Watch Wilco’s Nels Cline Discuss How Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ Changed His Life

Guitar Player Magazine asked Wilco’s Nels Cline to detail the five guitar riffs that changed his life. The video from 2017 shows Cline dissecting Television’s “Marquee Moon,” which was written by guitarist Tom Verlaine, the punk rock icon who died on Saturday at age 73.

“Marquee Moon” and Verlaine’s influence on Cline can be heard within several Wilco songs, perhaps most notably on “Impossible Germany.” Released as the title track to Television’s 1977 debut album, “Marquee Moon” features not only Verlaine’s innovative guitar playing but also Richard Lloyd’s inventive riffs as well. Obvious from the video footage, Cline has intimate knowledge of the song as he expertly demonstrates both Verlaine and Lloyd’s parts.

“The song that represented my re-embrace of a rock band – the rock band was from New York called Television – and the record was called ‘Marquee Moon,’ and it’s a veritable feast of memorable and influential guitar riffs,” Cline says of the song. “Tom Verlaine plays a long guitar solo that ends in one of the most memorable examples of Mixolydian scale in its most rudimentary form, sounding like absolute poetry.

“There’s this beautiful John Cipollina-influenced, in my opinion, thing Tom does here that goes like that [emulates guitar riff], but he does it with his finger and I do it with the bar. That’s John Cipollina and Tom Verlaine – that’s where I get my pension for the ‘wiggle’ as people call it, at least my friends … ‘Marquee Moon’ is, to me, one of the most iconic, beautiful guitar arrangments in rock ‘n’ roll — in music.”

Cline then goes on to demonstrate how he copped part of the “Marquee Moon” riff for live performances of “Handshake Drugs” to the delight of his Wilco bandmate and fellow “‘Marquee Moon’ obsessive” Jeff Tweedy.

Wilco performed “Marquee Moon” at their Solid Sound Festival in 2013. Verlaine and Television were on the 2017 Solid Sound lineup. Tweedy recently performed the Verlaine-written Marquee Moon track “Venus,” which he called the “perfect song.”

Watch Nels Cline break down the life-changing riffs of Television’s “Marquee Moon” and stream Wilco’s live “Marquee Moon” cover from 2013 below: