard Hell; he later dated and collaborated with fellow bibliomaniac Patti Smith), although their emphasis on musicianship and dynamics were light years away from punk.
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