Television Artistfacts

1973–1978, 1991–1993, 2001–2023
Tom VerlaineVocals, guitar, keyboards1973–1978, 1991–1993, 2001–2023
Billy FiccaDrums1973–1978, 1991–1993, 2001–2023
Richard LloydGuitar1973–1978, 1991–1993, 2001–2007
Richard HellVocals, bass1973-1975
Fred SmithBass1975–1978, 1991–1993, 2001–2023
Jimmy RipGuitar2007-2023
Television frontman Tom Verlaine was born Thomas Miller in Denville, New Jersey. He adopted "Verlaine" as a stage name in homage to the 19th-century French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, a figure known for his richly musical verse. His bandmate and early collaborator Richard Hell (born Richard Meyers) took his own assumed name at the same time; the two teenagers reinventing themselves as literary outlaws before they even had a record deal.
Verlaine trained on piano as a child and moved on to saxophone in middle school, finding his heroes in jazz improvisers like John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. It was the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" that finally convinced him to pick up a guitar, and once he did, he spent years developing a style that would fuse the lean attack of punk with jazz's adventurous spirit and the precision of classical composition.
Richard Hell devised the band's name when the group evolved out of an earlier lineup in 1973. Hell, Tom Verlaine, and drummer Billy Ficca had previously played together as the Neon Boys, and when they recruited second guitarist Richard Lloyd and relaunched as Television, Hell came up with a name that worked on more than one level. He intended it as a pun on "tell a vision" - a statement of artistic intent, as well as a commentary on the dominant mass media of the time. What he did not notice until later was that "TV" were also the initials of his bandmate Tom Verlaine.
After Television's manager Terry Ork persuaded CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to give the band a regular residency in 1974, the band members helped design and construct the club's stage, setting it on three levels: drums at the top, amplifiers in the middle, performers at the front. It was Tom Verlaine's idea to book two bands per night on the double-feature model, and it was Television's residency that drew in the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Blondie, turning CBGB into one of the most consequential venues in rock history.
Verlaine kicked Hell out of the band in 1975, finding their playing styles incompatible. Hell went on to form the Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, and later, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Television brought in Fred Smith on bass and pushed toward a more musically ambitious sound.
Television released their debut single, "Little Johnny Jewel" in 1975. On it, Verlaine bypassed amplification entirely, plugging his guitar straight into the recording desk. It was a characteristically unconventional move from a guitarist who was already developing a reputation for favoring close miking, slap echo, phasing, and tremolo to coax unusual sounds from his instrument.
When Television went into A&R Recording in New York City in September 1976 to record their debut album, Marquee Moon, the band had already been rehearsing and road-testing the songs for years. Verlaine insisted on co-producing the album, agreeing only on the condition that he could work alongside engineer Andy Johns, a choice informed by Johns' work on the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup. Richard Lloyd described the band during those sessions as "both really roughshod musicians on one hand and desperadoes on the other, with the will to become good."
Marquee Moon was not an immediate commercial success in the United States, but it was received as a landmark record in the UK and Europe. Verlaine was so struck by the warmth of his reception abroad that he briefly relocated to England after Television's first breakup in 1978. The album has since been widely reassessed - it appears on virtually every major critical list of the greatest rock records ever made and is now regarded as one of the defining statements of the post-punk era.
David Bowie heard something in Tom Verlaine's solo work that most American listeners missed. Verlaine's 1979 self-titled debut features a track called "Kingdom Come," and within a year Bowie had recorded his own version, releasing it on his 1980 album Scary Monsters. It remains one of the clearest acknowledgments of how deeply Verlaine's influence had reached.
Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith had a long creative and personal friendship that stretched back to the early New York punk scene when they were both young artists drawn to the intersection of poetry and rock. Smith later wrote that seeing Television live for the first time, she thought: "Had I been a boy, I would have been him."
Tom Verlaine joined Patti Smith's band for her 1996 comeback tour, and he proved to be especially good company for her children, Jesse and Jackson, who traveled on the tour bus. Smith wrote in her memoir Bread of Angels that Verlaine was particularly gifted at entertaining her kids, thanks to his "childlike sense of humor." It was a warmly human side of a guitarist more often described in reverential, almost otherworldly terms.
Television reunited in 1992 and recorded a well-received self-titled album, proving their chemistry had not faded despite a 14-year absence. The reunion was never intended as a full-time comeback - the band played occasional shows through the 2000s and beyond, but Verlaine remained a resolutely private and uncommercial figure throughout.
Speaking with Songfacts in 2018 guitarist Richard Lloyd talked about the biggest misconception with Television: "People think we improv'd, that we had a lot of improvisation, but we worked our parts over. We would take a song apart and put it back together over a period of a year, a year and a half, to get it to a place where we were happy with it, and there is a good deal of structure that isn't at all improvisation."

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