Legendary singer-songwriter and guitarist Tom Verlaine passed away this Saturday at the age of 73 in Manhattan after a brief illness, according to Jesse Paris Smith, the daughter of Patti Smith.
He will be remembered above all for being an icon of the generation that contributed to the explosion of art punk, thanks to his work at the head of Television, a group with which he released the seminal Marquee moon in 1977, considered a rock masterpiece located in the position 128 on the list of the 500 best albums of all time made in 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine. It also appears on many lists as a must-have album of the 1970s.
Born Thomas Miller in New Jersey, he grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. There, in his student days, he became friends with Richard Meyers, who would later become Richard Hell, with whom they moved to New York at the end of the sixties.
Baptized for art as Tom Verlaine, in honor of the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, he founded his first band, Neon Boys, with Hell in 1972. The group did not last long, but it was the germ of Television, born the following year, after recruiting the guitarist Richard Lloyd.
Thanks to their performances in small clubs such as CBGB -where they shared a residence with Patti Smith- and Max's Kansas City, they have built a great reputation on the underground circuit.
After the Hell march to form the Heartbreakers, they get a contract with Elektra which allows them to edit Marquee moon, which becomes a great critical and sales success. In it they maintain the fierceness of punk, but moving away from its schematism to achieve an indelible songbook in which the watermarks and lyricism of Verlaine and Lloyd's guitars play a determining role, lengthening in exciting and unclassifiable developments that reach 10 minutes of the title track.
The album becomes a cornerstone of alternative rock and a strong influence for the later new wave in particular and indie rock in general. After a second album, Adventure (1978), the group dissolved. They briefly got back together in 1992.
Verlaine continued his solo career, issuing his self-titled debut in 1979. This was followed by other works that helped keep his cult following alive: Dreamtime (1981), Words from the front (1982), Cover (1984), Flash light ( 1987), The wonder (1990) and Warm and cool (1992). The last two albums under his name came out in 2006: Songs and other things and Around. In all of them, he displayed his elegance as a composer and an exploratory will with the guitar in which rhythmic intensity and melodic lyricism fit.
He had a close relationship with Patti Smith, who was at one point romantic. Thus her guitar appears in Hey Joe, her first single, and in the song Break it up by Horses. He can later be heard on the albums Gone Again and Gung Ho. The history of Patti Smith remains in 1996 at the Pyrenean Doctor Music Festival, which included Tom Verlaine and Michael Stipe in her band.
He was also part of the Million Dollar Bashers supergroup -along with musicians from Sonic Youth and Wilco, among others- with whom they recorded part of the soundtrack for I'm not there, the peculiar Bob Dylan biopic directed by Todd Haynes. David Bowie recorded a version of his Kingdom Come song, included on Scary monsters (and super creeps). Verlaine participates in the Luna album Penthouse and his guitar can be heard in the Violent Femmes song Hotel last resort. And we won't forget Television's visit to Primavera Sound in 2014, in which they reviewed Marquee moon.
