Never Heard Marquee Moon

How a Twitter Meme Brings Home a Classic Guitar Album

In August 2020 a Twitter account Memorial Device* posted a picture of far-right “commentator” Nigel Farage sprawled out on a verdant hillside, overlooking the south coast of Britain—an island nation famous for its bright white cliffs—complete with the caption: “This man has never heard a single note of Marquee Moon.” And so a meme was born.

The phrase quickly extended into several variations of a hashtag #neverheardmarqueemoon  #thismanhasneverheardmarqueemoon alongside nudge-nudge asides “they’ve never heard it”—an acidic sting that delivers a rod of taste-making justice to beat political pseuds across the papier-mache head of their public image. The Farage photo-op was later righteously edited with the addition of a passing Nazi parade and box of tissues near to hand. 

In spite of the lurid bonfire that X has become, infected by vitriolic hate speech, porn-bot zombie followers, and “verified” (paid-for) blue tick autocrats, a scorched earth wildfire fuelled by drug-addled egomania of the platform’s current owner, Twitter still endures as a platform for vicious humor, critical discussion, and sharing music and creative influences. And it was in this spirit the Memorial Device account delivered its own double-punch: combining nostalgia for Television’s iconic debut album with biting present-day satire of the self-declared commentariat class and feckless Conservative members of the British parliament—pop culture meets political angst on the internet’s best never-ending hellscape.

Mocking self-appointed seers like Nigel Farage as a man without qualities and deaf to the world of great music is an open goal, but it’s also a necessary act to highlight his self-serving grifting. A natural “disruptor,” he was elected to the European parliament in 1994 (re-elected through to 2014) just so he could dismantle Britain’s membership of the EU from within—seeking a return to old-fashioned values of an (imagined) imperialist England. A man out of time, he has largely gained a following on an Oswald Mosley/Enoch Powell anti-immigration platform, exploiting extremist othering as a way to scapegoat British multiculturalism as the root cause of a splintering national identity. (Farage would embarrassingly ask Powell to back UKIP in 1994, but he was turned down.)

Farage presents himself as speaking for the “man on the street,” but he does so from an eagle’s nest view of privilege and wealth. A former stock exchange trader dealing in metals, Farage got rich quickly in The City (London) and would become Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and later the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021). Continuing his slithey slide into media prominence he would appear as a guest on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here… and presents a show on the GB News channel. It is from these platforms he continues to bemoan the same issues of jingoistic nationalism, while ignoring real life concerns such as declining wages, lack of social and affordable housing and rising costs of living — all things that affect the majority, but not him.

Perhaps the most concrete benefit of the Marquee Moon tag has been the way it brings new life to the discussion of serious music fandom set against manipulative use and abuse of popular music. We suddenly find our own tastes awkward, tainted by the association of terrible people who enjoy the same great music, made worse by their exploitation of mutual appreciation to present a “common people” image to play to the crowd. A case in point: alleged pig-fucker and Brexit-inducing former Prime Minister (currently dredged back into the cabinet as Foreign Minister) David Cameron. A long affirmed fan of The Smiths and cousin of the late-Queen, already his association seems at odds with the artist he claims to love. 

Even in the political and social upheaval of 1980’s Britain, there were few bands who were as vehemently anti-Tory and anti-monarchist as The Smiths (see their third album The Queen Is Dead, 1985). A working class band from pre-gentrification, post-industrial Manchester, The Smiths were formed as both a symptom and a reaction to the Thatcherite government which sought to erase the notion of “society” and dismantle the welfare state, even the band’s name aimed for a grounding in normality, outside of the pop escapism of the era. The great irony of this of course being Morrissey’s gradual slide away from his former bandmates shared politics towards an isolationist, libertarian stance. Self-exiled in LA, for the past 30 years he has held forth on the need to reinforce British identity, furthering the Carry On Brexit charade. The clues to his casual, half-joking xenophobia and self-absorption were always there, from the anti-migrant anthem “why don’t you go home” of “Bengali In Platforms,” to his accusation that reggae is “vile” and the continued self-regard of the hardened individualist who doesn’t need other people, just an audience. 

There is a further connection in the politics of popular passions between music and sports. Traditionally seen from above as working class pastimes—in seeming contradiction—they remain accessible at point of entry, but roll with big money at the high end. In mid-January 2024, the Conservative government minister for Immigration, Michael Tomlinson went through what is generally considered to be a classic car crash interview. Declaring he was too busy to watch political drama on television he instead declared his love for cricket and all sports, presumingly to attach himself to an empowering masculine trope that will play well to most male voters, particularly to British football fans. When asked which team he supported, Tomlinson struggled to name one, eventually settling for the rather obscure Wimborne Town Football Club, a local team in his own constituency. When asked the result of their last match, he got lost in contradiction: “The last result when I was there was very exciting, there were lots of goals, and it was a 1-1 draw." This massive oversight echoes an interview with David Cameron who told the media that he supported West Ham United, instead of the club he actually supports, Aston Villa—the teams have opposite stripes of crimson and blue, but are based hundreds of miles from each other. 

The desperate need to appear as a “common man,” and then to be revealed as entirely ignorant —a fraud, charlatan, a mere pseud—highlights the extent to which politicians in an election year can adopt a pose and set policy by what they pretend to be the desires and wants of a large section of the majority voter base: culture wars, anti-refugee rhetoric and the ever-flogged but still dead horse of Brexit, regardless of personal moral and pragmatic convictions, or to consider what a country and its population actually needs (rent freezes, affordable trains that run on time, and a fully-funded healthcare system).

This can manifest in the need to latch-on to the perceived cool factor of musicians; whether baiting the high-art niche or the pop chart mainstream, it awards a sheen of credibility through either classic nostalgia or zeitgeist awareness. Consider Ronald Reagan’s no doubt genuine fandom of Bruce Springsteen, that most earnest of blue collar singers who hails the American Dream while (gently) critiquing its difficult realization. Reagan’s advocacy not only missed the message of “Born In The USA” but it also had unintentional consequences—radicalizing an otherwise benign Springsteen into the position of an outspoken Democratic supporter.

Politicians are never shy of using pop songs as campaigning tools, often without permission and against the political interests of the artists. In the upbeat swing of the 1990s we saw Bill Clinton employ Fleetwood Mac’s seemingly positive “Don’t Stop,” another song about looking forward after imminent divorce (ahem) while Tony Blair embraced the pop-dance of D-Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better.” More recently, Donald Trump’s steamroller campaign trail for the Republican nomination to stand in the 2024 US Presidential election has used The Smiths’ classically maudlin “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” as a warm-up track for the crowd. It’s fittingly one of Morrisey’s most self-pitying but earnest lyrics, the use of which has incensed The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. Others have suggested more appropriate tracks from the band’s canon: “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” “Paint a Vulgar Picture,” “I Started Something (I Couldn't Finish),” “A Rush and a Push,” a more sardonic playlist suggesting endless possibilities for thwarted ambition and externalized self-loathing. Such internal tensions mark out the hollow men of professional politics as half-hearted fans, as lacking in their own sense of taste as they are in authenticity, for whom art is just a vehicle for expressing false sense of unity—opportunists who, in the words of Oscar Wilde, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

There is a sense in which the #neverheardmarqueemoon tag is an effort to take music back from people who only stand for crowd-pleasing performance in opposition to the sincerity of real art, and as a revived celebration of the cult record as a rite of progression. Although Marquee Moon has only continued to grow in critical stature with the decades, not unlike The Velvet Underground’s debut album, it remains one of those touchstone records that inspired more new bands than it sold copies. I first heard the album at university on a portable CD player played through a mono guitar amp (embarrassing), but it was a seminal record for my eighteen year-old self back in 2004, and it still is. Full with the passionate intensity of someone who “wanted to be a writer” I was particularly inspired by the off-beat vocal yelps and surrealist imagery of Verlaine’s lyrics, as in love with urban romance as they are flush with bitter kiss-offs and cynical resignation, equal parts spurned and spurning. Now the record is 46 years-old, I begin to feel a little older with it, though the music sounds continually new—it could have been made just yesterday.

Television’s unique sound and Verlaine’s very specific mastery of tone is delivered in the band’s melodic interplay of running guitar lines. Already post-punk, they stood in stark contrast to the rock tradition of distorted power chords that marked out the wider New York punk scene at CBGBs where Television first cut their teeth. With only eight songs to its name, but a ten minute title track, the album sits outside of the hard and fast archetype of dumb-it-down nihilism displayed by the Sex Pistols, a kind of protest against musicianship birthing its own kind of (anti-) avant-garde (although never entirely the Situationist revolt that Greil Marcus would have us believe). What Television shared with the breadth of diverse bands rolled into the punk brand is the need to push back against the mainstream grain of popular music and big guitar rock that had dominated much of the 1970s before it.

The track “Marquee Moon” begins with drums and stepped bass that slowly build as Verlaine recounts a story that shifts gears between daytime dream and waking nightmare of wandering the streets, bored and vacant, embracing the willful naivete of making your own adventure from the city. The needling guitars edge in with brief spiraling climbs towards the chorus, shifting in and out like a lapping wave, ever closer to the edge. It is Verlaine’s sharpened cries of lightning that “struck itself,” finding himself adrift in a graveyard, grudgingly admitting to “the deadly embrace of life” before ascending into criss-crossing murmurations of glittering guitars, not dueling, but working in a kind of asynchronous harmony. We never find the exact meaning of “Marquee Moon” but it doesn’t matter, there is that further artistic wonder in songs that carry meaning beyond explanation.    

A follow-up album, Adventure, was delivered shortly after but despite some great songs (I love “Days”) it doesn’t share the mystic immediacy of Marquee Moon. Verlaine argued that the band’s debut had been honed through live shows, so by the time it came to record the songs were second-nature, accommodating well-drilled improvisation. As befitting the growing pains of difficult second album syndrome, Adventure found the band forcing a record into being; creating as a matter of process, the way many contemporary bands are forced to churn out music-as-content just to maintain a recording contract and find excuses to keep touring and inspiring merchandise sales, which is one of the only realistic ways of generating a livable income for many. 

Verlaine continues to be praised for his solo albums Tom Verlaine (1979) and Dreamtime (1981) where he seemed to continue the Television project in a more singular vein, though like his peers Rowland S. Howard (of The Birthday Party) recognition seemed to arrive too late. David Bowie would select Verlaine’s song “Kingdom Come” as the obligatory cover on his 1980 record, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, acknowledging Verlaine as “one of the best songwriters we have.” Beyond his clear and distinctive musical ability, surely it was Verlaine’s thwarted vision of art for its own sake, not as mere entertainment for an audience of spectators, that brought a shared and communal passion between song and singer to the turned-on listener.   

Deemed a “flop” on release, Marquee Moon failed to scrape into the US Billboard 200 (although it did make a brief showing at #28 in the UK charts). It nonetheless remains a timeless, beloved record for many, marked by blistering shards of nimble guitar work and Verlaine’s wry, poised songwriting. But almost as soon as it started, the band was already dissolving, collapsing into the mercurial diffidence of its notoriously exacting and singular artist.

Verlaine’s recent death, aged 73 in January 28, 2023 brought forth hundreds of tributes from musicians and fans across the generations. Testament to his heavy learning lightly worn, people queued around the block to purchase books from his library; if only to invite the secondhand touch of something left behind by the artist, but also to explore his private passions; one hand reaching out to another. Perhaps this was an act of connection with a man who some viewed as an avant-garde genius, already ahead of the musical curve in the 1970s, or the need to absorb something of Television’s ambience, a band out of time.

So overwhelming was the amount of recognition heaped upon Television and Verlaine after his his death it sometimes seemed to edge into parody that befits the ironic grandeur of the #neverheardmarqueemoon tag. In typically earnest and elated fashion Flea, bassist of Red Hot Chili Peppers, declared on Twitter to have listened to Marquee Moon 1000 times:  “And I mean LISTENED, sitting still, lights down low taking it all in. awe and wonder every time. Will listen 1000 more.”

For others there was a more direct inheritance of musical DNA, you can hear Verlaine’s poised guitar work in the shining arpeggios of Echo and the Bunnymen guitarist, Will Sergeant and the Go-Betweens Robert Forster who called Television’s “Venus” the perfect pop song. Oddly, the satirical culture website The Hard Times would publish a witty piece on the 40th anniversary of Marquee Moon back in 2018, “Looking Back: We Listened to Almost All of Marquee Moon”; playing upon its conflicted status as a “post-punk/proto-punk/art-punk epic,” most of which is contrarily true. This awkwardly elevated position in music history suggests there is something to the fear of missing out on classic albums as if admitting to a kind of rock and roll heresy, in much the same way that authors and university lecturers are expected to have read much of the Western canon without gaps. Very recently I saw an English Lit professor criticized on social media for having never read Jorge Luis Borges; the kind of stigma that laid the ground for the deftly coy 2007 bestseller, How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. Perhaps this rush to pay tribute to Verlaine and by virtue of this to Television, confirms the sound taste and critical side-swipes of the Memorial Device Twitter in righting an unjust case of neglect? 

Marquee Moon’s wider influence remains hard to ignore. In the early 2000s a jarring, angular, clean guitar sound proliferated among indie bands of the era, noticeably American retro-revisionism of The Strokes set against the more forward-looking Bloc Party and Foals, also inviting comparisons to Gang of Four. Both the 2000s bands would deny much knowledge of their forebears, even refusing to register the sonic similarities, being more of the 90s generation of music fans. Nonetheless, there remains an inherited musical debt to bands like Television in the stripped back-to-basics sounds of the indie sleaze, what NME termed at the time as the “New Rock Revolution,” if only through a deeper osmosis of rock heritage, standing on the shoulders of giants; different attitudes trying to hold onto a continuing flame, others kicking its ashes into the dust. 

Admittedly, the high-minded praise for Marquee Moon perhaps reeks of a certain critical snobbery—that everyone should have heard the record—but there is a cultural good in accumulating musical knowledge and appreciation, and passing it on to others. In a conversation with John Doran, the author and co-founder of the Quietus website, he points out that the original hipsters would be people who actively pursued the next interesting release, already looking ahead of the curve for the next wave of music. Before file-sharing deconstructed the top-down music industry model, there remains a worthy nostalgia for the early-days firmament of the 70s and 80s where music would be spread among peer groups through records inherited from friends and older siblings and shortly after dubbed onto blank cassettes and compilations, passed around or ordered through the mail and the culture of underground zines.    

But looking beyond this, we cannot entirely remove music from the context of the artist and the  listener, faced with the naive notion that good music might save us from evil, the literary critic George Steiner pointed-out that the Nazis and their Final Solution emerged from a highly cultured Western civilization that produced great art, among many other achievements. 

We have to admit to the painful reckoning that the creative power of music rarely aligns to a moral or ethical virtue—music does not necessarily make us better. Whether or not Marquee Moon’s magic would be lost on some too spiritually deaf to truly hear it—it’s the vicious use of art as propaganda to provide a whitewash of character, obfuscating bad by rubbing against the shine of the truly great and beloved. While the #neverheardmarqueemoon tag, this article even, might seem a self-righteous folly, where trying to pin down the beautiful and ephemeral thing is to kill it, like pointing to a bubble it inevitably bursts, there is a cultural good in bringing listeners to an older album that is nonetheless new to them. This becomes the electrified surprise of finding a record that speaks to us and falling in love with it as it becomes a part of our life. I think of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden (1988) a kind of ambient free jazz album of deep and searching introspection. Growing up I only knew the band’s main hit, “It’s My Life” (1984) on Heart FM in my mum’s car—I would never have put the two divergent sounds together from the same band. 

In contemporary music the way we access a record—through live gigs, physical releases, downloads and streaming—opens up a world of discovery that looks both forward and backward. I could spend my entire life trawling the archives of 1930 field recordings of Blues musicians of the Deep South; equally I can go out every night and see a band of 18 year-olds doing their first gigs in dirty, sweaty venues. Marquee Moon is but one example of a great record that is worth hearing, and listening to, just to explore what is out there. I’ve heard many people talk in the same way about the 1967 album Forever Changes by band Love, fronted by the singer-songwriter Arthur Lee—another record, another band I’ve never heard. I think I’ll make it my next musical adventure.

* The twitter account name Memorial Device alludes to the legendary late-70s/early-80s post-punk band (from the small working class town of Airdrie in Scotland) also celebrated in David Keenan’s 2017 novel, This Is Memorial Device.