Tom Verlaine, guitarist for the band Television, who influenced the punk scene, dies

Tom Verlaine, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal protopunk band Television, who influenced many bands while playing at CBGB, a downtown New York venue alongside the Ramones, Patti Smith and Talking Heads, has died. He was 73 years old. Verlaine died on Saturday in New York City, surrounded by close friends after a brief illness, said Cara Hutchison of Lede Company, a public relations firm.

“Tom Verlaine has gone beyond what his guitar has always hinted at. He was the greatest rock and roll guitarist of all time and, like Hendrix, could dance from the spheres of the cosmos to garage rock. That takes a special greatness,” he tweeted. Mike Scott of The Waterboys.

Although Television never enjoyed much commercial success, Verlaine’s inventive playing as part of the band’s two-guitar attack was influential to many musicians. Television released their groundbreaking debut album Marquee Moon in 1977 – including the nearly 11-minute title track and Elevation – and second album Adventure a year later.

“Marquee Moon has become something of an indie rock holy grail ever since. He was a clear influence on artists like Pavement, Sonic Youth, The Strokes and Jeff Buckley”, wrote Billboard magazine in 2003.

Growing tension between Verlaine and fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd led to Television breaking up after their second album Adventure. The group would reunite for an album in 1992 for Capitol Records and sporadic live appearances.

“We wanted to strip everything even further away from the showbiz theatrics of glitter bands and blues and boogie,” wrote Television co-founder Richard Hell in his autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp. “We wanted to be rigid and broken, the way the world was.”

Verlaine has released eight solo albums, his most commercially successful being his second, 1981’s Dreamtime, which peaked at No. 177 on the Billboard album chart. He often acted as a sidekick to former teammate Patti Smith.

Online tributes included Susanna Hoffs and Billy Idol, who said Verlaine made music that influenced the punk scene in the US and UK. Smith shared a tribute on Instagram, posting a photograph of the two together.

He was born Tom Miller – later adopting the surname of 19th-century French poet Paul-Marie Verlaine after he met Hell, born Richard Meyers, at a Delaware prep school. They were tall, skinny kids who had given up and gone to the East Village, where they worked in bookstores and wrote poetry together.

“He was known for his angular lyricism and pointed lyrics, a shrewd intelligence and an ability to pluck every string at its truest emotion,” said a statement from his publicist. “Your vision and imagination will be missed.”