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.ing quit Blondie.I was pissed.I was pissed at all of them Replacing Richard temporarily will probably be the— all of Television, all of the Patti Smith Group, and bass player of Blondie, and no doubt Television willPatti and Fred.I was pissed at Patti because she talked continue to thrive, but Richard will be missed.”23 The Fred into joining Television.Boy, did he make a mistake.following week he reported on the Dolls’ breakup andHa ha ha.”27 Photographer Roberta Bayley, who workedthe formation of the Heartbreakers with Hell andthe CB’s door and was living with Hell at the time heex-Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan.quit Television, also noted the irony that Blondie even-Verlaine told the crowd at Television’s firsttually outstripped Television commercially: “But at that post-Hell show, on 17 April, that Fred Smith had24 Heylin (1993: p.138).21 Betrock (1975b).25 Mitchell (2006: p.58).22 Fields, SoHo Weekly News, 10 April 1975.26 Richard Hell Papers, Box 9, Folder 594.23 Fields, SoHo Weekly News, 17 April 1975.27 McNeil and McCain (1996: p.196).• 108 •• 109 •M A R Q U E E M O O NB RYA N WAT E R M A Npoint Television was the one tipped for big, big success.I should be about the reasons for my demise fromBlondie was the worst band in the city — they were just Roxy,” Eno had told Nick Kent in the summer ofa joke.Everybody liked them personally but they didn’t’73.“The problem is that when it gets printed, it all really have it together on a musical level.”28 Patti had seems to look much more meaningful and seriousalready poached Kral from Blondie and Dougherty fromwhen unqualified by that chuckle at the back of theMumps.For Harry and Stein, these personnel shiftsthroat.People who do great hatchet-jobs on themarked the end of CBGB’s communal era.With Patti’smembers of their old band usually come out lookingcontract a done deal and rumors afloat of others, knives like losers when it all appears in print.”32came out.29 For years Harry would complain that PattiKent should have relayed that warning when heSmith had had it out for her from the start: “Basically started tracking Television in 1976.Instead he helped she told me that there wasn’t room for two women inwiden the gulf between the former friends.Kent returned the CBGB’s scene and that I should leave the businessto the states in the spring of ’76 to cover the British glam’cause I didn’t stand a chance against her! She was going band Sweet at an Ohio gig.Stopping over and returning to be the star, and I wasn’t.”30via New York, on Malcolm McLaren’s advice he lookedFor many fans, Hell’s departure marked the end ofup Richard Hell, hoping to score heroin, and woundan era as much as had the arrival of gawkers, wannabes, up crashing a few weeks on Hell’s couch in a perpetual and record labels.The acrimonious split intensifiednod.After publishing Hell’s side of the break-up that over the next two years, especially during the UKyear, Kent offered an ecstatic review of Marquee Moon media frenzy that followed Marquee Moon’s release.in early 1977, followed only a few weeks later by anHell and Verlaine’s mutual rage seemed evidence ofarticle repeating some of Hell’s most damning (and most abiding feelings: “[T]he two new wave culture heroesfrequently reprinted) characterizations of Verlaine:regularly vilify one another with Romeo/Juliet inten-“I knew though from the very beginning — with Tomsity,” Vivien Goldman wrote in 1977.31 Certainly the— that it’d probably end that way,” Kent quotes Hellscenario echoed other high profile falling-outs: Lennon as saying.“Years and years ago, when we were dropping and McCartney, Zappa and Beefheart, Reed and Cale,acid together — God, it’d get very, very scary.He’dFerry and Eno.“It’s very hard to know just how honest really open up then and he more or less revealed thathe had this fundamental belief in his absolute inherent superiority to everyone else on this earth.”3328 Heylin (1993: p.160).29 See esp.Heylin (1993: pp.160–1).30 Bockris and Bayley (1999: p.112).32 Kent (1973a).31 Goldman (1977).33 Kent (1977b).• 110 •• 111 •M A R Q U E E M O O NB RYA N WAT E R M A NKent gave space to this swipe in what was supposedOffended by this piece, Verlaine responded by attacking to be a post-album feature on Verlaine, even as heKent to another magazine’s interviewer: “Nick Kent isacknowledges Verlaine’s dissatisfaction with Kent’sthe guy who prints hearsay, total hearsay,” he toldearlier piece on the friends’ breakup:the British underground paper ZigZag in June of’77.He’d given a platform to Hell, “a guy who’s saidWhen the subject of Hell occurs in our interviewa million times that he’s out to get me, and who’llVerlaine has well established a striking propensity for say anything that’s going to make me look bad.” Noresolute eloquence.He is very concerned about express-stopping there:ing his interests accurately and having them reportedexactly as such.I don’t have any respect for Nick Kent as a person.Yes, he’d read my previous NY City article and yes,Anybody that prints gossip about somebody, and thenhe was “Rather upset” by the Hell accusations.sees them and still prints gossip.I mean, I did every-“Patti too.”thing I could to straighten out that stuff, I spent an hour (Verlaine didn’t have to remind me of his sweetheart’s talking to him, and it still came out as.he’s sick.He reactions as I’d spent a taxing half-hour the previous gets this fantasy idea about somebody and won’t let go, year debating the charges against the lovely Tom with a even if you confront him face-to-face about it.fraught and very feisty Miss S.)“I was going to ask you about Hell,” Verlaine retorts with a slick smirk of sorts on his lips.About Hell, Verlaine stepped it up, denouncing himSo I tell him straight.Hell thinks you’re a hot talent not just as a bad bass player but also as a junkie:— particularly as a guitar-player — but as a humanbeing, he mmm.hates you.(Is that it, Richard?)Let me tell you what happened.and I really hope“Oh, come on now
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