Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Garage to Stadiums is one of the Top 5% of podcasts in the world. From the bars to the arenas, learn the fascinating stories of how our biggest rock music legends made the leap. Each episode reveals the stories, songs and little known facts of the journey from obscurity to fame of one of rock music’s biggest stars. Join us on Garage To Stadiums as host Dave Anthony teams up with an author of a rock biography or director of a rock documentary to explore that journey, their early years, the stories behind the scenes, their top songs, and their place in music history.
Learn about the passion, talent, luck and even scandal that often came together to propel these stars from obscurity to household names.
Garage to Stadiums Music History podcast
Episode 56
The Story of Talking Heads: a new blueprint for music
Host Dave Anthony
Guest: Jonathan Gould, author (“Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock”)
[00:00:00] Dave Anthony: Welcome to Garage to Stadiums. Today's story is the story of Talking Heads. From the 1960s through 2000s, most great bands built on what came before. The Beatles drew from Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Little Richard.
[00:00:15] Dave Anthony: Eagles leaned into the harmonies of The Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Nirvana fused a love for both The Beatles and Black Sabbath. But then there's Talking Heads. Not a refinement, not a revival, something entirely new.
[00:00:29] Dave Anthony: Three art school students leave Rhode Island for a crumbling New York City in the mid-'70s, a city on the brink of bankruptcy, they didn't chase a sound, they invented one.
[00:00:39] Dave Anthony: Nervous rhythms, angular guitars, lyrics that felt like overheard thoughts, music that didn't just break rules, it ignored them completely. They emerged from a New York scene as others did, but quickly stood apart. Talking Heads were wired straight into something different. This is a story of a band that didn't follow the blueprint.
[00:00:59] Dave Anthony: They rewrote it.
[00:01:00] Dave Anthony: Our guest today to discuss Talking Heads is Jonathan Gould, the author of books on The Beatles, soul R&B artist Otis Redding, and his current book, “Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock”, which was recently released. Jonathan joins us today from New York. Welcome to Garage to Stadiums, Jonathan.
[00:01:21] Jonathan Gould: Thank you.
[00:01:22] Dave Anthony: Jonathan, why did you choose Talking Heads as your subject?
[00:01:25] Jonathan Gould: Talking Heads was really the band that, grabbed me for, for all sorts of reasons. Um, I wasn't that much of a fan of the punk scene. I wasn't certainly that much of a fan of the progressive rock scene in the 1970s, but Talking heads leapt out
[00:01:41] Dave Anthony: Your book's a real deep dive a band that has been a bit of a mysterious creature all these years. Help us understand the characters that inhabit the band. their family backgrounds, and, how they came together.
[00:01:53] Jonathan Gould: Sure. I suppose one characteristic of them is they all came from, upper middle-class families, [00:02:00] um, uh, David Byrne less so than the others. David was born in Scotland.
[00:02:06] Jonathan Gould: his parents immigrated to first to Canada and then, to the United States.
[00:02:10] Jonathan Gould: His father worked for Westinghouse. he was, a high-level electrical engineer who worked on defense contracting systems, submarines, guidance systems, things like that. David grew up in a town called Arbutus, which is, sort of working-class blue-collar suburb of Baltimore.
[00:02:29] Jonathan Gould: David was a shy, rather awkward kid who nevertheless had a share of friends. and he from an early age spoke about attaching himself to people who, were more outgoing, as a way of compensating for his shyness.
[00:02:46] Jonathan Gould: something that becomes very important. we today, in the worlds speak confidently about something we call the spectrum, and we talk about people who have high functioning autism. we've all become very familiar with that.
[00:02:59] Jonathan Gould: Such a thing didn't exist, in the 19 or 1950s or sixties or seventies when David was growing up. David has described himself as having what used to be called Asperger's Syndrome, which is another word for high functioning autism. he describes it as a mild case and compared to some versions of autism, of course it was a very mild case.
[00:03:19] Jonathan Gould: He was quite functional in the world. He was shy. He was awkward. but it also gave him pretty powerful sense of concentration of focus, this sort of thing, which many people with high functioning autism we now know have.
[00:03:33] Jonathan Gould: he was an odd ball, who managed to fit in in this, in, in this kind of blue collar of suburban town outside of Baltimore. now the other two people in the band, were very, had very different backgrounds. Chris Franz was the son of
[00:03:47] Jonathan Gould: A lawyer, a former military officer who became a lawyer in, in the Army, uh, west Point graduate. he grew up in, in a true upper middle-class Milia in Pittsburgh. he went at one point to a boarding school, uh, called Christchurch, which was, near Chesapeake Bay. And then he came home.
[00:04:07] Jonathan Gould: And for his last two years of high school, he went to a school called Shadyside Academy, kind of like the top private school in Pittsburgh, while he was at Shadyside Academy,
[00:04:17] Jonathan Gould: his interest in visual art was strong enough that he applied to the Rhode Island School of Design, R.I.S.D, as it's called, and was accepted there. and that's where he went to college.
[00:04:27] Jonathan Gould: David also applied to R.I.S.D and was accepted at R.I.S.D. David too was, was drawn to art in high school. so, the two of them. Entered college at the same time in Providence. They were on the same corridor in their dorm, but they were not friends their freshman year. I, Chris has described the way he took one look at David, who at that time had a thick beard and looked a bit like a hobo.
[00:04:52] Jonathan Gould: some people at R.I.S.D thought he might be Amish because there was something definitely unusual about, about his, his physical [00:05:00] presentation. Anyway, Chris took one look at this guy and thought, I, I want nothing to do with him. Chris in the meantime was developing a very rock and roll look, a well-groomed head of hair and, all of the sort of trappings of, what we think of as late sixties, early seventies, rock dress in that way.
[00:05:18] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:19] Jonathan Gould: David, had a rough time at R.I.S.D. Uh, R.I.S.D is a fairly conventional art school, And David was drawn to the one form of art that had nothing to do with any of that stuff. He was drawn to conceptual art. nothing to do with drawing.
[00:05:33] Jonathan Gould: It had nothing to do with painting. nothing to do with sculpture. It was all about ideas. And after a year there, he dropped out. He really felt like a fish out of water. not to try a different type of, education, to try a a different art school.
[00:05:48] Jonathan Gould: So, he enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Design in Baltimore. close to his home. Micah, as that school is called.
[00:05:57] Jonathan Gould: And David wound up dropping out So he went to two art schools, dropped out of each of them after the end of his first year
[00:06:04] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:04] Jonathan Gould: some time kind of hitchhiking around the country, this sort of thing. but, a year later, a good friend of his, that he knew from Micah, had transferred to R.I.S.D
[00:06:16] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:17] Jonathan Gould: David wound up going back to Providence and reacquainting himself with his cohort of acquaintances there.
[00:06:24] Jonathan Gould: and that's when he and Chris Franz first got together. they had a mutual friend who was, who had made a kind of underground film, and the friend asked Chris and asked David if they would do some, music for the film. And that's where the two of them met. by that time though, the third member of the original talking heads had come into the picture.
[00:06:44] Jonathan Gould: Tina Weymouth grew up in a military family. Her father was a high-ranking naval officer.
[00:06:50] Jonathan Gould: as a result, she lived, uh, all over the world, wherever her father was stationed.
[00:06:54] Jonathan Gould: Um, San Diego, Honolulu, um, Washington dc. [00:07:00], Annapolis, Newport. And in, uh, Kevi, uh, which is a, a remote naval base in, in Iceland. Uh, her, her father commanded the aircraft carrier that, that retrieved Alan Shepherd, the first American space flight. Um, so her father was a, as I say, a high-ranking naval officer in Admiral.
[00:07:19] Jonathan Gould: her father was, actually transferred to Vietnam. and the family spent, the time that he was serving in Vietnam, in Los Angeles.
[00:07:28] Jonathan Gould: So, Tina had, for her last two years of high school, a fairly conventional Los Angeles, um, high school experience. She was on the cheerleading team. She went first to Barnard, which at that time was the Girls School of Columbia, and she was studying French, and then she decided to transfer to R.I.S.D.
[00:07:47] Jonathan Gould: And so, Chris and Tina met at R.I.S.D. after David had left there. And by the time David returned, they were a couple, they'd gotten together. So that was the way these three people [00:08:00] met. Chris and Tina graduated, uh, in 1974, um, and David found himself at Loose Ends.
[00:08:08] Dave Anthony: Next, the three friends, David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Weymouth, move to New York City and stumble on a new opportunity.
[00:08:17] Peter Aaron: I'm Peter Aaron, author of Moving in Stereo: Ric Ocasek, the Driving Force of The Cars, and you're behind the wheel at the Garage to Stadiums Music History Podcast.
[00:08:30] Dave Anthony: David Byrne wound up moving to New York City
[00:08:32] Dave Anthony: and lived on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan with another friend from the Rhode Island School of Design, who said, "Help me renovate and you can stay here." Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth moved to New York City a couple months later.
[00:08:42] Dave Anthony: To understand the New York City the trio walked into, you have to rewind the clock. After World War II, Lower Manhattan roared with garment factories, warehouses, and light industry packed into the buildings south of Houston Street. But by the late 1960s and early '70s, the machines had [00:09:00] fallen silent, with these kinds of businesses moving to the suburbs or replaced by foreign imports.
[00:09:04] Dave Anthony: Jobs and companies disappeared. The result? An eroded tax base and a once roaring New York City teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. However, this led to abandoned lofts in Lower Manhattan suddenly becoming dirt cheap, creating the perfect breeding ground for a new generation of artists, punks, and outsiders who would ignite New York's alternative music scene.
[00:09:26] Dave Anthony: And by 1975, the fastest growing demographic in New York was the 25 to 35 age segments
[00:09:33] Dave Anthony:
[00:09:33] Jonathan Gould: David and Chris and Tina
[00:09:35] Jonathan Gould: rented a loft on Christie Street in Lower Manhattan, they were all able to get, standard entry level jobs that paid minimum wage, um, they were, each of them making a few hundred dollars a month.
[00:09:47] Jonathan Gould: Chris is a stock boy. Tina as a shop girl. David is a theater usher. This sort of, those sorts of jobs. they could afford to rent this, this large loft, um, in which, when everybody went home and [00:10:00] the rest of the building went home at night, um, they could play rock and roll as loud as they wanted for as long as they wanted in that sense, and.
[00:10:07] Jonathan Gould: And then of course, that leads us to the origins of where they got their first gigs, the infamous or famous CBGB. And
[00:10:15] Jonathan Gould: Sure.
[00:10:15] Dave Anthony: the story of the, uh, hilly the founder and how this came to be.
[00:10:21] Jonathan Gould: Yeah, well, hilly Crystal was, um, started out thinking he might be a folk singer, might be an actor or something like that. Um, but early on he got into, uh, managing clubs. At one time he was the manager of the Village Vanguard, which was the top jazz club in New York in those days. in the 1960s, uh, he opened a series of, of bars, really, uh, clubs are dignifying it a little bit.
[00:10:47] Jonathan Gould: one was called Phillies and I think it was on ninth Street. And it was 1969, he moved his operation to a place that he called Hilles on the Bowery. some listeners may remember the [00:11:00] idea that the Bowery was once, uh, world famous as being the skid row of New York City.
[00:11:06] Jonathan Gould: the, the expression Bowery Bums or Bowery Boys or this sort of thing. It was the poorest part of New York, essentially. the club was on the ground floor of something called the Palace Hotel, which was a, which was basically a flop house for, um, indigent people, alcoholics,
[00:11:23] Jonathan Gould: that's a good thing for a bar. They start drinking at 12 o'clock in the afternoon and they stay there until you close the place.
[00:11:29] Jonathan Gould: For the first, um, four years, he tried putting music in there. sometimes he would put in jazz groups. Sometimes some of the kind of early LGBT, groups in New York City, this sort of thing.
[00:11:41] Jonathan Gould: Um, and then he decided he was gonna change in the name of the club. And, um, he put up an awning, that, that said CVGB. And, CV GB stood, stood for Country Bluegrass, and blues. Nobody knew that it was CBGB.
[00:11:55] Jonathan Gould: a guitarist who lived in the neighborhood named Tom Ver Lane, who had a band called [00:12:00] Television, came up to him and asked if the band could play there.
[00:12:03] Jonathan Gould: And Hilly, said, sure. They would get the door, he would get the bar, uh, in terms of the, the finances of it. So, television was the first band that played there. Hilly said they were the worst band I ever heard in my life.
[00:12:14] Jonathan Gould: one of those groups was the Ramones, um, who, unlike television, didn't live in the neighborhood they all lived in, in Forest Hills, Queens.
[00:12:21] Jonathan Gould: when David Byrne first came to New York, uh, this loft that I referred to on Bond Street is directly around the corner from CBGB. And, um, by the way, the name of the band, the name of the, of the club was CBGB for some reason or another, uh, people have always referred to it as CBGBs.
[00:12:38] Jonathan Gould: They put an s on the end of it, which, uh ha has a better ring to it, I think. when Chris and Tina arrived in the city, uh, David took them there, showed them the place, and this became the focus of their idea about where they might play,
[00:12:55] Dave Anthony: next, guitarist and lead singer David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz know they [00:13:00] need a bass player to complete their trio, and a surprising candidate is hired for the job.
[00:13:10] Jonathan Gould: when Chris reconnected with David,
[00:13:12] Jonathan Gould: they talked about putting, getting back together and, and forming a band in New York City. And to do that, they would need a bass player. David played guitar. Chris played a drum. Tina in the meantime, was planning on pursuing a career as a visual artist. So, they wanted a loft where a band could rehearse and where Tina could paint.
[00:13:29] Jonathan Gould: Um, and after several weeks of not being able to find a bass player, either Chris suggested or Tina suggested, well, maybe Tina should play bass. she had played a little bit of acoustic guitar,
[00:13:42] Jonathan Gould: But she had no musical experience. She’d never had much of a relationship with, with, with popular music. but she, uh, Tina is a bright dynamic, uh, uh, at that time, young woman. Who set her mind to doing this? Um, David Byrne was basically her instructor [00:14:00] as a bass player because he was the person who played a stringed instrument,
[00:14:03] Jonathan Gould: and the three of them began rehearsing in their loft on Christie Street, near, as I could tell, beginning in December 1974, and they continued to hang out at CBGBs. And then by June they decided that they were ready to try playing in front of people.
[00:14:21] Jonathan Gould: And so, they asked Hilly Crystal if, if they could do that, and they came in and they auditioned for him. they passed the audition and he put them on a bill, uh, with, uh, opening for the Ramones, who at that time had become sort of one of the top acts at CBGBs.
[00:14:37]
[00:14:47] Jonathan Gould: June 6th, 1975, was their first gig ever anywhere as far as that goes.
[00:14:54] Dave Anthony: we were back what would we witness sitting in CBGB when the talking heads took the stage?
[00:14:59] Jonathan Gould: Um, [00:15:00] well, there's some great descriptions of it because people saw them very early on and wrote about them. I would say the overwhelming impression of them had to do simply with their awkwardness.
[00:15:13] Jonathan Gould: David particularly looked very awkward, very nervous, very withdrawn.
[00:15:29] Jonathan Gould: Most performers, do their best to, command, the room, command, the stage and act like they're the center of attention and that all eyes are on them. David and, and talking has had none of that.
[00:15:40] Jonathan Gould: but there was something fascinating about seeing somebody who looked that uncomfortable on stage, especially because there were other characteristics they had.
[00:15:49] Jonathan Gould: they had been rehearsing sort of avidly for six months,
[00:15:53] Jonathan Gould: there was an aspect of them that that was very, very polished compared to many of the other bands [00:16:00] at CBGBs that tended to get up on stage and just blast away in this sense.
[00:16:05] Dave Anthony: the bands that were part of that core group because we always kind of lump them in together.
[00:16:10] Dave Anthony: And reading your book, there wasn't much camaraderie among the, the
[00:16:15] Jonathan Gould: No,
[00:16:15] Jonathan Gould: No, it, it wasn't that kind of a scene.
[00:16:17] Jonathan Gould: there was no, there was no sort of mutual admiration for the most part going on.
[00:16:22] Jonathan Gould: the Ramones were not exactly what you would call, uh, likable.
[00:16:26] Jonathan Gould: they thought they were better than any everybody else because they thought that everybody else, um, who were writing songs that two or three chords to them were a bunch of pretentious Manhattanites.
[00:16:35] Jonathan Gould: Blondie on the other hand, you know, was a nascent pop group.
[00:16:48] Jonathan Gould: and their main. Task was to figure out what sort of words to put in the mouth of this beautiful girl who stood in front of them and so on and so forth.
[00:16:57] Jonathan Gould: Um, television on the other hand, [00:17:00] um, were, uh, very impressed with themselves. two, um, quite accomplished guitarists in the group. they thought of themselves almost in the line of bands like the, the Grateful Dead or,
[00:17:18] Jonathan Gould: the Allman Brothers, these two guitar bands that improvised on stage and so on and so forth.
[00:17:24] Jonathan Gould: the original CBGB bands, were in competition with one another and none of whom were particularly supportive of one another. probably the person who had the greatest success starting at CBGBs was Patty Smith.
[00:17:36] Jonathan Gould: who was a mesmerizing performer, not a great singer. Patty Smith was a riveting performer, who very quickly got recording contract with Columbia Records a But Patty Smith's great line to talking heads.
[00:17:59] Jonathan Gould: When, when, [00:18:00] um, I think it was Chris Franz introduced himself, uh, to her at, at CBGBs one night, um, uh, Patty turned to him and, and basically said, oh, she said, you're that art school band. She said, I wish my parents were rich enough to send me to art school and just turned away. And that was the end of the conversation.
[00:18:17] Jonathan Gould: Right. So, it gives you some sense of how they were perceived,
[00:18:21] Dave Anthony: next, Talking Heads get their big break via a curious young journalist who writes a seminal article on this innovative New York music scene.
[00:18:36] Jonathan Gould: By the summer of 1975, there was a scene developing around, uh, around CBGBs, uh, the Ramones, Patty Smith and the Ramones.
[00:18:45] Jonathan Gould: opening acts basically had to invite all their friends so that there'd be people sitting there but by that summer, things were starting to happen. And a sort of cub reporter for the Village Voice named Jim Walcott, started to, to write about the people [00:19:00] who were performing at, at the club in the Village Voice.
[00:19:03] Jonathan Gould: And Hilly Crystal had this idea in August of 1975, that he would put together a sort of a festival of CBGBs bands, downtown bands. And Jim Walcott wrote a long piece in the Village Voice, about the bands that appeared at this festival. And, and there was a writeup of television and there was a writeup of talking heads, and there was a writeup of the Ramones.
[00:19:26] Jonathan Gould: But the critical element When the, the article came out in the paper, the group that they chose to picture in a photograph on the front page of the Village Voice was talking heads. this had to do something somewhat with the idea that they were kind of photogenic. Uh, what made them photogenic?
[00:19:41] Jonathan Gould: they were pretty attractive people. Um, not wildly so, but attractive enough as far as this goes.
[00:19:47] Jonathan Gould: And the voice was a big deal in those days. The organ of, of the arts in downtown New York. that article attracted the attention of, of John Rockwell, the official rock critic of the New York [00:20:00] Times. after Walcott's article came out, Rockwell wrote a, a piece about talking heads.
[00:20:06] Jonathan Gould: what this means is that basically seven months after Tina. Weymouth first picked up a bass and tried to learn how to play it. is being written up in the New York Times. Um.
[00:20:19] Jonathan Gould: This is, this is the sort of publicity that most people, um, wait years for in that sense. But Rockwell, um, like Walcott, like many music writers who were living in New York City at that time, was fascinated by the idea that some kind of a local, generic music scene
[00:20:38] Jonathan Gould: seemed to be happening in lower Manhattan New York writers who had access to major media wrote about it as if it was a major musical phenomenon.
[00:20:48] Dave Anthony: The three Talking Heads members realized they needed to round their sound and went knocking on the door of a band they admired from Boston, and they tried to recruit what sounds like an unlikely candidate, a graduate [00:21:00] student from Harvard.
[00:21:06] Jonathan Gould: one important development before the first album,
[00:21:09] Jonathan Gould: they knew from the very beginning that, that the three-piece configuration was, was pretty unworkable for them. if you think back, most of the successful three-piece bands that is, say bands with three instruments, whether they have an added singer or not.
[00:21:24] Jonathan Gould: Um, they've had virtuoso musicians in them. They've had guitarists like Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix. They've had drummers like, uh, Mitch Mitchell or, or, or John Bonham or people like that. They had virtuoso players. It's very hard for three people to put music across, in an effective way.
[00:21:43] Jonathan Gould: They knew they needed a fourth member. They figured he should probably be a keyboard player. Um, although it would certainly be helpful if, he or she could also double on guitar and, um. In the year before they recorded their first album, uh, [00:22:00] they managed to connect with, Jerry Harrison, um, whose background was in keeping with theirs.
[00:22:06] Jonathan Gould: Uh, he grew up in an upper middle-class family in, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or as in suburb of Milwaukee. He went to Harvard University from which he graduated. Um, but Jerry had also played in a band, which in many ways was a kind of premonition of talking heads called the Modern Lovers, who were a cult band that, made some interesting recordings, but then fell apart we're led by, by a figure, uh
[00:22:28] Dave Anthony: Ri Jonathan Richmond
[00:22:29] Jonathan Gould: Jonathan Richmond, who in many ways were the kind of premonition of David Byrne, a, a real oddball,
[00:22:44] Jonathan Gould: Who professed to love the suburbs around Boston, where, where, where he grew up.
[00:22:49] Jonathan Gould: So, Jerry Harrison fit with talking heads very well. Um, and as I say, joined the band very shortly before they, uh, they made their, their first album.
[00:22:59] Jonathan Gould: Talking Head [00:23:00] 77 is their first album uh with Sire Records and of course it has uh the infamous Psycho Killer Don't worry about the government tentative decisions tell us about the themes that they're exploring in that first album
[00:23:37] Jonathan Gould: in the beginning, occasionally David and Chris Franz would, um, would write together. Chris would, would have a set of lyrics that David would use.
[00:23:46] Jonathan Gould: But quite quickly, David basically announced to the rest of the other members of the band that he really felt he needed to write the words and the music to the songs. Um. And this became actually the pattern of, [00:24:00] of their entire career.
[00:24:01] Jonathan Gould: Um, there were, there was, there were forms of instrumental collaboration that took place, words or melodies of the songs in that way.
[00:24:09] Dave Anthony: I was listening to Jonathan an interview by Chris France I saw online and he was saying that when they first met a family member knew a lawyer they should run the contract by they got a schooling and how royalties are split And Byrnes sort of announced after that I'm not going to be singing anything that I don't write from here on in
[00:24:30] Jonathan Gould: since I wrote the book, I've heard Chris say that. Um, unsurprisingly, uh, later on there was a, a great deal of tension in the band around the question of royalties.
[00:24:39] Dave Anthony: this has been true of almost every rock band, um, every major rock band that, um, uh, ha has ever existed in that way.
[00:24:47] Dave Anthony: so, the songs on the first album were, were mainly the most, with the exception of Psycho Killer, were, uh, mainly the most recent songs that they'd written.
[00:24:57] Jonathan Gould: there are songs on the record that address [00:25:00] romantic situations. Um, all of them from a sort of negative point of view. The, uh, basically the message of, of most of these songs is, we don't need love.
[00:25:10] Jonathan Gould: Since love is the common denominator of popular music and has been for about 150 years. it's very interesting to think about, um, this band, which is, which is sort of interrogating the very idea or need for romantic attachment as one of their basic themes as they come into the world in that way.
[00:25:31] Dave Anthony: Next, the band befriends a mercurial figure in the music industry and believes he might be the key to evolve their sound.
[00:25:50] Dave Anthony: When the Talking Heads toured London after their debut album, they met producer Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music After leaving the band due to creative [00:26:00] differences, Eno pioneered ambient music, a style focused on tone, texture, and atmosphere rather than traditional melody, designed as much to shape a space as to command attention.
[00:26:12] Dave Anthony: Think of the kind of music you hear in a boutique hotel lobby or an airport at 2 a.m., more atmosphere than performance. That approach would go on to deeply influence his collaborations with David Bowie, especially the Berlin-era albums like Bowie's Low. Impressed by what Eno had achieved with Bowie and his reputation as a boundary-pushing thinker, Talking Heads pushed to bring him in to produce their next album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, launching a collaboration that would reshape their sound.
[00:26:51] Jonathan Gould: From the very beginning, Eno helped them to, uh, reimagine both their sound and their whole approach [00:27:00] to record making.
[00:27:01] Jonathan Gould: whereas on the first album, they had tried to get, the sound of the band, live on their first album. This is who we are, this is what we sound like.
[00:27:09] Jonathan Gould: We want it authentic. Um, on the second album, by contrast, almost every sound on the record, every instrument, every vocal is manipulated in some way. the technique that Eno was, was, was learning as a producer, which was to use the opportunity presented by multi-track recording where each instrument is isolated on, on a particular track, to, tweak or in some cases more than tweak the sound or tone of every element of the music.
[00:27:41] Jonathan Gould: David Byrne I mentioned before, has enormous powers of concentration that that may be related to his Asperger's Eno has enormous powers of concentration that don't have anything to do with Asperger's.
[00:27:52] Jonathan Gould: And so, the two of them, um, as I say, were able to sort of focus in the recording process. And the result is a much more [00:28:00] interesting, um, more imaginative record, despite the fact that the songs on it are probably not as strong as the songs on, on the first record as far as that goes.
[00:28:10] Dave Anthony: Mm-hmm fact one of the covers “Take Me to The River” was of course Al Green
[00:28:24] Dave Anthony: give, especially Chris Fran some credit. Chris from his high school years was infatuated with soul music.
[00:28:30] Jonathan Gould: he loved Al Green; he loved Otis Redding.
[00:28:32] Jonathan Gould: when they recorded it, Eno suggested that they slow the tempo town drastically from the way they, they had played it.
[00:28:39] Jonathan Gould: That the way to develop rhythmic force is not to speed things up, but often to slow things down and not to complicate things, but often to simplify things.
[00:28:51] Jonathan Gould: Eno educated them in, in, uh, a new level of instrumental, particularly competent. And it also had a big effect on David [00:29:00] singing. because when there's more space, when the tempos are slower, singers have to think harder about what they're doing.
[00:29:08] Jonathan Gould: the whole experience of making that record for them, I think oriented them toward music making in general in a very, in a new and very interesting way.
[00:29:17] Dave Anthony: Produced by Brian Eno, that second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, peaked at number twenty-nine on the Billboard album chart. It was ranked at number four among the top albums of the year for 1978 by Britain's New Musical Express.
[00:29:35] Dave Anthony: Produced by Brian Eno, 1979's Fear of Music album by Talking Heads blended experimental rhythms with anxious urban themes on songs about an underground guerrilla moving through New York called Life During Wartime, and other [00:30:00] tracks including Cities and Heaven which were later covered by k.d. lang and by the group Simply Red. Interestingly, much of the album was recorded in Chris France's and Tina Weymouth's Long Island loft, with cables running from a mobile studio truck parked outside.
[00:30:41] Dave Anthony: The next album fear of music that rather than coming with written lyrics it was more like let's get the music and the vibe down and then we'll worry about lyrics later
[00:30:53] Jonathan Gould: it was something that actually started on fear of music. it the track called I Zimbra.
[00:30:59] Jonathan Gould: both Eno and [00:31:00] Byrne, became deeply impressed with, the Afro Pop music that was starting to come to Western ears, so to speak, in the late 1970s. And I'm talking about records by, Nigerian artists like Fila and King Sun Ade.
[00:31:14]
[00:31:24] Jonathan Gould: African popular music that reflected the, uh, ancient tradition of African drumming, but, uh, translated to, uh, Western instruments. And I, Zimri was really the first evidence of it in Talking Heads repertoire.
[00:31:41] Jonathan Gould: So, Eno suggested that they use a nonsense poem, from the, the data period from, uh, the, the World War I period. when, when European intellectuals developed a similar sort of fascination with what they thought of as, as, the exoticism of, of Africa.
[00:32:08] Jonathan Gould: they are very much sort of like added on as opposed to the way that most songs are written, which is that someone starts with a line and adds as it puts it to a melody and develops it in that way.
[00:32:19] Dave Anthony: And that was really a marked a turning point for the band where this idea of more sounds more things happening on a record uh really took place
[00:32:30] Jonathan Gould: having learned to simplify their sound, they could then start anew to, um, uh, to, to making it more complex, to adding more tracks.
[00:32:40] Jonathan Gould: on the next few albums, they began building things up again.
[00:32:43] Jonathan Gould: some of that had to do with their own proficiency
[00:32:46] Jonathan Gould: by the time of Fear of Music, which is 1979, um, they're a very proficient band. Um, even to the point that David Byrne even live is starting to sing on key.
[00:32:59] Dave Anthony: [00:33:00] Next, the band tensions cause several band members to act on pursuing their own projects.
[00:33:18] Dave Anthony: during that period of time the tensions starting to rise because during an interview apparently David Byrne had told another reporter that he was thinking of leaving the band Tina Weymouth and the others are kind of miffed at that but of course Eno's influence Eno how shall I say this Eno uh had an affinity for um David Byrnes so much so that they
[00:33:41] Dave Anthony: they collaborated on that album my Life and The Bush of Ghosts And that album with Very innovative sampled vocals found sounds African rhythms east middle Eastern electronic music techniques
[00:34:04] was recorded before Eno and Byrne's work on the next album remain in light adding another point of tension to this group in its nascent days
[00:34:13] Jonathan Gould: Sure. the personal relations in the band were, were complicated from the beginning. There's no other way to put it.
[00:34:21] Jonathan Gould: I don't know what would've happened if Talking Heads had not gotten the amount of publicity, um, uh, so soon that they did. that of course made them a going concern, and that meant that everybody in the band had to do their best to get along with one another as best they could.
[00:34:39] Jonathan Gould: I don't think that Tina ever had a strong affection for David Byrne, and I don't know how much affection David Byrne ever had for any of the other people in the group, the sort of emotion that leads to feelings of loyalty and supportiveness and all of that sort of thing.
[00:34:56] Jonathan Gould: Jonathan that's probably a function of what you said earlier he was assessed [00:35:00] or he would be assessed today as
[00:35:01] Jonathan Gould: people with high functioning autism, struggle with concept like empathy more than we, the rest of us who also struggle with those concepts.
[00:35:11] Jonathan Gould: And I think the fact that the others had no awareness that, um, something like Asperger's exist. his behavior could make them much less sympathetic, um to some of the quirks of his behavior, there are descriptions, early on, in the British Music Press of Tina Weymouth, one writer wrote scolding David as if he was a sort of, as if he was a sort of, misbehaving child, in that way.
[00:35:38] Dave Anthony: Yeah I recall reading that in your book
[00:35:40] Jonathan Gould: early on, Chris and Tina they thought that Eno's forceful personality would serve as something of a check on David's forceful personality.
[00:35:49] Dave Anthony: Right
[00:35:49] Jonathan Gould: they didn't bargain for was the idea that these two forceful personalities, um, might get together with one another and, and amplify one another rather than, [00:36:00] check one another in some way.
[00:36:01] Jonathan Gould: And, um, the irony being that, uh, Eno and David bonded so powerfully in the making of that record fear of music that the other members of the group, felt shunted aside in some ways.
[00:36:15] Jonathan Gould: and here is uh Byrne with Eno and then you have Chris France and Tina Weymouth basically saying man we're feeling a little controlled in this environment We've got to step out and do our own thing and of course that leads to the Tom Tom Club
[00:36:31] Jonathan Gould: sure.
[00:36:31] Dave Anthony: she even hires her sisters Laura and Lanny are what Backup singers and eventual contributors to some songs
[00:36:38] Jonathan Gould: yes.
[00:36:38] Dave Anthony: what a funky pop sound that that they reached the top 40 with their efforts in June 81 with the first of their albums
[00:36:46] Jonathan Gould: well, absolutely, and particularly the Hits song, genius of Love. one of the great, I use this term, advisedly [00:37:00] novelty records of, well, certainly the 1980s. it's a record that has this, instrumental hook that, you know, once you've heard it, you can't get out of your head.
[00:37:09] Jonathan Gould: And it became, more commercially successful than anything that Talking Heads had done.
[00:37:15] Jonathan Gould: what it wasn't though was the start of a, a parallel career in any meaningful sense.
[00:37:21] Dave Anthony:
[00:37:22] Dave Anthony: Working again with producer Brian Eno, Talking Heads released their 1980 album Remain in Light, featuring songs like Once in a Lifetime, Cross-Eyed and Painless, Houses in Motion, [00:38:00] and Listening to the Wind.
[00:38:13] Dave Anthony: Blending funk, jazz, and African rhythms, the groundbreaking album is widely considered one of the greatest ever made, landing at number 39 in Rolling Stone magazine's top 500 albums of all time.
[00:38:27] Jonathan Gould: after Remain in Light Eno Jerry Harrison and David Byrne, who had been most involved with mixing the album and, and putting it in its final state, were acutely aware of the fact that there was no way that Talking Heads could reproduce this music live a- as a four-piece band.
[00:38:44] Jonathan Gould: And so, they decided, Jerry Harrison really took the lead in this, to ex- for the purposes of live performance, to expand the band. And they hired, five more musicians.
[00:38:57] Jonathan Gould: So, all of a sudden, this four [00:39:00] sort of preppish looking band, is performing on stage with, uh, four virtuoso black musicians one additional as I say, white virtuoso.
[00:39:10] Jonathan Gould: it completely changed, of the band, the personal dynamic of the band. All of a sudden, they were touring, uh, as a nine-piece band. Touring does create a sense of camaraderie. interconnection between, people in this way.
[00:39:23] Dave Anthony: it would also dissipate the, the, concentration of David, among a higher amount of people.
[00:39:28] Jonathan Gould: Absolutely. Yeah. it did two things. it, diluted David's presence a little bit, but it also freed David in ways that were really quite ex- as a performer- Right.
[00:39:39] Jonathan Gould: It freed him from playing an instrument for one example,
[00:39:41] Jonathan Gould: Exactly.
[00:39:42] Jonathan Gould: And He loved the, he loved singing with another really accomplished singer, which Delette McDonald certainly was. the other people in the groups, Adrian Ballou Jerry Harrison sang Backup, um, Tina Weymouth also, so all of a sudden, there are different voices in the music.
[00:39:58] Dave Anthony: The band capitalizes on its [00:40:00] large band format of touring musicians to use the same approach on the recording of their next studio album, 1983's Speaking in Tongues, which would attract a new mass audience to the band and contain tracks like Byrneing Down the House, , This Must Be the Place, and Slippery People.
[00:40:44] Jonathan Gould: So speaking in tongues was really the conversion of that live band, to a studio album, right? the band was created to reproduce the complexity of, Remain in Light, but now that complexity [00:41:00] and that interplay particularly, became something that they were able to translate onto record in Speaking In Tongues.
[00:41:06] Dave Anthony: the other great sort of virtue of speaking in tongues a song on it. Uh, I took the title of the song for the title of my book called Byrneing Down the House. Mm-hmm. It's an incredibly powerful track. And it finally gave them, a real hit single.
[00:41:21] Jonathan Gould: And so, on many different levels, speaking in tongues was the culmination of this kind of, of this whole musical progression that had been going on really since Eno first became involved with the band.
[00:41:35] Jonathan Gould: Eno was not involved with speaking in tongues. They didn't feel they needed him at that point. They had learned how to make records like that.
[00:41:41] Dave Anthony: The album reached number 15 on the billboard album charts. And then as they into the 80s, Byrne is really expanding. he's started becoming, the Renaissance Man of Rock he composes music and lyrics for, an opera,
[00:41:55] Jonathan Gould: One of the most interesting he worked with the great choreographer, Twila Tharp, and actually [00:42:00] had an affair with Twyla Tharpe, on a, a dance piece called The Catherine Wheel-
[00:42:04] Jonathan Gould: he got wonderful reviews while the reviews of the dance piece itself were mixed- all of a sudden Bern is having the type of experience that a successful, artist in New York City has, which is the phone ringing off the hook. Will you do this? Will you do that? would you, will you contribute a piece of visual art to an auction
[00:42:23] Jonathan Gould: he is eventually, lionized on the cover of Time Magazine, which in those days was a really big deal- as Rock's Renaissance Man.
[00:42:30] Dave Anthony: he even writes music commissioned to write some of the music, for the movie. The Last Emperor,
[00:42:35] Dave Anthony: Yeah. Which ended up winning an Academy Award for Best
[00:42:38] Dave Anthony: Original score.
[00:42:39]
[00:42:46] Jonathan Gould: there's a period there where it's as if everything, he touches- turns to gold.
[00:42:50] Dave Anthony: The 1985 album Little Creatures, the sixth album by Talking Heads, delivered a more Americana-tinged sound with steel guitar [00:43:00] textures on hits like And She Was, Stay Up Late, it became the band's best-selling studio album with over 2 million U.S. copies and.
[00:43:25] Dave Anthony: And was voted Album of the Year in the Village Voice poll.
[00:43:27] Dave Anthony: The 1986 True Stories album incorporates country music and continues the use of Americana stylings begun on 1985's Little Creatures album in the form of accordions and fiddles. A popular single, Wild Wild Life, became the most prominent hit from the album, and the song's video won two MTV Video Music Awards in 1987. [00:44:00]
[00:44:00] Dave Anthony: And that leads us to true stories, which was a quirky ... He commissioned people to write a script, and then he took it over, changed it a lot.
[00:44:09] Jonathan Gould: Ultimately, that became a movie. Right. And an album that the Talking Heads, reproduced the soundtrack that David had developed, they actually put out an album, True Stories. Yes. Americana the True Stories album and the album called Little Creatures were basically recorded at the same time. the songs from True Stories were songs that David had written for this film that, was produced by Talking Heads Manager David directed the film.
[00:44:37] Jonathan Gould: Little Creatures and True Stories was a complete sea change- Yeah.
[00:44:42] Jonathan Gould: from what they had been doing with the live band, with the big band, with the expanded heads, playing largely improvised instrumental grooves, uh, to which he grafted, increasingly sort of, disassociated lyrics.
[00:44:57] Jonathan Gould: he decided that he wanted to go back to writing [00:45:00] pop songs. that had conventional verses and choruses lasted for three or four minutes and this sort of thing.
[00:45:07] Jonathan Gould: And, here again, the rest of the group was a little taken aback a- about this. they had been at the beginning when David pretty much sketched out the songs himself, but on, on, Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, they had developed this way of, of writing working off these instrumental grooves, um, and now all of a sudden David is saying, "No, I don't want to do that anymore.
[00:45:30] Jonathan Gould: I winna present you with, completed songs and you can add your parts to them in that way."
[00:45:35] Jonathan Gould: now as it happened, uh, Little Creatures was, um, wildly successful. Um, and the songs on it are, are terrific.
[00:45:45] Jonathan Gould: but it created a whole new set of tensions in the band who now, again, felt that he was dominating the music
[00:45:52] Jonathan Gould: And really, between his, sort of blossoming, as a film director, [00:46:00] as a film composer, a dance composer, that really was the, the kind of final straw, in the personal relations of this group.
[00:46:08] Jonathan Gould: Mm-hmm. And it made him think that, basically there are all these other things that I want to do with my life and the idea of being one of David's many projects, became sort of intolerable for the other members of the band.
[00:46:22] Dave Anthony: we talked about how the, stream of consciousness lyrics that David was well known for almost from the beginning of the band, and then of course he goes to the more traditional with little creatures, et cetera, pop structure.
[00:46:35] Dave Anthony: do you think David's stream of consciousness became a bit of a crutch rather than writing more straight-ahead lyrics? In other words, did he rely on it as a ploy to avoid the hard work of stringing together actual lyrics?
[00:46:47] Jonathan Gould: 'Cause here's, here's why I say that. It was lauded by the fashionistas in the musical press as he's so smart, isn't this interesting, but was that a New York kind of like art thing whereas, [00:47:00] hey, people who are putting together conscious lyrics are just as valid. Did it become a crutch? Did he rely on it too much? Was it the easy way out to sort of just blur- bla- blab a bunch of things? I think it started as a fascination, but I think you're correct. I think it did become something of a crutch. he said he felt it was successful about half the time, okay?
[00:47:21] Jonathan Gould: And that's interesting right there, the idea that he was comfortable with using a technique that he felt was successful about half the time. Now, most talking Heads fans would probably say that they felt it was successful much more than half the time. Mm-hmm. but I know exactly what you're saying.
[00:47:39] Dave Anthony: when I think of lead singers who came after Byrne, who are lyric writers that rely on that same stream of consciousness, Michael Stipe of REM, Anthony Kedis Red Hot Chili Peppers come to mind.
[00:48:01] Jonathan Gould: Who do you think Byrne influenced with this stream of consciousness approach? Well, I think, I think you're, you're naming them way. but I think he's the most distinctive version
[00:48:10] Jonathan Gould: I think that poets particularly would say disassociation in one's writing requires greater discipline, not less discipline than otherwise in that way.
[00:48:21] Dave Anthony: this tension ultimately
[00:48:22] Dave Anthony ends in the culmination of the band. David decides that he wants to leave.
[00:48:26] Jonathan Gould:
[00:48:26] Dave Anthony: Who do you think they've influenced, since they have laid down their tracks, literally?
[00:48:32] Jonathan Gould: Well, you mentioned some of them, REM, Radiohead, Vampire Weekend.
[00:48:37] Dave Anthony: If you were to tell the, the history of music, what would you say about Talking Heads, in the context of the history of music?
[00:48:44] Jonathan Gould: I would say that they took the, to use a sort of old-fashioned term, cosmopolitanism of popular music to an entirely new level.
[00:48:53] Jonathan Gould: I think the most important thing involved their engagement with, African music, and what's now referred to as world [00:49:00] music in general.
[00:49:01] Jonathan Gould: other thing that I would say about them that, almost every really important rock group had some element of virtuosity attached to it.
[00:49:08] Jonathan Gould: there was no element of virtuosity attached to talking heads, and there's, an important lesson there.
[00:49:14] Jonathan Gould: almost a common denominator of whatever rock and roll, continues to be.
[00:49:23] Dave Anthony: The guest we've been talking to today is Jonathan Gould. He is the author of Byrneing Down the House, Talking Heads in the New York Scene that Transformed Rock, which was recently released. And Jonathan, you've taken us on a journey with the book and this interview today that is pointed to a band that continually innovated, continually pushed the envelope.
[00:49:49] Jonathan Gould: and all sorts of different sounds over time. in an original way thank you. It's been fun talking about this.
[00:49:57] Dave Anthony: Some closing notes on the Talking [00:50:00] Heads. Did you know that two popular bands derive their name from Talking Heads songs? Radiohead named themselves after the song of the same title from the Talking Heads 1986 album, True Stories. '80s band Big Country named themselves after the Talking Heads song of the same name off their 1978 album, More Songs About Buildings and Food.
[00:50:24] Dave Anthony: Tina Weymouth, bassist for the Talking Heads, has a very famous brother. Her brother is Yan Weymouth, a renowned architect who designed the Salvador Dalí St. Petersburg, Florida building and was also chief of design for legendary architect I.M. Pei on the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Grand Louvre project in Paris.
[00:50:47] Dave Anthony: in the name of performance art, while at art school, David Byrne, lead singer of the Talking Heads, shaved his beard on stage with only beer for shaving foam and an accordion for accompaniment. This [00:51:00] resulted in a great deal of facial bleeding.
[00:51:02] Dave Anthony: Former Talking Heads guitarist and keyboardist Jerry Harrison teamed with rock critic Tom Zito in 1999 to create an internet music resource called garageband.com. The resource offered unsigned bands the chance to win record contracts. After limited success though, the company closed its doors in 2010, allowing Apple to acquire the domain name for their music software of the same name.
[00:51:27] Dave Anthony: Andy Warhol was an early fan of Talking Heads. Warhol was spotted at their early gigs in New York, enjoyed their music so much that he invited the band over to his new factory on the corner of Union Square.
[00:51:42] Dave Anthony: Bad Liar, a hit by Selena Gomez, features a sample from the Talking Heads tune Psycho Killer. In an interview with Variety Songwriter Justin Tranter revealed that David Byrne heard it, loved it, and approved it.
[00:51:57] Dave Anthony: David Byrne appeared on the [00:52:00] Simpsons episode, "Dude, Where's My Ranch?" Homer, in that episode, composes an anti-Flanders song called Everybody Hates Ned Flanders. He plays the song at Moe's Tavern, and when David Byrne comes in, he likes the song so much that he wants to produce and record the song.
[00:52:16] Dave Anthony: The famous Talking Heads song, once in a Lifetime, was born of David Byrne's writer's block. Three distinct but very different elements inspired him to complete the track. Byrne adopted a stream-of-consciousness style inspired by his taping of religious sermons off the radio delivered by Southern white evangelical preachers, who often used rhetorical, repetitive questions like, " You may find yourself."
[00:52:41] Dave Anthony: His famous erratic movements in the song's video were inspired by observing people claiming to be in religious trances. And the third incongruous element that combined to make the track so memorable was the African polyrhythmic beats that he and producer Brian Eno became infatuated with during that early [00:53:00] 1980s recording period.
[00:53:01] Dave Anthony: The line, "You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile and asking yourself, 'How did I get here?'" was meant to portray the questioning of one's life on autopilot, ending up with a suburban consumerist lifestyle.
[00:53:15] Dave Anthony: We mentioned in the episode that David Byrne was referred to by Time Magazine and on the cover as rock's renaissance man due to the fact that he showed incredible versatility. He wrote soundtracks for opera, dance. He even wrote the soundtrack of the movie The Last Emperor, which won an Oscar for Best Original Soundtrack.
[00:53:39] Dave Anthony: There is a fascinating story about the creation of the Talking Heads song drummer Chris Frantz and lead singer David Byrne had combined to create the song Psycho Killer. well before the Talking Heads became famous. Byrne had come up with the first verse and chorus and said it was based on an Alice Cooper [00:54:00] vibe, which was popular in the early 1970s.
[00:54:04] Dave Anthony: David then asked a Japanese friend if they wanted to contribute a foreign language to show the protagonist having a psychotic episode. However, the Japanese friend did not like the subject matter, and so Chris suggested his girlfriend, Tina Weymouth, could contribute French, as her mother spoke French to her growing up.
[00:54:21] Dave Anthony: Tina came up with the middle part of the song, the French language piece, and ultimately became the bassist for the Talking Heads.
[00:54:29] Dave Anthony: Tina Weymouth comes from a line of regal individuals in Europe. One of her ancestors is Anatole Le Braz, the Bard of Brittany who was born in 1859 and died in 1926. He was a French poet, folklore collector, and translator. He was widely regarded among both European and American scholars, and was known for his warmth and charm
[00:54:54] Dave Anthony: Special thanks to our guest, Jonathan Gould, author of Byrneing Down the House: Talking Heads and the New [00:55:00] York Scene That Transformed Rock. For more on today's episode, visit garagetostadiums.com, where you'll find bonus content on Talking Heads, including our thesis that they helped invent a new operating system for rock music, along with curated performance clips and song examples.
[00:55:17] Dave Anthony: You'll also find dedicated Talking Heads playlists as well as additional curated downloadable playlists for every artist featured on the show. You can also find us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky for daily music history insights delivered straight to your feed. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube to stay up to date on new episodes.
[00:55:40] Dave Anthony: Thanks to our production crew, Scott Campbell, Chad Raymond, Amelia Marion, and Nigel Campbell. I'm Dave Anthony. Thanks for listening. Join us next time for another Garage to Stadium [00:56:00] story.