The Talking Heads song Chris Frantz hates with a passion: “A dispiriting song”
We like to think of our favourite bands as a unique gaggle of friends, brought together like a sonic gang ready to defeat boredom. But that’s not really the convention, and Talking Heads were an unconventional band in every sense of the word.
They operated unlike any other group and reaped the rewards from their adventurous methods. It was these bold manoeuvres which spawned some of the band’s biggest hits. However, they didn’t always hit the jackpot, and there remains one song that drummer Chris Frantz wishes was never recorded.
Toward the end of their tenure, the relationship between singer David Byrne and the rest of the group had begun to fall apart. Despite misconceptions surrounding how they worked, Talking Heads largely operated as a democratic unit, and Byrne wasn’t always in control of the wheel. However, on occasion, the singer’s vote proved to be final even if his bandmates didn’t agree with the musical direction.
Speaking with Vulture in 2020, Frantz simultaneously looked back upon his time in the band with fondness and regretfulness. “It annoys me when people don’t realise or don’t seem to realise, that Talking Heads was very much a shared experience — a longtime collaboration that was very successful. Some people tend to believe in a single-bullet theory with David, which isn’t true,” he said.
Frantz added: “It’s very much a unique chemistry. All four members and some of our extended musical family contributed. Everybody in the band was a star.” That’s certainly true. Each member of the group brought something entirely unique to the party, which is what allowed the group to flourish. But it was hard to shake the star quality Byrne possessed, and it saw him take the spotlight more and more as time passed.
And that didn’t always sit well with the group. Their tensions frayed to the point of breaking, and when the group did split, unlike any other band, it has always felt final. In the same interview, Frantz named ‘Give Me Back My Name’ as his most hated Talking Heads song. The drummer’s reasoning for singling out the track was his lack of involvement in the creation, which goes against everything he said about how the band functioned.
Frantz explained: “There’s a song called ‘Give Me Back My Name’ from Little Creatures. It never resonated with me.” The reason being that it seemed to be one of byrne’s songs that cared for no other input from the band, or reception from the audience for that matter.
“It was one of David’s ‘inner thoughts’ songs,” Frantz continued. “I’m not sure anybody really related to the song very much, but somehow it got to be on the album. It’s a dispiriting song. The music is good, but the lyrics and vocal melodies are whiny and sad. I wasn’t into it at that particular point in time. I’m not today either.”
In the confusing song, Byrne sings: “Let X make a statement, Let breath pass through those cracked lips, That man was my hero, And now that word has been taken from us, Some things can never be spoken, Some things cannot be pronounced, That word does not exist in any language, It will never be uttered by a human mouth.”
The relationship between Byrne and the rest of the band continues to be difficult today. In 2022, Tina Weymouth spoke exclusively to Far Out about why she found Byrne challenging to work alongside and said his personality was “Trumpian”.
“I think everybody was always afraid David would crack or break,” she noted. “You really had to walk on eggs, and he could be a bully, but you couldn’t do it to him. He could be unfaithful, but you have to be loyal – it’s very Trumpian, in a way. One needed sacrifices in order to keep it going because we absolutely adored our fans. David never cared about people, but we did, and we loved our team.”
While Talking Heads created a tremendous back catalogue throughout their career, adversity was never too far away, and by the end, it was out of control. Although they made two more albums after Little Creatures, their split was already inevitable by the stage ‘Give Me Back My Name’ was recorded.
Listen to ‘Give Me Back My Name’ below.
