Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman for the New York rock band Television...
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth13 December 1949
europe elements radio
There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something".
song thinking ideas
People ask me this a lot, what a song's about.... I do think analyzing a song can be interesting, although it doesn't necessarily get to the point. It's a whole other side activity. I do like making a thing into pictures. If I get an abstract idea and all the words in it don't represent tangible things, I might try to take the idea and make it into a picture, create a little scene there, an image.
writing knows
You know, there is something I'm looking for when I'm writing. But I couldn't tell you what that is.
trying
Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.
television vices negative
I can't presume to speak for the others, but I never felt anything negative from anyone when I was onstage with Television. When I played rhythm behind Lloyd, the only thing that concerned me was to push him as hard as I could so that he'd go beyond what he was capable of and come up with something new, and vice versa. That's the only thing that mattered.
order television madness
I've got a quote for you, a good quote to describe Television...In madness there is order.
interest stardom
I really don't have that much interest in stardom.
people way sincerely
I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can react to it sincerely.
mistake years people
It's like first grade where you make all your mistakes and people see it and yet some people see that there's something there that's really valuable. That's the way it went for more than 2 years almost 3 years of playing.
audience
I'm not even sure who my audience is.
expression sound kind
You can't get so interested in just making sounds. The point of it all is some kind of expression.