Jerry Harrison’s favourite Talking Heads song
Picking out your favourite Talking Heads song is no easy task. Between the early new wave sounds of 77, the wonderfully weird experimentalism of Fear of Music and the funk-infused Speaking in Tongues, the post-punk pioneers spent just over a decade honing a lucrative discography filled to the brim with quirky and groovy hits.
It’s possible to make a case for almost any Talking Heads song to be their best. But while the rest of us struggle to choose between the swathe of dependable hits and more obscure ventures, keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison has named his own favourite Talking Heads song as ‘I Zimbra’.
Fusing the band’s growing interest in Afrobeat with their penchant for post-punk, the song paired frontman David Byrne’s love of nonsense lyricism with African drums and an appearance from King Crimson’s Robert Fripp on guitar. Taking its lyrics from a poem by Dadaist Hugo Ball titled ‘Gadji beri bimba’, ‘I Zimbra’ has become one of the most memorable entries into Talking Heads’ discography.
Naming the song as his favourite during an interview with Liquid Audio, Harrison explained how ‘I Zimbra’ spawned from the band’s collective love for African music. “We all loved many African bands, particularly Fela,” he stated. Despite their combined passion for this reference point, they initially struggled to finish the track.
“After we had recorded the rhythm track to ‘I Zimbra’ for Fear of Music we were stuck on what to do with it,” Harrison recalled. Before the band embarked upon a tour of Australia, they sat and listened to mixes at Atlantic Records, where the keyboardist encouraged them to revisit the early recording of the track. “When we heard it I knew we must finish it,” he remembered, “David and I flew 30 hours back from Australia to finish it on our way to a festival in Denmark.”
This sense of urgency and passion for the song certainly paid off, as ‘I Zimbra’ would go on to become a firm favourite in their discography and pave the way for them to create their third record, Fear of Music. “We also knew that our next album would be a further exploration of what we had begun with ‘I Zimbra’,” Harrison concluded. The influences of polyrhythms would continue to appear in their discography even beyond Fear of Music.
‘I Zimbra’ became Harrison’s favourite Talking Heads song, while Fear of Music would take the title for his favourite album, albeit tied with their 1980 follow-up Remain In Light. Over four decades on, both ‘I Zimbra’ and the album it inspired sound just as fresh and innovative now as they did upon first release.
Revisit ‘I Zimbra’, Jerry Harrison’s favourite Talking Heads song, below.
