Fred Smith, who has died aged 77, was a bassist who began his career with Blondie before joining the guitarist Tom Verlaine in Television, the New York band whose dazzling virtuosity set them far apart from punk’s three-chord thrash.
While Television blazed all too briefly, falling apart after one all-time classic album and a decent follow-up, Blondie soared into the pop stratosphere, topping the charts around the world. Their singer Debby Harry admitted that Smith’s departure had been “a blow to our prestige”, but she was able to crow in later years: “Boy, did he make a mistake.”
But early Blondie were often shambolic, and Smith had no regrets. “Blondie was like a boat that was sinking and Television was my favourite band,” he said.
He was born Fredrick Edward Lefkowitz in Manhattan on April 10 1948 and grew up in Queens. His father Samuel was a trumpeter; his mother Frances, née Glasser, was a saleswoman at Macy’s.
Fred had early musical ambitions and taught himself guitar and bass in his teens. He attended Forest Hills High School, leaving in 1966 – by which time he was already playing in a garage band with John Cummings and Tommy Erdelyi, the future Ramones, Johnny and Tommy, taking Smith as his stage name.
In 1974 he joined the guitarist Chris Stein and singer Debby Harry in a band that was briefly called Angel and the Snake; they soon changed the name, to Blondie and the Banzai Babes, then to Blondie.
Television, meanwhile, had been formed by two friends from Delaware, Verlaine and the bassist Richard Hell, who recruited the guitarist Richard Lloyd and drummer Billy Ficca. They persuaded the owner of CBGB, a bluegrass club in East Village, Manhattan, to shift to rock music, and the grimy dive became the epicentre of the nascent punk/new wave scene; Blondie were one of the revamped club’s earliest attractions.
Television were the kings of CBGB, but Verlaine and Hell soon fell out, Verlaine frustrated with his friend’s inferior playing and his habit of prancing round the stage. Hell departed to form Richard Hell and the Voidoids – who would release one of the seminal tracks of the era, Blank Generation – and Smith was tapped up to replace him.
Already a fan of the band, he took little persuading, as Blondie were showing no signs of the star quality that would come to characterise their work, and in the break of an especially uninspiring set at CBGB, he announced that he was joining Television. Debby Harry accused Verlaine’s then girlfriend, Patti Smith, of convincing the bassist to switch camps. (Patti Smith’s future husband was Fred “Sonic” Smith, formerly of the Detroit rockers MC5.)
Television were fleetingly the bigger of the two bands, and when they toured the UK in 1977 they were the headliners, Blondie the support act. In the NME, Tony Parsons put his finger on the essential difference: “Seeing Blondie was like hanging round an amusement arcade while Television made you feel like you were sitting in church.”
By then Television had released their debut album Marquee Moon, a singular masterpiece unlike anything that had gone before, shot through with elements of jazz and Indian music and laced with long instrumental passages of shining beauty. Smith’s punchy, melodic basslines were the perfect counterpoint to what Mojo magazine called “the spiralling dialogue of guitars”.
The critics loved it – especially the epic 10-minute title track – and though it failed to chart at home, it reached the UK Top 30. The follow-up, Adventure, was also highly praised, while selling modestly. But the introverted Verlaine, a spiky, moody perfectionist, was a difficult character, and with Lloyd’s drug habit adding a further source of conflict, the band fell apart.
In later years Lloyd played in Verlaine’s backing band, and in 1992 Television reunited, releasing a self-titled album and touring. Smith also played with a bluegrass band, Grazz Matazz.
Smith married Jan Mullen in the 1980s, but they divorced. With his second wife, Paula Cereghino, whom he married in 2004, he established a winery in a 19th-century barn in Bloomington, New York. She survives him.