re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

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Tom Verlaine, singer and guitarist for punk legends Television who crafted the band’s 1977 masterpiece Marquee Moon, has died at the age of 73.

Jesse Paris Smith, the daughter of Patti Smith, confirmed Verlaine’s death following a “brief illness” to Rolling Stone on Saturday. “He died peacefully in New York City, surrounded by close friends. His vision and his imagination will be missed,” Smith wrote.

“This is a time when all seemed possible,” Patti Smith wrote in a tribute on Instagram, which included a photo of her and Verlaine. “Farewell Tom, aloft the Omega.”

Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine (who adopted his last name from the French poet Paul Verlaine), was high school classmates with fellow punk icon Richard Hell, with whom he’d later form his earliest bands. Arriving in Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the dawn of punk, Verlaine and Hell first teamed up for the short-lived act Neon Boys before co-founding Television in 1973 alongside guitarist Richard Lloyd.

Verlaine and Television honed their sound as one of the premier acts at legendary punk clubs like CBGB — establishing one of the earliest residencies at that venue — and Max’s Kansas City. Patti Smith — who once likened Verlaine’s guitar sound to “a thousand bluebirds screaming” — was in the audience for one of Television’s early shows in 1974, and split the bill with Television when the Patti Smith Group made their CBGB debut the following year.

Hell would soon leave Television to join fellow punk act the Heartbreakers. With Verlaine and Lloyd taking the reins, the duo developed a guitar sound that merged punk riffs with jazz interplay. After making their recorded debut with the 1975 single “Little Johnny Jewel,” Television released what was their masterpiece — and one of the greatest albums of the punk era — Marquee Moon, the centerpiece of which was the album’s twisty, mesmerizing title track. (The album was, as Rolling Stone noted in the review, “the most interesting and audacious” of a series of 1977 releases from CBGB bands like Blondie and the Ramones, but “also the most unsettling.”)

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