It's been a few days since the sad news that Tom Verlaine, renowned Television frontman and guitarist has died, hearing his music again on the radio, reminding me of his great talent.
I'd been introduced to his music through, of course, David Bowie, by seeking out the original writer of Bowie's splendid Kingdom Come cover on his now classic, Scary Monsters (and Supercreeps) album. At the time I was only 15 or so and entering 'peak Bowie disciple' mode, desperately hunting down anything the great man touched or recommended. This approach had already paid dividends through an introduction to Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop which marked me out from my fellow school pals who were generally more attentive to the Top 40, rather than what had come before and had perhaps influenced those artists.
Diligently I bought Television's seminal Marquee Moon album and later on its 1982 release his third solo album, Words From The Front. My memory is that I enjoyed them both but preferred his solo work with it's echoes of loss, history and war, themes which still resonate with me.
Both these purchases were on vinyl but when I eventually followed the herd in replacing my turntable with a CD system in the early 90's, these albums didn't make the transition - looking back, very few of my old standby LP's actually did, with the afore-mentioned Scary Monsters amongst the handful to be 'upgraded' to the newer format. In fairness, money would've been tight back then and the attraction of the numerous new shiny CD releases too much to resist for an old favourite.
Although checking now, I see that Words From the Front was denied a CD release until 2008, so maybe I'm somewhat forgiven and I've also stumbled on a (previously unseen by me!) video of the hypnotic title track.
Hearing many of these songs these last few days and others which had previously escaped me is a timely but ultimately sad reminder of the inspirational talent we have lost, still there is a legacy and his music is left behind for us to find and re-discover.
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