The New York band David Byrne envied: “Beyond my capabilities”
New York in the late 1970s was the epitome of a two-sided tale.
The rose-tinted glasses through which many seek to view the time period rightly foregrounds some of the greatest music to come from the era, such as Blondie, Talking Heads and Ramones, but beneath the surface was a dark community, rampant with crime and corruption that thrived off the economically stagnant state of America’s proudest city.
Luckily, though, those damp and dark conditions are perfect for artistic movements to thrive, as we all know. And so while the streets of New York offered very little in the way of opportunity, the inner sanctum of its DIY music venues made up for it.
Namely, CBGB, an iconic venue that has since gone on to exist in the pantheon of musical history. As Blondie’s Clem Burke described, “It was like a rock ‘n’ roll high school”, adding, “When you see people from back in the day, there’s a shared history right away, there’s a connection that endures. If we were not at CBGB, Blondie would not have had the success that we had; that was the stepping stone.”
It was the centre point of a movement that hosted a catalogue of varying sounds, because at their heart, Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones, Lou Reed and Patti Smith were all wildly different artists, with different artistic sentiments motivating their music, so creating an artistic microcosm where they could all co-exist couldn’t be understated.
While many greats came and went through the doors of that place, it was Blondie who David Byrne believed mastered the art of hitmaking. As he stepped off the stage, making way for Debbie Harry and co to deliver their brand of exciting new-wave, he marvelled at their unashamed ability to pen an instant hit.
He elaborated, “Blondie and Talking Heads and Ramones and all that, were all playing the same few clubs. CBGBs and other clubs. Blondie had hits almost right away. In a certain way, it wasn’t an accident, they were writing pop songs with an attitude. And they would write them in different genres.”
He continued, “They just loved pop music, so they’d write a reggae song, they’d write a kind of rap song, they’d write an electronic dance song, and they’d do all, you know, they’d jump from one thing to another. And they just loved that, which was beyond my capabilities at that time.”
“At the time” is a crucial suffix for that sentence, because sure, Blondie mastered the art of making an alternative hit instantly commercial, but Byrne and Talking Heads were tapping into something inherently futuristic. It may not have been for the right there and then like the former’s music, but it was something for the future, that with every passing year, would weave tighter into the cultural tapestry.
Talking Heads’ quality to be quirky and esoteric, while still feeling inherently familiar, was a skill that Debbie Harry herself envied. While Byrne was looking on at her with creative envy, she was staring back at her CBGB alumni, remarking that her band “maybe wasn’t as fully developed as those bands were”, and it’s that competitive spirit that ultimately fostered a scene of historic music.
