With 1977’s Marquee Moon, New York enigmas Television delivered one of the greatest debut albums of all time: a revolutionary, intricate, and questing fusion of punk, jazz and guitarist/vocalist Tom Verlaine’s Beat poet lyricism. A critical, if not commercial, hit at the time, the album’s stature has only grown over the years, with bands from Magazine and R.E.M. to Sonic Youth, Pixies and The Strokes declaring it a continuing wellspring of inspiration.
After Marquee Moon’s release, however, the band struggled, squabbled and split up, yet made two more great albums - 1978’s Adventure and the post-reformation Television in 1992 - and an until-now unheard fourth, recorded with the group’s third-era line up.
Two years on from Verlaine’s death, MOJO’s David Fricke was granted an exclusive listen to what could have been the group’s final long-playing statement…
The sound is classic Television – a stately rhythm and processional chord movement in glistening treble with potent melodic implications in the spaces where vocals and solos would be. Another track has a crisp bass-and-drums stride, a thick, low-end guitar motif curling around the beat like a muscular snake. And the guitar hook in one piece – a raised eyebrow of suspicion in an impish, clucking tone – is a stark surprise. Guitarist-leader Tom Verlaine, a paragon of opaque stoicism, had a wicked six-string sense of humour.
These recordings – previewed exclusively for MOJO – are among the 14 instrumental tracks that comprise Television’s unreleased, fourth studio album, taped by the third-era line-up – Verlaine, Billy Ficca, Fred Smith and Jimmy Rip – in late December, 2007 over the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day at a studio in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood.
Vocals and guitar overdubs were to be added later. “It might happen before we all die,” Ficca said in a 2013 interview about the album’s ongoing limbo. “It’s sort of laying there.”
It still is – an intriguing promise Verlaine left unfulfilled. Rip made his live debut with Television that summer in Central Park, then convinced Verlaine to go back into the studio with the band. The two worked together on overdubs in 2008 “with ProTools and a laptop,” Rip says. “He would erase them the next day. I’m like, Tom, just finish one song.”
Verlaine also went to Smith’s studio in upstate New York – with the same results. “Tom paid for the session with his own money, so it was all his call,” the bassist says. “He had funny names for all the songs. [Wingnut and Froggy’s Dinosaur were two favourites, according to Rip]. But he never said, ‘I got the lyrics, let’s finish this up.’ He liked the experiment.”
Television did not record Persia and The Sea, their most durable new songs, in the studio. “They were never the same way twice,” Smith admits. “Sometimes we’d go over them in the dressing room, and hopefully everybody remembered how Tom wanted to do the chorus this time, including him.” Smith recalls The Sea first coming up during a soundcheck at New York’s Irving Plaza: “The chorus had a C chord. But when do we go to the chorus? Tom would blurt it out in the middle of a measure: ‘Let’s go to the C.’ We’d barely catch it.
“I don’t think he minded playing Marquee Moon over and over,” Smith says of Verlaine, “that and Persia. He wanted Persia to be his next Marquee Moon. But it never had the structure to put down on a record.”
"Tom had a vision that was not really rock'n'roll... it was a challenge to be unique" Read the full feature on the enduring magic of Television and Tom Verlaine only in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now. More information and to order a copy HERE!
