Melody Maker, April 15, 1978

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Melody Maker

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Elvis bassist Thomas hurt


Melody Maker

Elvis Costello has had to re-think his current British tour following a severe injury to bass player Bruce Thomas' right hand.

Costello's producer Nick Lowe stood in on bass the night after the accident at Manchester Rafters on Saturday, but European commitments left it unsure whether he would be able to stay with Costello's band.

At the time of going to press, Costello's shows at Birmingham on Thursday and Friday this week may have to be cancelled, but the Saturday and Sunday night concerts at London's Roundhouse are definitely on, with Costello performing several acoustic numbers followed by the Attractions with a deputy bass player. Two days later, the band start an American tour in Minneapolis.

An announcement this week on behalf of Costello said that anyone with a ticket who does not want to attend the "experimental" show can get a £3 refund — £2 ticket price plus £1 travelling costs — from the box office, and any returned tickets will be sold at £1 on the night.

A replacement bass player is currently being sought by the band to replace Thomas, who had 18 stitches in his hand after an accident with a broken bottle in the dressing room at Manchester Rafters, but Costello emphasised that as soon as Thomas is fit he will be back in the band.



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Elvis Costello And The Attractions

The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London

Melody Maker

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Saturday, April 15, Sunday, April 16. Sold out. Concert starts at 5.30 p.m. Supporting are Mickey Jupp Band and Whirlwind. There are still some critics unconvinced of Elvis' talent, and of the quality of his songwriting. Boo, to them. We've yet to hear of anyone who's caught Costello and the Attractions on this British tour who hasn't staggered away completely fazed by the intensity of the group's performances. You'll be there, of course.



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The Raver: Elvis Costello in Devon


The Raver

Extracts, in EC order:

Here comes the weekly Elvis Costello bit. Despite his current popularity, Elvis went to Devon recently to play at a wedding. Apparently, the bride had given Elvis her barn to practise in when the boy was in dire straits without a penny to his name. The deal was that he would play at her wedding and he honoured the agreement ... Any truth in the rumour that Nick Lowe is on the verge of splitting up?


Will Birch's Records made an auspicious London debut at the Hope And Anchor last week. Nick Lowe (stealing some riff perhaps?) and Jake Riviera turned out, as well as Radar Records execs. We're tipping Radar to nip in and sign the boys ... Tom Verlaine tells us he wants English engineer John Woods to work on Television's next album. Verlaine is a great admirer of Woods' work with John Cale, the Incredible String Band and Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and is hoping that he will engineer a projected live album to be recorded at Hammersmith Odeon this weekend.


Sorry, Glen, but we're not telling: — A puzzled Glen Colson frantically attempted to find out how we got our hands on Parkerilla, the Graham Parker live album, last week. The album's not due out for another three weeks. Talking of the GP and the Rumour, any truth in the rumour that Martin Belmont is leaving to pursue a solo career? We hear that he plans to do a Nick Lowe (whatever that means). Also, the band very upset by what they claim is erroneous review in Belfast last week ... Chrysalis have abbreviated the title of the next Blondie single. Conscious that it would be a bit of a mouthful for the illiterates down at Broadcasting House, "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence (Dear)" has been shortened to "Presence (Dear)" Talking of the Beeb, Peter Powell is the man who boasts about playing Brian And Michael's single, "Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs," first.


Tags: Bruce ThomasThe AttractionsNick LoweManchesterBirminghamLondon's RoundhouseMinneapolisWill BirchMickey JuppHope And AnchorJake RivieraRadar RecordsTom VerlaineTelevisionJohn CaleKate & Anna McGarrigleGlen ColsonGraham ParkerMartin BelmontBlondieBracknellMuddy WatersCBGBThe Sex PistolsThe ClashDavid BowieLowHeroesPatti SmithBob DylanElton JohnBuddy HollyJim Morrison

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Melody Maker, April 15, 1978


Melody Maker reports on Bruce Thomas' hand injury.


Mailbag has a report on the Elvis Costello concert, Saturday, April 1, 1978, Bracknell.


The Raver notes EC's performance at the Sue Barber wedding, January 21, Davidstow.


Melody Maker previews EC's Roundhouse concerts, April 15 & 16, London.


Elvis Costello is mentioned in Allan Jones' interview with Tom Verlaine.

Images

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Clippings.


To pogo or not to pogo


G.P. Houlden

Last Saturday night I went to see Elvis Costello at Bracknell. He and the Attractions were tremendous, if far too loud for comfort and clarity.

However, we all knew he would be great and this does not warrant the effort of me sitting down and scrawling on paper. The audience does!

I am a boring old fart of 24, have been to many concerts over the last eight years or so and have never come across a crowd like it.

Normally at concerts when people are standing and dancing, it tends to be hot, crowded and vaguely uncomfortable. Furthermore, the attitude, as a rule, is one of "be nice to people and they'll be nice to you." There is a cheerful atmosphere built on camaraderie in adverse circumstances. Not this time.

The Mickey Jupp Band were support and while they were playing, those of us at the front had a good view and could dance happily if we chose to.

As soon as the band filed off, however, all the Elvis Costello fans started to push forwards and in at the side so that we barely had room to breathe and were gradually forced backwards by weight of numbers of totally selfish and inconsiderate schoolkid punks.

Then the pogoing commenced and I noticed several interesting things about it. Firstly, it seems to have nothing at all to do with dancing; it is more an expression of hipness, to use an old expression.

Due to its nature, it is a very exerting way of passing one's time. This means that at the start everyone pogos madly until they get knackered.

Then they gradually stop, have a rest and then look around them anxiously until one brave boy gives a half-hearted leap. This seems to fill them all with confidence and they all set off again. Very strange.

However, you'll be pleased to know that pogoing does have a practical use and that is getting to the front, even when you have come in late.

The theory is, I suppose, that if one takes a run up and leaps forward into the air it is easier to push a body aside and get in front of it, especially if the object body is also in mid-air at the time. If it is not, it soon steps backwards to examine its blackening toenails through its Hush Puppies when one lands on its toes.

This constant pushing and damaging of other people's bodies does not lend itself to an atmosphere of conviviality.

Anyway, both bands were great and a bargain at £1.80, so well done, Elvis, Mickey and the tour organisers. But that audience...!

— G.P. Houlden, Calder Court, Maidenhead, Berks.

LP winner.



Television commentary


Allan Jones

Tom Verlaine talks to Allan Jones

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June, last year; the exact date eludes me. Tom Verlaine is stacked like an anorexic bookend against the wall of a bleak room, backstage somewhere in the belly of the Colston Hall in Bristol. It is the last night of Television's first British tour.

His eyes betray his fatigue. Clearly, he's in no mood for celebration. He tears the filter tip from a Lucky Strike — or were they Winstons? — and winces as the dull thunder of Blondie, winding up for the climax of their support set, penetrates with a thin, violent edge the whitewashed brick and flaking plaster of this temporary sanctuary.

The room is coughing already, its lungs filled with smoke and the air stained with nicotine, as he nervously lights another cigarette.

The conversation, like Richard Hell's notion of love, comes in spurts: fragments of sentences and thoughts and vague ideas taking slow shape in the patterns of his speech.

We arrived at the prospect of Television's second album, upon which, he promises, he will begin work when the band return to New York.

"I've no clear idea of it," he muses. "I keep thinking in terms of... like, atmospheres. It'll be different, I think, but I don't know for sure yet, you know. I can't see it yet... I mean, we haven't started writing for it or anything... I think we might go for a more spacious kind of sound maybe...

"I think art has a lot to do with, like atmosphere, sensations... feelings that are maybe more than emotions. I don't know how to explain it... these are just, like, thoughts I'm having about one possible direction we might follow. I don't know that people will understand it."

He was laughing quietly to himself at the time.

"I think there's a lot of fucked up people writing about music. Like, these people are supposed to be music critics, and they're just stupid. It's ridiculous what some of them have written.

"These reviews I've read, they weren't like music reviews. They seemed like some other kind of review I've never encountered before. They're unbelievably funny, you know. So predictable. So obvious.

"There're very few critics who ever get it right. They just don't seem to go on musical grounds. That's what upsets me. They're not critics. They're not writers. They're plain stupid."

Verlaine is dressed for the garret in New York bohemian threads. Too haphazardly decked for fashion, he has the look of an impoverished student nursing dreams of literary glory. The image here, in his dishevelled tee-shirt, shapeless cord pants and working boots, of the artistic figure he might perhaps have idealised in his romantic reveries a decade past in the parochial backwaters of Delaware, from which he was so determined to escape.

He looks well, despite his ghostly pallor, if not bursting with robust health. He is most commonly described as boyish — mention is usually made of his cropped blond hair — but there is a patrician maturity, even if he is amusingly prone to infectious giggles when confronted with specific analysis of his work.

He is always reluctant to advance any exaggerated claims.

"I don't understand those songs, either," he will say evasively. "These things just come to me, you know... and I know they're right for me. They do something to me that makes me want to sing them. I can't really talk about the content of those songs. It's not like talking about what you have in your living room, or something like that. It might seem to be like that, but it's not that simple, you know."

It is almost a year since Television first breezed into England on the back of ecstatic reviews of their debut album, Marquee Moon. Their first British concerts confirmed all the enthusiastic notices that had been regularly flying out of New York for months, if not years (they seemed to be forever organising a British excursion).

This month, Television's arrival for a second crack at Albion has been received with considerably less critical elation. Adventure, their second album released last week, has not been unanimously praised. The frantic applause which greeted Marquee Moon has cooled.

This paper was alone, in fact, in its acclaim (I was that soldier). Elsewhere, the comics took it to the cleaners. and some jokers took it into the backroom for a solid mauling. Verlaine's been antagonised by the insensitivity of some of the reviews — as you'll have guessed from the introductory outburst — though he attempts a facade of equanimity. I'm on his side, so we'll let him have the floor for a few paragraphs.

"It seems," he attempts to rationalise, "like every first album that gets a good review, especially in England, is bound to be followed by a second album that gets slammed. Whatever its merits, you know. It's almost like a whim the critics have.

"I'm not indifferent to criticism. Like anybody else I like to read good reviews of the band. But I'm not afraid of someone tearing the music apart if there're grounds for it, and if the writer is thoughtful in his criticism.

"But most of the stuff I've read is just nonsense, you know. Sensationalist nonsense. It's ridiculous. Like, these reviews hardly mentioned the actual music. There was hardly any reference to what's going on in the grooves, so to speak.

"I'll tell you what really upsets me. In America there's a view of England as a place that has some class, a sense of quality. And when you see that sort of criticism coming from England, I think it's bad for the English people to have writers like that, because you don't see that sort of criticism even in America, where they have some real stupid reviews.

"I find it offensive that critics should ignore the music and attack the personality of the musician, especially when they don't even know the people involved. Like. I don't think I've even met these people. They know what they're talking about. They don't know a thing about me. One of them says I'm still, nice, with Patti Smith or something. It's ridiculous, what are they talking about?"

I mention that several of the reviews of Adventure correspond to the criticisms of Television's concerts last year: namely, that their music lacked emotion, that it was cold and detached. I quote from one review that described them — entirely without justification, in my own opinion — as "the prodigal sons of doom, gloom, destruction and general slash your wrist downness" (sic).

Verlaine bursts out in derisive laughter.

"I just don't know where people get these ideas from. These people just don't listen. I don't think there's any doom on the records. I don't hear any doom on them. To me doom is like — what? — no life or something. I just don't hear what they're talking about.

"I think they hear something that's direct and they take it to be stark, and they hear something that isn't overworked and they take it to be minimal. It's just a lot of blahblahblah to me.

"I mean, to me there's a lot of humour on those records. Especially the new one. Like "Foxhole" is a joke in a way. It's definitely not a serious song. "Careful" isn't a particularly serious statement. "Glory" isn't a depressing song. "Ain't That Nothin" is hard to take with anything more than a laugh in a certain sense."

He refuses, with equal vehemence, to accept that Television lack emotional impact in performance. "To anybody who's not a performer, it might look like that," he concedes. "But if you're a performer you'd recognise the paradox. It could be that the more feeling you have, the less you show it.

"I don't know what we look like, but if you look at, like, Muddy Waters or any of those classic blues performers, you could say that they look pretty cold, too. They don't move around a lot... they just, like, stand there and do it. Because a guy doesn't want to make an... an OBJECT of himself, that doesn't mean he has no emotion.

"I don't move around the stage a lot. So what? Some people are inspired like that. But an awful lot of them aren't. They're just following common showbiz techniques... 'Cmon, now — clap your hands, let's BOOGIE... let's jump across the stage and wear a colourful scarf...'

"I find that colder and more calculated than anything. I've seen a few videos of us that I think are just funny. I don't see the coldness at all."

Oh, yes, Tom. There were also a few bitching asides about the red vinyl upon which Adventure was pressed.

"Oh shit," he complains." "Christ, I got nothing to do with red vinyl. I come over here and some guy hands it to me in a taxi on the way in from the airport. So, they've pressed it on red plastic. I don't care. I happen to, you know, like red plastic.

"But to criticise the band for anything like that is stupid. Just totally stupid. What did people criticise it for — that it's a sales gimmick or something? It's stupid. I happen to think it looks better than black plastic. I think it's great. regardless of the reason it was done. I like it. I like red. Big deal. I wouldn't have given a fuck if they'd pressed it on clear vinyl.

"I've got an Albert Ayler record that came out in the States that was done on white vinyl with a silkscreen on one side and music on the other. I think it's great. Did anyone accuse Albert Ayler of cheap promotional gimmicks? What a fuss about red vinyl. Will somebody please remind these people that there's music on the record?"

Verlaine, I'm reminded by the cuttings and gossip, has a reputation for being awkward, a capacity for conceit and arrogance, and a manner that some have found supercilious and, occasionally, venomous. He's said to be easily agitated and overly sensitive — almost to the point of paranoia, some would have us believe.

His intransigence is most often blamed for his split with Richard Hell, a close childhood friend with whom he eventually formed Television, and with whom he has been feuding for more than two years (recent reports suggest that the hostility has cooled, however).

I have met him in only the formal atmosphere of interviews and cannot, therefore, deny conclusively these accusations. He freely admits, though. that he feels little empathy with musicians outside the immediate circle of Television — whose individual members have spoken of him with an admiration, but it's not ostentatious — and that his natural reluctance to socialise might lead those who feel no particular sympathy for either him or his band to think of him as aloof.

I put it to Verlaine that this might also be because Television want to be above the currency of fashion and popular trends; certainly, they have not furthered their association with the New York new wave.

"There's a certain truth in that," he says, "but I wouldn't say that it's any kind of conscious ambition. We're not deliberately out to transcend any particular kind of fashion. We've simply never been concerned with what's popular at the moment. We might be the kind of band that's considered hip one year and unhip the next, but we don't think about it in those terms.

"We've never deliberately tried to remain aloof. None of this is deliberate, you know. I just never felt comfortable with a lot of those other groups.

"Like, we played at CBGB's six months before most of these others even existed. They just heard about this club and they saw it was being written up in the papers and thought, 'gee — maybe WE'LL get in the papers, maybe WE'LL get a contract. Let's get together and play there.'

"Bands would just invent themselves to play this famous club, you know, because they thought they'd get a lot of press and a record contract straight away, and it was just a bar that had folk music when we started there.

"I'm not really interested in, like, trends. England, as far as I can make out, is still really concerned with trends.

"In the States it's different. Like, the new wave made no impact over there. And now I'M told that the punk thing is dying over here, and I'm not really surprised. I don't really know what went over in England. I never saw any of the bands.

"But I heard the singles, and it seemed that there was this particular kind of energy that started out with a couple of bands that came out of New York and for some reason they had a big impact on a community in England. Much more of an impact than they did in the United States.

"It seemed that all these people in England went out and got guitars with some big fantasy in their heads. There was a lot of strong energy, but no ability to communicate beyond pounding out some, like, really confused message. It was boring, basically. There was no communication.

"I'm not even sure that there was a lot of passion involved. No, there was a lot of energy, but I don't think there was a lot of emotion. And passion suggests emotion, you know. There was no emotion in the Sex Pistols. It was just energy going nowhere.

"Not enough people made the distinction between energy and passion. I heard only one single by the Clash. It was like the Ramones except for the political edge to the lyrics. And I can understand people getting mad at governments and really being convinced that they should make statements about things. But they sounded like a real hype. Real naive. But then what can you expect from people like that?"

His own musical tastes, he admits, are limited these days. There is little in rock 'n' roll that presently appeals to him, there's much that totally repulses him.

"The records I've been listening to most recently have been recordings by people like Howlin' Wolf, people I've never really heard before. Mostly Fifties and Sixties blues recordings.

"The thing about those blues records is that they're sophisticated in ways most people don't realise. Sonny Boy Williamson is a real sophisticated lyricist. They're not stereotyped blues singers. They're also completely sincere, and I don't really think that sincerity can be found in rock 'n' roll any more.

"I think a lot of the rock that's happening in the States right now is just sickening. Really sickening. Like, the main trend on the radio is to play a softer kind of music.

"That's basically because the deejays who were there in '67 are still there. They've grown older and their nervous systems don't allow them to go for a more inspiring kind of music. They go for a more relaxed kind of sound. That's what's happening in the States right now.

"If they got some younger guys in, some 20 year old deejays, I think the whole music scene in the States would be revolutionised in two years. At the moment it's terrible.

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"There's one trend in the States at the moment that's so sickening it's got to die within the next year. You know, you get this young wealthy guy who'll find a band and spend, like, 20,000 dollars on getting them costumes and lights and all sorts of crap, and he'll put them out on the road for a year, and with some sort of pull he'll get them signed to a record company.

"This is a band like Angel, Styx, or someone, that I'm talking about... They sorta set themselves up against Kiss or Yes. Christ, who listens to that crap? I find it really sickening.

"No, there's no radical music in the States that I'm aware of, except maybe in the jazz communities. There're a few what you might call new wave bands but all of them are Ramones imitators and I would guess that maybe half of them have disappeared already.

"Pere Ubu are an interesting band. A friend of mine used to play in Pere Ubu. I forget his name. He died last year. I haven't heard their album yet, but I used to talk to that guy — what is it? Crocus Behemoth, the singer. He calls himself David Thomas now, which seems more sensible. He's interesting.

"They used to come to New York once in a while and I used to talk to him. He's, like, one of a kind, which is something I got a weakness for.

"I only heard Devo on the radio last night. They sound interesting, but a little too tied up with their own philosophy to be what they really want to be. That idea of DeEvolution, that's an English idea, if I'm not mistaken. I think Colin Wilson talked about it in one of his books."

I'd read that he'd been impressed by David Bowie's recent work, Low and Heroes especially.

"Yeah, I liked them. Bowie's one of the few intelligent people left around. I'm sure he has his problems, same as Eno (who, you will remember, was due to produce Television's first album until he had a falling out with Verlaine).

"But I think he's pretty smart, very intelligent. But then, I'd even say Joe Walsh of the Eagles was very smart and very intelligent because he was clever enough not to quit his own band until he'd made something like a million dollars."

Verlaine, you will have gathered, does not esteem most of his contemporaries; nor, after his experiences during the last year since Television returned to America from their European jaunt, does he have even the most tenuous respect for the industry that ostensibly supports the individual musician.

The last 12 months have been, it transpires, pretty traumatic for Verlaine and Television. They split from their management company (Wartoke, whose principal clients included Patti Smith, John Cale and Television) because of a dispute about payment for their extensive European tour.

"We haven't played in nearly a year," he complains. "We did three dates in Illinois when we got back from Europe, and then went to New York and rehearsed, and then did the record. We haven't worked, primarily, because I sensed that our managers weren't quite right for us.

"I didn't want to get into some long fight with them, so I just suggested that we part. company. But it still took, like, seven months to get out of the contract and then it took something like five and a half months to record the album. It was all time wasted in frustration and negotiation.

"It was a situation of spending energy you could spend better in other ways. I was put in the position of having to do it.

"You have to be ruthless. I don't think I have that kind of ruthless streak, no. You probably have to have a manager who is ruthless to a certain extent. To spend even an hour of a day talking business is something I can't stand to do. Particularly since most people in the music industry think that musicians are nuts.

"Their attitude is, you just play the music, that's enough.' But it's not. You want to make sure you get paid for what you do. You want to make sure the conditions are right for you to play a concert. Some guy might send you to a club that has a p.a. built for a jukebox. These people, they treat musicians like they're adolescents.

"Yeah, there is an adolescent mentality in rock 'n' roll, but to be treated like that continually, it doesn't make you feel bitter, but it does make you lose your respect for people you might at one time have had a lot of respect for."

I'm an unsympathetic toad at the best of times, and suggest to Verlaine that most rock musicians bring such dismal circumstances down upon their own heads largely through their own stupidity and blindness to everything but the gratification of their own inflated egos and habits.

"You're right. Too much of that crap goes on in rock 'n' roll. A lot of people in rock 'n' roll are not... they aren't sober all the time. That's probably okay if you've got a manager who can take care of you all the time.

"A good manager will do that. He'll recognise that a guy loves to drink and performs great when he drinks, and as long as the guy's not an alcoholic and ruining himself, that'll be fine and he'll be looked after. But it's still true that musicians get catered to more than is good for them. You can be taken advantage of and not even notice it; you lose sight of everything.

"It sometimes looks like everybody's out to take advantage if they can. I mean, we're very lucky to be with Elektra. We took five months on Adventure, but they never pressured us. They knew we had to be left alone if they were going to get anything out of us.

"Some groups need pressure from the company to get something out, otherwise they'll just go into the studio and drink beer all night. I couldn't work under that kinda direct pressure.

"There're so many other kinds of pressure to contend with. Like, we were really looking for a producer. I had a whole list of names, you know. Because I like to have someone there with me, someone who knows a lot about the technology of the studio, because I don't want to be worried all the time about instruments distorting and sound levels — it's so frustrating.

"But we couldn't find a producer who was right for us (John Jansen, who finally produced the album in collaboration with Verlaine, was an engineer recommended by Allen Lanier of the Blue Oyster Cult).

"Most producers are really inflated people. I mean, once they've worked with. a band that gets a gold record, they suddenly start demanding, like, 30,000 dollars and a third of the royalties. Jesus, who's worth it?"

Hey — still with us? Well, this is where we knuckle down to assessing what we can of Adventure, Tom having barked back at his critics and side-swiped some aspects of the industry of human happiness along the way.

Now it was recently proposed (by Chris Brazier, actually, in his persuasive piece on Patti Smith) that rock 'n' roll can be successfully defined as a direct descendant of Romanticism. The association is genuinely valid, even if it has largely been debased.

There is clearly a case to be made for the Romantic impulse in Smith's work, which does seem to evoke the incantatory power of some of Rimbaud's tirades against the universe.

And I referred in my review of Adventure to what I took to be the discernible influence of the Romantic poets upon songs like "The Dream's Dream," "The Fire" and most notably, "Carried Away" (still my favourite piece on the album, despite Verlaine's arguments for "The Dream's Dream"). There are moments, too, on Marquee Moon, which support the Romantic connection ("Guiding Light," for instance).

Verlaine, however, appears uncomfortable with the references. Yes, of course, he has read the poetry of the Romantics — we talked at an earlier date of Rimbaud and Baudelaire — but he maintained a determined discretion when any attempt was made to forge a direct alliance.

Still, particularly on Adventure, there's a sense of pursuing the infinite, a reaching beyond the restrictions of the temporal (I don't want to make of this anything too preposterous, excuse the language).

"Music can express more than a physical reality," Verlaine advances tentatively. "It's capable of more than the imitation of reality. It's such a weird experience... it's so mysterious. I find it difficult to talk about.

"There are all these patterns, and lack of patterns, that are really new patterns forming, and you try to make sense of them, locate them and understand them. Music is like a way of going beyond yourself. It's like an emotional drive that takes you further and further out. It's a way of allowing yourself freedom. absolute freedom, not suppressing your own awareness.

"But I wouldn't say that there was any real philosophy behind these songs of mine. There might be the fundamental belief that a person can believe anything he wants — that might be implied on all those toons. It's the simplest belief that a person has — that he needn't limit his awareness to, say, the drudgery of everyday existence. It's a really common belief, I'd have thought. Maybe I'm wrong.

"But, like, the album title is meant to, like, suggest that you should maybe think about getting beyond that. And the songs, I think, are adventures in themselves. Whether they're worthwhile adventures is up to the individual to decide. I can't decide for anyone else what's most worthwhile for them."

Neither, it seems, can he clarify the immediate inspiration for the album or its individual songs. Adventure was not conceived as a work that would exist within any coherent, premeditated atmosphere, though he does not deny its continuity of mood.

He's almost frustratingly pragmatic when we discuss the album in detail, preferring to talk about the technicalities of its production, sound qualities and the imperfections of the snare drum sound in the studio Television used.

He mentions that he worked for six weeks on the lyrics of "Carried Away," attempting to capture the exact mood of the song. I ask him to elaborate and explain the mood for which he was striving.

He laughs nervously. "Jesus, it would be very easy for me to come out of this sounding stupid..." There's a pause of fully half a minute as he attempts to rationalise the inspiration of the song.

"That song's just basically about a memory that's always with someone. Memory as a state of mind rather than something that someone refers to once in a while, or something that crawls into your head sometimes."

The explanation seems succinct and reasonable. Encouraged, I ask him about "The Fire." He immediately flies into the most unlikely story of listening to the records of an Italian pop singer — "he was originally an Elvis imitator" — named Adriano Celentano (the spelling, he thinks, is suspect), to whom he was introduced by the girlfriend of Television's bass player, Fred Smith.

She first played him a single, whose title escapes him — "it was some Italian nonsense word, with, like, 30 letters or something, you know" — which she picked up from an Italian record shop in New York's Little Italy.

"It came on," he continues, a smile cracking across his face at the memory (or could it be at my gullibility?), "and there was this Bo Diddley guitar part, a blues harmonica with a ton of echo on it, and a drum beat that's backwards to that, and this guy is screaming over the top something like, 'it's 99 degrees and my shoes are frozen...' Totally crazy.

"Anyway, I found some other records by this guy, and I finally got an album of his, and there was this song called 'Yippie Doo,' which was just him and this girl singing those words over and over. Sort of building it up and adding instruments here and there and adding these really funny lyrics about flowers and peace..."

Tom, I thought we were discussing "The Fire."

"This all leads up to it... There was another song on this album that had a real Italian flavour to it, and the original version of 'The Fire' had the same sort of Italian melody going through it. A sort of Mediterranean feel to it."

It doesn't sound like that now.

"No. The way it ended up it has a kind of reggae bass part, and there's nothing left of where it originally came from."

Then I don't exactly see the connection.

"Oh, I guess it's just about listening to some kind of Italian pop music and thinking how innocent it sounded, just like American music was maybe 15 years ago before everything started to break up."

"Yeah," says Verlaine, "I do have to be in a certain state to write. I usually have to be awake."

"Foxhole" Verlaine has already described as something of a joke. I tell him that some of us have taken it as further evidence of his infatuation with, if I may be allowed to quote my own tortured prose, "the darker parameters of experience" (gulp).

"How can you take it so seriously?" he asks, laughing (I blushed and offered no defence). "I can't. I was laughing in the studio when I sang that last verse."

But there was evidence elsewhere to suggest that he wasn't exactly averse to skimming relatively close to what Keith Moon has movingly described as "the abyss" (ha!).

"I think all people are drawn to extremes," he replies. "I think that everybody puts themselves into an extreme situation at some point in their life, and then they realise that some situations are maybe too dangerous and they draw back. The ones I put myself into aren't exactly dangerous. I mean, I don't — let's say I don't abuse drugs.

"A lot of people do abuse drugs. I've known at least two people who've died from drugs and I know about four people, probably more, who've ended up in hospital through the accumlative effects of drugs."

You've experimented yourself with narcotics?

"Oh, sure," he replies cheerfully. "Not much anymore, but for a while I did. It's a period most people seem to go through. Say, from somewhere between 16 and 25. I'd say from 21 to 23 I was using all kinds of hallucinogenics. Just out of interest. To see just what scrambling your senses could do to you.

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"But drugs, you know, they begin to dominate the personality, to say the least. Their after-effects, the memory of the experience, can be inspiring in a certain sense. But they do lock you onto a certain level that you do have to get away from after a while.

"I also think that for sure they can debilitate a person's ability to communicate. That's pretty obvious. I also think they make people more egotistical and at the same time make those people less aware of their own existence. It removes them from reality. "People who mess with drugs, I can't take their personalities. I can't stand to be around them for too long. There are still a lot of people doing it to themselves. They also have so many illusions about things that they're totally boring to listen to."

"I think that any writing is political," says Verlaine. "Everybody knows that. I think our music is a celebration of a certain kind of individual freedom."

We have been talking about the responsibility of the artist and to what degree his work should embrace political and social concerns, the danger with the Romantic being that his pursuit of experience might become a narcissistic obsession (the French Romantics, after the failure of the revolution of 1848 and the fall of the Paris Commune, turned away from the society whose standard they had attempted to influence).

Verlaine's not sure how deeply an artist should involve himself with politics. He would prefer to communicate emotions and thoughts that may touch his audience more personally.

"I don't know if it's a matter of conscience. I don't know that that's enough. You really gotta know what you're talking about. And most of the stuff I've heard doesn't know what it's talking about.

"I'd say there might be some responsibility to say something if things were so grave, there might be a real strong impulse to speak out if things were that awful. I mean, I've been touched by that impulse.

"There was something that happened at a specific time that really got to me. I read an article about atomic energy plants in the States, about the amount of accidents that happen in them because of inevitable human errors, and that is totally frightening. Like, 20 minutes up the river from New York, there's an atomic energy plant, and all it would take is one human error and that would be it.

"It's inevitable that a city in America close to one of those plants is going to be affected soon and a million people are going to be killed by an accident. And there's no need for it. There's no need for atomic energy.

"Anyway, I wrote a song about one of those plants. I can't remember why we didn't do it. We were probably working on something else. It's an idea I should maybe return to."

He's suspicious, nevertheless, of anyone who would attempt to convince an audience that theirs was the true voice of social concern. He's equally suspicious of the kind of audience that would feel the need to elect such a leader or spokesperson. The Sixties, I mention, seemed full of such figures.

"Who're we talking about?" he demands.

Dylan, for one. Bowies, even. Countless others, but I'm not into lists at the moment.

"Dylan's just a humorist. You talk to any kid in high school in America and they'll tell you that Dylan is just funny. They laugh at Dylan. The word they use about a song like 'Highway 61' is funny.

"I think there's definitely a tendency in the music business not to see artists or musicians as human beings. This process of, like, elevation is crazy. I mean, let's see just who's big in the States in the Seventies, and if they're capable of being, like, leaders.

"They're mostly, like, people who would have been the creepiest guys in your school.

"Like Elton John. Or Elvis Costello, to take a more recent example. These are the kind of guys who, if they sat next to you at high-school, you wouldn't talk to because they were creeps.

"I mean, Costello's a prime example of what's happening in the States right now. I mean, it's all to do with image. He's, like, a cross between who? Buddy Holly and Bob Dylan, say. And deejays in America fall for it.

"His image is like totally unindividual — Mr Ordinary — and yet he can pass it off as being unique. I'm sure he'll get me for saying this." Damn right, Tom. "But, like, I heard five cuts by Costello and it was enough.

"I don't know the guy, so I don't know if he's sincere. I don't even know if he's for real. My tendency is to believe that it's not for real. I can't believe that it's real, because all the music he's playing isn't real. It's all copied from here and there. I can't believe in a guy who's coming on and playing a ripped-off buncha shit from ten years ago. I just think, 'so what?'

"You know, somebody said recently — it may even have been Dylan — they said that rock 'n' roll doesn't exist anymore. I'm beginning to think like that myself."

Verlaine, toward the end of this interview, slips into a strangely sombre mood. His conversation falters as he attempts to clarify some elusive thought.

"You know," he says finally," a lot of the people I admired died under real strange circumstances. There was a whole pile of Sixties jazz musicians that suddenly dropped off. Coltrane was one, and Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler. "There were even more than that. They all died within something like a three-year period.

"And the stories I've heard are kinda disturbing, you know. Like I heard one thing about Ayler, about how one time he was going to get on a boat in Sweden to come back to the States, and one of the girls that worked on this boat told him, don't get on this boat, I'm telling you, just don't get on this boat.' So he didn't. And, anyway, this boat sank. No one knew why.

"Like, I think," he continues gravely, "that people in politics tend to get paranoid about anything that's togs freely expressed, anything that's genuinely kinda emotional ind being communicated and enjoyed. I don't know, Morrison died under very strange circumstances. No autopsy report exists now. He's just thrown in a grave in a foreign country. I mean, there's all this stuff.

"There are also rumours going around about how Dylan was told to shut up after his motorcycle accident. They're just rumours, you know... I mean, no one's come up to me and actually said anything. But I wouldn't be shocked if someday somebody did... Politicians, you know, are all in their forties, and they're all frightened of youth. It wouldn't surprise me if there was something going down... Some kind of silencing faction knocking people down.

"I'm not, like, a paranoid or anything, I don't keep looking behind me... It's just that there could be some other reason why all these people are dead.

"It just seems that anybody who came on real strong in the Sixties is dead. They're either out of action or it's all over for them. Hendrix was another one... These people probably abused things... drugs, you know... and maybe that's the more likely reason they're dead. If you'd prefer to believe it."

I think we'll just leave it there for the present, while we're still ahead.



Cover, page scans and clippings.
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