Marquee Moon by Television

The iconic front cover photo was taken by the legendary and occasionally controversial Robert Mapplethorpe (who also took the photograph that appears on the cover of Patti Smith's first album, Horses), but very little information seems to exist for the back of Marquee Moon. The spiral design is credited to Billy Lobo, but I can find no more out about him beyond that. It looks almost James Bond-esque, but does perhaps echo what Pitchfork called a "shockingly economical" album with a "tightly wound web of simple guitar parts".

What the back does contain though is an example of the sort of detail music lovers delight in. It lists which of the two guitarists played each solo. 

Nick Kent wrote an infamous review for NME on its release, which is worth quoting: "Marquee Moon is an album for everyone whatever their musical creeds and/or quirks. Don’t let any other critic put you off with jive turkey terms like ‘avant-garde’ or ‘New York psycho-rock’. This music is passionate, full-blooded, dazzlingly well crafted, brilliantly conceived and totally accessible to anyone who (like myself) has been yearning for a band with the vision to break on through into new dimensions of sonic overdrive and the sheer ability to back it up. Listening to this album reminds me of the ecstatic passion I received when I first heard ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘Happenings Ten Years Ago’ – before terms like progressive/art rock became synonymous with baulking pretensions and clumsy, crude syntheses of opposite forms."

More recently, Chris Dahlen writing for Pitchfork mirrored these sentiments: "the things that make the record so classic, that pump your blood like a breath of clean air, are the guitars. This whole record's a mash note to them. The contrast between these two essential leads is stunning: Richard Lloyd chisels notes out hard while Verlaine works with a subtle twang and a trace of space-gazing delirium. They play lines that are stately and chiming, rutting and torrential, the riff, the solo, the rare power chord, and most of all, the power note: the second pang on the riff to "Venus de Milo" lands like a barbell; the opening bars of "See No Evil" show one axe rutting the firmament while the other spirals razorwire around it.

What Matt LeMay had to say for the album's entry into Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s was an alternative take on the guitar parts, but was no less in awe of the end result: "Its lengthy and numerous guitar solos are individually credited in its liner notes. But at its core, Television's Marquee Moon is shockingly economical-- a tightly wound web of simple guitar parts wrapped around Tom Verlaine's straightforward and impressionistic songwriting. Taken out of context, the guitar solos on Marquee Moon aren't just unimpressive; they're downright illogical. Everyone who plays guitar will, at some point, learn the solo from "Stairway to Heaven", but it's practically impossible to sit down and actually play anything from Marquee Moon. Like The Velvet Underground before them, Television's songs focus on interplay and exploration, rather than individual melodies and chord progressions.

This, of course, is just icing on what is unquestionably the finest release from one of the most talented bands to be nurtured by the scum-soaked floors and paint-chipped walls of 1970s CBGB's. The subtle buildup of "Marquee Moon", the nervous energy of "See No Evil", and the melodic tension of "Guiding Light" are all songwriting masterstrokes, articulated perfectly by able and adventurous players. The punk scene from which Television emerged is often cited as discarding the concept of musicianship entirely. And in a sense, this is exactly what Television did with Marquee Moon, recasting virtuosity as a function of the brain, not the fingers."

It is clearly an album that moves people, which is all you can really ask.