To me, Tom
Verlaine, who died Saturday at 73, was always an ecstatic poet of immanence, both
in his lyrics and in his guitar playing.
He saw the prosaic
world of the contemporary city as charged with mystery and the possibility of poetic
surprise, a world at once rather desolate and forlorn, but also dense with a beauty
and significance accessible to the imagination.
The emotion
corresponding to Verlaine’s way of perceiving the world was kind of delinquent
ecstasy, a feeling of being lost, with nothing to lose, in a world of hidden wonders.
For me, that
vision was captured in the following lines from Venus de Milo, the second song
on Television’s landmark album Marquee Moon:
You know it's all like some
new kind of drug
My senses are sharp and my hands are like gloves
Broadway looked so medieval
It seemed to flap, like little pages
And I fell sideways laughing
With a friend from many stages
The line “I
fell sideways laughing/With a friend from many stages” beautifully expresses a feeling
of youth, of being adrift in a world of potential beauty and adventure with
friends who feel the same way, that I associate with my own late teens and
early 20s, the period when I first listened to Verlaine.
Verlaine may
have been a lyricist/poet with a taste for imagery that seemed redolent of Jean
Cocteau as well as his namesake Paul Verlaine – “I was standing where the
darkness doubled/I recall, lightning struck itself” – but he was also firmly rooted
in a nocturnal world of bars and cars and parties, creating an ambience that
was as much film noir as French poetry.
The same
kind of poetic yearning the pervades Verlaine’s marvelous lyrics is at play in
his unique guitar playing.
Not only is he
a master of a kind of lyrical, often melancholic, melodicism; he is also a
master of variation, taking short figures and submitting them to a series of relentless
changes, as if determined to wrench every last potential for meaning and
emotion from a simple musical fragment, searching endlessly for the same immanent
beauty his lyrics speak of.
The best-known
example is his soloing on the title track of Marquee Moon, but it surfaces in
virtually every song on the album, even the short, punchier pieces like Venus
de Milo. His playing often has a rigorous intelligence and systematic quality
that’s not too distant from one of his early influences, John Coltrane.
Marquee Moon
is one of the handful of albums from that time that I’ve found myself returning
to consistently over the decades.
I used to
think it was an excellent album that was somewhat marred by a pacing problem.
It seemed to
race through a succession of sparkling, near-perfect songs on the first side,
climax with the title track at the end of that side, and then give way to a
series of still excellent, but mournful, dirge-like pieces on Side Two.
As the
decades passed, I slowly understood how deep and rich each one of those tracks
was an how they reinforced the tranquil, morning-after feel of the second side
as a whole.
I lost track
of Verlaine after the first incarnation of Television broke up, occasionally picking
up and enjoying one of his solo albums, which were always fine and interesting,
if lacking, most of the time, the cohesion and ambition of the two classic Television
albums.
It’s an interesting
reflection of how important the dynamics of a real, functioning band are to forging
rock music with lasting value. Television may have been Verlaine’s band, dominated
and defined by his music and lyrics, but the passion and commitment of the
other members of the band brought his vision to life more vividly and compellingly
than his solo output ever seemed able to.
I was lucky
enough to see Tom Verlaine at the Ritz in New York City in June of 1982.
I don’t remember
much about it, except that King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp brushed by me on
the way to his reserved table, and that the show was superb.
The details
are mostly gone from my memory, but I do remember on one thing quite vividly.
Verlaine played a long, exploratory solo over a rumbling, reggae-like accompaniment
from his band, the same kind of relentless exploration and variation of an
evolving melodic idea that characterizes his playing with Television.
He was
alone, just himself and his guitar, but I had the feeling the whole club was
along with him, accompanying him, note by poignant note, on his solitary but determined quest for transcendent
beauty in the earthly immanence of rock and roll.
It’s a
memory I’ve always held on to, and delighted in, particularly when I feel
nostalgic for those days.
As of yesterday,
I’ll hold onto it even more tightly.
It was a tight toy
night, streets so bright
The world was so thin between my bones and skin
There stood another person who was a little surprised
To be face to face with a world so alive
How I fell (did you
feel low?)
No (huh?)
I fell right into the arms of Venus De Milo
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