Hear a rare recording of Television performing ‘Marquee Moon’ in 1978
Has there ever been a better punk song than ‘Marquee Moon’? Is it even a punk song for that matter? All these questions and a thousand others are almost rendered redundant when you listen to it and have no choice but to simply switch off, strap in for the ride, and bask in its wild glory. With a shower of glittering half-notes, the beauteous anthem remains a shimmering piece of escapism. Thank you, Television.
The song is a textured and luscious gem with a far more intricate melody than many of the others that it helped to spawn. “It’s like a mini-symphony,” guitarist Richard Lloyd accurately said of the song. “There’s a part that’s loud and there’s a part that’s soft, and there’s a build-up, then there’s a climb – there’s actually three sets of climbs – then there’s what we call the ‘birdies,’ and then another section and then the verse comes back in. So it was pretty well structured.”
Nevertheless, it seems as effortlessly free-form as bird song. Its triumph resides not in the usual placeable praise of music, but in the rarefied heights of the atmosphere it achieves. As Tom Verlaine said himself of the opus: “You don’t have to say what you mean to get across.” ‘Marquee Moon’ is swarming with the vagaries of life and somewhere in that is the essence of vibrant adolescence.
Initial live renditions of the song saw them race through it in about five minutes at the CBGB. However, when this recording was taken in 1978, Verlaine, along with the current line-up of Billy Ficca on drums, Fred Smith on bass, and the aforementioned Richard Lloyd on guitar, were relishing in its symphonic trajectory and stretching it out to 20 minutes, sometimes. I mean, why wouldn’t you, it’s f—king brilliant.
Its brilliance is summed up by the fact that it summons the rare thought, “I remember when I first heard this,” at least for me, it does. And the brilliance of the adrenalised live version below is that it is almost like hearing it anew. A different scene plays out in the playground of the imagination as you picture the gangly gang that Patti Smith described as “relentlessly adolescent” on a fabled stage in San Francisco. Oh, to have been there.
You can check out the recording below.
