Talking Heads

When they finally did return to the studio to record a new album for 1983, they did so without Brian Eno. Although he and David Byrne got along well, Eno’s cerebral approach and abhorrence of anything popular started wearing on the other members, so in the interim, everybody stretched out into their own projects. David Byrne scored Twyla Tharp’s massive dance project, The Catherine Wheel, to great effect and acclaim. That soundtrack, Remain in Light, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts are all of a piece, as far as I’m concerned, and mark the pinnacle of David Byrne’s creativity. Jerry Harrison, the keyboardist they recruited from The Modern Lovers, came out with a fair solo album and started producing albums for other bands, and the rhythm section, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth (who reportedly chose her instrument because it was the most annoying) got together with some friends from the Remain in Light days and Tina’s sisters to create Tom Tom Club as a venue for their more sacrilegiously commercial impulses.

They returned as a stripped down foursome with the highly regarded Speaking in Tongues, which largely abandoned their thickly layered and intricately intertwined African sound for a more minimalist, funky approach. Speaking in Tongues, released on the day I finally left University of Chicago for a life unknown, was their most popular album, and it does contain a few wonderful tracks, including what is probably their biggest hit, Burning Down the House and their most beautiful and sublime track, the sweet album-closing This Must Be the Place, an uncharacteristically genuine ode to domestic bliss and love, especially surprising coming from the usually cynical and paranoid Byrne, who sings the song beautifully and with heart-happy joy. But this is where I started to lose them.

Another live album, this time the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme’s documentary of their Speaking In Tongues tour called Stop Making Sense, brought them even wider acclaim, and acted as a sort of greatest hits package, continuing their run of unlikely public success.

Speaking in Tongues was huge when it came out, and I heard it all the time as I was getting to know my way around the Big Bad Apple. I played it a lot that summer, and grew to like most of the album, but they were drifting away from the sounds and themes that interested me, and by the next album, 1985’s Little Creatures, they had turned another corner and disappeared down another street, but this time, I couldn’t follow them. Little Creatures is stripped down even further, and is played as a mostly straight guitar band – almost country at times. Byrne’s paranoia continued to ebb and his domestic bliss continued to flow and I just didn’t care anymore. Plus, he seemed to be going for a kind of forced faux-naivety, which felt entirely disingenuous and a little insulting. This was also about the time that Byrne directed his film True Stories, which is nearly unwatchable. Actually, I went to go see it with Oma, my grandmother, and it did provide one of my most cherished memories of her. She was always an incredibly good sport, and willing to try anything at least once, so when I told her, during a visit, that I was interested in seeing this film, she eagerly agreed and we jumped in the car and drove to the theatre. We took our seats and the lights went down. The movie started and, after a couple of minutes, she leaned over and asked, “is this the movie?” I assured her that it was and ten minutes later she was fast asleep. She always was a wily critic.

Byrne released an album of music from the film (Sounds from True Stories), which is actually quite a charming little treasure, featuring everything from the Kronos Quartet to cowboy tunes to disco to Meredith Monk, but, for some reason, he decided to recast most of the songs as Talking Heads songs and their next – and worst – album was also called True Stories. I don’t know if he thought the songs wouldn’t stand up in their original forms, or if he was out of ideas, or if he thought it would be a good set of songs for Talking Heads, but whatever the motivation, the album is flat and uninteresting and continues with the disingenuous ingénue angle.

That should have been it for me and Talking Heads, but cool bands die slowly for me, and I’m almost always willing to give them another chance. So, when what would turn out to be their final album, Naked, was released early in 1988, I picked it up. Talking Heads had turned another corner and went down another street, and his time I was happy to follow them. They were going forward by going backwards and sideways. They built their songs from jams again, and invited lots of additional musicians to fill out the ranks, and took a more rhythmic approach to their music than they had since the Remain in Light days, but this time instead of looking to Africa for inspiration, they went south of the border. Naked utilizes much more of a South American palette, and many of the funky songs have an irresistible groove to them. This time their polyrhythmic jams were punctuated not by creepy synthesizer stabs, but by blaring horn sections. A much more danceable effort than anything they had done since Speaking in Tongues, Naked invigorated the bands and the music was the most energetic and infectious it had been for years. It seemed like they were back on track, but, alas, it was not meant to be. The public largely ignored the album and Tina and Chris were eventually surprised to find out that Talking Heads had broken up by reading an interview with David Byrne. This created no small friction between the band members, and eventually led to Jerry, Chris, and Tina forming a band called The Heads with a parade of guest lead vocalists. To rub salt in the wound, they called the album No Talking, Just Head, which, in addition to its double entendre, irked David Byrne so much that he tried to sue them, although the suit was quietly dropped later. The band that rose from the womb of punk, made it safe to think and rock at the same time, virtually invented college rock, turned the world onto multi-culti cross pollination, brought funk back to the foreground, and released one of the most vibrant and varied catalogues in rock had finally called it a night and went their separate ways.