Television’s art-punk masterpiece ‘Marquee Moon’ turns 45
Of all the bands to kick off the punk movement in New York City during the mid-1970s, Television seemed the least likely to find an audience. While the Ramones were aggressive and The Heartbreakers were a mess of junkies, those bands had an established scene to play on. Talking Heads and Blondie were willing to indulge in the influences of R&B and reggae, while Suicide and Jayne County had been cutting their teeth for years. Television couldn’t be anything but themselves, for better or for worse.
Despite having a reputation for aggressive punk rock, CBGBs’ initial crowd was a largely-indifferent rag-tag conglomerate of weirdos and outcasts who couldn’t stand the more polished and pretentious nature of other clubs in the city. Owner Hilly Kristal didn’t even want rock music within his walls —it stands for Country, Blue Grass, and Blues after all. But young rock musicians began getting booked out of necessity. Television wasn’t the first band, but they were one of the first who sounded different.
The direct inheritors of The Velvet Underground’s title to New York’s coolest urban rockers, Television were four gangly, goofy-looking music nerds who played with all the energy of punk but with none of the distortion. Tom Verlaine didn’t spit out his lyrics as much as he delivered them in an impassioned wail. Billy Ficca played with plenty of power, but his drum fills were precise and militaristic. Each of the string players laid down their own lines, creating three melodies all competing to be the best and most prominent.
Their songs were poetic but had plenty of Big Apple grime in them. Numerous songs refer to the ocean, something most NYC dwellers never saw with their own eyes. But references to Broadway and the Bowery endeared the band to the crowds who connected with the drug-induced daze of ‘Venus’ and the strung-out impressionism of ‘See No Evil’. It’s no coincidence that Dee Dee Ramone often sat in the front row and tapped along to the sprawling beauty and infinite possibilities within Verlaine’s lyrics.
Despite their unconventional mix of art rock, poetry, and punk, Television were one of the first groups from the New York scene to get major label interest. They even recorded a demo with former Roxy Music technician Brian Eno, but the results were not up to Verlaine’s lofty standards. The singer insisted on producing the band’s debut himself and turned down label offers for two years until someone was willing to let him do it.
Elektra Records eventually agreed to take the risk, on the condition that experienced engineer Andy Johns work with Verlaine to shepherd the album to completion. Johns had the ability to make the band’s stark live sound come through without sounding as cold and icy as Eno’s productions. The mix had all the spirit of the band’s more aggressive contemporaries without the harder edge. Verlaine insisted that the band track live and refused common effects like reverb or compression. When ‘Marquee Moon’ was finished in a single take, Ficca was surprised, assuming the performance was just a rehearsal.
If there’s any criticism to be level against Marquee Moon, it’s that the album is ridiculously front-loaded. That shouldn’t be a knock on ‘Elevation’, ‘Guiding Light’, ‘Prove It’, or the fantastic album closer ‘Torn Curtain’, but it feels like a slight step down after the mind-blowing first side. When you put ‘See No Evil’, ‘Venus’, ‘Friction’, and the title track all back-to-back, anything else is going to seem like a letdown.
But side two isn’t without its charms. ‘Torn Curtain’, with its symphonic opening drum roll and desolate guitar-keyboard interplay, is a wonderfully eerie note to end the album on. ‘Guiding Light’, the closest that the band ever came to a power ballad, brings all the emotional weight of the form without devolving into saccharine sappiness. There’s something wonderfully endearing about Marquee Moon‘s second side: not revolutionary like the front half, but more conventional and comfortable with rock’s previous history, the same history that most of Television’s contemporaries were eager to destroy.
Side two also points to the band’s future: Adventure, which came out a year after Marquee Moon, was a lighter and less aggressive album that sounded like the band themselves liked playing ‘Guiding Light’ the most. The punk hangover was in full effect, with numerous bands either splitting up or jumping ship to the eclectic sounds of new wave. Television themselves weren’t built to last – artistic friction, drug use, and a strong desire to move on led the group to split only a few months after Adventure hit stores.
When the rest of the world heard Marquee Moon, it was a record that flew in the face of punk rock. These were guitars that were playing intricate progressions, sustained lines, and complex solos. The buzzsaw guitars that the rest of the New York bands preferred were nowhere to be found, and the group’s rhythm section played like a jazz fusion band. But it was still presented with an unadorned finish and an uncompromising attitude, making the album unmistakably punk, or at least punk-adjacent.
Although the album was a success in the UK, American audiences failed to connect with Marquee Moon. It didn’t help that Television were forced to tour with Peter Gabriel in the midwest of America, which alienated their core fan group and left the band dispirited. But like The Velvet Underground before them, Television’s mix of poetic urban decay and revolutionary guitar rock made each of their meagre record sales count as they amassed a fanbase that kept their legacy going well beyond their breakup.
Everyone from Sonic Youth to U2 to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes picked up lessons and influences from Marquee Moon. It got to the point that Television looked decades ahead of their time once the original wave of punk rock sputtered out and gave way to the burgeoning sounds of alternative rock. Those 20 person crowds at CBGB’s probably didn’t know the future when they saw it (except maybe Dee Dee), but Television wound up leapfrogging most of their contemporaries post-mortem. Marquee Moon still sounds like a vision from the future, even as it settles into middle age.
