Guitarist Tom Verlaine, co-founder of Television, has died at the age of 73.

NEW YORK. Tom Verlaine, the guitarist and co-founder of the legendary proto-punk band Television, who influenced many bands playing at the ultra-cool music club CBGB in downtown New York with the Ramones, Patti Smith and the Talking Heads, has died. He was 73 years old.

He died Saturday in New York surrounded by close friends after a short illness, said Kara Hutchison of the Lede Company, a public relations firm.

“Tom Verlaine has gone beyond what his guitar playing has always hinted at. He was the best rock and roll guitarist of all time and, like Hendrix, could dance from the realms of space to garage rock. It calls for greatness,” Mike Scott of The Waterboys tweeted. He was one of many artists who paid tribute to Verlaine.

Although Television never achieved much commercial success, Verlaine’s uneven inventive playing as part of the band’s two-guitar attack influenced many musicians. In 1977, Television released their groundbreaking debut album, Marquee Moon, which included the nearly 11-minute title track and “Elevation”, followed a year later by their second album, Adventure.

“Since then, ‘Marquee Moon’ has become something of the holy grail of independent rock. It has had a clear impact on artists such as Pavement, Sonic Youth, The Strokes and Jeff Buckley,” wrote Billboard magazine in 2003.

Growing tensions between Verlaine and fellow guitarist Richard Lloyd led to Television disbanding after the release of their second album Adventure. The band reunited for a 1992 self-titled album for Capitol Records and performed live occasionally.

“We wanted to simplify things even more, to get away from the theatrics of show business of brilliant bands, from blues and boogie-woogie,” wrote Television co-founder Richard Hell in his autobiography, “I dreamed that I was a very pure drifter. “We wanted to be edgy and tough and torn, just like the world was.”

Verlaine has released eight solo albums, the most commercially successful of which was his 1981 second solo album Dreamtime, which peaked at number 177 on the Billboard albums chart. He often worked as an accompanist for a former mistress, Patti Smith.

Online tributes included tributes to Suzanne Hoffs and Billy Idol who said that Verlaine made music that influenced the US and UK punk scene. Smith shared a tribute on Instagram by posting a photo of them together: “Goodbye Tom on Omega.”

Born Tom Miller, he later took the surname of 19th-century French poet Paul-Marie Verlaine after he met Hell, born Richard Meyers, at a Delaware prep school. They were tall, thin, snarky kids who dropped out of school and moved to the East Village, where they worked together in bookstores and wrote poetry.

“He was known for his angular lyricism and sharp lyrical digressions, cunning wit and ability to rock every string to the most sincere emotion,” his publicist said in a statement. “His vision and his imagination will be missed.”