Source: Marquee Moon web page
"‘Broadway Looks So Medieval'" by Jessamin Swearingen (adapted and edited by Allan Metz)
‘We Created It: Let's Take It Over!' web site, 1999-2001
On the band, Television–Ed.
Source: Marquee Moon web
page
Patti Smith was the Godmother of punk rock, but her Bowery neighbors, the highly intellectual band Television, were the high priests. Formed from a nucleus of Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, Television was the quintessential musical backdrop for self-obsessed poetry. Television's music gave form to the early New York punk's poetic wanderings and created the look for what later was termed punk. Bandmates Verlaine and Hell met at a reform/boarding school in Delaware and ran away from school together in the early 1970s (Savage 88). In the liner notes to Richard Hell & the Voidoids' Blank Generation CD, author John Piccarella writes:
"Sometime in the mid-60's, Richard Myers and Tom Miller, two teenagers who had been missing from a prep/reform school in Delaware, were arrested in Alabama for setting a field on fire. One said he wanted to keep warm (He later changed his name to Verlaine). The other said he just wanted to watch it burn (He changed his name to Hell)." (Sire/Warner Bros. 9 26137-2)
Piccarella's account of Verlaine and Hell's juvenile exploits, while comical, sets the tone for Television's career. The constant rivalry between Verlaine and Hell caused Hell to leave and form the Voidoids after a short stint with the Heartbreakers, with one-time New York Doll Johnny Thunders. When Hell was with Television, there was a constant tension in the band. Hell states, "Tom and I kind of hated each other from the beginning but there was some mutual ground which we didn't share with anyone else." Hell cites his and Verlaine's shared interest in "the self-conscious twisted estheticism of the French 19th century," which fostered a working bond between competitors, if not friends.
Their competition and working relationship is apparent in Piccarella's account of their arrest in Alabama. A pattern of rivalry is immediately obvious. The young Miller, who later took the surname of the nineteenth century French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, masked his intentions by claiming he was cold. Hell, on the other hand, flat out declared that he "wanted to watch it burn." Where Verlaine was tricky, Hell was blatantly rebellious, and this pattern is reflected throughout their music. After the Alabama arrest, they migrated to New York City to form the poetry-rock combination, the Neon Boys (Lazell 503). By 1973 the band, with the addition of Billy Ficca on drums and the New Jersey guitarist Richard Lloyd, was renamed Television.
Television was significant to the formation of a New York City punk identity. Though their live debut was pretty much ignored by the press, Television eventually played CBGBs and was the first rock band to do so....