Words & Music
October 2013
Marquee Moon
Television
With their extended solos, clean guitar tones and poetically cryptic lyrics, mid-70s New York hipsters Television seem unlikely progenitors of the punk rock movement. Yet, the group was at the epicentre of the hugely influential CBGB scene that also gave rise to the likes of Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads. Their 1977 debut album, Marquee Moon, helped rewrite the rulebook for a generation of alternative musicians to come and its title song remains one of the great artefacts of the era.
Marquee Moon begins with a musical sleight of hand that tricks the listener into hearing the second beat of the bar as the first – an aural illusion created by the staggered entry points of two interlocking guitar parts and a bass line. The result is a mind-bending correction, triggered by an impossible drum fill that appears to start on the ‘wrong’ beat yet ends on the right.
A warning perhaps that from here on in nothing will be quite as it seems.
I remember how the darkness doubled
I recall lightning struck itself
I was listening, listening to the rain
I was hearing, hearing something else.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Tom Verlaine delivers the lines in a high, taut voice. Around him the forces of nature gather, the import of his words ominous but obscure.
Life in the hive puckered up my night,
The kiss of death, the embrace of life.
There I stand ‘neath the Marquee Moon,
just waiting
…at the crossroads perhaps? Poised heroically on the verge of some momentous fate with just the moon to light the way? The lyrics suggest the struggle is as much with one’s own nature. The natural world gives way to the hive of the city, the stars replaced with neon and the moon taken as a sign to light the way.
After the second chorus, guitarist Richard Lloyd takes the first solo, his playing fluent and expressive. His guitar tone, like that of Verlaine’s, is the pure sound of a fender guitar and amplifier, unadulterated by pedals or effects. According to Lloyd the group were steadfastly ‘anti-Marshall and anti-hippy’ – in reference to the ‘fat’ sound of the Marshall amps so popular in the 70s. Rather they opted for the sharper, shinier and decidedly ‘thinner’ Fender sounds so popular with the surf and garage bands of the 60s.
After the third chorus Lloyd and Verlaine swap roles with Lloyd holding down the rhythm while Verlaine solos – and here we can appreciate why he is regarded as one of the truly great players in rock ‘n’ roll. He starts low and tremulous, like Dick Dale’s Miserlou, before rising slowly up the fretboard in sinewy, snaking movements. Drummer Billy Ficca follows him while bassist Fred Smith stays resolute. Verlaine wrings out the notes like he’s strangling the instrument’s neck, or as Patti Smith once put it ‘like a thousand bluebirds screaming’. According to Verlaine, it’s an approach that owes more to sax players like Albert Ayler and John Coltrane than any rock guitarist.
Verlaine’s lengthy solo is followed by a series of rising chords and staccato beats that build to an emphatic crescendo and sparkling lyrical passage of transcendent beauty. Having reached the 10-minute mark the song dies away, only to reprise at the beginning a moment later – the (life) cycle complete.
Marquee Moon was recorded in a single take by one time Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones producer, Andy Johns.
“I had no clue what the music was like or if we’d get on,” Johns has said.
“My first impression was that… the music was bizarre.” Johns was also confused by the band’s expectations. Having spent the first day getting the massive drum sounds he had created for Led Zeppelin, he was surprised when Verlaine asked him to tear it all down.
“I thought, didn’t you hire me for this?” says Johns. “Tom was saying they wanted ‘small dry sounds.’ I said ‘Oh, this must be like a Velvets thing, right? It’s a New York thing, right?’”
Johns was right. It was a ‘New York thing’ that reached back to the Velvet Underground and spread quickly across the world. Folklore has it that English impresario Malcolm McClaren, who was in New York during CBGB’s heyday, returned to London with a blueprint for the Sex Pistols. From Television’s original bassist and visionary Richard Hell he took the spiky hair and nihilistic attitude and from The Ramones the three-chord buzzsaw guitars. Adding class politics was his own idea.
Marquee Moon would touch a wealth of bands like The Pixies, The Strokes, Echo and the Bunnymen and closer to home, The Triffids and The Church.
Television play the entire Marquee Moon album at ATP in Melbourne on Oct 26.
Other Articles You May Like
Words & Music
Do you Realize??
The Flaming Lips
Words & Music
The Crying Game: In search of the saddest songs
Galleries
Weather
20°Latest Edition
