‘Talking Heads 77’: Lee Renaldo on the album that broke the New York scene open
What defines the alternative New York sound? Is it the experimental alt-rock of The Velvet Underground, the garage band feel of The Strokes, or the avant-garde no-wave approach of Sonic Youth? Or perhaps it’s another artist, somewhere in between the spaces of those three bands pushing through the New York rubble, trying to make sense of a changing world through the lens of its most vibrant city.
Sonic Youth, however, have gone on to be considered a cult artist among music lovers for their deeply experimental take on alternative rock music. Coarse guitar lines, pushing the boundaries of how instruments can be utilised; preparing guitars with screwdrivers and drumsticks. It’s an attitude of experimentation that may feel alien to some but normal within the context of New York, a city vacuum packed with creativity and character where the only way to innovate is to introduce the obscure.
During their emergence in 1981, the city had become an already fertile ground for musical change, with bands turning the decade in search of fresh alternatives. One particular New York record left such an impact on Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo that during an interview with Tidal, he said: “It became kind of earth-shattering in terms of the shift it demanded in my perspective of what music was and what music was at that very moment in time. It really shaped and changed so much of what I felt going forward and inspired me to get back involved in music. It wasn’t long after that that Sonic Youth formed.”
Artists who were making that sort of cultural impact in the late 1970s could have feasibly been Lou Reed, Iggy Pop or perhaps the Ramones. But who Renaldo was referring to was Talking Heads and, more specifically, their Talking Heads ‘77 record.
He continued: “They were still playing pretty little places. It was a little tiny bar in Binghamton, and I just remember my first impressions of them were that they didn’t look anything like people that I had come to associate with musicians. They didn’t have long hair; they were all really clean cut, they had kind of a preppy look to them; they weren’t dishevelled or in flannel or dirty jeans or whatever.”
Elaborating on the impact of that show, Renaldo commented, “I just remember that that concert was kind of life-changing for me. It was really one of those concerts where maybe I’d heard the record once or twice already and wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I left there completely converted and completely smitten with what they were doing. It was kind of like hearing them play opened this huge door onto that whole period of music and what all of those bands were doing in like ’77, ’78, ’79, in that period”.
Just over half a century later, the influence of David Byrne and Talking Heads continues to be proudly worn in the sound of modern bands like Parquet Courts, Vampire Weekend, and Squid. But at that time, their multi-textural art rock sound delivered on cleaner aesthetic lines that ultimately introduced a brand new way of fusing rock, pop, and funk sensibilities.
The tempo changes and experimental vocal performance in Talking Heads ‘77 no doubt introduced Renaldo to a world of difference that would have undoubtedly helped make sense of the ever-changing New York City of that time.
Come the late 1970s and early ’80s, political angst was making way for a booming capitalist landscape that was moving swiftly away from the glam and progressive rock sound. With disco and funk filling the vacuum created by that change, there was a yearning for an artist to come along and make sense of that change to subcultural groups of alt-rock fans. Talking Heads ‘77 paved the way for Byrne and the band to do this, along with the records that swiftly followed, going on to define the sound of a transitioning New York.
