Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (37 page)

Henry Rollins:

I was introduced to the work of Suicide when I bought their first album in 1979. I didn’t know anything about the band, just that any band who called themselves Suicide had to be intense. The picture on the back of the two members... looked menacing. I remember my friend Ian [MacKaye, of
Minor Threat
/ Fugazi] and I playing the album in his attic and not knowing how to take it. It was intense, really strange. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Time went by, and I kept up with the band’s records. The Rollins Band covered a Suicide song
Ghost Rider
, and it became a staple of our set for years, [from 2.13.61 CD’s Suicide reissue]

Though Suicide failed to get much notice in the U.S., British critical acclaim led to a European tour supporting the Clash and Elvis Costello. By the late ‘70s, though, punk had become synonymous with guitar-based power-chord rock and audiences universally hated Suicide – riots ensued in several cities. But used to the abuse, Suicide relished it.

When the Cars, another band that integrated keyboards into punk-inspired music, hit big in the late ‘70s, they invited Suicide to open for them on tour and even insisted the duo be included on a popular television show they hosted. By 1980, the attention led the group to a major label for their second album, produced by the Cars’ Ric Ocasek,
Alan Vega and Martin Rev: Suicide
. The record’s smoothed edges and higher fidelity reflected a larger budget and better studio equipment, but while it drew comparisons to early synth-pop contemporaries
Kraftwerk
, the street attitude of songs like
Mr. Ray
and the epic
Harlem
was recognizably the work of full-blooded New Yorkers.

Kins Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

Dream Baby Dream
was the first 12-inch I bought. I played that to death. I saw them on the Midnight Special, when the Cars said they’d be on the show only if they could pick the other bands. They had Suicide on. Alan Vega’s pretence was psychotic, it was scary. I’d never seen anything like it, just a singer and keyboard player, very over the top and confrontational.

Again, Suicide was warmly greeted abroad but failed to connect at home. Though the duo never officially broke up, they slowed down in the early ‘80s and pursued solo projects. Vega achieved enough success in France to get him on major label Elektra in the mid ‘80s, though his later albums were released only in Europe (recently, they’ve been made available on Henry Rollins’ Infinite Zero label). In 1986, amid the massive popularity in Britain of the Suicide-inspired group Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Vega and Rev reunited for a tour of the U.K. This led to two more Ocasek-produced Suicide records, in 1987 and ‘92. Though not without their merits, neither record ignited much interest in the band. While the possibility of further Suicide material remains, the duo have since returned to separate pursuits.

DISCOGRAPHY

Suicide
(Red Label, 1977; Restless, 1990)
; a classic record of New York punk attitude and avant-garde pop vision.

Alan Vega and Martin Rev: Suicide
(1980; Restless 1990)
; a slicker, more upscale version of the group’s unique sound.

Half Alive
(ROIR, 1981)
; a collection of early unreleased recordings and live tracks.

Ghost Riders
(ROIR, 1986)
; a live recording from 1981, of the band’s 10
^th
-anniversary show at Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center.

A Way of Life
(Wax Trax!, 1989)
; a respectable but hardly earth-shaking return.

Why Be Blue
(Brake Out / Enemy, 1992)
; a second reunion album.

TRIBUTE:
An Invitation to Suicide
(Munster [Spain], 1994)
; featuring Luna, Flaming Lips, Mudhoney, Spectrum’s Sonic Boom, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

TELEVISION

RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS

Matthew Sweet:

Television’s
Marquee Moon
really “blew me away. It was really huge for me at the time. I had been really into [British] stuff, and hearing Television I started fixating on American stuff. It seemed more like the way I was trying to make demos and write songs. I was looking for who I was, and this was a band that sort of guided me there. And obviously later on, hooking up with Richard Lloyd, that’s the big Television influence on my record.

Though less known than New York pre-punk peers such as Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads, Television opened the door for all of these groups through their early gigs at CBGB, the club around which these bands coalesced to form one of the most influential music scenes in rock history. Decades later, Television remains one of the best loved “unknown” bands in rock and has earned a mythic status that belies its album sales. The group’s meticulous arrangements are standard texts for post-punk guitarists and art-minded garage rockers everywhere. And Richard Hell – an original Television member who went on to front the also notable Voidoids – invented a gritty street rebel image that would become the standard punk look for generations to come.

Television formed in 1973 in New York, but its roots go back to Delaware in the late ‘60s, where Tom Miller and Richard Meyers met in boarding school. Sharing an interest in music and poetry, the two became friends and conspired ways to escape their restrictive surroundings. Meyers was first to arrive in New York, where he remade himself as Richard Hell, a modern-day version of French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. After a short stint at college, Miller joined his buddy in Manhattan; taking on the surname of another symbolist, he became Tom Verlaine.

Chris Connelly, the Bells / Ministry / Revolting Cocks:

Lyrically, I’d have to say Tom Verlaine is one of my favorites. Very poetic, but very cool as well. At school, I really shone in English literature, and it was great to read the poets. But if my English teacher had come in with the album
Marquee Moon
, I would be a fucking professor by now. It spoke more to me than Shakespeare’s sonnets.

While the two pursued literary life, publishing a book of poems under the shared alias Theresa Stern, Verlaine also immersed himself in free-jazz saxophone and then guitar. Inspired by bands like the Velvet Underground, the
Stooges
, and the New York Dolls, Verlaine and Hell formed their first group in 1972. With drummer Billy Ficca (a friend of Verlaine’s from Delaware) and Hell on bass by default, the Neon Boys played for one year, while they searched in vain for a second guitarist to fill out their ragged sound. After recording a six-song demo, the group called it quits.

While performing as a soloist, Tom Verlaine met the guitar compatriot he’d been searching for. With Richard Lloyd, a blues-oriented guitarist who’d recently arrived from L.A., Verlaine re-formed the Neon Boys, renaming it Television. Over the next five years, Verlaine and Lloyd rewrote the book on two-guitar arrangements in rock, with poetic styles that both worked together and played off each other in a beautiful marriage of harmony and tension.

Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney:

Corin [Tucker, Sleater-Kinney’s other guitarist] and I have been influenced by how the guitars work in Television. I love Marquee Moon, the guitars cut through in a really different way. They were able to combine two guitars without one being a soloing lead guitar. They intertwined and communicated with each other in a really interesting and dynamic way. Corin and I are conscious of not having one guitar fake precedence over the other. We’re interested in having them overlap, and we’ve become more conscious of the relationship of the guitars to each other.

In search of a new club where Television could gig regularly, Verlaine and Lloyd chanced upon a little-known bar on the Bowery, frequented mostly by Hell’s Angels. Assuring the owner that Television could play “country, bluegrass, and blues” – or CBGB – the band debuted in the spring of 1974. Soon, as Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, and Talking Heads became CBGB regulars, the club emerged as a focal point for the brewing New York City punk scene of the mid-‘70s, beginning a tradition that was to make CBGB the best known punk-rock establishment in the world.

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.”