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      Tom Verlaine, Influential Guitarist and Songwriter, Dies at 73

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      He first attracted attention with the band Television, a fixture of the New York punk rock scene. But his music wasn’t so easily categorized.Tom Verlaine, whose band Television was one of the most influential to emerge from the New York punk rock scene centered on the nightclub CBGB — but whose exploratory guitar improvisations and poetic songwriting were never easily categorizable as punk, or for that matter as any other genre — died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 73.His death was announced by Jesse Paris Smith, the daughter of Mr. Verlaine’s former love interest (and occasional musical collaborator) Patti Smith, who said that he died “after a brief illness.”Although Television achieved only minor commercial success and broke up after recording two albums, Mr. Verlaine had an enduring influence, especially on his fellow guitarists. (He was also Television’s singer, primary songwriter and co-producer.)“Verlaine persisted in playing the guitar while those around him were brandishing it as a weapon,” Kristine McKenna wrote in Rolling Stone in 1981.Lenny Kaye, the guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, said in an interview that “Tom was capable of anything,” adding: “He could move from chaotic soundscapes of free jazz to delicate filigree. It wasn’t covered up with distortion. He had a real sense of the instrument and its expressive powers.”Mr. Verlaine and the other members of the group Television in 1973. From left: Richard Lloyd, Mr. Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca.Collection of Richard MeyersReviewing Television for the magazine Rock Scene in 1974, Ms. Smith wrote that Mr. Verlaine “plays guitar with angular inverted passion like a thousand bluebirds screaming.” She also declared that he had “the most beautiful neck in rock & roll.”Tom Verlaine was born Thomas Joseph Miller on Dec. 13, 1949, in Denville, N.J., the son of Victor and Lillian Miller. The family relocated to Wilmington, Del., when Tom was a child.He attended a boarding school in Delaware, where he studied classical music and played saxophone. He was equally influenced by rock bands like the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones and free-jazz musicians like Albert Ayler and John Coltrane.He ran away from school with a classmate, Richard Meyers (later known as Richard Hell). “Our plan was to become poets in Florida where the living was easy,” Mr. Hell said in an email. Camping in Alabama, they set a field on fire and were arrested and sent back home.Mr. Hell soon went to New York and after graduating from high school, Mr. Verlaine joined him. They wrote and published poetry together; Mr. Miller renamed himself Tom Verlaine, in tribute to the 19th-century French poet Paul Verlaine.GodlisMr. Hell recalled the two friends being exuberant teenagers on Second Avenue near St. Mark’s Church in the early days of spring: “As we walked down the street, we’d start rapidly weaving between the parking meters making buzzing sounds with our mouths and flapping our bent arms, fertilizing the parking meters. Tom was often lightheaded and whimsical back then.”In 1972, inspired by the New York Dolls, they started a band called the Neon Boys. Mr. Verlaine bought an electric Fender Jazzmaster guitar for himself and picked out a $50 bass for Mr. Hell; their friend Billy Ficca joined them on drums.In 1973 they added Richard Lloyd, a guitarist, and renamed themselves Television. They chose the name because they had a distaste for the medium and hoped to provide an alternative. Mr. Verlaine also enjoyed the resonance with his initials, T.V.After seeing a performance by Television in 1974, David Bowie called the group “the most original band I’ve seen in New York.” However, Mr. Hell’s emotive, chaotic outlook on music clashed with Mr. Verlaine’s more controlled approach. Mr. Hell was replaced by Fred Smith in 1975 and later went on to form the punk band Richard Hell and the Voidoids.Television signed with Elektra Records and in 1977 released its first album, “Marquee Moon,” which featured hypnotic guitar work that ranged from mournful to ecstatic.Television, Tom Verlaine, Fred Smith, Richard Lloyd, Filly Ficca on First Avenue in New York City in 1977.GodlisThe album contained eight songs, mostly written by Mr. Verlaine, and showcased two lead guitarists who did not just trade solos but also built sonic cathedrals out of countermelodies and interlocking parts. Although Mr. Verlaine was renowned as a lead guitarist, Mr. Lloyd said that his work as rhythm guitarist was underrated. “He used to drag me kicking and screaming through five minutes of solos,” he said in an interview.Mr. Verlaine’s lyrics (which he sang in a pinched but expressive tenor) were sometimes poetically abstract, sometimes slyly funny. The song “Venus” featured the line “I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo.”In 1991, Mr. Verlaine told Details magazine: “As peculiar as it sounds, I’ve always thought that we were a pop band. You know, I always thought ‘Marquee Moon’ was a bunch of cool singles. And then I’d realize, Christ, this song is 10 minutes long, with two guitar solos.”The New York punk scene inspired sonic experimentation in multiple directions, from the aggression of the Ramones to the tightly wound funk of Talking Heads to the calloused poetry of Ms. Smith. But no act seemed to push further than Television.Mr. Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television in performance in 1978. The band recorded two well-received albums before breaking up but later reunited periodically.Stephanie Chernikowski“Once we all got past tuning problems, we could explore at will,” Mr. Kaye said. “Those couple of years where nobody knew where CBGB was, it was a gloriously experimental time.”While “Marquee Moon” received rapturous reviews and now regularly appears on lists of the greatest rock albums ever made, that did not translate into significant sales or airplay. “Shooting himself in the foot was a particular talent of his,” Mr. Lloyd said of Mr. Verlaine. “He had a will of iron and he would say no to big tours and big shows.”Asked by The New York Times in 2006 to summarize his life, Mr. Verlaine replied, “Struggling not to have a professional career.”Television released a second album, “Adventure,” in 1978 and then broke up. The band reunited in 1992 for an album simply called “Television,” followed by periodic tours.The group’s members continued to employ “an experimental approach,” Mr. Verlaine told Details. “It’s like when we started, all falling together from different angles.”Mr. Verlaine released nine albums under his own name over the decades, some emphasizing songs and others emphasizing guitar heroics. Reviewing a performance by his band at the Bowery Ballroom in 2006, the Times critic Jon Pareles wrote: “Mr. Verlaine’s guitar leads didn’t flaunt virtuosity by streaking above the beat. They tugged against it instead: lagging deliberately behind, clawing chords on offbeats, trickling around it or rising in craggy, determined lines.”Mr. Verlaine performing at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan in 2006.Rahav Segev for The New York TimesHe also wrote film scores, including for silent movies by Man Ray and Fernand Léger, and made occasional guest appearances with the Patti Smith Group. In 2006 he told The Times, “I liked recording, but I wasn’t much in the mood to do it until a couple years ago.”He was, Mr. Kaye said, “very much not into the persona of being a rock star. His legacy is that he was always looking for a new expression of who he could be.”Mr. Verlaine leaves no immediate survivors. However, he does leave an outsize influence on other musicians. The 2022 album “Blue Rev” by the Canadian group Alvvays, for example, includes a song titled “Tom Verlaine.”In 1981, Mr. Verlaine told Rolling Stone: “I recently realized that Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, Teardrop Explodes — it’s obvious what they’ve listened to and what they’re going for. When I was 16 I listened to Yardbirds records and thought ‘God, this is great.’ It’s gratifying to think that people listened to Television albums and felt the same.” More

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      Tom Verlaine’s 15 Essential Songs

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      From Television through his solo career, the songwriter created enigmatic tidings and cat’s-cradle guitar structures. He died on Saturday at 73.Tom Verlaine was present at the creation of New York City punk. His band Television held a residency at CBGB in the club’s first years. But his music was never bound by what became punk’s ruling aesthetic of fast, loud and simplistic. Instead, Verlaine’s songs reveled in the open-ended: in improvisations that could spiral out toward free jazz and in verbal enigmas and paradoxes.Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine — who died on Saturday at 73 — renamed himself after a symbolist poet, Paul Verlaine, and he built his songs around guitar patterns that interlocked like cats’ cradles, intricate but never confining. His music looked back to the not-so-distant days of psychedelia and the Velvet Underground, but it was leaner, tauter, steelier.His guitar was always clear and focused, whether it was balancing riffs in perfect tandem with Richard Lloyd in Television, clawing concise rhythm chords or arcing skyward for a keening solo. His playing drew on country, jazz, blues, surf-rock and raga; his compositions almost always set up a contrapuntal dialogue of guitars with distinct tones, colluding or contending.Verlaine’s voice would never be ingratiating enough for a broad audience; it was reedy, yelpy, quavery, a bit strangulated. Yet it was perfectly suited to the sly, cryptic tidings of his lyrics, which might invoke romance, dreams, spiritual quests or the convoluted plotting of film noir.Television’s 1977 debut album, “Marquee Moon,” still reigns as Verlaine’s most significant work — a signature statement that would become a cornerstone of indie-rock. But through the next decades, he created music that rewards attention to every detail.Here are 15 songs that demonstrate Verlaine’s tenacious ambition and singular vision.Television, ‘See No Evil’ (1977)“What I want I want now/And it’s a whole lot more than anyhow.” That was the mission statement that opened Television’s debut album, with a trilling riff and a warped Bo Diddley beat: new and old, terse and encompassing, absolutely committed.Television, ‘Marquee Moon’ (1977)No wonder this was the title song of Television’s debut album: It was a whole musical system and universe. “Marquee Moon” is both architectonic and disorienting, blueprinted and unpredictable. It starts with the two guitars of Lloyd and Verlaine, separated in stereo, syncopated against each other; then, before anyone can get settled, Fred Smith’s bass and Billy Ficca’s drums forcibly move the downbeat. Verlaine sings about opposites — “the kiss of death/the embrace of life” — on the way to a jam that culminates in chiming bliss.Television, ‘Glory’ (1978)Spirituality meets flirtation in “Glory.” The music harks back to the metronomic beat, talky verses and major chords of the Velvet Underground, but it has its own twists, as Verlaine’s guitar lines push toward Eastern modes. The glory is in the resonant chords and proud chorus, not whatever happens between the narrator and his partner; the sound suggests the most promising outcome.Television, ‘Days’ (1978)With its pastoral, major-key guitar hooks and vocal-harmony choruses, “Days” makes Television’s closest approach to a pop single. Still, it’s no compromise; it radiates an everyday mysticism.Television, ‘Little Johnny Jewel — Live in San Francisco 1978’ (1978)“Little Johnny Jewel” extended across both sides of Television’s first single, in 1975, and onstage it would expand even further, into a jazzy, sprawling, exploratory jam that was never the same twice. Its basic riff was blunt — two three-note arpeggios — but all four band members could tease at it, push against it, scurry around it or, as starts about halfway through this 12-minute version, launch a guitar solo that climbs from a lament to a flailing, racing peak. The reaction, at a gig in 1978, was a smattering of applause.Tom Verlaine, ‘Souvenir From a Dream’ (1979)On his self-titled 1979 solo debut album, Verlaine welcomed keyboards into his arrangements. The piano chords that open “Souvenir From a Dream” bring a droll but deadpan film-noir tone to the song, which has Verlaine patiently explaining, “Mister, you went the wrong way — I think you better go back.”Tom Verlaine, ‘Kingdom Come’ (1979)Over a stalwart march beat, with guitar chords like distant fanfares, a prisoner prays for redemption. Verse by verse, the song moves from despair toward hope.Tom Verlaine, ‘There’s a Reason’ (1981)In “There’s a Reason,” from Verlaine’s 1981 album, “Dreamtime,” infatuation feels like being buffeted from every direction by emotions and sensations. It starts with a brusque, seemingly straightforward riff, only to have that riff repeatedly sideswiped by tremolo chords. And when the singer admits, “You’re my thrill, my dear,” the floodgates open and guitars and drums pour in.Tom Verlaine, ‘True Story’ (1982)“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Verlaine sings, offering a desperate apology amid a crossfire of guitars and drums — knife-edged single notes, barbed lines, implacable offbeats — that don’t promise any forgiveness.Tom Verlaine, ‘Dissolve/Reveal’ (1984)A rhythm workout that turns out to be a love song, “Dissolve/Reveal” is constructed from tiny, pointillistic elements — cowbell and tambourine taps, zinging single guitar notes, brief trickle-down arpeggios, sudden chords on unexpected offbeats, explosive bursts of distortion — that eventually unite in ecstasy.Tom Verlaine, ‘Cry Mercy, Judge’ (1987)A brisk shuffle beat drives “Cry Mercy, Judge” while little corkscrewing guitar licks turn up all over the place. The terse lyrics imply a complicated back story, with Verlaine’s voice savoring some well-deserved revenge.Tom Verlaine, ‘Shimmer’ (1990)Verlaine never sounded more lighthearted than he did on his 1990 album, “The Wonder.” He gets downright funky in “Shimmer,” stacking up scrubbed rhythm chords, pithy blues licks and tickling riffs as he smirks his way through compliments and come-ons: “Nice new features on your automobile/Maybe I could get a lift uptown.”Television, ‘1880 or So’ (1992)When Verlaine reunited Television in the early 1990s, the band seemingly picked up right where it left off in 1978, aiming for the same clarity and suspense. Verlaine’s and Lloyd’s guitars set up “1880 or So” with a calm fingerpicked drone immediately answered by a nervous, leaping line, immediately re-establishing their two-guitar equipoise as Verlaine sings about love and mortality.Television, ‘Call Mr. Lee’ (1992)“Call Mr. Lee” hints at a movie plot — “He’ll know the code is broken/Tell him the dog is turning red” — and frames it with gnarled, reverb-laden, Middle-Eastern-tinged guitar lines.Tom Verlaine, ‘Spiritual’ (1992)From Verlaine’s 1992 album, “Warm and Cool,” the instrumental “Spiritual” suspends his lead guitar line above a drone. He plays the folky melody as if he’s discovering it for the first time, coaxing out each note, letting it claim its place in the phrase. He returns to it in a lower octave and then a higher one; at the end he lingers over a few notes, hinting that they still hold mysteries. More

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      Ray Cordeiro, a Voice on Hong Kong’s Airwaves for 70 Years, Dies at 98

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      Late-night radio listeners in Hong Kong associated Mr. Cordeiro’s sonorous voice with easy-listening standards and early rock. He worked until he was 96.HONG KONG — Ray Cordeiro, a familiar voice on Hong Kong’s airwaves who was one of the world’s longest-working disc jockeys, spinning records for more than 70 years, died here on Jan. 13. He was 98. His death, at CUHK Medical Centre, was confirmed by his manager, Andy Chow. Mr. Cordeiro, known to fans as Uncle Ray, worked until he was 96. His durability got him into Guinness World Records, though he later lost his title to a Chicago D.J., Herbert Rogers Kent.Countless Hong Kong residents associated Mr. Cordeiro’s husky, sonorous voice with early rock n’ roll and easy-listening standards, both when the songs were new and when they’d become sources of nostalgia.Mr. Cordeiro interviewed the Beatles, Elton John, Tony Bennett and other stars, cementing his stature as a local authority on Western popular music. But he was also one of the first D.J.s to introduce Hong Kong’s homegrown Cantopop to English-speaking listeners in the 1970s, said Cheung Man-sun, a former assistant director of broadcasting at Radio Television Hong Kong.“It’s rare and exceptional,” said Mr. Cheung, who did much to popularize Cantopop as a Chinese-language D.J. He said Mr. Cordeiro would translate the Cantonese lyrics into English for a weekly segment on “All the Way With Ray,” his long-running late-night show. “His spirit of loving music influenced the other D.J.s and raised the status of Chinese music,” Mr. Cheung said.Reinaldo Maria Cordeiro was born in Hong Kong on Dec. 12, 1924, the fifth of six children in a family of Portuguese descent. His father, Luiz Gonzaga Cordeiro, a bank clerk, left his mother, Livia Pureza dos Santos, and the children in 1930, according to Mr. Cordeiro’s 2021 autobiography, “All the Way With Ray.” Mr. Cordeiro attended St. Joseph’s College, a prestigious Catholic secondary school, where he credited a teacher with giving him a solid grounding in English. In his late teens, during Japan’s World War II occupation of Hong Kong, he spent years in a refugee camp in Macau, then a Portuguese colony, with his mother and sisters.After the war, the family returned to Hong Kong. Mr. Cordeiro briefly worked at a prison, then spent four years as a clerk at the bank where his father worked. To escape the tedium of that job, he played drums at night for a jazz trio. In 1949, Mr. Cordeiro got his first radio job: writing scripts for on-air hosts at a local station called Rediffusion. Within the year, he was hosting his first show, “Progressive Jazz.” His big break came in 1964, a few years after he’d become a producer for the city’s main broadcaster, Radio Hong Kong, which is now Radio Television Hong Kong. In London, where he’d gone for training at the BBC, Mr. Cordeiro interviewed rock bands like the Searchers and Manfred Mann — and the Beatles, who were coming to Hong Kong. “I heard it’s a swinging town, or city, or place,” Ringo Starr said when Mr. Cordeiro asked about their expectations of Hong Kong, according to a transcript published in Mr. Cordeiro’s book. Mr. Cordeiro’s stature at Radio Hong Kong skyrocketed when he came back and delivered tapes of the interviews to his boss. He said he was given all of the broadcaster’s pop music slots, which meant three other hosts had to be reassigned. Besides playing records, he hosted live music shows like “Lucky Dip,” on which local singers took audience requests. They mostly sang covers of Western hits, which had more cachet in Hong Kong then, but some of his guests — notably Roman Tam and Sam Hui — went on to become major Cantopop stars.In 1970, Mr. Cordeiro debuted “All the Way With Ray,” which he would host for more than half a century. He took requests; knowing that some callers saw his show as a chance to practice conversational English, Mr. Cordeiro often helped them with their pronunciation. Sometimes, so many people called in that the lines crossed and listeners found themselves talking to each other, said Dennis Chan, a longtime fan. He said he and some of the people he met that way struck up friendships.As the years went by, Mr. Cordeiro accommodated listeners’ requests for more contemporary music. But late in life, he shifted the emphasis back to the older music he preferred, always starting his show with Elvis Presley. As midnight neared, he would move further back in time, to the likes of Steve Lawrence and Doris Day. “He wouldn’t take too much time to describe the songs or their stories. Instead, he would let the audience listen to the music,” said Mr. Chow, Mr. Cordeiro’s manager since 1985. Mr. Cordeiro had open-heart surgery in 2010, but returned to the airwaves and kept up a five-nights-a-week schedule, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., until he retired in 2021. In his book, he said he had the best job in the world. “No matter how bad I feel, once I walk into the studio, I’m full of energy — and ready to go,” he wrote.Mr. Cordeiro never married and had no children, and he outlived his five siblings. Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old retiree, said he had listened to Mr. Cordeiro since he was 12. He said Mr. Cordeiro knew his voice and would greet him by name when he called. “I would tune into the program after long days at work, and feel like my good friend was still with me,” he said. More

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      Billy Walsh Designs Sneakers for Rihanna and Writes Songs for the Weeknd

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      The Footwear News Achievement Awards, sometimes called the Oscars of shoes, shines a spotlight on the industry’s top designers. But when the singer Dua Lipa won for a Puma collection last November, her frequent collaborator Billy Walsh bolted at the sight of flashing cameras.“Billy Walsh’s five-seconds limit on the red carpet,” Ms. Lipa said, as photographers shouted her name at Cipriani Wall Street.“More like two seconds,” Mr. Walsh, 40, added safely from the sidelines.Avoiding attention is a peculiar trait for a man who collaborates with some of the biggest names in pop, including Ms. Lipa, Post Malone and the Weeknd, straddling the upper echelons of fashion and music.He has collaborated with Rihanna on a Fenty collection with Puma, and consulted Kanye West on video directors. As a fashion stylist, he dressed the Weeknd in Givenchy for the Met gala and James Blake in Yohji Yamamoto for awards shows.But his biggest achievements are in songwriting. His co-writing credits include “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee, and six tracks on Mr. West’s “Donda” album — and those are just counting his Grammy nominations.“Billy is part of a small group of people in this industry that I consider to be like family,” Mr. Malone said by email. Their shared writing catalog also includes the hits “I Fall Apart,” “Better Now,” “Wow” and “Circles.” “Not only is he one of the best songwriters, but he is a brilliant creative and fashion designer.”Dua Lipa and Mr. Walsh won collection of the year award at the Footwear News Achievement Awards last November.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Walsh has written numerous songs for Post Malone, seen here at a Spotify concert in 2022.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesOn a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Walsh went shopping at Dover Street Market, the retail temple in Manhattan where he often goes for inspiration. “I would come here to do massive pulls for the Weeknd,” he said. “I used to start on the top floor and work my way down.”He still does. As he flipped through racks of Raf Simons and Junya Watanabe on the seventh floor, Mr. Walsh recounted this unorthodox rise in the recording and street wear industries. “Fashion and music are definitely interrelated, but I guess I don’t know too many people who have succeeded in both,” he said. “I stay in the back and don’t need credit.”Dressed in an all-black “uniform” (T-shirt, Prada nylon shorts, Alyx socks and Nike Air Tuned Max sneakers), with his signature shaved head and chrome-metal grills, he has the tough-guy appearance of a post-apocalyptic British rude boy.Mr. Walsh credits his dexterity to his rough-and-tumble upbringing in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. His father, William Walsh, a folk musician who performed at local Irish pubs, encouraged him to write poetry and dance. He was also an obsessive sneaker head. “I drove my mom crazy looking all over the city for the Adidas Equipment Basketball shoes with the interchangeable, different-colored socks,” he said.Other addictions followed. He started drinking at 11, often getting into after-school brawls until he sobered up a decade later.Mr. Walsh at his home in Los Angeles.Jack Bool for The New York TimesAt 18, he headed to Los Angeles to study dance at Loyola Marymount University, and signed with an agent. But dance gigs were few and far between, so he spent most of his 20s as a nightclub promoter, working alongside his brother at Hollywood hot spots like Emerson Theater and Hyde, where he would party with a young Post Malone and future designers like Matthew M. Williams of Givenchy.In 2011, the choreographer Fatima Robinson, who he met at Eden, a Hollywood nightclub, encouraged him to stop dancing and focus on poetry and design instead. “This woman literally saved my life,” he said.He quit auditioning and busied himself with writing poetry and daydreaming about street wear. He looked inside his sneaker closet and began experimenting with Frankenstein combinations. One of the first designs cobbled together was a white Nike Air Force One with a black rubber creeper sole. “I always wondered what a creeper would look like with certain old sneakers from my childhood,” he said.He wore his custom sneakers to the clubs, which would get noticed by emerging V.I.P.s like Virgil Abloh and Travis Scott. In 2014, with seed money from fellow party promoters, he and a friend started a street wear label called Mr. Completely, which reimagined classic sneakers including Adidas Sambas and Stan Smiths.Mr. Walsh added a creeper sole to an Adidas Stand Smith for his streetwear brand, Mr. Completely.via Billy WalshTo promote the brand, he held a party at Fourtwofour on Fairfax and invited everyone he knew. Among them was the stylist Jahleel Weaver, who ordered several pairs for his client Rihanna. That turned out to be a propitious sale. A few months later, Rihanna invited Mr. Walsh to design her debut collection with Puma (which went on to win the Footwear News “Shoe of the Year” two years later).Sneakers opened other doors. One of them led to Illangelo, a veteran Canadian producer, who became a confidant and his unexpected entree into music writing. Once again, it started at a nightclub. The two were clubbing on the Sunset Strip in 2014 when Illangelo mentioned that he needed a new songwriter. Seizing the moment, Mr. Walsh shared a short poem from his iPhone Notes app.Illangelo was so impressed that he brought Mr. Walsh into studio sessions with Alicia Keys and he ended up getting his first mainstream writing credit on the song, “In Common.” Illangelo also introduced Mr. Walsh to the Weeknd, who at first was only interested in working with him as a stylist. (The two shared an appreciation for military bomber jackets.) But as Mr. Walsh’s reputation as a songwriter began to rise, the Weeknd began bringing him into the studio.Mr. Walsh dressed the Weeknd for the Met Gala in 2016.George Pimentel/WireImageMr. Walsh dressed James Blake in Yohji Yamamoto for the Grammy Awards in 2020.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesThose sessions resulted in three tracks from the 2016 album‌‌ “Starboy,” including “True Colors” and “Die ‌for You,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 this month, seven years after it was first released, thanks to going viral on TikTok.Mr. Walsh has since gone on to write more than 100 songs for artists as varied as the Kid Laroi (“Without You”), pop powerhouses like Mr. Malone and Ms. Lipa, and rock royalty like Ozzy Osbourne (“Ordinary Man”). His publishing catalog has racked up a combined 20 billion streams. Last November, “Sunflower” went 17 times platinum, becoming the highest-certified single of all time.His soaring music career hasn’t stopped him from other creative pursuits. In 2016, he started Donavan’s Yard, a nightlife collective in Los Angeles with the D.J.s Drew Byrd and Sean G that hosts parties in Tokyo and a streaming concert series on Amazon Music Live. Branded merch is sold at Dover Street Market,In October, he started a conceptual street wear label called Iswas with Keith Richardson, his creative partner at Mr. Completely. The label currently sells one item: a pair of painter’s pants made from Japanese selvage denim that costs $450.Despite his many accolades, Mr. Walsh prefers being behind the scenes. “I am never the main focus, just as it should be,” he said. Jack Bool for The New York TimesWearing many hats, Mr. Walsh said, affords him creative freedom. “If Abel knows I am winning an award with Dua and doing my own clothing line, he respects that I’m doing OK for myself,” he said, referring to the Weeknd by his given name. “No one feels like you’re too dependent.”Back at Dover Street, Mr. Walsh went from floor to floor, examining the clothing racks like an archaeologist at a fresh dig. On the shoe floor, he picked up a pair of cloven-toed “tabi” boots by Martin Margiela. “I appreciate what this guy does,” he said of the designer, who, like himself, shuns the limelight in favor of letting his work speak for itself.After about two hours, he reached the Rose Bakery on the ground floor, took a seat and ordered an Earl Grey tea. As ambient music played overhead, he reflected on his unusual journey. “My success comes from artists recognizing that I see the creative process as sacred, somewhat secret,” he said. “I am never the main focus, just as it should be.” More

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      Jerry Blavat, D.J. Who Channeled the Soul of Philadelphia, Dies at 82

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      A live-wire personality and an epic self-promoter, he got a generation of youth in the City of Brotherly Love on its feet with little-known R&B gems.Jerry Blavat, a bookmaker’s son from South Philadelphia who rose from head-turning teenage dancer on a precursor to “American Bandstand” to widespread acclaim as the most influential disc jockey in the Delaware Valley thanks to his third-rail energy, fantastical wordplay and finely honed instincts for the particular rhythms of his native city, died on Jan. 20 in Philadelphia. He was 82.His longtime partner, Keely Stahl, said the cause was myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that weakens the skeletal muscles.With his rat-a-tat patter and crooked Jack-o’-lantern smile, Mr. Blavat (pronounced BLAV-it) displayed otherworldly skills in promoting under-the-radar vinyl — and himself — in a career that began in 1961 with a 10:30 p.m. Thursday slot on tiny WCAM-AM in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.Christening himself the “Geator With the Heater” (“geator” being Blavat-ese for “gator,” an animal as voracious as the disc jockey himself) and the “Boss With the Hot Sauce,” he woofed, howled and rhymed his way to local fame, particularly among a generation of young Philadelphians in the 1960s, whom he affectionately referred to as “yon teens” (“yon” was a twist on “young,” which, in his view, sounded Shakespearean).“It’s hard to explain to an outsider what kind of energy and influence he had,” said the singer, songwriter and syndicated radio host Ben Vaughn, who came of age listening to Mr. Blavat’s show and later became a close friend. “He defined the sound and the sensibility of the city.”Purchasing his on-air time by selling ads himself, Mr. Blavat steered clear of program directors and rigid formats, and as a result he had the freedom to upend the conventions of early-’60s pop radio by spinning little-known singles, some of them several years old and many of them by Black artists who were largely unknown to white audiences.Among the many performers Mr. Blavat presented on his nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” were the Supremes. Jerry BlavatThroughout the ’60s, Mr. Blavat spun the latest singles by artists like Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Smokey Robinson. “Whenever we were in Philly and the Geator was playing our music, we always knew we’d have a hit,” Mr. Robinson wrote in a blurb for “You Only Rock Once,” Mr. Blavat’s 2011 memoir. But Mr. Blavat also made it his trademark to unearth underappreciated gems by R&B groups like the Intruders or Brenda & the Tabulations.His unflagging support of Black artists made an impression on many young white Philadelphians, some of whom would become stars themselves.“I tell people everywhere I go that I’m the product of the Philadelphia music scene,” Todd Rundgren said when he inducted the band the Hooters into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame in 2019. “People ask me, what does that mean? I tell them it comes down to one thing: I grew up listening to the Geator. He played the music that would have been called race records at the time, the music that was made south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And that’s why so many white kids in Philly grew up wanting to sing R&B.”For Mr. Blavat, success rested on one set of ears: his own. “If I don’t dig it, it could be my father out there grooving on the record and I won’t play it,” he was quoted as saying in a 1966 profile by the novelist Bruce Jay Friedman in The Saturday Evening Post.He could be stubborn in his refusal to abide by industry trends — for example, he largely ignored the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. “I sensed that it just didn’t have enough soul for my kids,” he told Mr. Friedman. “The Stones, yes. The Beatles, no. So I’d go up to Fonzo’s restaurant and the upper-class kids would say, ‘How come no Beatles?,’ and I’d say it’s just not my schticklach, not my groove.”Gerald Joseph Blavat was born on July 3, 1940, in South Philadelphia, the youngest of two children of Louis and Lucille (Capuano) Blavat. His father, known on the street as Louis the Gimp, favored sharkskin suits and Stetson hats, had ties to the local Jewish mob and ran an illegal bookmaking operation, according to Mr. Blavat’s memoir. His mother worked in a jewelry store, as well as at Philadelphia’s naval shipyard during World War II.“My mother taught me love,” Mr. Blavat told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2011. “My father taught me the streets, the nightclubs, how to hustle.”An avid dancer from an early age, he used that hustle to talk his way onto “Bandstand,” a local television show featuring teenagers dancing to the latest hits, at age 13, a year shy of the minimum age requirement. (The show, hosted by Bob Horn, later evolved into Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”) With his flashy moves and electric personality, he was soon a neighborhood celebrity. His musical ambitions, however, lay far beyond the dance floor.Mr. Blavat at an in-store appearance promoting “The Discophonic Scene.” He didn’t just present acts on that show; he was out on the floor, showing off his moves.Jerry BlavatChasing any opportunity, he did stints as a road manager for Danny & the Juniors, the Philadelphia doo-wop group best known for the No. 1 hit “At the Hop,” while still in high school, and as the comedian Don Rickles’s valet. When he was 20, he used his outsize salesmanship to scrounge up enough sponsors to buy his first $120 hour of airtime on WCAM.Despite the limited reach of the station’s signal, word spread quickly. “Kids would park on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River, as close to the transmitter as they could, so they could listen to the Geator,” Mr. Vaughn said. “There was a whole scene going — dancing, heavy petting, everything you could think of. Just classic teenage rock ’n’ roll passion.”Before long, Mr. Blavat was hosting record hops drawing up to 2,000 teenagers in ballrooms around the city. In the mid-1960s, he produced and hosted a nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” similar to “American Bandstand” but with Mr. Blavat actually out on the floor, showing off his moves, and with the artists performing live and not lip-syncing.As the decades rolled by, Mr. Blavat remained a cherished and ubiquitous figure on the Philadelphia cultural scene, hosting radio shows on WXPN and other stations in the region as well as an annual celebrity-dotted revue at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the city’s marquee performance hall.His reputation would not remain entirely unsullied. His friendships with Philadelphia organized crime bosses like Angelo Bruno and Nicodemo Scarfo brought various allegations of mob-related activity over the years.In 1992, the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation called Mr. Blavat to testify in a hearing about mob influence in the state’s liquor business, including allegations that Mr. Blavat had paid a “street tax” to Mr. Scarfo to keep union organizers away from Mr. Blavat’s popular Memories in Margate disco on the Jersey Shore, and that he had served as a front for a yacht purchase by Mr. Scarfo.Mr. Blavat at a parade in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving Day 2021.Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images, via Getty ImagesMr. Blavat cited the Fifth Amendment, and in later interviews described his relationship with local crime figures as merely personal. “I’m a performer,” he said about his mob associations in a 1995 television interview. “I’m friends with everyone.”Such controversies did little to slow his momentum. Ms. Stahl said he continued to spin his oldies on local stations seven nights a week, and to drive all over the region to perform at record hops for his old fans, and in many cases, their grandchildren.In addition to Ms. Stahl, Mr. Blavat is survived by his sister, Roberta Lawit; his daughters, Kathi Furia, Stacy Braglia, Deserie Downey and Geraldine Blavat; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.Despite achieving nationwide exposure in the 1960s with “The Discophonic Scene” and appearances on “The Monkees” and “The Mike Douglas Show,” Mr. Blavat was never interested in making the compromises it would take to abandon his roots in Philadelphia, Mr. Vaughn said.“He had offers to go national,” he said, “but they told him that they needed him to be less Geator, because what he does doesn’t make sense outside of Philadelphia. Everything he says rhymes, and he makes up words that don’t even exist. In Philly, we didn’t even question it.”“To his credit,” he added, “he passed on every one, because he didn’t want to lose us.” More

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      Rosalía Issues an English Request, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Fever Ray, Chloë, Cécile McLorin Salvant and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Rosalía, ‘LLYLM’Just before the first chorus of Rosalía’s airy new single “LLYLM,” the Spanish phenom sings, “Lo diré en ingles y me entenderás” — I will say it in English and you will understand me. There’s a brief moment of silence before Rosalía launches into a lilting, pop-radio-friendly hook, sung, yes, in English: “I don’t need honesty, baby, lie like you love me.” In the context of the song, it’s a plea to an uncaring partner, but in the grander scheme of Rosalía’s career, it’s also a playful wink at the idea of an English-speaking crossover hit. The nimble “LLYLM” pivots restlessly between these two worlds, and finds Rosalía — for now at least — having it both ways. LINDSAY ZOLADZFever Ray, ‘Kandy’The eerily alluring “Kandy” is almost a Knife reunion. Though it’s technically by Karin Dreijer’s shapeshifting solo project Fever Ray, it’s one of four songs on the upcoming album “Radical Romantics” that was co-written and co-produced by Karin’s brother and Knife bandmate Olof Dreijer. (It even features the very same synthesizer Olof used on the pulsating “The Captain,” from the Knife’s classic 2006 album “Silent Shout.”) Still, thematically, “Kandy” is of a piece with the other promising glimpses of “Radical Romantics” that Karin has previously offered, at once dark and hypnotically sensual: “After the swim,” the musician sings in a low croon, “she laid me down and whispered, ‘All the girls want kandy.’” ZOLADZClark, ‘Town Crank’Christopher Stephen Clark, the English musician who records as Clark, has built a huge, polymorphous catalog of instrumental music that ranges from stark, austere techno to exquisite chamber-music soundtracks. But he hasn’t sung lead vocals until now — on “Town Crank” from an album due in March, “Sus Dog,” with Thom Yorke of Radiohead as executive producer. “Town Crank” hurtles into motion, starting with dry, jittery acoustic guitar before mustering a full sonic barrage: a relentless electronic bass line, blasts of drums and distortion, orchestral flurries. Clark’s voice turns out to be like Yorke’s, a high, pensive tenor shading into falsetto; he sometimes multitracks it into Beach Boys-like harmonies, while his lyrics offer stray bits of sage advice: “Nothing comes about without a little tweaking.” JON PARELESCécile McLorin Salvant, ‘D’un Feu Secret’Cécile McLorin Salvant, one of her generation’s finest jazz singers, throws a high-concept curveball on her coming album, “Mélusine.” It retells a European folk tale — about love, a curse, broken promises and reptilian transformations — in songs new and old. “D’un Feu Secret” (“Of a Secret Fire”) is indeed old. It was composed in 1660 by Michel Lambert. “I could be cured If I stopped loving/But I prefer the disease,” it vows. McLorin sings it like an early music performer, poised and delicate with feathery ornaments. But the accompaniment, from her longtime keyboardist and collaborator Sullivan Fortner, is on synthesizers, savoring the anachronism. PARELESChlöe, ‘Pray It Away’The Beyoncé protégé Chlöe — of the sisterly R&B duo Chloe x Halle — goes full church girl on the fiery “Pray It Away,” the first single from her upcoming debut album, “In Pieces.” An unfaithful lover brings Chlöe to her knees and makes her wrestle with cravings for vengeance but, as she puts it in breathy vocals stacked to heaven, “I’ma just pray it away before I give him what he deserves first.” ZOLADZASAP Rocky, ‘Same Problems?’ASAP Rocky mourns the many rappers who have died young by questioning himself: “Am I a product of things that I saw?” he sings. “Am I a product of things in my songs?” His self-produced track is a haunted waltz, seesawing between two perpetually unresolved chords, with ASAP Rocky’s doleful voice cradled and answered by vocal harmonies from Miguel. “How many problems get solved if we don’t get involved?” he wonders. PARELESKimbra featuring Ryan Lott, ‘Foolish Thinking’Kimbra, a singer and songwriter from New Zealand, had her global triumph in 2011 as the duet partner (and comeuppance) for Gotye in “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which won the Grammy for record of the year. Since then, she has persevered with her own kind of electronic pop, and in “Foolish Thinking” she collaborates with Ryan Lott, a.k.a. Son Lux. It’s a clear pop structure with an eerie refrain — “thought I could remove the pain/but that’s my foolish thinking” — delivered in an echoey, shadowy production, full of furtive keyboard patterns and variously miked vocals, sketching the longings of a partner who’s loyal but utterly confounded. PARELESRickie Lee Jones, ‘Just in Time’Rickie Lee Jones takes on jazz standards on “Pieces of Treasure,” an album due April 28. Her version of “Just in Time” by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne, a song about last-chance romance — “The losing dice were tossed/My bridges all were crossed” — is simultaneously thankful and teasing. With Mike Mainieri’s vibraphone scampering around her voice, Jones places her phrases slyly behind the beat, pausing to land each note just in time. PARELESJobi Riccio, ‘For Me It’s You’“Everyone has a person they sing their love songs to,” Jobi Riccio sings in “For Me It’s You,” a slow, terse, old-fashioned country waltz complete with a plaintive fiddle. It just gets torchier as that love goes unrequited. PARELESSamia, ‘Breathing Song’Deep trauma courses through Samia’s “Breathing Song,” from her new EP, “Honey.” Over stark, sustained keyboard chords, she sings “Straight to the ER/While I bled on your car”; the driver asks, “It wasn’t mine, right?” The chorus, sharpened by Auto-Tune, is “No, no, no” — it’s simultaneously denial, reassurance and proof of life. PARELES More

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      Sam Smith Seeks Self-Acceptance and Catharsis on ‘Gloria’

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      On the British musician’s fourth album, “Gloria,” Smith puts aside ballads for more danceable tracks that show flashes of boldness, but often retreat to generics.Since the release of Sam Smith’s soulful 2014 smash “Stay With Me,” the British singer and songwriter has been pop’s most high-profile balladeer of queer heartbreak, a crooner with a pure, buttery tone and an agile vocal range that can swoop from the depths of despair to an airy, yearning falsetto. Now, on the musician’s more upbeat and sensual fourth album, “Gloria,” Smith, who uses they/them pronouns, is singing a less dour tune.The album’s first single, “Love Me More,” is a bright, springy ode to self-acceptance, inspired by Smith’s increasing vulnerability in talking about their longtime struggles with body image. “Every day I’m trying not to hate myself,” they sing with wrenching candor, “but lately it’s not hurting like it did before.” “Love Me More” transcends the limitations of one-dimensional “empowerment pop” because it doesn’t downplay the intensity of Smith’s challenges and, refreshingly, suggests that self-love is an ongoing process.But the “Gloria” song that became Smith’s first No. 1 hit in the United States is something else entirely: “Unholy,” a campy, devilish romp with a hook that cleverly utilizes the double harmonic scale and features a guest verse from the German pop singer Kim Petras. (Smith and Petras became the first nonbinary person and the first openly transgender woman to reach the top of the Hot 100.) The appeal of “Unholy” comes from the way it wags a lusty finger at holier-than-thou puritanism and presents queerness as the basis of aesthetic liberation. “Mummy don’t know daddy’s getting hot at the body shop,” Smith sings with a knowing, beckoning wink. It sounds like the most fun they’ve ever had on a song.Much of “Gloria” aims for a similar sense of ecstatic catharsis and looks for it where Smith’s career began: on the dance floor. The forlorn pianos and light percussion of Smith’s signature ballads have largely been swapped out for synthesizers and electronic beats. The thumping neo-house “Lose You” harkens back to Smith’s early breakout appearances on U.K. dance hits like Disclosure’s “Latch” and Naughty Boy’s “La La La,” while the sleek, glittery “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” (which was produced by the E.D.M. hitmaker Calvin Harris) taps into the pop-disco revival ignited by artists like Dua Lipa and Jessie Ware, taking its shout-along hook from a common reality show refrain.As on “Unholy,” Smith’s arrangements often feature prominent and inventive use of backing singers. While some pop musicians of more limited vocal range employ choirs to hit notes they cannot reach, the nimble-voiced Smith always sounds, more organically, like a member of the chorus who has simply stepped to the forefront for a solo. Smith hammers that point home on the grandiose hymn “Gloria,” but makes it more subtly and effectively on the excellent “No God,” a moody, midtempo R&B number that reads a stubborn ex-lover the riot act. “You’re no god, you’re no teacher, you’re no saint, you’re no leader,” Smith sings with silky venom, while a group of bass vocalists offer some sonorous no-no-no-nos in agreement.But the quality varies across the 12-track album, which Smith wrote with their longtime collaborator Jimmy Napes and a rotating cast of other contributors. The dancehall-influenced “Gimme” has the libidinousness of “Unholy” but little of its charm, centered around a gratingly repetitive hook from the Canadian musician Jessie Reyez, who also makes an appearance on the similarly uninspired “Perfect.” The album’s final track, “Who We Love,” is its gravest misstep, a schmaltzy duet with Ed Sheeran that plays it safe and blunts the force of Smith’s previously idiosyncrasy. “It’s not a feeling you can run from, ’cause we love who we love,” Smith and Sheeran sing, blandly sloganeering. If it’s meant to be a romantic duet between them, it lacks a spark. If, more likely, it’s meant to be a message of allyship from a straight artist, it’s giving Macklemore.“Gloria” has moments of boldness, but its occasional lapses into generics keep it from feeling like a major personal statement. “Nobody taught you how to cry, but somebody showed you how to lie,” Smith sings on the acoustic-guitar-driven “How to Cry,” a well-intentioned call for vulnerability that nonetheless revolves around a simplistic melody and rhymes so obvious, the listener will be able to predict them before each line ends. Smith’s voice, as ever, is effortlessly dazzling, but it can certainly handle more challenging material. Maybe they are an Elton John in need of a Bernie Taupin.Sam Smith“Gloria”(Capitol) More

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      Ticketmaster Called a ‘Monopoly’ at Senate Hearing Over Taylor Swift Debacle

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      The Judiciary Committee, responding to the bungled sale of Taylor Swift concert tickets, heard the company apologize and its critics trace the problem to the industry’s lack of competition.Live Nation Entertainment, the concert industry giant that owns Ticketmaster, came under withering attack during a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday, with committee members from both parties criticizing it for the botched sale of tickets to Taylor Swift’s latest tour and calling the company a monopoly that hinders competition and harms consumers.Over nearly three hours, senators pilloried a top Live Nation executive, Joe Berchtold, over the handling of Ms. Swift’s tickets last November and over longstanding allegations that the company badgers its competitors to win new business. Such bullying would be a violation of a Justice Department agreement that set conditions on the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2010.“This is all the definition of monopoly,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. “Live Nation is so powerful that it doesn’t even need to exert pressure. It doesn’t need to threaten. Because people just fall in line.”Some at the hearing went so far as to question whether the two companies, whose agreement with the Justice Department expires in 2025, should be broken up.Mr. Berchtold, Live Nation’s president and chief financial officer, acknowledged the problems with a presale for Ms. Swift’s tour, and apologized to the singer and her fans. When those tickets went on sale, millions of people were turned away. Technical problems also caused tickets to disappear from the online baskets of customers — whom Ticketmaster had approved through its Verified Fan system — as they were trying to buy them.At the hearing, both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concern about Live Nation’s dominance in the ticketing industry. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Berchtold largely attributed Ticketmaster’s failings to an assault from online bots: automated programs, run by scalpers, that seek to snatch up tickets before they ever make their way to consumers. That drew a largely skeptical response from the senators.“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said, with more than a hint of anger in her voice. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, was even more blunt. “The way your company handled the ticket sales with Ms. Swift,” he said, “was a debacle.”The merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster united the world’s most powerful concert promoter and the biggest ticketing platform, creating a colossus without equal in the multibillion-dollar live music business.In 2019, the last full year unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic for which Live Nation has reported data, the company put on more than 40,000 events around the world and sold 485 million tickets. It owns or otherwise controls more than 300 venues around the world, far more than any other player in the business.In part because of its bulk and global reach, Live Nation has long been the target of complaints from competitors, who contend that the company’s size, and its control of Ticketmaster, give it an unfair advantage.Jerry Mickelson, a longtime independent concert promoter in Chicago, told the senators that a common frustration among the market’s smaller players is that Live Nation can profit from concerts put on by rival promoters because it still makes money through its control of Ticketmaster. “Pepsi doesn’t earn money from Coke,” he said. “But our competitor, Live Nation, makes money from selling tickets to our concerts.”Objections to Live Nation’s business have grown louder since 2019, when the Justice Department said that the company had “repeatedly violated” the terms of its regulatory agreement, called a consent decree.Justice Department investigators said that Live Nation had threatened venues that it would withhold tours under the company’s control if those venues did not sign deals with Ticketmaster, in violation of a key provision in the decree. Live Nation did not admit any wrongdoing, but in early 2020 the Justice Department extended the decree by five years.Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was among those at the hearing who raised the question of whether Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster should be undone.“If the Department of Justice establishes violations of the consent decree,” he said, “then unwinding the merger ought to be on the table.”Mr. Berchtold pushed back against many of the accusations, saying that Live Nation does not threaten venues; that those venues hold a great deal of leverage in negotiating ticketing contracts; and that new entrants like SeatGeek, a rival ticketing platform, have kept Ticketmaster on its toes. According to various estimates cited by the senators, Ticketmaster controls the ticketing at 70 to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States. Mr. Berchtold said Live Nation’s estimate is 50 to 60 percent and he attributed its market share to the quality of its product.A small number of people demonstrated outside the Senate office building during the hearing, some holding signs referencing the Taylor Swift ticket debacle. Kenny Holston/The New York Times“We believe ticketing has never been more competitive,” he said.At the hearing, called “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” witnesses included other players in the concert business who described great difficulties competing against Live Nation.Jack Groetzinger, the chief executive of SeatGeek, said that venues are afraid of losing Live Nation concert tours if they do not sign with Ticketmaster. He said that is an obstacle for smaller companies like his in winning new business — though SeatGeek has been one of the more successful upstarts in ticketing in recent years, signing major clients like the Dallas Cowboys and Jujamcyn Theaters, one of the major Broadway theater owners.The panel also included a musician, Clyde Lawrence, of a small New York band called Lawrence. Dressed in a black suit, and with a scruffy head of hair, he joked that he could only dream of the crushing ticket demand enjoyed by Ms. Swift. But he described frustrations in dealing with Live Nation, such as the backstage costs it charges musicians, and the opacity of ticket surcharges, for which his band gets nothing.He described a typical show, where the face value of the ticket was $30, plus $12 in fees. Yet out of that $42 paid by the consumer, $30 was eaten up by the venue, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and another $6 went to the band’s touring expenses. “So that leaves us with $6 for an eight-piece band, pretax,” he said, “and we also have to pay our own health insurance.”In his questioning, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, honed in on a facet of Ticketmaster’s business, the resale marketplace that exists seamlessly within its online ticket sales platform, “where you’re forcing everyone in the resale market to come into your ecosystem.”“This is how monopolies work,” Mr. Hawley added. “You leverage market power in one market to get market power in another market — and it looks like you’re doing that in, frankly, multiple markets.”Ms. Klobuchar, who called the hearing, said in a summation that some of the problems in ticketing, such as fighting bot traffic, could be dealt with through legislation. But she said that the larger question, of whether to take action against Live Nation as a monopoly, was best handled by the Justice Department. The near-unanimous criticism from lawmakers on Tuesday may put pressure on the Justice Department to act.The most remarkable aspect of the hearing may have been the display of consensus by a panel often split along partisan lines. Mr. Blumenthal summed that up with a mocking salute to Mr. Berchtold.“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” he said. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.” More