‘Marquee Moon’: How Television’s Debut Album Tuned Into A New Frequency

The backstory: “I like the energy of so-called punk music but I don’t like the sound of it”

After signing with Elektra Records, guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca headed to iconic producer Phil Ramone’s A&R Recording Studios, on 48th Street, in Midtown Manhattan, to embark on the sessions for what would become Marquee Moon. Enlisting engineer Andy Johns as co-producer, due to the fact that he’d worked on The Rolling Stones’ 1973 album, Goats Head Soup, Television set about recreating their live material in a studio setting. “With Marquee Moon, all the songs were songs we had already hashed out and honed for two or three years,” Lloyd said. “We’d played them live hundreds of times. We were ready.”

The recording: “We kept increasing the volume, until, finally, he sat bolt upright, panicky, paranoid as all hell”

It’s easy to assume that most punk-era acts had a slapdash approach to recording, but it was clear from the offset that Television were perfectionists. From the hypnotic, web-weaving riff of Marquee Moon’s opening track, See No Evil, the rambunctious sound Television aimed for belied its complexity, the song kicking off with intermeshing guitar stabs before Lloyd lets rip with an intricately arranged solo. However, though their sound was considered, the spirited nature of the group’s playing – not to mention Verlaine’s unschooled yelping – had much in common with the punk ethos.

Despite once counting infamous 70s punk rocker Richard Hell (of The Voidoids) among their members, Television always felt uneasy about being lumped in with the punk-rock explosion. “I like the energy of so-called punk music but I don’t like the sound of it,” Verlaine admitted in 1978. “To me it’s really boring.” If the crystalline guitar tones of Marquee Moon’s second track, Venus, prove anything, it’s that Television were forging their own path, with Verlaine’s lyrics pondering the goddess of love. “The arms of Venus De Milo are everywhere,” the singer said in an interview with Creem magazine, in 1977. “It’s a term for a state of feeling. They’re loving arms.”

“It’s like a mini-symphony. There’s a part that’s loud and there’s a part that’s soft, and there’s a build-up”

With the freewheeling rhythm of Friction propelling Television into snaking guitar lines and toying with atonal fret-rattling, the band’s gutsy sense of ambition is palpable. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Marquee Moon’s epic ten-minute title track, a shimmering work of majesty full of Lloyd’s shuffling call-and-response riffing and Verlaine’s enigmatic wordplay. “It’s like a mini-symphony,” Lloyd later said when attempting to describe the song. “There’s a part that’s loud and there’s a part that’s soft, and there’s a build-up.” Culminating in a sprawling and convoluted solo from Lloyd, Marquee Moon is a wondrous, free-form dive into a chasm of unhindered imagination. Upon its release as a single in April 1977, the song would go on to peak at No.30 in the UK.

Lloyd’s intuitive approach to playing made it seem to many as though he had no forebears. As it happened, the guitarist was a student of classic rock, which makes his avoidance of blues-based soloing all the more astonishing. “Elevation is probably my favourite, because it’s letter-perfect,” Lloyd later said in an interview with Damien Love. “I would often play imagining some of the people I’d known when I was younger – [Jimi] Hendrix or Jimmy Page – were looking over my shoulder.” Positively spellbinding in every sense of the word, Lloyd’s virtuosic impulses continue unabated into Guiding Light, bathing a phosphorescent groove in gentle arpeggios.

Imbued with duck-like guitar quacks and a gumshoe kiss-off from Verlaine (“This case is closed!”), Prove It was recorded when co-producer Andy Johns fell asleep in his chair after drinking a bottle of red wine, and the band decided run through the track without him. “We kept increasing the volume, until, finally, Andy snorted himself awake,” Lloyd said. “He sat bolt upright, panicky, paranoid as all hell.” Issued in July 1977 as Marquee Moon’s third single, Prove It would reach No.25 in the UK.

The legacy: “It’s been on Top 10 lists and Top 50 lists and Top 100 lists, and I hope it stays on those lists”

Released on 8 February 1977, Marquee Moon sold 80,000 copies in the US, but, despite being a crucial part of New York City’s CBGB scene, Television achieved greater commercial success across the Atlantic. Championed by both BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel and David Bowie (“The most original band I’ve seen in New York. They’ve got it”), Marquee Moon quickly gained a cult following in the UK. Yet despite finding themselves lumped into the first wave of punk acts to break through to the mainstream, it was clear that, with their debut album, Television had found a way to explore unfamiliar facets of guitar-based music that helped give rock’n’roll a new lease of life. “I’m very proud of that record,” Richard Lloyd said in an interview with Consequence Of Sound. “It’s been on Top 10 lists and Top 50 lists and Top 100 lists, and I hope it stays on those lists.”

Wrenching themselves free from the strictures of the blues, Verlaine and Lloyd’s twin guitar attacks often yielded angular and fragmentary guitar riffs that almost verged on jazz-rock, the pair jamming lengthy and resplendent compositions that somehow avoided the pretentious pitfalls that punk’s prog-rock rivals were accused of falling into. Marquee Moon influenced a whole generation of new wave and post-punk acts to look beyond the primal bursts of rage beloved by the safety-pinned masses and embrace a more cerebral and arty direction. Proving themselves accomplished musicians in their own right, Television’s fresh take on rock’n’roll was just as revolutionary as the brash and amateurish three-chord attacks of most of their punk-rock contemporaries,

Find out where ‘Marquee Moon’ ranks among our best debut albums of all time.