The Quiet Man

Television veteran Tom Verlaine has gone his own unpretentious way for years, quietly turning out superlative albums and occasionally touring. Tony Clayton-Lea talks to an artist of few words but plenty on his mind.

THE words "blood", "from" and "stone" spring to mind, but then we are talking about (and, after a fashion, to) the Quiet Man of US punk - not so much the Lower East Side version of JD Salinger but the soft-spoken, reflective type who mooches around Greenwich Village bookstores on a Sunday afternoon, a man with a face you know you've seen several times before but can't quite put a name to.

Tom Verlaine has always been the silent type, but sometimes they're the ones you have to look out for. They're the ones who take the names of French poets as their own, the ones who are transformed from weeds to flowers under the glow of a spotlight, the ones whose gifts manage to make it from one decade to the next without being diminished or undermined by over-familiarity.

Certainly, one could not accuse Verlaine (born Thomas Miller, Mount Morris, New Jersey, 1949) of flooding the marketplace with his music. We know of his work with Television (more about which later). But since they split up almost 30 years ago, Verlaine has released a mere nine records; the latest two, one instrumental (Around) and one song-based (Songs and Other Things), released simultaneously, are his first new recordings since 1992's Warm and Cool.

Verlaine stumbles and stops and starts throughout the conversation. A naturally reticent person, it's clear he doesn't enjoy the process, but occasionally he'll let rip with a flurry of words. In some ways he is the personification of his guitar work: brittle, fluid, underlined with a tension and nervousness that make way for a series of uncluttered thoughts. And then the song comes to an end and he clams up.

He talks of the efficiency of recording simply and quickly, and of how keeping the momentum going is important to the work he does. He doesn't dwell, however, on why it took him almost 14 years to come up with enough songs to fill two albums, but presumably life and the like just got in the way - reforming Television in 1991 and sporadically recording and touring; producing Jeff Buckley's new recordings shortly before the singer's tragic death in 1997. And so on.

Verlaine says he isn't a particularly efficient person, which goes some way to explaining his loose sense of momentum, but his methods have at least a resistance to change. He strayed into New York from New Jersey in 1968 and has never left. It's still his favourite city, and not even 9/11 could shake his belief in its beauty. Galvanised is not the right word to use in relation to how he felt in the period following the attacks on the WTC; neither was he inspired or spurred on to formulate thoughts about what happened.

"I don't think that happened to me," he admits. "And it's got nothing to do with the work on these new records. That was such a monstrous thing, it's hard to be clear in my own mind how events such as this can lead to the creation of art. I don't know what the relation is, but let's put it this way: I know I've never sat down consciously to create something that is a reaction to that. It's possible I'm the kind of person who takes a while to assimilate certain emotions and gradually puts them out. So, yes, probably my reactions are delayed - and perhaps will be, even by years."

By his own admission, and not something that's foisted upon him by a cynical media, Verlaine is viewed as one of rock's least egotistical characters. He dislikes the word "recluse" but admits that he's "not the biggest party guy in the world, and I'm not crazy about dance clubs, either." He hesitates to describe himself as reflective. "It sounds monk-like, which I don't feel to be. I get around in my own way."

Irrespective of his solo work, and his veneer of compact self-isolation, Verlaine will always have people asking him about his work with Television, the New York band that fired up and sputtered out in the space of a few years, leaving a bona fide classic rock album (Marquee Moon) and a comparatively poor follow-up (Adventure) in its wake. The band was revived in 1991, and since then Verlaine has engaged in sporadic touring and highly irregular bouts of songwriting.

"We average one new song every 18 months, so our next record will be out within a couple of years We're not exactly prolific, but it works that way for us."

Why does it take so long? "I tend to concentrate more on solo stuff, but everyone in Television has things of their own going on as well, so it's a matter of scheduling and having to plan far ahead for things, which I'm not really into. I think when you have to start planning that far ahead it gets a bit too much. I've never been one to do that. I'm not a diary-led person.

"And you have to remember that, historically, making records was so much easier. Material was recorded on a Friday and it would be in the shops the following week. People were well capable of doing this and being excited about it. And record companies liked to do it. Now, though, from the day you sign a deal with somebody to when you put a record out takes a minimum of maybe a year. It's such a shame. I prefer the old method of getting things done quickly."

Reluctantly, he talks about Marquee Moon. It's a terrific record, of course, but does he think that too much has been written about it

"I wouldn't know how much has been written about it," he says, edging towards clamming up again. "It gets mentioned a lot and for me it's good that newer generations are listening to it and liking it. The people that have mentioned it to me in the past 10 years or so have been young enough to be my children, which is interesting. What is it about music journalists, though? Most steer interviews around to the past, and I object somewhat because I don't want to really talk about that record anymore. I don't know why people have such an interest in it."

Do you find it irritating that we'd rather talk about Marquee Moon than your solo work "Sometimes. I just don't get it. So much has been said about it there's probably not much more that can be said."

Does it annoy him even more at solo live shows when people shout for the title track (which, for those who might not have heard it, features a series of shimmering rock guitar solo masterpieces in the space of over ten minutes)a

"Funnily enough, no. I did about a dozen dates in the US recently, and it only got shouted out twice, which I thought was interesting. I don't think people who go to my solo shows come to hear songs off that album, because they know Television play now and again. So at least that worked out pretty good."

And that's it. Verlaine is off the promotional duty hook. He breathes an audible sigh of relief. Where's he off to now, then "There's a good second-hand bookshop near where I live, so maybe there for a browse."

Tom Verlaine appears at Dublin's Village on tonight. Roundstone and Other Things are on Thrill Jockey