By the early Seventies,New York was a decaying metropolis,teetering on the verge of bankruptcy (sound familiar?),left basically to rot by Capitol Hill indifference.The music industry had chosen to look the other way,too,its increasing corporate voracity fed by a stream of anodyne West Coast troubadours.Fittingly enough,it was the-lipstick-in-the-gutter-sleaze-glam of The New York Dolls that re-focused the industry's attention towards the Big Apple.
In 1973,inspired by a Doll's concert at the Mercer Arts Center, Tom Miller (soon to become Verlaine) and Richard Meyers (soon to be Hell) formed their own band, The Neon Boys,hooking up with Verlaine's old Delaware buddy,drummer Billy Ficca.
Using a loft owned by Terry Ork,who ran the movie-stills store where Verlaine and Hell both worked, the trio auditioned Dee Dee Ramone and Chris Stein,who would soon form after form Blondie with Debbie Harry,before recruiting Richard Lloyd as a second huitarist.Hell, whose musical ability was negligible, rechristened the band Television and helped secure a Sunday night residency at Hilly Kristal's Bowery dive CBGB's in March 1974.
By all accounts ragged,self-destructive and infectious in equal doses,their sweaty,experimental hybrid of Stones-elevators-Yardbirds turbulence also led to a joint tenure at Max's Kansas City,alongside the fast emerging Patti Smith.
Initially attracting the attention of Island Records,their six song demos for the label (co-produced by Brian Eno) were to prove crucial in the band's trajectory. Unhappy with with the tentative,colourless results,Verlaine vowed to oversee all future recordings and ditched the increasingly wayward Hell for Blondie bassist Fred Smith.
In August 1975,they released the astonishing "Little Johnny Jewel" - a slab of vinyl so lo-fi that according to Julian Cope it "made The New York Dolls sound like Yes"- on Terry Ork's own label.When the big boys came calling,they chose Electra for their debut album.
Impressed by the guitar sound captured on the Stone's Goat's Head Soup, Verlaine brought in Andy Johns to co-produce.Johns' first impression was they that they couldn't play or sing.Verlaine,doggedly determined to pursue small,spartan sounds over showy flamboyance,and the minimum of sonic flavouring.
From the opening, Stonesy riff and divebombing lead of "See NO Evil" through the bluesy squall of "Torn Curtain", the almost unbearable,synergistic tension never flags. "Venus" is a knotty,bruising tumble of needles-to -red Valhalla, Verlaine's elusive Beat-hipster subversion to the fore.
"Friction" has Verlaine's lead pirouetting around the corners of Lloyd's gnarly rhythm;"Elevation" eases back on the throttle,but laps in a dramitically perverse pre-chorus chord change,while "Prove It" surprises with almost bouncy,quasy-calypso guitar glide before soaring to altitudes new.
Of course, the 10-minute title track is the true river of fire: Smith's two-note bass pulse grounding Ficca's jazz-patinated skins and the cloudburst duelling of Lloyd and Verlaine, whose guitars skid and crash into each other's airspace,coming at moments to within a whisker of annihilation.It's easy to wax lyrical and scribble icy directions for where to find the descending cyclic sevenths that give it that otherworldly feel, but it's imposible to overestimate the jaw-dropping, dark magic of this song.
Television may have vowed to "pull down the future", but no one knew they'd reinvent it.Proof that lightening can,indeed,strike itself.Maybe just the once though....(Rob Hughes)
