The song Tina Weymouth says every musician wishes they wrote
Tina Weymouth, the former bassist of new wave heroes Talking Heads, has cemented her legend in many ways. One of the most influential and dynamic bassists of her generation, it was Weymouth who gave the band their funky edge, which toed the line in appealing to the masses as well as art school creatives.
Let’s not forget that Weymouth’s work is made even more significant because she was one of the only prominent females at the top of popular music at the time, setting a more than encouraging example for girls dreaming of making it in the industry. Adding more importance to this is how widespread society’s misogyny and sexism were at the time.
Demonstrating Weymouth’s unapologetic character is that she once described former Talking Heads frontman and leader David Byrne as one of music’s “sly foxes”. Notably, he and the rest of the band – Weymouth, Frantz and guitarist Jerry Harrison – do not have the most agreeable relationship.
During an interview with Far Out, Weymouth recalled of Byrne: “Nobody told us about David Byrne and their personal experiences with David Byrne. So, we didn’t find out for decades about a lot of stuff. Like people now say, ‘Oh, yeah, you know, I used to play poker with him, and I couldn’t understand how he was winning all the time. But then he went home, and I found all these aces hidden in the furniture.’ So, that would have been a clue, but we didn’t know.”
Brilliantly unafraid to speak her mind, Weymouth has provided many fascinating moments in her time. Whilst it might be easy to concentrate on the friction with David Byrne, her comments on the music that influenced her are the most important as we better understand her artistry’s inner workings. When sitting down with the NME for the ‘Soundtrack of my Life’ segment, Weymouth provided several compelling insights, with her choice of the song she wishes she’d written, particularly so.
Keeping it close to home in New York, Weymouth chose Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ from 1972’s Transformer as the one. Describing how flawless the song is, she also maintained that every musician wishes they’d written it. She said: “It’s just amazing, everything about it – the arrangement, the production, the performance, the sentiment, gosh, we all wish we’d written that one.”
Listen to ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed below.
