Album: Marquee Moon
Year: 1977
. . .
OK, let’s set the scene, as this is a day I’ve been mythologizing for nearly 45 years, though the exact date is lost to those 45 years. What I do know is that it’s late summer or early Autumn of 1978, and I’m just a couple few months shy of turning sixteen.
And it’s the day that I bought my first two punk rock albums.
And yeah, I know, I know. Television isn’t really punk rock, blah blah blah technicalitycakes. What matters is that to me, in 1978, they were part of the CBGBs New York punk rock scene that I’d been reading about. That’s what I knew. So fuck your authenticity.
Because by this time, I’d been reading about the CBGBs New York rock scene and the London punk rock scene in Creem and Rolling Stone and Circus — at least! — for about a year, buying each issue of each magazine as it showed up on the shelves of the Thrifty Drugs or maybe that weird little convenience store at the corner of Fruit and McKinley where I’d go in and buy a Tootsie Roll after getting off the bus that went down Fruit and waiting for the bus that went up McKinley that would drop me near San Joaquin Memorial High School, where I was entering my Junior year.
Sometimes Kevin was with me on those busses, and we would rate — like we were Olympics gymnastics judges — how well the cars made the left turn from Fruit onto McKinley, deciding that the ambulance drivers made the prettiest turns, because they had a higher degree of difficulty.
At first, I had resisted punk rock — as a teenager in 1970s Fresno, the instinct was always to resist anything new and weird, that’s how you stayed safe — but a year of reading all of those aforementioned magazines had worn me down. As had The Cars self-titled debut, which wasn’t punk, but definitely punk-adjacent, and had totally ruled that summer for me. And as I had a job that summer, I also had disposable income, which I instantly started disposing at Tower Records, riding my bike there every couple of weeks just to buy records, unless I could get Larry or Craig to take me there.
But it was time. Time to experiment. Time to experiment with something weird and well out of my comfort zone. But what? Because all I had to go on was what what I read in those magazines. Articles and reviews and pictures. They didn’t really play any of those bands on any radio station I could turn into, though I think I might have heard “Psycho Killer” on KBOS once, and maybe “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” Maybe. So all I really had was my guesses on what I might like, based upon those articles and reviews and pictures.
That was how we lived then.
So, the Sex Pistols or The Clash or Jam? Too rough. Too punk. Too scary. Talking Heads or Patti Smith or Blondie? Too arty. Too weird, Too conceptual. I wanted to rock. I wanted guitars. Guitars!! So I went with what was then the most recent Ramones album, Rocket to Russia, and the first Television album, Marquee Moon. I bought them at Tower on the same day, and rode my white ten-speed home to listen to these new records in my room. By myself. Loudly. Not really knowing what was going to happen next.
SPOILER ALERT: Everything. Everything happened next.
For the sake of this story, let’s say I listened to Rocket to Russia first. I’m pretty sure I had a basic idea of what it was going to sound like: short songs, singalong choruses, no guitar solos. Whereas I had no idea whatsoever what Television sounded like. I knew they had riffs and solos, and — egads! — longer songs than what I understood punk was supposed to be, but I couldn’t even imagine what they actually sounded like, which as it turned out, was for good reason: turns out they didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before in my life.
And so, I put on side one of Marquee Moon, and “See No Evil” just spilled out; Tom Verlaine’s three-note riff came out of one speaker, followed quickly by Fred Smith’s bass fanfare, and Billy Ficca’s drums, which were somehow echoing Verlaine’s riff but all providing forward momentum. And then over in the other speaker was Richard Lloyd, playing a bunch of notes that circled the entire song like a pack of wolves surrounding their prey, both providing color and dominating the entire proceedings.
(NOTE: I’m guessing here as to who is playing which guitar: I couldn’t find any definitive sources, and am basing it solely on YouTube clips of the song that have Verlaine playing the rhythm part.)
What even the fuck was this? There were too many moving parts to figure out. And that was before Tom Verlaine started that first verse, his voice strangulating on itself. A not-singer singing like he either doesn’t know or care that he’s not a singer.
What I want, I want now
And it’s a whole lot more than “anyhow”
I wanna fly, fly a fountain
I wanna jump, jump, jump, a-jump a mountain
But before I could wonder what any of that meant, the whole song changed as they floated into the chorus on a hail of hi-hat hits from Ficca, big chords from Verlaine in one speaker, while in the other speaker, Lloyd is ringing the doorbell to heaven, even as Verlaine’s vocals are invoking the other place.
I understand all (I see no)
Destructive urges (I see no)
But it seems so perfect (I see no)
I see, I see no evil
Where do you even start with that chorus? For me, it begins with the call-and response, the way that Smith and Lloyd break up Verlaine’s declarations that “I understand all destructive urges” as well as his assertion that “It seems so perfect” before Verlaine breaks it down to just a couple of power chords as he asserts “I see / I see no . . . “ before just letting it all hang out on “eeeeeevoooooooooooollllll!” while his guitar leads us all into the second verse.
I get ideas, I get a notion
I want a nice little boat made out of ocean
I get your point, you’re so sharp
Getting good reactions with your “BeBo” talk
Hilariously, the Genius website — normally my go-to for transcribing lyrics — has this second verse dead wrong, claiming that it’s “evil talk” instead of “BeBo” talk. My guess is whomever originally transcribed it hadn’t spent hours days weeks years staring at this lyric sheet in utter disbelief at Verlaine’s completely surreal lyrics. Maybe “BeBo” meant something to Verlaine, maybe not, and either way and now I’m thinking we shoulda called our podcast “Medialoper Bebo” instead of “Medialoper Bebop” in honor of that lyric, but since I just thought of it now, maybe not.
Or even better: “I see, I see, I see no bebooooooooo”
Anyways, after the second chorus comes Richard Lloyd’s solo. You see, I know it’s Richard Lloyd’s solo because it says so on the back cover: apparently Television didn’t really care if you know who played which licks and riffs, but they sure as shit wanted you to know who played the guitar solos. This was a thing that impressed me so much when I first bought Marquee Moon, I did the same thing when Sedan Delivery released Untitled: made sure Doc & Don got credit for which solos they took. (Which I’ll do again with our second album.)
Anyways, Lloyd’s solo just shoots out of the song, dancing and skittering all over the rest of the music, going on just exactly long enough before exploding into the final verse.
Don’t say “unconscious”, no, don’t say “doom”
Well, if you got to say it, oh, let me leave this room
‘Cause what I want, I want now
And it’s a whole lot more than “anyhow”, get it?
No, of course we don’t get it!! That’s what makes it so awesome! “See No Evil” is always on the verge of being comprehensible, of making sense, when of course it has no agenda except to convince us that whatever evil is out there, Tom Verlaine doesn’t see any of it. But that’s a crock, he’s protesting too much; he sees all of the evil, and maybe even more, especially during the coda, which starts out him doing things with “the one I love”, each one counterpointed by Lloyd and Smith also pretending they don’t see any evil, either. (If you read Lloyd’s amazingly weird autobiography, you’d know it was even more of a lie in his case.)
I’m running wild with the one I love
(I see no evil)
I’m going crazy with the one I love
(I see no evil)
I keep on dancing with the one I love
(I see no evil)
I saw R.E.M. cover “See No Evil,” — which they eventually released as one of their Christmas Singles — in Berkeley in 1985, and Michael Stipe prefaced it with “once upon a time there was the greatest album ever!!!!” as Peter Buck went into those opening chords and the crowd went crazy. A couple of years later — on the 20th anniversary of Marquee Moon — R.E.M. would have their first major hit with “The One I Love,” which I am going to absolutely 1000% assume was a phrase he cribbed from this song. And maybe Verlaine somehow knew it, because he switched it up from “the one I love” to “the one you love” for the rest of the coda.
You control the feelings of the one you love
(I see no evil)
You control the feelings of the one you love
(I see no evil)
You can feed the fires of the one you love
(I see no evil)
You combine fusion with the one you love
(I see no evil)
Pull down the future with the one you love
(I see no evil)
And at that point, he sticks with “Pull down the future with the one you love” while Smith & Lloyd help pull down that future by screaming “I see no evillllll” and Billy Ficca slams home some rolls as “See No Evil” fades into the apocalypse, the utter classic opening track of what might be the greatest album side in rock history.
And as for 15-year-old Jim, he couldn’t even imagine what was coming next.
SPOILER ALERT: Everything. Everything was coming next.
“See No Evil”
“See No Evil” Live 1992 (partial clip)
“See No Evil” Live in Rio, 2005
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