I don’t know if I have much to say on the personal front when it comes to ‘Torn Curtain’. I listened through Marquee Moon the first time, sometime in 2012 when I was going through a “Classic Albums” discovery phase, and from what I can recall ‘See No Evil’ and today’s subject were the two songs on there that I latched on to from the jump. I liked them then and there. Years would gradually come and go, and on subsequent revisits I’d get into another song or two. At this point, it’s just ‘Friction’ and, in a most blasphemous case, the title track that remain the numbers on the album that I can’t get into. The former’s kind of rock and roll party vibe isn’t for me, and even though I appreciate ‘Marquee Moon’ the song, there’s never been a point where I’ve willingly wanted to listen to it outside of the LP. If I’m not into those two songs now, I think I’m at the point where I can accept I probably never will be. It’s just me, I don’t know what to tell you.

To me, ‘Torn Curtain’ feels like it was written to be the big, emotional album closer. Just want to look out the window and see it’s raining while listening to this one, you know? A very minor-key composition, songwriter Tom Verlaine sings about the titular object. The ‘torn curtain’ is meant to symbolise something. What that thing is eludes me to this day. I bought the 33 1/3 book written around Marquee Moon in 2018, wanting to know more about the songs on there and their respective backgrounds and inspirations. I remember there being many more words written about the CBGB punk scene and the context of the album than the actual music and the songs themselves. Felt a bit gypped, to be honest. I can’t seem to find anything online showing Verlaine’s thoughts on it. The one note stated across the board on lyric sites is how the song shares a name with a 1966 Alfred Hitchcock film. Basically, what the song’s about is anyone’s guess, and because Verlaine’s no longer with us, no one will really ever know for sure.

But what we can’t find regarding the lyrical matter is certainly made up for in the musicality of it all. Never really paid attention to the sort of skipping pattern the drums take on during the verses before. They sound like a ticking clock to me, maybe symbolizing this second-by-second suffering Verlaine experiences with this torn-curtain symbol. But that may be a reach in itself. I like how the sparse, empty-feeling verses contrast with the bursting melancholy of the choruses – heightened by a twinkling piano and a call-and-response dynamic between the backing vocals and Verlaine’s lead vocal. I like how there isn’t just one guitar solo but two, both performed by Verlaine, the latter of which seems him climb further and further up the neck before sliding back down and working his way up, before alternating on two notes until the song eventually fades to silence, signifying the album’s end. Such a dramatic way to finish it up, a complete 180 from the confident beginnings of ‘See No Evil’, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect conclusion.