Television's roots can be traced to the teenage friendship between Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, who met at Sanford School in Hockessin, Delaware, from which they ran away. Both moved to New York, separately, in the early 1970s, aspiring to be poets, and when they re-connected they formed their first group together, The Neon Boys. Consisting of Verlaine on guitar and vocals, Hell on bass and vocals and Billy Ficca on drums, the group lasted from late 1972 to 11 March 1973, during which time they did some recording, with a 7-inch record featuring 'That's All I Know (Right Now)' and 'Love Comes In Spurts' being released in 1980, following the success of their next band. Renaming themselves Television, the group reformed on 12 March 1973, recruiting Richard Lloyd as a second guitarist, and after a year of rehearsals they played their first gig at the Townhouse Theater on 2 March 1974. Their new name was devised by Hell, and was a pun on 'tell a vision', as well as a reference to reclaiming the dominant media of the era. Their manager, Terry Ork, persuaded CBGB owner Hilly Kristal to give the band a regular gig at his club, and after playing several times at CBGBs in early 1974, they performed at Max's Kansas City and other clubs, returning to CBGBs in January 1975, where they established a significant cult following.
Richard Williams, Island Records' A&R rep in London at the time, and keen to find something new, spotted Television, and demo sessions were arranged for December at Good Vibrations studios. The idea was to produce rough demos that he could take back to London in order to convince the company that they were worth signing, and to strengthen his case he took along Brian Eno, as he was also intrigued by the scene evolving in New York. They all spent two days recording and one day mixing five of Verlaine's songs, but none of Hell's, which in retrospect could have been a sign that he would soon be out of the band. Back in London, however, very few people at the company showed a positive response to the demos, and so they were put to one side, although they were later bootlegged. Initially, song-writing was split almost equally between Hell and Verlaine, with Lloyd being an infrequent contributor as well, but friction began to develop as Verlaine, Lloyd, and Ficca became increasingly confident and adept with both instruments and composition, while Hell remained defiantly untrained in his approach. Verlaine, feeling that Hell's frenzied onstage demeanour was upstaging his songs, reportedly told him to "stop jumping around" during their gigs, and occasionally refused to play Hell's songs, such as 'Blank Generation', in concert.
This conflict, as well as one of Hell's songs being picked up by Island Records, led him to leave the group and take some of his songs with him. He co-founded the Heartbreakers in 1975 with former New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, and then later formed his own group, Richard Hell And The Voidoids. Fred Smith, briefly of Blondie, replaced Hell as bassist, and in two hours on 19 August 1975, Television cut a handful of demos on an infirm TEAC 4-track owned by Jay Dee Daugherty, drummer for Patti Smith's group, including two tracks that never made it to their debut album. 'Little Johnny Jewel' from the sessions was pressed up as a single, split over two sides of a 7", and was released on Ork Records in September 1975, and less than a year later they'd signed a deal with Elektra Records, and were recording their debut long-player, the classic 'Marquee Moon'. To hear how they got there, listen to these early demos, and see that the band was pretty much fully formed up to two years before that first album was released.
Track listing
01 Prove It
02 Friction
03 Venus De Milo
04 Double Exposure
05 Marquee Moon
06 Hard On Love
07 Friction
08 Careful
09 Prove It
10 Fire Engine
11 Little Johnny Jewel
