Hear David Byrne’s isolated vocals in Talking Heads’ ‘Road to Nowhere’
New York’s towering new wave royalty, Talking Heads, were nothing short of a creative and commercial sensation during their 15-year reign over the late 1970s and ’80s. This musical mastery propagated impressively over their first four albums, with help from Brian Eno confirming three-quarters of that output as a seminal trilogy. The peak was reached in 1980 with the band’s magnum opus, Remain In Light. Their mission for the decade was to keep the sound fresh while maintaining the same level of commercial appeal as they had garnered with the first four albums.
While Talking Heads arguably never pushed the creative bar higher than the Fela Kuti-inspired Remain In Light, they were more than successful in captivating audiences with the following album, Speaking In Tongues, in 1983. The album marked a new commercial peak for the group thanks to its funky rock anthems, including their only US top-ten hit to date, ‘Burning Down the House’.
This emphatic release was followed a year later by Talking Heads’ landmark concert film, Stop Making Sense. The film saw the band perform live from Hollywood’s Pantages Theater with an extended cast of musicians, backing singers and choreographers through a blazing, animated set packed with big hits and Byrne’s famous “big suit”.
“Making that [film] was a great, great time,” Weymouth told Far Out in a recent interview. “That was a wonderful band. It was just the travelling and the work were exhausting. But every time we got on stage, we were so energised. And we were young, you know, so we could do it, we could really go there. But no, it was great fun. I actually think – this is kind of a fantasy – but I felt that I was watching the show. I had a prime position to be able to watch and enjoy the show, and I was just awed by everyone. And I just love the fans. I actually believed that we were doing something good. I thought, ‘This is really spiritual; we’re really communicating some love here.'”
Sadly, the concert film marked an end to Talking Heads tours. It was thought that fans could experience the band live through the film instead while the band continued as a studio act through the remainder of the ’80s. “I couldn’t believe it when David [Byrne] said to us, ‘Oh, well, we’re not going to tour anymore because the movie’s gonna tour for us,'” Weymouth said. “I just scratched my head. Like, ‘What? That’s not the same!'”
Over the remainder of their time together, Talking Heads created three further studio albums, Little Creatures, True Stories and Naked. The first of which remains the band’s best-selling album thanks to its highly accessible singles: ‘The Lady Don’t Mind’, ‘Road to Nowhere’, and ‘And She Was’.
Below, we bring you Byrne’s arresting isolated vocals from ‘Road to Nowhere’ supported by a wonderful gospel choir in the intro.
“I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom,” Byrne wrote in the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads. “At our deaths and at the apocalypse… (always looming, folks). I think it succeeded. The front bit, the white gospel choir, is kind of tacked on ’cause I didn’t think the rest of the song was enough… I mean, it was only two chords. So, out of embarrassment or shame, I wrote an intro section that had a couple more in it.”
