Was Covent Garden curiously responsible for launching the Talking Heads?
In 1975, Talking Heads performed their first-ever gig, opening for the Ramones at New York’s CBGB. It would be a couple of years before the release of Talking Heads: 77 sparked a more explosive arrival, by which time it wasn’t just the Big Apple witnessing a band on the cusp of greatness.
Before their breakthrough, Talking Heads weren’t exactly what outsiders might have called a cohesive group unity. After all, their unlikely collaboration from different parts of the Rhode Island School of Design seemed more a product of musical experimentation than anything else, especially when you look at the different tastes of each member and their unique mindsets when it came to the creative process itself.
A period that Tina Weymouth once labelled as “rarefied times”, Talking Heads emerged as a contradictory entity that embraced the conceptual practice of music rather than the theoretical or practical aspects. This was due to differences in each member’s skill set, like Chris Frantz’s exposure to “raw Black American sound”, combined with Weymouth, David Byrne and Jerry Harrison’s interest in the fundamentals of European classical music.
According to Weymouth, those were the two pillars of their sound, the combination of which served as the perfect background for Byrne’s jittery charisma as their trusty frontman, with lyrics that captured equal parts of his personal affiliations with the world around and the absurdity of navigating modern life when nothing makes any sense.
According to Byrne, his lyrical style was never something he wanted to overthink, which in turn became an approach that enhanced the stream-of-consciousness feel of the music itself, with the music taking the listener on an oftentimes unpredictable journey that almost feels as though the words are pouring out of Byrne in the moment.
“At times words can be a dangerous addition to music – they can pin it down,” he once said, explaining why he often chose to free-flow much of their lyricisms instead of mapping out more cohesive wordplay or intelligible narratives. Now, we consider this to be one of the more genius aspects of Talking Heads – a familiar quirk that positions them among the greats.
Back in their early days, however, it’s interesting to think about how this was received among live audiences who heard their material for the very first time. Following the release of Talking Heads: 77, it was obvious that this was a band destined for greatness, with ‘Psycho Killer’ leading what many termed a new wave of “science fiction funk”.
But did everybody understand their vision – well, it seems that, while some people might have been turned off by their unique sound and on-stage whims, the people that mattered most were there for the ride, including a certain Brian Eno, who was present for the band’s first-ever gig in the UK, when they performed at The Rock Garden in Covent Garden in 1977.
There’s one image on the internet of Eno watching their set, and he already looks besotted. This makes sense, given that Eno went on to produce some of the band’s best music, but back then, it feels especially poignant given that they were just a quirky outfit from overseas with a deep love for musical innovation. And while they’d already built up a healthy following over in New York’s CBGB scene, their stint in London no doubt transformed that initial appeal into a more explosive movement.
