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.When Richard Hell left the band he was may say.Let’s face it, man, when two best friends sort doing all kinds of heavy drugs, and at that same timeof go separate ways.when that bond is severed, then Nick Kent was in New York and moved in with him forboth parties usually discover feelings about each other a couple of weeks.Richard at that time was super-bitter that are based on hurt, on aspects of rejection that often about any involvements he’d had with me, and he totally manifest themselves openly in very juvenile ways.broke off our friendship.I didn’t have anything against“And that’s not a slight on him.I was probably ashim when he left the band.I was still willing to spend bad.”34time with him, because I like the guy a lot.he’s my best friend.But all of a sudden there was no communication.Then Terry Ork told me that this guy was livingwith Richard.and he never came over to talk to me.34 Kent (1977b).• 112 •• 113 •M A R Q U E E M O O NB RYA N WAT E R M A NSo whatever Richard told him is, like, all this garbage with transatlantic punk, which kept an emphasis onthat came out of bitterness.35the original impulse to stick it to the record industry.Though some believed that punk had commercialThere’s more here than just “he said/he said” betweenpotential in the late ’70s, its mass appeal would remain former friends.The Hell/Verlaine split has beenmuch more limited than would the art-pop new wavetaken to indicate tensions running through the entirestylings of Blondie or Talking Heads.scene.The critic Bernard Gendron, for instance, reads Fred Smith’s arrival was to Television what Lloyd’sthis conflict as competing discourses — art versushad been to the erstwhile Neon Boys.Things fell intopop — with Verlaine representing high-minded artplace.The band’s sound tightened, taking on a moreaspirations and Hell representing punk’s DIY ethosstreamlined tone.Like Verlaine and Ficca, Smith hadand pop image-orientation.On the larger scene,played in bands throughout high school.A ForestGendron argues, art rockers like Talking Heads linedHills, Queens, native, he’d joined a short-lived bandup with Television and Patti Smith, while the Ramonescalled Captain Video in 1971 and had responded tosided with the “fuck art, let’s rock” agenda of Hell and Elda Gentile’s ad for a bass player a few years later, his later bands, the Heartbreakers and Voidoids.36which led him to the Stillettoes.Photos of Fred withBut this view, though compelling, overlooks waysthe Stillettoes show him in full flash mode: knee boots, in which the Ramones and Blondie (and the Dollsvelvet shirts, long hair parted down the middle andbefore them) grew out of Pop contexts (not just pop,feathered, eye shadow and lipstick.37 Fred’s bass playing lower-case p); Hell’s very image for Television betrays was certainly more fluid and jazz-derived than Hell’s, a Warholian influence.Plus, part of Hell and Verlaine’s better fit with Verlaine’s impulse to improvise on long, beef seems to have resulted from Verlaine’s desire for rollicking numbers like “Breakin In My Heart,” whichbroad commercially viability.Contra Gendron, whatshared ground with Patti Smith’s improvisatory style.emerged during CBGB’s first phase was nearly the“At the first rehearsal me and Lloyd [were] lookinginverse of his art/pop dynamic, one that aligns art and at each other and thinking, ‘God, this is a real relief.’pop bands like Patti Smith Group, Television, TalkingIt was like having a lightning rod you could sparkHeads, Blondie, and the Ramones with aspirationsaround.Something was there that wasn’t there before.for commercial success and left other bands — theFred could follow stuff.I remember starting up in the Voidoids, the Dead Boys — more closely identifiedlonger songs and being able to do stuff that wouldn’t35 Kendall (1977).37 See, for example, Bangs (1980: p.17); Harry, et al.(1998 [1982], 36 Gendron (2002: pp.252–4).p.18).• 114 •• 115 •M A R Q U E E M O O NB RYA N WAT E R M A Nthrow everybody.”38 Though such comments emergedmarginal at CB’s, to the degree that one writer,from the drawn-out feud with Hell, and so should bereviewing the previous weekend’s “gay erotic poetrytaken with a grain of salt, Smith’s arrival — and therock” of Emilio Cubeiro, warned of a “precarious sexelimination of Hell’s material and stage presence —stance” increasingly inhospitable to women and gays.pushed Television toward Marquee Moon’s emphasis“[T]he musician-dominated C.B.G.B.crowd,” thison precision over rough proximity, even as many fanscritic worried, was wary of threats to “their heterosexual mourned the loss of Hell’s energy on stage.superiority (and usually sexist) bag.” Characterizing the After 20 nights with Patti, and still weathering Hell’s crowd as “young city rednecks” bristling with “teenage departure, Television played three more four-nightmachismo,” he reported that some audience membersstands at CBGB’s through June, each with a week orwere heckling “faggots” to get off the stage.40 Withtwo off in between, headlining over the Modern Loversthe Dolls’ demise, glitter’s wane seemed inevitable.as well as newcomers like Planets and the Shirts.InAnother blow fell in May, when Eric Emerson wasearly June, between Television’s runs, Talking Headskilled by a hit and run driver while biking near themade their CBGB’s debut opening for the Ramones.West Side Highway.By now CB’s was drawing a couple hundred people perThe end of the glitter era seemed to be confirmednight.But problems seemed to loom on the horizon.by the UK press’ first major report on CBGB’s.TheIn May, Betrock reported a crowd of around 150 forNME, which had mentioned Television the previ-Marbles and the Ramones on a Monday “new bandous summer in a feature on the post-Mercer scene,night,” including members of several other bands: “2sent 24-year-old Charles Shaar Murray to gaugeTelevisions; 3 Milk ‘n’ Cookies; 2 Mumps; 1 Planets; 2the local effects of Patti Smith’s signing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]