Talking Heads

Two art students, a bassist who learned on the job and a former Modern Lover, who went from CBGB to Remain in Light and Stop Making Sense, joining new wave to funk and African polyrhythm on eight studio albums for Sire.

Origin
New York City, United States
Years active
1975-1991
Genres
new wave, post-punk, art punk, art pop, funk rock
Labels
Sire

Art school to CBGB

David Byrne and Chris Frantz met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design, where in 1973 they started a group called the Artistics, which Frantz later described as a "prototype punk band." When no bassist turned up, Frantz's girlfriend Tina Weymouth took the job. The three moved to New York in 1975, shared a loft, and on 5 June played their first show as Talking Heads, opening for the Ramones at CBGB. Weymouth said the name came from a TV Guide piece describing a head and shoulders shot as "all content, no action."

Sire signed them in November 1976. Jerry Harrison, formerly of the Modern Lovers, joined on keyboards and guitar in January 1977, the year Weymouth and Frantz married and the debut Talking Heads: 77 gave them their first charting single, Psycho Killer.

The Eno years

Brian Eno produced the next three albums. More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) brought a first Billboard Top 30 hit with Al Green's Take Me to the River, and Fear of Music followed in 1979. For Remain in Light (1980) the band and Eno, drawing on Fela Kuti and African polyrhythm, built the music from looping grooves in Nassau and New York rather than from finished songs, and Byrne wrote words afterwards over the jams. Both Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) and Crosseyed and Painless come from those sessions. A dispute over the songwriting credits left Frantz and Weymouth, in his words, feeling burned.

To play the record live they grew to nine or ten players, adding Adrian Belew, Bernie Worrell, Busta Jones and Steve Scales among others. The big band debuted before about 70,000 people at the Heatwave festival in Ontario on 23 August 1980. A hiatus followed, filled by Weymouth and Frantz's Tom Tom Club, Harrison's The Red and the Black, and Byrne and Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, while the double live album The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads appeared in March 1982.

Stop Making Sense

With Eno gone, the band co-produced Speaking in Tongues (1983) with Alex Sadkin. Burning Down the House became their only American Top 10 hit, and the album closed with This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody). Jonathan Demme filmed the tour over four nights at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles in December 1983, and the result, Stop Making Sense, became one of the most celebrated concert films. It was their last tour.

Little Creatures (1985) was their best-selling album, True Stories (1986) gathered songs from Byrne's film, and Naked (1988) was the last studio record. Byrne made solo albums, and in December 1991 the band announced it had split. Frantz said he learned of Byrne's exit from the Los Angeles Times, adding: "As far as we're concerned, the band never really broke up."

Afterlife

Weymouth, Frantz and Harrison toured as the Shrunken Heads and, as the Heads, released No Talking, Just Head (1996) with guest singers, and Byrne took legal action over the name. The four played together once more at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction on 18 March 2002, after which Byrne cited bad blood. They received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, reunited for a Q&A when A24's restoration of Stop Making Sense premiered in Toronto in September 2023, and in 2024 reportedly turned down $80 million to tour. Harrison and Belew have toured the Remain in Light songs since 2022.

Radiohead named themselves after the song Radio Head and cited Remain in Light as an influence on Kid A, and LCD Soundsystem and St. Vincent are among the acts who cite the band. Remain in Light entered the National Recording Registry in 2017, and the concert film the National Film Registry in 2021. Frantz told the story in his memoir Remain in Love (2020).

Members

Records

Songs

Brian Eno, Tom Tom Club, Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Angelique Kidjo

Where to go next

Official

Reference

  • Talking Heads A full history through the 50th anniversary.
  • Remain in Light The sessions, the lyric method, the credit dispute and the cover.
  • Stop Making Sense The filming, the 2023 restoration and the reception of the concert film.

Discography and data

  • MusicBrainz Every release group, including archival live broadcasts.
  • Discogs Every pressing.

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Film and video

Sources

  1. Talking Heads, Wikipedia
  2. Remain in Light, Wikipedia
  3. Speaking in Tongues (Talking Heads album), Wikipedia
  4. Stop Making Sense, Wikipedia
  5. Talking Heads, MusicBrainz
  6. Talking Heads: setlist statistics, setlist.fm