The jazz album that inspired a pre-teen Tom Verlaine: “Before that I played the piano”
In 1970s New York, there seemed to be a magical happening. For one moment, in one peer group, it seemed like everyone was doing something new and something pioneering. The Ramones were leading the way for all-out punk, Patti Smith was merging rock and literature, and Television were inventing new sounds and styles for guitar music. It could be put down to some cosmic intervention or the hands of fate looking to create a cultural moment. Or, it could come down to the fact that every artist buzzing around the scene seemed to have a distinctly different background. In the case of Tom Verlaine, that happened to be jazz.
At that moment in New York, the misfits were coming out on top. Patti Smith, who had spent all the years before being a poetry obsessive, was suddenly now a rockstar bringing Rimbaud onto the stage. Talking Heads were making music for neurotics, the Ramones were making music for people with all the energy rather than all the skill, and Tom Verlaine was seemingly making rock music for jazz fans.
Given that he’s best remembered as a deeply influential guitar player, the thought of him being a big jazz fan feels at odds with his punk legacy. But he was deeply embedded in a more classical world before he ever picked up a six-string. “In the early 1960s, I was playing saxophone. Before that, I played the piano; I did all that stuff before playing the guitar,” he told NPR, thinking back to his childhood.
When playing through a playlist of songs that shaped him, he picked out ‘Hog Callin’ Blues’ by jazz icon Charles Mingus, reminding Verlaine of when he was only 11 or 12 years old. “I think that was maybe in the second year of listening to jazz in Wilmington, Delaware,” he recalled. “There was one time in a shop never to the fish markets that sold jazz records, and I went in there, and they always locked the door behind me cause I think they were scared what was this white boy doing in this neighbourhood. The guy said, ‘Well, what do you want?’ and I said, ‘Do you have Charlie Mingus?’ The guy says, ‘Sure, this one’s really good.’”
That’s when he discovered this track which always stuck with him. “I found an amazing, exciting record” he said, “All the solos on it, everything about it. You can hear charlie yelling stuff in the background. It’s such a cool record.”
The impact of jazz on Verlaine’s career could be explained quickly and easily with the suggestion that this genre, built on improvisation and formless compositions, inspired Television to push beyond the rigid format rock and roll songs typically help. But in reality, it seems to go deeper than that. It seems to be less about Mingus or jazz, and more about his entry into music, which was always DIY.
When NPR asked Verlaine if playing saxophone meant he was playing in school bands or if it meant he was having lessons as would typically be expected of a kid learning an instrument, he said no. “I just got a pawn shop thing, an alto, and then I ended up trading that in for a soprano and bought a fingering book,” he explained. Stories of people teaching themselves the guitar are so common that it feels standard that many iconic guitar players began their journey on their own with nothing but a chord book. But for Verlaine to be attempting to tackle jazz on his own speaks to his outsider spirit and lifelong determination to push beyond expectations and defy any and all rules.
He did it himself and played around until he found something that sounded cool to him; that’s the ethos Television was founded on and the spirit that made them great. So, while jazz lit that initial spark, it seems to be Verlaine’s natural desire to forge his own path that always guided him well.
