How Talking Heads got their name
Like many bands of their generation, Talking Heads were conceived at art school. In the early 1970s, David Byrne met Chris Frantz at the Rhode Island School of Design. The pair were kooky, artistic music lovers who found a shared interest at almost every turn. When setting off on their first music project as a duo in 1973, they named themselves ‘Artistics’. At the time, their future bandmate Jerry Harrison was busy laying his first tracks alongside Jonathan Richman in The Modern Lovers.
Tina Weymouth, Talking Heads’ eventual bassist, was also a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. As Frantz’s devoted girlfriend, her initial remit involved getting Artistics and their gear to and from gigs safely as the designated driver. Eventually, Frantz persuaded Weymouth to learn the bass guitar, which she did by playing along to records by minimalist art-punk groups like Wire and Pere Ubu.
By the mid-1970s, the three relocated to an attic apartment in New York City. As a trio, Artistics renamed themselves Talking Heads ahead of their first gig supporting punk pioneers the Ramones at CBGB in June 1975. According to Frantz’s 2020 memoir Remain in Love, the trio cycled through several possible names before landing on Talking Heads.
Vogue Dots, Billionaires, Tunnel Tones and Videos were all considered, but thanks to the band’s friend, Michael ‘Wayne’ Zieve, who would later write the lyrics to the More Songs About Buildings and Food track ‘Artists Only’, Talking Heads held the winning ticket.
According to Frantz, Zieve visited the group with a TV Guide featuring a list of jargon used by camera operators. Among the words and phrases was “Talking Head,” which Zieve called the “most boring but also the most informative format in TV.” He added, “I think you should call your band Talking Heads.”
The trio were sold on the idea, with the decision set in stone once Weymouth created band T-shirts with ‘Talking Heads’ printed on them. In his book, Frantz recalled the band walking through Washington Square Park wearing their new t-shirts and a pleasant passer-by informing them that ‘Talking Heads’ was a “terrible” name.
Fortunately, the band was undeterred by the passer-by and went on to release their first single, ‘Love → Building on Fire’, in February 1977. One month later, Talking Heads became complete with the addition of Harrison. Hitting the studio as a foursome, Talking Heads recorded another ten tracks to fill out their seminal debut album of September 1977, Talking Heads: 77.
Over the next three years, Talking Heads became one of the most influential rock bands of the so-called “new wave” era, releasing their three most critically lauded albums in collaboration with master producer Brian Eno. Following their 1984 concert movie, Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads stepped back as a touring act and released a further three studio albums before disbanding in 1991. At this point, it was evident that Byrne wanted to disembark to focus on his solo ventures. Weymouth, Frantz, and Harrison later reunited without Byrne for one further album, 1996’s No Talking, Just Head, under the new name ‘The Heads’. In Byrne’s stead, the album featured several stand-in vocalists, including Debbie Harry, Shaun Ryder, Richard Hell and Michael Hutchence.
