Image via NYPL
On Jan. 9, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts announced that it has acquired the archive of Tom Verlaine, the musician, poet and longtime New York presence best known as the frontman of Television.
The collection spans roughly six decades of Verlaine's working life and fills about 40 linear feet. It includes lyric drafts, short stories, abandoned songs, correspondence, photographs, ephemera, and hundreds of hours of released and unreleased recordings — demos, rehearsals, and live material from the Neon Boys, Television, and Verlaine's solo years.
Among the highlights: early 1970s handwritten lyric drafts for Marquee Moon and 145 personal notebooks and journals.
Verlaine, a longtime East Villager who died in 2023 at age 73, emerged in the early 1970s as a central figure in the downtown scene orbiting CBGB. Television's 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, is widely regarded as one of the most influential rock albums ever released. Though commercial success largely eluded him, Verlaine's angular guitar style and literary sensibility left a deep mark on generations of artists.
In a letter to the library, Patti Smith reflected on Verlaine's lifelong love of books and their shared hours in used bookstores, calling the New York Public Library "a more fitting place" for his papers. Library officials say the archive will help spark long-overdue scholarship on Verlaine's work and legacy.
The collection now joins holdings connected to figures such as Lou Reed, John Cage and Arthur Russell at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza ... within the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex.
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