A couple of weeks ago when seeing the Stiffs the singer said that the Ramones invented punk rock. Well I did take issue with that at the time but said nothing but I thought I'd pass on my view on this occurrence. It was Television - when they had Richard Hell on bass before he was in the Heartbreakers and the Voidoids. Maclaren was manging the Dolls at the time when Television supported them and was immediately impressed by their ripped t-shirts, spikey short hair and nihilistic style. He asked Hell to come back to the UK to front a band he was going to put together. Hell wasn't interested, but the style was adopted by Mclaren when he formed the Sex Pistols - so you can see how the whole transatlantic thing was spawned by TV. Television were hugely influential musically too but there are few recordings that testify to their glory days apart from some live bootlegs of varying quality. One track appears on the recent Hell compilation 'Spurts' which is a must-have album, worth buying for the blistering guitarwork of the lately departed Robert Quine. Hell bio from own website
Enjoy this classic clip...
Ralphadeus. Music movies comics feature in this look at life from Somerset.
No comments:
Post a Comment