Patti Smith pens heartfelt Tom Verlaine tribute: “There was no one like Tom”
Patti Smith has paid tribute to late Television frontman Tom Verlaine in a new essay.
The singer, guitarist and songwriter died last weekend (January 28), aged 73, following a “brief illness”.
His passing was confirmed by Jesse Paris Smith (daughter of Patti) in a press release, which said Verlaine “died peacefully in New York City” while “surrounded by close friends”.
News of his death was followed by tributes from Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ Flea, Tim Burgess, Primal Scream and more.
Posting a tribute on Instagram this weekend, Patti Smith, who previously dated and collaborated with Verlaine, wrote: “This is a time when all seemed possible. Farrwell Tom, aloft the Omega.”
The singer-songwriter has now paid fresh tribute to the late musician with an essay in the New Yorker, recalling his creative process of “exquisite torment”.
“He awoke to the sound of water dripping into a rusted sink,” she began, recalling how he “lay shuddering, riveted by flickering movements of aliens and angels as the words and melodies of [debut album] ‘Marquee Moon’ were formed, drop by drop, note by note, from a state of calm yet sinister excitement.
“He was Tom Verlaine, and that was his process: exquisite torment.”
The singer went on to explain that the musician lived 28 minutes from where she was raised, but they never crossed paths.
“We could easily have sauntered into the same Wawa on the Wilmington-South Jersey border in search of Yoo-hoo or Tastykakes,” Smith continued. “We might have met, two black sheep, on some rural stretch, each carrying books of the poetry of French Symbolists—but we didn’t.
“That was, until Easter night, April 14, 1974. Lenny Kaye and I took a rare taxi ride from the Ziegfeld Theatre after seeing the première of “Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones,” straight down to the Bowery to see a new band called Television.”
She added: “What we saw that night was kin, our future, a perfect merging of poetry and rock and roll. As I watched Tom play, I thought, Had I been a boy, I would’ve been him.”
Smith explained that she would see Television whenever they played, “mostly to see Tom, with his pale blue eyes and swanlike neck”.
“He bowed his head, gripping his Jazzmaster, releasing billowing clouds, strange alleyways populated with tiny men, a murder of crows, and the cries of bluebirds rushing through a replica of space. All transmuted through his long fingers, all but strangling the neck of his guitar.”
The pair grew closer, she continued, recalling that each other’s bookcases were “nearly identical, even those by authors difficult to find”.
“He was angelic yet slightly demonic, a cartoon character with the grace of a dervish. I knew him then,” she continued.
“There was no one like Tom. He possessed the child’s gift of transforming a drop of water into a poem that somehow begat music. In his last days, he had the selfless support of devoted friends. Having no children, he welcomed the love he received from my daughter, Jesse, and my son, Jackson.
“In his final hours, watching him sleep, I travelled backward in time. We were in the apartment, and he cut my hair, and some pieces stuck out this way and that, so he called me Winghead. In the years to follow, simply Wing. Even when we got older, always Wing. And he, the boy who never grew up, aloft the Omega, a golden filament in the vibrant violet light.”
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe was among others to share their reverence for the late proto-punk icon, sharing: “I’ve lost a hero.”
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Hollie Geraghty
NME
