Influences
Television is known to have drawn heavy influence from poetry, as both Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine were writers of poetry themselves. When a band is influenced by writing, people tend to look at the lyrics for overlap, but Television used poetry to shape their entire image, from musical forms, to fashion.
On the right side of the page is the album cover from Television's breakout album, "Marquee Moon," released in 1977. Below is a page from a clothing magazine from 1977, advertising typical daily menswear styles.
Fashion
The members of Television, specifically Robert Hell and Tom Verlaine, were heavily influenced by French poetry. French poet Charles Baudelaire's poem, "The Abyss," is credited with the inspiring the band's spiky hair and ripped clothes. The line in the poem, "— Alas! all is abysmal, — action, desire, dream, Word! and over my hair which stands on end I feel the wind of Fear pass frequently," relates directly to the band's trademark spiky hair. The line about feeling the wind pass relates to the main subject's ripped clothes. You can see, from the picture above, that Television's style was directly conflicting with the clean, polished look that was popular in 1977, at the time of the release of "Marquee Moon." The band's punk attitude and the idea of rejecting normality can be found in the likes of NYS poets, and other NY artists of the time period. Richard Hell is described by author Daniel Kane as pioneering the, "dandy punk," look. Kane writes that Hell's look was unique because of, "his display of self as one that can be altered, refigured, and reimagined."
Richard Hell in his signature Baudelaire inspired look.
Attitude
Richard Hell, the original bassist for Television, and Tom Verlaine both moved to New York in the late 1960's to become poets. When the pair moved to New York, they had mutual taste in poetry, both liking translations of French poetry written by Rimbaud, Verlaine, Huysmans, and Baudelaire. They also were mutually interested in modernist poets like William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, and Dylan Thomas. However, after integrating into the city of New York, a rift started to form between Hell and Verlaine, as Hell started to read and appreciate the NYS poets of the time. Hell loved Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan, and started to move away from his interest in modernist poets, almost brushing it under the rug, as if he had never liked them at all. Verlaine, on the other hand, did not particularly enjoy the work that the NYS poets were producing. Richard Hell had this to say about Verlaine: “He could never accept the low-key, daily, Frank O’Hara chitchat, ‘I did this, I did that’ style they used a lot.” Verlaine and Hell started to view art and expression in different ways, which ultimately led to Hell leaving Television in 1975. Hell liked spontaneous art that was all personal expression and not thought out at all, while Verlaine liked calculated works that provided definite deeper meaning to the reader. Both Hell and Verlaine, however, shared one thing in common: they liked to do things that were against the grain.