New York guitarist Tom Verlaine dies

The news was confirmed by Brooke Delarco, Verlaine’s close friend, sound engineer, and producer of ‘Ork Records: New York, New York’, a 2015 album that compiles songs from some of these guitar bands and those who follow them in the city. skyscrapers No further information has been distributed at this time. It took more than ten years without registrationAlthough a record emerged with the 1987 concert recorded in Turin in 2021.

Before television, there was The Neon Boys, a short-lived combination and some recordings in single disc format. It was founded in New York City by Thomas Miller, born on December 13, 1949, in New Jersey, and bassist Richard Meyers, born in Kentucky a few months earlier. Influenced by French romantic poetry, Miller changed his surname to Verlaine to pay homage to the author of the ‘Poems of Saturn’, and Meyers decided to call himself Hell, hell directly. Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell hired drummer Billy Ficca. Soon after, a second guitarist, Richard Lloyd, joined and They swapped The Neon Boys for Television. They recorded a demo produced by Brian Eno that would surface in the mid-’90s. Hell and Verlaine mutually exploded, with the first leaving the band—another provocative guitarist of the time, Robert Quine, to join The Voidoids—and took his place. Fred Smith hails from Blondie.

The quartet only recorded two records, but what records! “Marquee moon” (1977) and “Adventure” (1978). The song that gave its name to the first album became one of the anthems of the period, together with the theme of ‘Blank Generation’ recorded by Hell in the same year. Urban rock, guitar lyricism, proto-punk, new wave, alternative rock while this term was not known yet… Tracks like “See no Evil”, “Venus”, “Friction”, “Glory” or “Foxhole” are the soundtrack for an entire generation. The adventure was short-lived and was culminated in the legendary Roir cassettes ‘The blow up’, released in 1982 and later released on vinyl and CD. There we discovered a long, beautiful and interlaced version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Knocking Heaven’s Gate’ alongside powerful live shots of their agendas.

Television met several more times. They recorded a new album called ‘Television’ in 1992 and played it ten years later at Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Meanwhile, Verlaine embarked on an excellent solo career. So is Richard Lloyd. In Verlaine’s records, guitars sometimes pure arabesque, continuous, suspended in the air, just like her melodies, with that special singing style she has, like dragging her words. Hotter, bums at Lloyd’s.

Verlaine wasted no time and He released his first solo album on the street in 1979., ‘Tom Verlaine’; One of their songs, “Kingdom come”, would be performed by David Bowie the following year. Then came ‘Dreamtime’ (1981), ‘Words from the front’ (1982), ‘Postcard from Waterloo’, which is one of his best songs, ‘Cover’ (1984), ‘Flash light’ (1986), ‘. Miracle’ (1990) – along with another priceless gem, ‘5 hours from Calais’ – and ‘Warm and cool’ (1992). Then came various and intense collaborations such as reuniting with old friends, two more solo albums and other versions of Dylan – ‘All along the watchtower’, ‘Highway 61 revisited’, ‘Maggie’s farm’ – on behalf of The Million. Dollar Bashers recorded Verlaine, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, John Medeski and Nels Cline for the soundtrack of Todd Haynes’ bizarre “biopic” about Dylan, “I’m not there” (2007). He also produced Jeff Buckley’s second album, which was left unfinished after the singer-songwriter’s death in 1997.