by Roni Sarig
Chris Cornell, Soundgarden:
Kim [Thayil, Soundgarden’s guitarist] was influenced by Television a lot. And bands like Television are the reason I started playing guitar in Soundgarden. I started writing songs that had more than one guitar part, where it wasn’t just playing the same thing. There would be one color part that would come in and out, or some rhythmic thing that would happen when the other guitar was doing its thing. That was directly influenced by bands like Television.
While Verlaine and Lloyd worked toward making the music more sophisticated, Hell was not particularly interested in becoming a master on the bass. Instead, he focused his attention on developing an image and penning early Television favorites like Love Comes in Spurts and (I Belong to the) Blank Generation. But as Verlaine gradually cut Hell’s material from Television’s set and even began rehearsing with Blondie’s bassist Fred Smith, Hell decided the time had come to quit.
In the interest of applying his street poetry to harder-driving rock, in 1975 Hell joined former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan to form the Heartbreakers. Though Thunders’ brand of muscular guitar crunch filled the bill, Hell soon found his bandmates’ artless approach and drug-wasted lifestyle difficult to handle. Having contributed the band’s best-known song, (I’m Living on) Chinese Rocks, Hell left the Heartbreakers after less than a year to Thunders’ leadership.
In 1976, Hell arrived at a happy medium between Television’s instrumental complexity and the Heartbreakers’ energetic rock when he formed the Voidoids. As uncontested frontman – but backed by excellent backing musicians such as guitarist Robert Quine – Hell freely flaunted the personal style that would prove instrumental in defining punk attitude and fashion. Dressed in torn clothing and leather, with messy hair and a sneer on his face, Hell reclaimed his Television songs and turned them into the Voidoids’ punk anthems. By 1977, the year the Voidoids released their classic debut Blank Generation, British kids like Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols had modeled themselves after Richard Hell and unleashed punk rock on the world.
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:
His whole stance was really influential. The way he wore ripped T-shirts and shades, and chopped his hair and wrote on himself. And then playing this spastic punk rock music with really amazing Iyrics. To me, he was the most important, more than Patti [Smith] or Tom [Verlaine]. Hell was the man, even though he wasn’t the most popular. People were more into Blondie and Talking Heads, but for me personally the Voidoids were more influential.
Meanwhile, Fred Smith’s understated bass playing rounded out Television’s sound just as Verlaine wanted, and in 1976 the group finally began recording. After disputes over their seven-minute single, Little Johnny Jewel, almost split up the band (Pere Ubu’s Peter Laughner joined as Lloyd briefly quit), Television came together to produce its debut album, the classic Marquee Moon.
Scott Kannberg, Pavement:
Marquee Moon was a great record, a big influence. How baby boomers would cite the Beatles as classic rock, I’d cite Television. On [Brighten the Corners] we definitely have a Television sound, in the dueling guitars. Like in “Transport is arranged” or “We are Underused.”
While it never became the megahit Television’s record company hoped it would be, Marquee Moon was quickly recognized as one of the best rock records of the decade. Along with a mix of older Television material such as Venus and newer workouts like Torn Curtain, the standout title track – nine minutes of pure punk poetry – encapsulated everything that made Television great. As the guitarists perfected their tightly woven interplay through extended musical passages, Verlaine’s arty street verse (voiced somewhat thinly by the lyricist) added cool commentary to the song’s built-in drama.
Eric Bachmann, Archers of Loaf:
A band like Television, the guitars never do the same thing, yet it sounds good because each player had good sounds. They were very busy, but they never walked on top of each other. Matt and Mark, our drummer and bass player, save us from sounding too much like Television. Like “Form and File” [on All the Nation’s Airports] is a blatant rip-off of Marquee Moon, where I do this rhythmic thing and the guitar swells up over top of it. I was listening to Marquee Moon one day and thought, “That’s a good arrangement. If I do this, maybe Eric Johnson [Archers’ other guitarist] can fill up the rest.”
A second album, Adventure, followed fast on the heels of Marquee Moon but failed to generate as much enthusiasm. Due mainly to “sophomore slump” – where a band puts its most tested material on a debut and must start from scratch on the follow-up – Adventure lacked the confidence and depth of the first album. A third album might have proved the band’s endurance and consistency, but it never happened. By the middle of 1978, a power struggle had once again caused tensions between band members. And in July, Television performed its final show.
Both Verlaine and Lloyd launched immediately into solo careers with 1979 debuts. Verlaine was more successful, and Lloyd soon abandoned his own recordings and achieved acclaim as a guitar for hire (playing with Matthew Sweet, Lloyd Cole, and others). Fred Smith played bass with both Verlaine and Lloyd, as well as many other bands, while Billy Ficca went on to join the Waitresses, who had a hit in the ‘80s with “I Know What Boys Like.” In 1992, Television briefly reunited and released a surprisingly vital new record. Though it was well received critically, no plans were made to continue. Richard Hell, meanwhile, has continued to make music sporadically (such as with the Dim Stars, a band featuring Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley), and has appeared in films (such as Desperately Seeking Susan with Madonna). In 1996, he published his first novel, Go Now.
DISCOGRAPHY
TELEVISION
Marquee Moon (Elektra, 1977); the group’s masterpiece.
Adventure (Elektra, 1978); a respectable follow-up with slicker production, that failed to match the debut’s power.
The Blow up (ROIR, 1982); a posthumously released live album recorded in 1978.
Television (Capitol, 1992); a one-off reunion album that stands up remarkably well, considering the time that had passed.
RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS
Blank Generation (Sire, 1977; Sire / Warner Bros., 1990); a classic punk document featuring some of Hell’s best material.
Destiny Street (Red Star, 1982); features Quine and an otherwise different Voidoids line-up.
R.I.P. (ROIR, 1984); live recordings of the Voidoids from Max’s in 1978 and CBGB in 1979 (and one mid-‘80s track).
Funhunt (ROIR, 1990); Hell’s career retrospective, spanning his early demos with the Heartbreakers up through the final incarnations of the Voidoids in 1984.
Go Now (Tim/Kerr, 1995); a spoken-word release featuring Hell reading from his novel, with Quine’s guitar accompaniment.
TRIBUTE: Who the Hell: A Tribute to Richard Hell (Cred Factory); a limited-edition collection of local North Carolina bands, including Vanilla Trainwreck and Whiskeytown, doing Hell favorites.
THE FEELIES
Dean Wareham, Luna:
The Feelies made me want to pick up guitar and play. I went and saw them an awful lot, and Crazy Rhythms is probably my favorite record ever. The two guitar players weren’t flashy, they just worked together. Crazy Rhythms is just so textured, so beautifully produced, but it’s also incredibly simple and easy to play along with. That’s a band that never really got the notice they deserved.
A central band in the New York and New Jersey music scenes from the late ‘70s through the ‘80s, the Feelies’ low-key approach and lackadaisical career path kept them away from large-scale LfLJ exposure. But during the band’s long and uneven lifespan, they emerged as an important influence on post-Velvets bands of the ‘80s, from R.E.M. to Luna to Yo La Tengo. Though not particularly driven to perform live, the Feelies were a popular club band whose mesmerizing interpretations of other groups’ songs (including everyone from Wire to the Monkees) inspired leagues of “fan” bands who were not ashamed to wear their
influences on their sleeves.
Glenn Mercer and Bill Million (born Bill Clayton), friends in the northern New Jersey town of Haledon, formed the Feelies in 1976. Having grown up just outside New York City they’d been inspired by the direct, hard-rocking pre-punk bands like the New York Dolls and Modern Lovers. The Feelies (their name taken from an invention in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World) wished to pursue “the basic punk rock aspects of rock and roll, going back to early Rolling Stones or Chuck Berry being punk rock in a sense,” Mercer says.
After a few predictably disastrous gigs in front of perplexed New Jersey high school kids, the Feelies set their sights on New York and debuted at CBGB in 1977. By then, the rock scene surrounding the club was well established, and bands like Television and the Talking Heads had already released albums. This proved a blessing and a curse. While the success of those bands was inspiring, the club was flooded with new bands wishing to follow in their footsteps and it became more difficult to get noticed. Still, the Feelies managed to stand out, and in 1978 they were named “New York’s best underground band” by the Village Voice. After a number of early personnel changes, the band settled on a four-man lineup: Mercer and Million shared guitar, vocals, and songwriting, Keith Clayton handled bass, and Anton Fier, who’d been involved with a number of early Cleveland bands (such as Pere Ubu), played drums.
Despite the band’s early acclaim, it would be years before they released a debut album. Though the CBGB scene had developed a great reputation, these bands’ failure to sell records nationally (at least early on) made record companies wary. While the Feelies had some offers, Mercer and Million’s insistence on producing their own records made labels especially cautious. What’s more, the band – ordinary looking, plain dressing, and with songs that excelled within the rock form rather than breaking new ground – lacked a recognizable image. Then one day, Mercer remembers, “Keith got this bowl haircut and a new pair of glasses. It was such a striking image, we thought if he kept that look people might pick up on it. It kind of snowballed; people responded to it and we’d play it up a bit.” By emphasizing their ordinariness the band became associated with a “nerdy” style that would later define college rock bands such as Pavement and Weezer.
Stephan Merritt, Magnetic Fields / Future Bible Heroes:
The best feature of the Feelies was, you couldn’t hear the words. That’s where Yo La Tengo and Pavement got it from. The Feelies took the Velvets’ loops and drones and made them sound rigorous and difficult just by strumming the guitar the same way on every beat, no mean feat. They didn’t look anything like musicians, which was shocking and liberating.
When they finally released a record, 1980’s Crazy Rhythms, it was well worth the wait. Defined by its pleasant drone and trebly guitar strum, as well as murmured vocals and percolating drums, the record was a perfect introduction to the jangly psychedelia-laced, late-Velvets sound that would reappear throughout the decade in bands like R.E.M. and the Dream Syndicate. Originals like The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness and Fa Ce-La placed the Feelies in a pop-oriented post-punk context, while a Beatles cover (a Stones song was added to the reissue as well) connected them to the bar-band tradition in which they thrived. The Feelies’ unapologetically covers – friendly approach became one of the band’s defining characteristics.
Steve Wynn, solo / Dream Syndicate:
That first album, and seeing them live, was amazing. The very fast strumming guitar really appealed to me, very clean but jittery rhythms. I had a 103 degree fever when I saw them live. Maybe it was because I was sick, but it seemed like everything got faster and faster, a very drug-induced experience. I got excited by the possibility of playing a show and making people feel like they were having a psychedelic experience even without being high. In our first year together, that was something we were always trying to do.
In preparation for a tour to support Crazy Rhythms, the band arranged to do a quiet warm-up gig in a little-known club in Hoboken, New Jersey, called Maxwell’s. Just across the Hudson River from New York City, Hoboken was a low-key backwater town that attracted people who wanted to get away from Manhattan’s high rents and huge crowds. Following the Feelies’ lead, other bands like the Bongos, the dBs, and Yo La Tengo made Maxwell’s a home base in the ‘80s, birthing the celebrated Hoboken music scene.
When Crazy Rhythms failed to take hold commercially, the Feelies were dropped from their label and Anton Fier quit the band. (Fier also quit his other band, the Lounge Lizards, and briefly joined Pere Ubu, before starting his own project, the Golden Palominos.) Rather than pursue a new record contract, the band became largely inactive, although they did do occasional live shows, which often coincided with a national holiday. As Mercer explains, “We just make music to make music, so if it means waiting around for inspiration to come up with a new thing or make yourself happy, we don’t feel like, ‘Oh, we’ve been out of the public eye for a while, we really need to get back in.’ It’s always been driven by the music.”
While the Feelies largely disappeared in name during the early ‘80s, its members remained active. Mercer and Million wrote the soundtrack for the film Smithereens, which developed into the instrumental and tape-oriented group the Willies. Most of the Feelies also appeared in Yung-Wu, a group led by off-and-on Feelies percussionist Dave Weckerman, and in the Trypes, a larger band led by New Jersey keyboardist (and member of Yung-Wu) John Baumgartner. By the mid-‘80s, Mercer and Million were concentrating on the Willies, who appeared in the film Something Wild. Having added drummer Stan Demeski and bassist Brenda Sauter, as well as Weckerman on percussion, the group moved away from instrumentals as Mercer introduced new rock-oriented songs. As it became clear that this was, by default, a re-formed version of the Feelies, the group decided to record again.
Ira Kaplan, Yo La Tengo:
I certainly learned a lot from those Maxwell’s bands, I was there so much. I loved the Feelies, I think some of the things we’ve done with percussion could be traced back to the Feelies. The first time I saw the Trypes, Glenn [Mercer] was playing drums. It was a real eye opener to see a guitarist playing drums – and playing drums like a guitarist. He did really cool things, but he wasn’t a drummer. When Georgia [Hubley, Yo La Tengo’s drummer] plays guitar in our group, because she doesn’t technically know how to play, she does things I would never think of doing. It provides a different slant on things, a different texture. Like the song “Autumn Sweater,” we started practicing it with Georgia playing the organ. That comes from being such big Feelies fans.
In 1986, the Feelies released The Good Earth, an album co-produced by longtime fan Peter Buck, whose band R.E.M. had started out as a Feelies-inspired group and since made it big. Though still clearly influenced by the Velvet Underground, The Good Earth’s more acoustic and ethereal (and a bit less edgy) sound made it clear that much had changed since the group’s debut. Subsequent albums in 1988 and 1991 reinforced this new approach with consistent success, both artistically and commercially, but it became more and more difficult to sustain the group financially. Following 1991’s Time for a Witness, Bill Million quit and moved to Florida. The rest of the band remained active, but not as the Feelies. While Mercer and Weckerman formed the band WakeOoloo, each member has appeared in a variety of groups. Most notably, Stan Demeski temporarily became a member of Feelies-influenced group Luna.
DISCOGRAPHY
Crazy Rhythms (Stiff, 1980; ACM, 1990); a terrific debut of jittery New York post-punk.
The Good Earth (Coyote / Twin-Tone, 1986); released six years after the debut, this was a more mature, acoustic effort, though still worthy of the group’s reputation.
Only Life (Coyote / ASM, 1988); despite a major label jump, this record largely follows its predecessor and achieves similar results.
Time for a Witness (Coyote / ASM, 1991); a fine but unspectacular finale.
DNA
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:
More than as a guitarist, I was influenced by the whole concept
of what DNA were doing. The fact that Arto never played the same chords and was so free, he’d just skronk on this twelve-string he never tuned, and Ikue Mori’s drumming was coming out of underground free improvisation. And Tim Wright’s bass playing was extremely centric. I was completely blown away by them. There was no one that sounded like them. It wasn’t like the initial English punk rock, where everybody sounded like the Pistols or the Clash. With no wave every band was completely unique, and that to me was super-influential.
With its entire studio output barely long enough to fill a whole album, DNA is undoubtedly the most influential rock band in the world per minute of recorded music. As leaders of the downtown New York post-punk movement called no wave, DNA pushed the rock form to its limit by getting rid of all apparent structure and tonality. Taking its cues from the guitar deconstructions of experimental composers Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, DNA made art rock to end all art rock. And in doing so, the band – particularly the group’s bespectacled guitarist and lead squawker Arto Lindsay – paved the way for generations of noise- and free-music makers, from Sonic Youth to God Is My Co-Pilot to Blonde Redhead (named after a DNA song). And Lindsay’s nerd-savant approach to music has reverberated in the worlds of pop (working with David Byrne), world music, and electronica.
