Sonic Transmission – Television, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell
“An Illustrated History”
Tim Mitchell
Glitter Books: London, United Kingdom, 150 pages

Review by Tony O’Neill

Good music writing can be a transformative experience, even if you don’t particularly care for the subject. I found THE DIRT–a book on the career and exploits of Motley Crue–a fascinating read, despite the fact that I am not a fan of the band. It was a book were you felt the passion of the band–a passion for getting laid, taking drugs, and–oh yeah–making music. Another favorite book of mine is DEEP IN A DREAM: THE LONG NIGHT OF CHET BAKER. Even if you are not a die-hard fan of the man’s music, the book will still be an unforgettable experience, getting into the dark side of the mans psyche as thoroughly as it does. DEEP IN A DREAM like all good biographical writing, was as entertaining as a good work of fiction, maybe even more so because it is tangibly real.

SONIC TRANSMISSION, unfortunately, falls far short of this kind of alchemic writing. The subject is undoubtedly a fascinating one–Television, one of the touchstone bands from the birth of punk, a band that stalled tragically two albums into it’s career, but left a legacy of amazing songs that pushed at the boundaries of what “punk” really was. Sadly SONIC TRANSMISSION offers no new insights into the fractured relationship between Television’s co-founders Tom Verlaine and Richard hell, and is content to cull all of it’s information from existing sources, coming across as more of an extended school project than a serious piece of music journalism.

Television remain a fascinating band because of the poetic roots from which the band sprung, and because of the scene they helped to create–the CBGB’s scene, The Ramones, Blondie, The Heartbreakers, Suicide … the white hot flashes of rock-and-roll purity which would alter the course of American music forever. Amazingly, there is no other book on the market which even attempts to tell the stories of Hell, Verlaine and Television.

The book catalogues the chaos and excesses of the band in an officious, offhand manner, capturing neither the grimy netherworld of New York’s Lower East Side in the mid 70’s, or the ice-cold, otherworldly splendor of the music created by Verlaine, Hell, Ficca, Lloyd and Smith.

Oddly, while the book claims to be a biography of “Television, Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell”, when Hell leaves he band he ceases to exist in the book (apart from a rather cursory chronology at the back) … It as if he never went on to form The Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, or the Voidoids, or indeed write his novels or books of poetry. Indeed this is not an omission limited to Hell: Verlaine’s life in the intervening years following the end of his solo career and Television’s late 90’s reformation are dispensed with in a couple of sentences, the author content to rely on Verlaine’s veiled account of what he did in the preceding decade “I went to the movies a couple of times.”

The book also suffers by looking like something of a rush job. The typos are too numerous to list, the first letters of paragraphs are routinely dropped, and most amusingly Nick Zedd’s cinema-of-transgression classic is given a new title … anyone for “Greek Maggot Bingo”?

Also hampering this account is the author lack of objectivity. Every release by the band is given a glowing analysis, even when the biggest of fans will recognize that the author is talking about some of the band’s lesser works. Listening to the author’s gushing account of the bands self-titled 90’s comeback album, I found myself wondering if he and I had heard the same album as I.

So whether to recommend the book … for die-hard Television fans, it is, as I mentioned earlier, the only product available. But frankly, a detailed net search would unearth most of the information that this book provides. There are no new revelations, no new photographs even (just badly reproduced promotional shots), and the soul of Television remains tantalizingly out of reach.

If you haven’t already read it, PLEASE KILL ME, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, covers the bands early days in much more vivid detail, and is a vastly more entertaining read. I am a great believer that it is the sum total that makes the story of a band–the friendships, the fallings out, the drugs, the mistakes … not just a list of gigs dates and production notes. Like Television’s later albums this book could be summed up as unfinished, overly technical, and rather dry.

Tony O’Neill is a novelist and poet. Originally from the United Kingdom, he now makes his home in New York City.