Overview:
The Television bassist and Ulster County resident passed away on February 5.
We’re deeply saddened to report that another well-loved member of the Hudson Valley music community, Fred Smith, passed away on February 5 following a long illness. Besides being the bassist of the hugely influential band Television, Smith was the cofounder of acclaimed winemakers Cereghino Smith, which he ran with his wife, the artist Paula Cereghino.
Born in New York in 1948, Smith attended Forest Hills High School in Queens. Among his classmates at Forest Hills were all four original members of the Ramones, and while a student there he briefly played drums in an unrecorded garage band that also included the future Johnny and Tommy Ramone. He met up with Johnny and Tommy again circa 1974 at venues that included Bowery bar CBGB, where the nascent New York punk scene was coalescing, as the founding bassist of the embryonic Blondie, then called Angel and the Snake.
In spring 1975, Smith left Blondie to replace the departing Richard Hell in Television, playing on that year’s first release by the band, the single “Little Johnny Jewel.” The following year Television recorded their landmark debut album, Marquee Moon, which appeared in 1977 and profoundly impacted the underground rock world with its idiosyncratic fusion of psychedelia, art rock, free jazz, garage rock, and avant-garde influences, with lead singer and songwriter Tom Verlaine’s hauntingly poetic lyrics, Verlaine and fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd’s dueling flights, and Smith and drummer Billy Ficca’s solid, understated rhythms further defining their sound. Adventure followed in 1978, but the group broke up amid intra-band tensions shortly after its release. Smith went on to play on solo albums by Verlaine and Lloyd and record and perform with Willie Nile, the Roches, the Fleshtones, Holly and the Italians, the Revelons, Peregrins, and others.
Television reunited in 1992, releasing an excellent self-titled album that year and resuming touring; Lloyd left in 2007, his place taken by Smith’s Holly and the Italians bandmate Jimmy Rip. The quartet never released another studio album—although Smith told me they’d recorded a few newer songs when I interviewed him for the September 2014 issue of Chronogram—but they continued to perform sporadically in the US and abroad. Their rare appearances included a triumphant concert at BSP in Kingston in 2016. Verlaine’s death in 2023 marked the end of the band.
After starting their winemaking business in their Lower East Side apartment in 1999, Smith and Cereghino moved the operation to the Rosendale-area house they purchased in 2003. Devoted members of the local arts scene, the couple were a roundly adored presence at musical performances, art openings, and other events in the region, including those connected with Chronogram. Recently Smith had recorded with all-star area quintet Taxidermy Girls.
Fred was one of the sweetest, most humble rock ’n’ roll heroes one could ever hope to meet, and Television was a key inspiration on the music that your arts editor has himself made over the years. Getting to know and become friends with him has truly been a gift, and he will be greatly missed. We at Chronogram extend our heartfelt sympathies to Paula and her and Fred’s family and friends.
