I'm comfortable in that I don't see Verlaine having come up with any of the faster, more difficult stuff. He has a great knack for cool 'simple' playing, but all the cool faster runs were Lloyd's - he had the knack for those. If you look at Verlaine's solo stuff and what he did/does in Television post-Lloyd there's none of that type of thing. It seems that Lloyd should have got much more official writing credit than he did.scottT wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:44 amI don't think the fact that Verlaine wrote a lot of the riffs diminishes the contributions of Lloyd. In fact, though the interview gives a rough breakdown of the division of labor, I still don't feel significantly closer to knowing who did what than I did before.
https://www.discogs.com/Television-Marq ... ase/557233
"Songwriter [Songs Written By] – Tom Verlaine (tracks: 1 to 5, 7 to 13) "
So Lloyd only got writing credit on Guiding Light (6). None on Elevation (and others?) where he devised and played the key guitar parts that make that song !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquee_Moon
Richard Lloyd – guitar (solo on tracks 1, 4, 5, and 6), vocals
Tom Verlaine – guitar (solo on tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, eight), keyboards, lead vocals, production
1. "See No Evil"
2. "Venus"
3. "Friction"
4. "Marquee Moon"
5. "Elevation"
6. "Guiding Light" (Verlaine and Richard Lloyd)
7. "Prove It"
8. "Torn Curtain"
"If he had a guitar part he couldn’t play while singing he’d give me the part, and I would make it mine. Like, on “Marquee Moon,” basically, I just took over his part so that he could solo."
The part that Lloyd plays (for 5 minutes straight !) in back of Verlaine's 'stream of consciousness' solo is the two-finger/two-chord 'riff' that Verlaine plays at the start. That's the sort of 'riff' that Verlaine came up with. Don't get me wrong - I love simple riffs ... I think it was Rowland Howard who said 'If you can play one note well you can play guitar' .. I totally agree - I mostly hate 'virtuouso' guitarists. But I do think it's fairly clear who did what in Television.
I think we're probably all in agreement that Television was a Verlaine / Lloyd thing (plus Smith / Ficca) ... and only Verlaine took issue with that.