It's been hard processing Tom Verlaine's death today. Mainly I have been listening to his music & thinking about how fucking great he was & how much I loved it & how much it influenced so many bands & artists I love. In fact, I wrote this on Facebook about reading one such artist:
I played some Television & Tom Verlaine songs to Magda this afternoon while processing the loss of that incredible artist. She remarked that at least one song reminded her of the Go-Betweens. I am not surprised to find Robert Forster writing this on his Facebook page just now:
I have woken up to the news of the passing of virtuoso guitarist & singer-songwriter Tom Verlaine. Absorbing that as best as I could, I made my muesli & a strong coffee & sit here typing, a little stunned, not knowing what to write, but knowing what Verlaine meant to me. An elder brother, someone in the mid-to-late Seventies who opened up doors for me. An enormously inspirational figure to Grant & I with his New York band Television. The Go-Betweens, one more band in a swarm of bands to form & bloom in the wake of Verlaine & his fabulous group.
& it's so poignant, that this Friday, with the release of my new album, I name-check him in a song that collects my thoughts so much better, & more succinctly, than what I can write here. The song is called "When I Was A Young Man." The verse goes - "Elder brothers, they came along/ There was a new David & there was Tom/ They bewitched me in wardrobe & song/ When I was a young man."
The "new David" is David Byrne, & "Tom" is of course Verlaine. They were my twin peaks. Showing me how to dress & behave as a nervy twenty-one year old, trying to act & look as intense & interesting & poetic as I could. (Check any photo of me from 1978 to 1987 for evidence.)
Musically, I couldn't really compete with either of them. They were incredibly strong influences I had to shake off (a little) to get to anything original I could do. But thinking of Verlaine's guitar playing this morning - & that's what really hit me - was the influence of his tone in Seventies Rock. He ended or at least challenged the heavy bluesy thrust of Page/Clapton/Richards. Verlaine's guitar was loaded but sweet. It sang & soared. It was lyrical. It possesses enormous beauty. It hinted at jazz. It was ethereal & other worldly. & for someone like me, who was not a follower of guitar players & their lengthy solos, here was a guitar player for my age. & you just have to listen to the shape of guitar bands of the Eighties & beyond to hear the legacy of his playing. No disrespect to Clapton, but who sounds like him these days? Verlaine's soaring melodic tone & flurry of notes are everywhere. I am not meaning Rock is a competition - just that Verlaine is very present & always will be.
Forster nailed it, & he failed to mention another mention of Verlaine in one of his songs, the song "When She Sang About Angels," from the Go-Betweens record "Friends Of Rachel Worth," which was recorded here in Portland. The song about is about Patti Smith & contains the lines:
"When she sang about a boy -
Kurt Cobain -
I thought what a shame
It wasn't about Tom Verlaine"
Still lots of processing to do, but glad to have had this moment of synchronicity in my grief.
Sorry to quote someone else. I just honestly couldn't have said it better.
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