Fact #117249
When:
Short story:
Television make their debut at CBGB’s club, New York City, USA. According to punk chronicler Clinton Heylin, ‘It was the beginning of a six month period in which post-glam NY rock and roll coalesced into a small but highly active scene. Throughout this period, Television continued to play every Sunday at CBGB, regularly attracting between 20 and 30 people.’ Full article:
Bob Gruen (rock photographer) : When CBGB’s started up, Television and Patti Smith used to play there. And then you’d see the Ramones, Debbie Harry and the Stilettos, Wayne County, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, etc. The story goes that Richard Hell, who was a junkie who woke with his hair messed up, had his only set of clothes cut up by his girlfriend, so he turned up at CBGB’s with his clothes held together with safety pins. Malcolm McLaren was there, saw him and thought it was a fascinating style!
Hilly Kristal (owner, CBGB’s) : One day I was putting up the awning for CBGB’s when Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd walked by and saw me up the ladder, and we talked about this club that I was starting and they went on their way.
Richard Lloyd (Television) : Tom and I were walking down from his house to the loft in Chinatown, and we passed this place which the owner was outside fixing up. We asked if maybe we could play there, and he told us he was going to call the place Country Blue Grass and Blues. So we said, ‘Yes, we play stuff like that. We do all kinds of stuff including our own original material.’
Hilly Kristal : I didn’t even give it another thought until about a week later, when this very dynamic man, Terry Ork, a non-stop talker, comes in and he’s their manager. He told me they were a wonderful band, but they had nowhere to play except Club 82, and in the end Terry persuaded me to put them in on a Sunday.
Richard Lloyd : He gave us a gig, so we got a whole bunch of friends down and convinced him to give us every Sunday for a month.
Hilly Kristal : They had their own guy on the door who charged a dollar, which was theirs, and I would get the bar takings. I was closed on Sundays anyway, so it was better than being closed.
So they came in, they were Television, and they were just horrible, horrible, horrible. Admittedly, we had a little dinky sound system, which was fine for bluegrass, but not for rock, so that was part of the problem, but they were really not together, and I was used to hearing good musicians. They hadn’t found themselves yet. They desperately needed a place to play.
Billy Ficca overplayed too much on the drums. The weakest musician was Richard Hell, on bass, certainly less than average. Tom was a good guitarist from the starts. Richard Lloyd was good but very erratic, but they were not together, and hardly anybody came to see them.
Duncan Hannah (audience) : Onstage Hell And Verlaine looked like they could blow up at any minute. Sometimes they’d have a fight on stage.
Hilly Kristal : My first response was to say, ‘No! No more!’ but Terry insisted that they were going to practice really hard, and he said he had another band from Queens, and they could both play. There was no real reason not to do it. It wasn’t costing me anything. So we tried again with both bands a couple of weeks later.
Richard Hell (bassist, Television) : The scene definitely started snowballing. CBGB’s was clearly where things were happening, from the very first time we played there. We were really unique. There was not another rock’n’roll band in the world with short hair. There was not another rock’n’roll band with torn clothes.
Richard Lloyd (guitarist, television) : Malcolm McLaren wanted to manage Television. He was managing the New York Dolls, who at the time were in a slump. He had them dressed in red leather, patent leather, with a communist flag in the backdrop. We did a co-bill for one week in Manhattan. Some dive. Malcolm fell in love with Television, and wanted to manage us.
When he was turned down, he went back to England and used the image that he had gotten from us, from Richard Hell, and started marketing the image in his wife's clothing shop. Ripped clothing. The safety pins, the stitches, which was Richard Hell's idea!
So then they got some kids together, and he got the wild idea of "It doesn't matter if they can play or not. The excitement is there." So anyways, that's where the Sex Pistols came from. In fact, irrespective of what others may say, any media, that's completely from the horse's mouth.
(Source : not known)
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Hilly Kristal (owner, CBGB’s) : One day I was putting up the awning for CBGB’s when Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd walked by and saw me up the ladder, and we talked about this club that I was starting and they went on their way.
Richard Lloyd (Television) : Tom and I were walking down from his house to the loft in Chinatown, and we passed this place which the owner was outside fixing up. We asked if maybe we could play there, and he told us he was going to call the place Country Blue Grass and Blues. So we said, ‘Yes, we play stuff like that. We do all kinds of stuff including our own original material.’
Hilly Kristal : I didn’t even give it another thought until about a week later, when this very dynamic man, Terry Ork, a non-stop talker, comes in and he’s their manager. He told me they were a wonderful band, but they had nowhere to play except Club 82, and in the end Terry persuaded me to put them in on a Sunday.
Richard Lloyd : He gave us a gig, so we got a whole bunch of friends down and convinced him to give us every Sunday for a month.
Hilly Kristal : They had their own guy on the door who charged a dollar, which was theirs, and I would get the bar takings. I was closed on Sundays anyway, so it was better than being closed.
So they came in, they were Television, and they were just horrible, horrible, horrible. Admittedly, we had a little dinky sound system, which was fine for bluegrass, but not for rock, so that was part of the problem, but they were really not together, and I was used to hearing good musicians. They hadn’t found themselves yet. They desperately needed a place to play.
Billy Ficca overplayed too much on the drums. The weakest musician was Richard Hell, on bass, certainly less than average. Tom was a good guitarist from the starts. Richard Lloyd was good but very erratic, but they were not together, and hardly anybody came to see them.
Duncan Hannah (audience) : Onstage Hell And Verlaine looked like they could blow up at any minute. Sometimes they’d have a fight on stage.
Hilly Kristal : My first response was to say, ‘No! No more!’ but Terry insisted that they were going to practice really hard, and he said he had another band from Queens, and they could both play. There was no real reason not to do it. It wasn’t costing me anything. So we tried again with both bands a couple of weeks later.
Richard Hell (bassist, Television) : The scene definitely started snowballing. CBGB’s was clearly where things were happening, from the very first time we played there. We were really unique. There was not another rock’n’roll band in the world with short hair. There was not another rock’n’roll band with torn clothes.
Richard Lloyd (guitarist, television) : Malcolm McLaren wanted to manage Television. He was managing the New York Dolls, who at the time were in a slump. He had them dressed in red leather, patent leather, with a communist flag in the backdrop. We did a co-bill for one week in Manhattan. Some dive. Malcolm fell in love with Television, and wanted to manage us.
When he was turned down, he went back to England and used the image that he had gotten from us, from Richard Hell, and started marketing the image in his wife's clothing shop. Ripped clothing. The safety pins, the stitches, which was Richard Hell's idea!
So then they got some kids together, and he got the wild idea of "It doesn't matter if they can play or not. The excitement is there." So anyways, that's where the Sex Pistols came from. In fact, irrespective of what others may say, any media, that's completely from the horse's mouth.
(Source : not known)