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Tom Verlaine, the influential guitarist, songwriter, and frontman of ’70s art-rock greats Television, has died. The information was confirmed by Jesse Paris Smith, the daughter of Patti Smith, who mentioned he died “after a brief illness.” Verlaine was 73.
Born Thomas Miller in Denville, New Jersey in 1949, Verlaine grew up in Delaware and started taking part in music at an early age, beginning with piano and switching to saxophone after taking an curiosity within the music of Stan Getz. He took up guitar after stepping into the Rolling Stones, and in highschool he was shut with future punk-rock figurehead Richard Hell.
Hell and Verlaine moved to New York City, the place Verlaine modified his final title in reference to the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. With Hell, Verlaine shaped the short-lived proto-punk band Neon Boys, who broke up and reformed as Television.
Television introduced on guitarist Richard Lloyd and began gigging across the metropolis at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. In 1975, Hell left the band and Fred Smith changed him. Verlaine additionally dated Patti Smith (no relation) round this time.
The band launched two albums — their 1977 debut Marquee Moon and 1978’s Adventure — earlier than breaking apart in 1978, then reunited to file a self-titled album in 1992. They have carried out collectively sporadically ever since.
In addition to his work with Television, Verlaine launched a prolific solo profession. He launched ten studio albums, together with his 1979 self-titled debut and 2006’s Around. Over the final 4 a long time, Verlaine collaborated with quite a few artists, together with taking part in guitar on Luna’s Penthouse (1995). He additionally steadily reconnected with ex-paramour Patti Smith, taking part in guitar on her Grammy-nominated “Glitter In Their Eyes” from her 2000 album Gung Ho; “Fireflies” from her 1996 album Gone Again; on her debut single “Hey Joe,” and “Break It Up” from her debut album Horses. Verlaine additionally performed on Smith’s eleventh and most up-to-date album Banga (2012), showing on “April Fool” and “Nine.”
Likewise, periods Verlaine famously produced for Jeff Buckley previous to his 1997 demise had been excerpted on the 1998 posthumous album Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk.
Verlaine was additionally a part of the supergroup Million Dollar Bashers, which featured Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, Wilco’s Nels Cline, Bob Dylan bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Smokey Hormel, and John Medeski. In 2012, Verlaine teamed up with Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha on his second solo album, Look To The Sky.
A famously reluctant rock star, Verlaine informed the Irish Times in 2013 that Marquee Moon was “mainly a reside file with the errors patched up and with some enhancing right here and there. I by no means consider it in any context specifically. It appears to get rediscovered by a brand new technology each 10 years or so, which is kinda cool.
“The people that have mentioned it to me in the past 20 years or so have been young enough to be my children, which is interesting, but I don’t want to really talk about that record any more. I don’t know why people have such an interest in it. I just don’t get it. So much has been mentioned about that album there’s probably not much more that can be said.”
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