The story of Talking Heads
There is a band whose name will slip out of the mouths of almost every self-described post-punk band you ask for their influences. There is a band who near enough invented new wave, a band of innovators and outsiders with complete disregard for the constraints of genre, the constraints of well-fitting suits, and the constraints of making sense. The name of this band is Talking Heads, or, at least, it was.
There was something magical about New York in the 1970s. Or, rather, there was something murky about it. Amidst brutalism, blackouts and bankruptcy, crime thrived, but so did creativity. The Velvet Underground had paved the way for art rock and the avant-garde to succeed, and the city became host to a new crop of artists partial to experimentation.
There was Blondie and the CBGB, punk rock and Patti Smith, no wave and new wave, and somewhere in between it all, there would spawn Talking Heads. Contributing to the future stereotype that would be applied to most post-punk kids, the founding members of the band first met at art school in Rhode Island. Going one step further to uphold that same stereotype, they initially named their project The Artistics.
Made up of frontman David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz, The Artistics didn’t quite adhere to the name they had assigned themselves. Rather than creating their own art, they sought to entertain their friends by borrowing music from bands they admired, the likes of The Velvet Underground revealing their admiration for New York art-rock while takes on The Who and Smokey Robinson proved interests that lay further afield.
A move to the city that spawned the Velvets set the powerhouse of Talking Heads into motion, working on their own compositions and beginning with the search for someone who could reliably pick at the strings of a bass. It was a quest that proved more difficult than initially anticipated, so the drummer recruited his girlfriend, Tina Weymouth, promoting her role in the project from driver to band member.
Though vulgar, many artists could take something away from the phrase, “Don’t shit where you eat”. Dating a fellow band member is almost always a bad idea, as has continually been proven by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Sonny and Cher, and ABBA. The list of poorly pursued relationships in music is a lengthy one – but Frantz and Weymouth’s names are notably absent.
While Frantz watched from behind a drum kit, Weymouth learned the instrument while frequenting the work of Suzi Quatro and continually proving herself to Byrne’s repeated requests. Suddenly, through sheer will, she was firmly on the road to becoming one of the most beloved bassists of all time, imposing and intentional in her playing.
Gigging around the Big Apple, gracing the now-iconic CBGB, the band’s efforts culminated in 1977 when they staked their claim on the year, the name, and the world with Talking Heads: 77. A future signature hit provided a glimpse into the mind of a killer with French flourishes, while the album as a whole cemented their place as the newest and greatest art rockers on the block.
While Weymouth and Frantz cemented the genius of their love with rings and “I do”s, Byrne was forging a new relationship of his own. Talking Heads’ follow-up record would mark the beginning of the frontman’s creative love affair with ambient pioneer and sought-after producer Brian Eno. His penchant for experimentation leaked into their sound, as the records that followed incorporated everything from funk to Dadaism.
Their taste for experimentation was so strong that it simply couldn’t be sated by the sound of Talking Heads, as Frantz and Weymouth set up the Tom Tom Club and Byrne took off with Eno to the so-called bush of ghosts. They infused their live performance with experimental energy too, nowhere more notably than in their collaboration with Jonathan Demme, Stop Making Sense.
Opening with Byrne’s unassuming introduction, “Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play”, the stage of the Pantages Theatre seems to swallow him up. But as his suit grew, so too did the company surrounding him, a lonely guitarist bolstered by bass and backup singers. Anxiety turns into gleeful community, and somewhere in between, the frontman becomes a legend.
Twirling around lamps and donning an oversized grey suit, Byrne delivered a genre-defining performance on a Hollywood stage in 1985. It wasn’t post-punk he was defining, or new wave, or any of the countless sounds and styles the band had incorporated into their catalogue by this point. The band were defining the concert film as an entire concept, documenting a night to be looked back on and adored forevermore, to be covered and restored and studied and danced to deservingly.
This night may well have marked the climax of their work. The story of Talking Heads certainly didn’t stop there, but it did start to slow. The band knew they could never match the brilliance of the live show they had delivered, instead electing not to tour the following records. They also seemed to dial back on their experimentalism on record, never quite attaining the shine of their earlier work.
Byrne had proven his place as a formidable frontman on stage, but he also found a desire to do so on screen. Contemplating life in surrealist suburbia as the cowboy-hat-wearing narrator of True Stories, he pushed into visual media and recruited his long-time collaborators to provide the supporting soundtrack.
As surrealist visuals took the focus, sonic experimentalism seemed to be tossed to the side. Though the True Stories album had some interesting moments, it was nowhere near as innovative as the band’s earlier work. The film became a cult watch for fans of the band, but it never came close to the legacy of Stop Making Sense, and the band were beginning to fall apart behind the scenes.
The frontman, self-admittedly, was somewhat tyrannical when it came to Talking Heads, a direction that had often irked his collaborators. The decision to go on hiatus seemed like an attempt to fix the band’s interpersonal issues, but it actually marked the beginning of the end. This fact was unbeknownst to even those within the band, as Byrne’s tyranny extended to their disbandment.
The end of Talking Heads came somewhat quietly and confusingly. Byrne’s decided departure supposedly stunned his bandmates, delivered in a manner that even the frontman himself regrets, while murmurs of animosity have surrounded the band ever since. Now, there is a broken band who seemingly never mended their relationships, a band who still take digs at one another in the press, and a band who reportedly turned down $80million to reunite on stage.
Still, Talking Heads remain a band who, despite it all, have made an indelible mark on music. Innovators and artists, in the purest sense, they will be imitated and admired forever. Same as it ever was.
