You may ask questions about any matters whatsoever, and I will answer you as best I can. "No one has ever found a limit to the storage capacity of the human brain".






Hi Richard,

What is the deal with that white or blonde Telecaster shown in the liner notes to the Marquee Moon reissue? Looks like it's missing the pickguard and it had the neck pickup routed for a humbucker at some point (but it looks like it has another Tele bridge pickup or something shoehorned in there). Anyway it looks super dirty and really cool. What ever happened to it?

Also, I was wondering how some of the tracks on Marquee Moon were recorded or processed. On Venus in particular, one of the guitar parts sounds kind of like it's doubled or lightly chorused, but that doesn't seem like a "Television" thing to do. Every note seems to decay differently. Maybe it's just a really short reverb? Anyway it sounds great.

Rob Chaney

Dear Rob,

Thank you for writing. When I was in Los Angeles during the early 70s I bought a Sunburst custom telly -- at the time I could not afford a Stratocaster. When I got back to New York and we formed Television that was my main guitar. I couldn't stand the Sunburst so I sanded it down to natural wood and painted it different colors -- pink at one point, black at another and so on. One of the pickups broke and it ended up having only one pickup -- I can't remember what kind but I only used the one pickup from then on. It was jerryrigged but I didn't care. Then I got my 1961 Stratocaster and eventually I sold the telecaster for practically nothing. If I had it now it would be worth quite a bit, but that's the way it goes. Both that telecaster and the Stratocaster are on our first record.

Tom Verlaine kept talking about making a "live" sounding record. I felt as if the record should have qualities which could only be accomplished in the studio. I have always been able to play the same thing exactly over and over, whereas Tom (aside from the rhythm parts) could not play exactly the same phraseology in his solos. When Andy Johns began recording us I suggested that I could double my parts -- I got this idea from both the Phil Spector productions and also from the Beatles. I thought that this doubling of certain of my rhythm parts and of my lead solos would lend some additional credibility and phenomena to the record. Andy was quite surprised that I had this skill and Tom enjoyed the subtle chorusing which was much more pleasant than any kind of chorus effect. We used no effects whatsoever on Marquee Moon -- just guitars into amplifiers.

All of the doubling on the record including the solo to Elevation are mine. In fact, one of the songs I cowrote for the record, "Guiding Light" has eight tracks in certain places of me doing the same part.

I hope that answers your question. There is as far as I know, no artificial reverb on the record, and no chorusing whatsoever. In one of my solos we wanted to use a revolving speaker but it was too expensive to rent those things they use with the organs, so Andy Johns swung a microphone like a lasso while I played -- it's very subtle, but it did the trick.

Best regards,
Richard Lloyd



hello richard, this is adam. i read that you gave jeff tweedy a guitar lesson and was wondering about some of the things you talked about, seeing as how i love both his and your playing. hopefully you can shed some light on this. i plan on checking out some of the lessons on your site and appreciate them very much!

thanks, adam

Hello Adam,
Thank you for writing, and for your interest in Jeff Tweedy and myself. Unfortunately, private lessons are just that -- private. For that reason, I cannot answer your questions with respect to what might have taken place between us, but we are and have been friends for a rather longtime -- Wilco opened a number of shows for Matthew Sweet many years ago when I was on tour with Matthew. We all became warm friends then and remain so, even though Jeff lives in Chicago and I live in New York. His wife called me a couple of years ago because she wanted to get him a guitar lesson from me for his birthday. So I flew to Chicago and we spend the day together. And I just saw him a month or so ago in Brazil when we both played at the Tim Festival in Rio de Janeiro.

Best regards,
Richard Lloyd



Why is the picking up point for all the tuning scheme the note E? Why bottom E? why don't we have, let us say, the lowest note on the guitar being a G?

I've been wondering about this for quite a while...

Good question. I am not sure I have the complete answer, but it may be a simple matter. The length of the string scale (distance from bridge to nut), intonation and thickness of the strings determines the optimum pitch for resonance. Certainly there are other tunings which can be used - as low as a baritone, which can be tuned as follows: B,E,A,D,F#,B. But the string scale would need to be longer for this type, and the truss rod and intonations  would be different. With a regular guitar, when one figures in alternate tunings and the fact that the strings can be tuned as much as a whole step up or down without stressing the neck or strings, there could be many different tunings. One person has mathematically estimated this figure as 16,175 possibilities.

Western music is based in "C," because when the piano was developed to emphasize the Major scale, a pitch needed to be selected and named. Using the first 7 letters of the alphabet would have confused people trying to learn to read and learn music at the same time, so the musical scale was decided to begin on C rather than with A. Since western music is based in "C", the start note of the guitar ended up as E, which is the third note in the scale of C.

The guitar is to be considered a "C" instrument (meaning that none of its open strings have sharps or flats). It might have started on any letter name. The cycle of fourths can be remembered in an easy way starting from B. It goes as follows:

BEADGCF, BbEbAbDb(C#)Gb(F#).

Here it is again:  

BEADGCF Bb Eb Ab Db Gb.

So those are the seven letter names followed by the five chromatic notes as flats with five of the letter names repeated. (of the five chromatic tones, it is simple common practice to call the first three as flats and the last two as sharps -- Bb, Ab, Eb, C#, F#). To tune in fourths, one could start from any of those, and alter the last two strings down a half step to arrive at:

BEADF#B, or
EADGBE (standard tuning), or
ADGCEA,
DGCFAD,
GCFBbDG,
CFBbEbGC or
FBbEbAbCF.  

It could be any of those, except that some of those alternate tunings would require radical changes in string scale and truss setup. And some of them, such as those starting with B, G, C or F, have  sharps or flats in them, which would render the natural key of the instrument other than C.

I hope that helps you. You might do research into the history of the guitar and how it developed. That could be fun, and lead to new discovery.

Best regards,
Richard Lloyd



Hello Richard, I saw at guitargeek that you use a boss super-overdrive together with a Ibanez Tube Screamer. How do you use both (knob settings)? One for boost and the other for distortion?

Best regards! Flávio Campos

Hello Flavio,
While the knob settings might change depending, when I use both pedals I will normally use the Ibanez as the main pedal and all most of the time. The Boss would be used as a volume boost and to add a little more grit to leads/ Lately I have been only using the Ibanez, and using the volume controls on the guitar for differentials. More work perhaps, but a more stable tone. where they both would be all out would be for something like the beginning of Rocket, which wants feedback and convoluted tonal turns.

Best regards, Richard Lloyd



I think I have found some new mistakes in your lessons. Anyway they are in the Lesson 13 - The pentatonic prayer wheel (very good exercise though). You wrote at the end: "Technically the exercise will follow this pattern of keys: F# minor, B minor, G. major, C major and F major. Next would be G minor, C minor, Ab major etc." I think it's more like F# minor, B minor, and then E something - don't know if it's major or minor, A something and D something. Next would be G minor, C minor, F something... Correct me if I'm wrong.
If you have time you can explain me why are some minor or major or I'll figure it out by myself soon maybe.

It works like this: following the cycle of fourths, the sequence is as you write, and the keys go F#, BEADGCF Bb Eb Ab Db Gb (F#) Cb (that's "B" again). The formula in alphabetical fourths goes BEADCGF, then BEADG again only all flats. But by convention, and in common usage (actually there can be 15 keys - please don't ask me to explain that now), three of the chromatics are flats (Bb, Eb, Ab) and 2 are sharps (C# instead of Db and F# rather than Gb) the way you wrote it, everything would be flats, and all the key qualities would be minor.

But the brain defaults every first thing it hears to the tonic. When you play the first pentatonic, the second note is a minor third away from the first note (the A is three frets above the F#), so the brain gearshifts into the key of F#m. The second pentatonic does the same thing on the first string, but it goes out of F#M at the fourth note -- the second note on the A string. The brain realizes it has made an error and gearshifts the tonic to the first note on the A string  and it all adds up, making the key seem to be Bm.

During the third pentatonic set, the first three notes are 1, whole step 2, whole step 3, making the third note a major third, not a flat. So the brain goes easily into the key of G. G and Em ARE THE SAME SCALE. One is the relative minor of the other, or the sixth mode of the major scale. Since the major pentatonics contain 1-2-3-5-6, they are THE SAME SCALE only minor if they start from the six. Patterns four and five both seem more major than minor when you play them alone, and for the same reason, only because the brain organizes key perception.

I could have written it all in minor keys or major keys, and confused somebody and made sense to somebody else, because it is all dependent on the perspective in the BRAIN. There is really no such thing as "key", just like there is no third dimension in a drawing, yet it can seem to have a vanishing point or horizon line. Same mechanics involved. Optical Vs aural illusion.  does this help? I used the split major minor keys sequence because that's the way the brain rightly organizes around the individual patterns. 1 & 2 seem minor (but they are also major at the same time), and patterns 3 & 4 and  5 seem Major (unless you hear the 3 or the 6 first), but are also minor at the same time.

Did you figure it out?Anyway, thanks for writing, and for your question.



I understand that Television did a fair bit of jamming. Do you have any tips, tricks or advice for turning jams into compositions? I jam with a bassist and drummer and we tape every session to catch those "magic moments" but focusing the jams into finished pieces is tough for us. I've heard that Brian Epstein would have the Beatles play backwards when they got stuck; I thought you might know of some similar tricks or approaches. Do you find a lyric/melody hook the most efficient approach to shaping a jam, or do you prefer having the riffs and chord changes worked out first?

Thanks, Richard!
- Slyde

Dear Slyde:

Thanks for writing. Your question about jamming is a good one. Although Television did and still does a fair bit of musical exploration that you might called jamming, I agree with you that it is not often that those jam sessions turn into formal compositions. Usually a writer has to have some clear idea come to him in order to develop into a song. But jamming is good for developing ideas. I don't know about Brian and his instruction to the Beatles but the Television song Days, from our second record IS a riff turned around and played backwards. You never know where an idea might come from.



Is there a reason for "standard" guitar tuning  to be E-A-D-G-B-E ?  Why not E-A-D-G-C-F so that you could tune all strings to the previous lower string fretted to the 5th fret?

David H.

This is an excellent question, and one which plagued me for the longest time.  In fact E-A-D-G-C-F would make sense because it would continue the tuning along the cycle of forths, which is how the guitar is organized.  However, the two outer strings would then be a half step apart.  Half steps are extremely dischordant: full of tension; the bottom E string would become the leading tone of the top F string, and have a strong desire for resolution.

The guitar follows the cycle of forths, which is the pathway of musical movement in the hope of return to the primordial unity, but music is first generated through its opposite cycle: the cycle of fifths.  If we tune both the outer strings to the same note, in this case E, and if we pretend that it is in the middle, we can build the cycle of fifths around it.  The three note sequence in the cycle of fifths with E in the middle is A E B.  Now, mind you, the guitar is built-in fourths, and is thus backwards: B E A. 

The E on the bottom of the guitar has the fourth (A) next to it on the inside (on the fifth string); the top E has beneath it on the inside (the second string), the B.  This puts the E in the position of strength and allows for greater consonance in the instrument.

Although the guitar is technically an instrument in the key of C because none of the open strings are sharp or flat; treating the instrument in this way, with its peculiar tuning, makes E the tonal center of the instrument .

Now as we move inside from both outer E strings, we run into a wrinkle.  Somewhere along the line we have to compensate for the half step that we have removed to gain outer consonance.  By convention, the compensation is placed between the lightest strings possible; that is, between the G and B strings.  This puts those two strings in a relationship of a major third, whereas all the other strings are in a relationship of a fourth.  This relationship is much more musically satisfying than if the two outer strings were a half step away from each other.

I hope that this explanation serves to deepen your appreciation of the phenomenal depth of musical profundity hidden within the six strings of the guitar. Thanks again for writing.



Do you think it is possible to develop perfect pitch? A student of mine recently purchased a "Train Yourself to Have Perfect Pitch" course from the back of a guitar mag. What's your take on the perfect pitch phenomenon?

I don't think it is important to have "perfect alphabetical pitch." It is much more important to have good relative pitch, interval sense and chordal quality appreciation. I have no idea if pitch training programs work or not, but they are a very good way to separate money from the gullible.



Regarding modes, specifically the Mixolydian mode- since it is such a popular scale in rock and pop music, do you think it would make sense to have modal key signatures - i.e. a song that is in the key of D and uses the chords D, C, G for its primary progression would have a key signature with an F# and a C natural at the beginning... this would show that the song has a tonality of D but the C natural in the key signature would indicate that the song is in D. Mixolydian.. not D major. What do you think?

It makes no sense to have 49 key signatures. It's bad enough that at times there are 15! The whole notion of musical notation is seriously flawed already, without mucking it up with micro-key labeling. The key is like a vanishing point in drawing. It is inferred by the melody and chordal harmonies. It can easily change as the musical blend changes in a piece. The "key" signature only points to the Ionic relative modality. Then, the tonal center is extrapolated by which degree is emphasized in the melody and harmony.



have you ever read the book The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick? It is unlike traditional method books in a most wonderful and inspiring way.

Over the years I have amassed every conceivable type of guitar instruction book. If this one helps you, fantastic! I am supposed to write my own, but have proven to be unbelievably slow at it, given that I have no "ghost writer" to spur me on.



Dear Richard,
I'm a huge fan of yours - you are definitely the guitarist whose work I admire the most - so I'm asking for advice (and hoping my question is not too ridiculous). I'm a classical guitarist with ten years' training who would very much like to switch to rock - which I am a total novice at. You'd think that my classical training would be a help to me, but instead it's a hindrance. I can't get the hang of using a pick because I'm too used to finger-picking, and I stumble badly over reading tablature. I just can't seem to block out all those years of my guitar tutor telling me I had to hold my right hand a certain way and use different fingers to strike different strings. Should I just forget everything I have ever learned and start from scratch? Are there any particular guitar exercises you would recommend that I practice that might help me in this transition? Or am I the only person in the world who has trouble with this switch and is therefore asking very silly questions? :)

Thanks for reading,

Jen in Chicago

Dear Jen,
First, thanks for writing. Yes, I would advise you to "start all over." For the most part, the techniques of classical guitar cannot be brought over to rock guitar. To tell the truth, rock guitar is rather juvenile and even infantile compared to classical guitar. Rock guitar for the most part uses simple triad chords and Pentatonics and avoids half steps like the plague. Sometimes the rock guitarist even avoids the thirds of chords, preferring to call his pumping of the one and the five a "power chord" to disguise his ignorance of chordal harmony. No "PIMA," just a flatpick and the occasional "backclawing" with the middle and ring fingers of the right hand. But this kindergarten of musical expressions strikes all manner of archetypes and satisfies deep primal urges which exist in us all. My advise is to practice simple right hand picking structures and "folk" style chording for a while. Later the nuance of your classical learnings can be reintroduced to great benefit. I am planning to write up a lesson for my website specifically for right hand picking and directly addressing your question, but it will have to wait until I am back from some touring over the next few weeks.



Richard,
I have long been a fan of your work with Matthew Sweet, but I recently discovered Marquee Moon and am, needless to say, in awe of your work. I've been playing guitar for quite some time myself, and I aspire to achieve the same mix of punk attitude/technical precision you have. I was wondering if you had any tips for a player looking to break out of the standard blues patterns...so many times, especially in the Matthew Sweet stuff, you sound like you're just going off, falling all over the guitar, but you never lose it...which makes your solos much more exciting, to me, anyway, than nearly any other player I've ever heard.

Any hints on how you played the solo to Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself" and Television's "See No Evil"?

Any information would be appreciated greatly. Thanks for all the inspiring work.
LINCOLN

Lincoln:
As far as breaking out of the standard blues patterns, try mixing up both the major and minor pentatonics in the same key. I'll be writing some more lessons for my website soon that may address this problem. Mostly one has to learn multiple fretboard maps, including diagonal patterns to break out of the boxes.

Hard to say about a specific solo... See No Evil is in "G" and Ionic (straight major mode). It has some walk up scales and some vertical Iterations as well as a 5 note flurry "ruff" (this is a drumming term) at the end.

Sick of Myself is (if I remember correctly) a simple major Pentatonic in the key of "A" (as if playing in "F#minor"). Hope this helps. Good luck.



I downloaded Lowdown. Sounds great. Who was in that band?

Hey, great question. I've had a number of wonderful musicians play with me over the years, and when they put in performances like this they absolutely deserve getting mentioned. The trouble is that the live tapes float around and lose contact with information like that.

So here we go: I can tell you that the period of time right after Field of Fire saw a number of personnel changes in my band. In the beginning of the American touring to support Field of Fire I had John Klages on rhythm guitar, but John had mixed feelings about touring. He liked some aspects of it but developed health problems from the stress, and dropped out. After John left my friend David Leonard stepped in, and I believe he is on this recording with me, as well as on the other mp3 from the same show.

Steve Cohen played bass for me for quite a while before he got into management, and I'm pretty sure that's him. The drums aren't quite as easy to tell because I can't remember exactly when the drum chair changed hands. I've asked someone who did play with me what they thought and they were pretty sure that this version has Ed Shockley on drums. The other possibility would've been Julius Klepacz. They were both awfully good. Anyone who has more definitive knowledge is invited to step up.
There is a picture of my band containing this lineup in the "Vision" section.



Richard-Thanks for this great website. I love all your work, Television, Matt Sweet and solo. I just finished "Please Kill Me" and you are one of the major players. First question, how did you prevent the oxygen-enriched hospital room from blowing up? Just kidding. I was wondering what you thought of the author's complete dismissal of the U.K. Punk scene. Sure, most of the bands weren't as musically talented or as artistically oriented as bands like Television, but we have to remember the New York scene produced bands like the Dead Boys (by way of Cleveland) and the Ramones. I think bands like this definitely influenced the first wave of English punk, but later, "new wave" bands like Joy Division, the Fall etc. owe a debt of gratitude to Television. Do you think the author's analysis was too simplistic?

Oh boy, Please Kill Me. Everybody's reading it. I'm really glad for Legs McNeil that his book is doing so well.

Now, to your questions. It is much harder to having an explosion with oxygen than you might think. The oxygen would only accelerate something else which would have to burn. How much burning can a cigarette do? But the idea was to have fun and take a little risk and play a little danger. There is no situation in which some benefit might not be derived, even being sick in the hospital, especially when you're young, pretty and demented.

Now that having been said, I spoke to Legs Mcneil for eight hours of taping for his book, and he spoke to many other people as you know. What you don't know is that he also spoke to a number of other people at great great length, but when I looked through the book, I could really only find dishy stuff. I will confess that I was a bit saddened that he only chose to develop the seedier aspects, until I realized what a clever lad he was. After all, gossip rules the world. Just look at the sales.

Now I don't know if he "dismisses" the English or not, but he wrote the book about the New York scene, and all the people he knew and talked to were the New Yorkers. What do you expect? And, to be fair, there have been enough books which have put the English punk scene on a pedestal and claimed that England was the real staging ground for this revolution in music. I have nothing against the English rock scene and the bands which came out of it, but claiming that punk music came from England is like claiming that Jimi Hendrix is English. The entire scene started in New York and spread from there, like a virus.

Now the other thing that I wonder about it is your question regarding the author's analysis. Does he do any analysis in the book? He told me that it was going to be a book of quote cuts, so that the voice of the book wouldn't be his but would be the various artists that he spoke to. Is this not true? I have to confess that I never got a copy of the book from him. Legs can be a strange fellow. After speaking to me for so long (and after all I've known him for many years) and then using only the gossipy parts, I think he started to avoid me and some of the others in the thought that he might meet with our disapproval. I'll put it here: I forgive you, Legs, you can come home now. But seriously, I hear they are going to be making a movie out of the book. I wonder who they might cast? One other thing.

The actual Please Kill Me T-shirt was Richard Hell's idea, and he wanted me to wear it, which I did for one show at Max's Kansas City. The trouble was that right after our show a couple of demented fans with very strange looks in their eyes, kind of like you get when you join a cult, came up to me and started talking to me. They started asking me about the T-shirt, and asking over and over again "do you mean it"? "Do you really mean it"? "Are you hoping that someone will take you up on it"? I have enough experience with deranged people to have had the sense to excuse myself. Later on I told Hell that I wasn't going to be wearing his T-shirt anymore. He was a little upset, and tried to coax me into continuing to wear it, but I wasn't having any of it. Richard sure had some great ideas, huh? But it makes a great title for the book, and a real pure statement about the musical scene back then.



Hi Richard. Big fan of your music. Please tell us about Velvert. What's the story? How do you know him? And how did he know Hendrix?
Thanks a lot.
marc

Okay, I'll tell you about Velvert. Velvert Turner was my best friend during some of my teenage years here in New York. I think I was either 14 or 15 and I was at a friend's house along with a group of us who had put together for a purchase of hash and we were waiting for the phone call that would tell as it was on its way. Every time the phone rang the entire group got excited. Well, the phone rang and the friend who answered it looked disappointed and told us that it was this guy, Velvert, who claimed to know Jimi Hendrix and that he was coming over. Everyone laughed when he suggested that we should make fun of Velvert for pretending to know such a famous person. Anyway, about fifteen minutes later the door opened and in walked Velvert.

The minute I laid eyes on him I became convinced that in fact he did know Jimi Hendrix and when they started to mock him I sided with Velvert. We actually went into the kitchen where Velvert proceeded to called Jimi on the telephone at his hotel because he was in town to do a show that evening. The phone rang and rang. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon. Velvert handed the phone around the table and we each took turns listening to it ring while Velvert explained that he was doing his best to prove that he knew this guy. My thinking was, Jimi Hendrix is a human being. He is not from Mars. He has to know somebody. Why not this guy? Anyway, by the time the phone got to me it had rung may be 10 to 12 times, and while I was listening to it ring, Jimi picked it up and said in a sleepy voice something like "sput, sput, who's this?" As I didn't know what I should say because I really had no reason to be calling Jimi Hendrix, I said "it's Velvert, man," and I handed the telephone to him whereupon he had about a five-minute conversation while all of our companions grilled me on what had happened. When he got off the phone of course the tables had turned on everyone except he and myself. He declared that Jimi had invited him to the show that evening and that he was going to take me along but that all the rest of them could get stuffed.

As a matter of fact, that evening we headed out to the show which was at the Singer Bowl out in Astoria Queens. We arrived a little late and the music was already going on, so instead of trying to find the backstage entrance we climbed the fence. This was the show which was on a revolving stage. Every time the band turned the people in front would stand up and then when the band couldn't be seen anymore would sit back down. It was the first time I think for what later became "the wave" at sporting events. Jimi swore up and down he would never do another revolving stage because it made him dizzy.

After the show we made our way to the backstage area and for some reason I got into a tussle with Eric, Jimi's guitar roadie. This was the beginning of a great friendship for me with Velvert which has lasted many years. Velvert and I used to spend all our time going to Steve Paul's Scene and the Fillmore East. Whenever we went to the Scene we would beg the musicians to get us in. The drinking age back then was 18 and we were like 14 or 15 but seem to have no trouble cadging drinks and staying out until closing time, 4 AM after which everybody would go get something to eat at Ratnor's. We had many adventures, and I could probably talk for a week and not run out of stories.

After Jimi died, Velvert recorded one album for Gulf and Western. During the entire Television era, I never told anyone about any of this for two reasons. One is that they are private memories not really made any better by publicizing, and second, some of those stories are so outlandish that I stood less of a chance of being believed than Velvert did when he first arrived at my friend Zeke's house. During one period in the 1980s Velvert and I actually played together, but nothing of it got recorded. Velvert now lives in Brooklyn and does a number of things including some work for the Experience Hendrix, which is the company run by Jimi's family.

I also understand from having talked to him recently that he has made a guitar instruction video for them, as Jimi used to give him guitar lessons. They used to use a large mirror for the lessons, because Jimi was left-handed and Velvert was right-handed. Velvert used to come over to my house after the lessons and show me what Jimi had taught him but usually while turning his back to me and making a game out of having me try to figure out what he was doing. I hope you have enjoyed hearing something about the mysterious Velvert Turner. Now of course, I need to make you work a little harder if you want to hear more. Until next time...



Dear Richard: I know this should be a guitar or music question, but Terry Ork Was my neighbor. The last time I saw him was about 1984 or 5 when he left town quietly in the middle of the night -rumor went he borrowed some money from mob money he laundered. Well, I hope things are good for him and if you ever see him, please tell him Susan M. from 39 sends regards. Thanks. e-mail randman16@aol.com

Well, although the first sentence mentions a question there is no question here. I will however answer a little to the question of Terry Ork. Terry Ork was Televisions first manager, and the man who introduced me to Tom Verlaine and to Richard Hell, and he was the single most person responsible for the entire New York's scene of the late '70s, being in the one that convinced CBGBs to allow rock bands to play there.

Terry had worked for Andy Warhol, at the factory, and was a bit of a socialist, or perhaps anarchist, or communist. Anyway, Terry admired Andy's support of the arts including his relationship to the Velvet Underground, and Terry wanted to have a band. He had been selling paintings to some buyers in Europe and had stacked up some dough. He wanted to be a patron of the arts, like the Medici in medieval Italy. I had been staying in his house and he told me about another fellow who played electric guitar and asked me if I would like to meet him. This was Tom Verlaine. Shortly after meeting Tom we formed Television with Terry as our manager.

It was Terry who convinced Hilly to let us play at CBGBs, and who talked him into letting all the other bands play. Sometime after Terry stopped managing us he moved to San Diego and to Los Angeles where I heard he got into movie making which was his other real love. Terry used to go to five or six movies in a single day sometimes. Anyway being a socialist or anarchist, or whenever he was, I think he failed to pay some taxes at some point or another and I heard that the Internal Revenue Service took him to task for it. I know that throughout history many great men have spent time in prison.

As to the rest of your middle of the night rumor, I have no means of answering it except to tell you that I have no need of rumors. I will never repeat it, and as far as I'm concerned is a fantasy. I have nothing but wonderful memories of this person who stands invisibly behind the entire new wave movement as the person singularly responsible for it. I haven't seen Terry in a couple of years but if I do now be sure to let him know that Susan says hello.



Great website. I find the lessons page particularly interesting. How often will you be updating it? Ever consider writing your own instructional book? K. Ron

A couple of years ago I spoke to some publishers of music books about writing an instructional book for the guitar and there was quite a strong interest. There are a couple of reasons that have prevented me from going ahead and writing till now. One is that I found that I was much more excited to teach a living person then I was sitting at home poring over charts and diagrams. So I went out and got some software that was supposed to transcribe music for me, but I haven't ironed the bugs out of the software, which doesn't work with the type of computer I have. I am hoping to update the music lessons every other week or so. Of course it depends on how busy I am with other things, but I plan to at least have the lessons continue until they form the basis of a strong musical understanding and a catechism of guitarist's exercises sufficient to stand as a self-contained work. I'll also have to see how strong an interest is maintained by those who visit the site. Certainly, letters like yours, and some others I've received, show that it is a beneficial thing to have the lessons on the site. Thanks for your interest, and good luck