1982

by Jian Ghomeshi

  I’m really not sure why I was so skinny in the 1980s. It was my metabolism or something like that. That’s what my mother said. My mother was very helpful in explaining these things. She would inform me that it was probably my metabolism or something like that, and then she would add some helpful suggestions so I would know what I should aspire to as an alternative to being thin.

  “You should eat well and be active, honey. Then you will look grand! You know, Umar has a very nice build. He’s not as thin as you.”

  My mother would say things like this. She would make her point about how skinny I was by comparing me to Umar. Umar was quite perfect in the eyes of my mother. Often, when my mother wanted to make a point about how I could change the way I was, or what I might aspire to, she would talk about Umar. It didn’t help that Umar seemed to have been blessed with a tediously pious disposition. It really wasn’t fair. And Umar had a remarkable facility for doing adult-like things at an early age.

  Once, when we were eight years old, Umar had single-handedly made hamburgers for both our families over at the Jans’ house. My mother had been very vocal at the dinner table about how impressed she was when Umar came out of the kitchen with the hamburgers.

  “Oh, my, look at that! Umar, those hamburgers look just lovely. You made all of those by yourself? Wow! Do you see that, Jian? That’s just so great. Thank you, Umar.”

  That’s what my mother said. As you can see, my mother couldn’t compliment Umar’s hamburgers without reminding everyone that I hadn’t made the hamburgers. And in truth, it really was quite impressive that Umar had made us all hamburgers. He was eight. I never found out if Mrs. Jan helped him, but I don’t think she did. I’d actually seen him in the kitchen with a pan in hand, cooking meat on the stove. And I really didn’t know how to make hamburgers. And anyway, I was quite sure my mother’s point had little to do with Umar and more to do with why I wasn’t cooking dinner for guests. Umar was just like That Chris from across the street and all the other kids that were better than me at various things. None of this seemed very equitable when I was growing up. And I already knew I was thin without my mother having to point it out.

  Besides, it was true that Umar had a nice build. He was more robust than I was, inasmuch as a kid can be robust. At the very least, I could still take solace in the fact that being skinny made me more like Bowie. I could hang on to that. Then again, even that claim wasn’t entirely steeped in credibility. The tragic part about my lean frame was that I wasn’t even skinny for the right reasons. Bowie had been gaunt because he was a drug addict and ate nothing but cocaine, milk, and red peppers for a lot of the 1970s. My skinny build had nothing to do with cocaine or anything glamorous like that. It was more that I was a fourteen-year-old asthmatic who seemed to get sick a lot as a kid. I also had allergies and I would sneeze often. This was bad. Mind you, by the ’80s, sneezing meant looking a bit more like Bowie with the scrunched-up face as if he were about to sneeze in the video for “Fashion.” There were some benefits to my downsides.

  Back at the Police Picnic, I had returned to our place in the crowd. Wendy spotted me and deftly pivoted away from the stubble-faced guys to face in my direction. She threw her cigarette butt on the ground and smiled as I gave her one of the Cokes in a large red paper cup that said “Coke.” Wendy and I then went about tearing into the two big pretzels. At one point, she playfully broke off a piece of my pretzel and threw it in her mouth. We both laughed. It was all very comfortable. There were moments when I forgot that Wendy was older and more experienced and cooler than me. It felt like she forgot that sometimes, too. Those were my favourite times.

  We’d now resumed the wait for Talking Heads to hit the stage, and I had no idea what to expect. The anticipation in the Grandstand was palpable, and it was building. Wendy leaned in close and looked directly in my eyes.

  “This is going to be rad. I know it. Their rhythms are really intricate.” I loved that Wendy used words like “intricate.” She was very smart. I had heard that Wendy did particularly well in school. This did not surprise me. Bowie was smart, too. We watched the crew guys wearing laminates set up the stage. And then, finally, the members of Talking Heads made their appearance.

  THE MOMENT TALKING HEADS hit the stage at the Police Picnic in 1982, the course of my life was altered forever. That is a fact. You might think I’m being dramatic. You might think that statement is what they call hyperbole. It’s not. Talking Heads were that important.

  That moment—and the set of music I was about to witness—would lead to big changes in my future. It would lead to years and years of Talking Heads music being played on repeat on my stereo, in my car, on my headphones, and in my head. It would lead to buying every single one of the Talking Heads albums on vinyl and then updating them with CDs and then digitally with each new decade. It would lead to learning and covering Talking Heads songs in various bands and musical incarnations. It would lead to attending a concert tour the following year that would be filmed to create the second-best rock movie of all time. It would lead to forming a band in my teens with a name as close as possible to “Talking Heads” with the secret intention of being placed next to them in the racks at record shops. It would lead to using their music as the theme to a national radio show I would host many years later. And it would lead to recording a version of “Psycho Killer” with my touring group in the late ’90s that would appear on our live album and become one of our standout show closers.

  From the moment Talking Heads hit the stage at the Police Picnic in 1982, I was transported.

  I had never seen or experienced anything quite like Talking Heads. Ever. All of a sudden, it was as though there were a hundred people onstage. I barely knew where to focus my attention. There was a cool blond woman playing bass. There were brilliant percussionists. There was a curly-haired guy who was very animated on rhythm guitar. There were black people and white people. There were women and men. There was a stage full of humans and everyone was grooving. From the moment they started playing, all the performers moved like the music was joyously deep in their bones. And at the centre of it all was a tall, thin guy with an elastic body that was contorting in ways I had never witnessed. He was like a rubber man. He was also somewhat androgynous. And then he started singing. Or speaking. Or announcing. And his words were profound. And weird. And funny. And he captured my attention like no one had beyond Bowie. And he had the same first name as Bowie. David. I was transfixed. I looked over at Wendy after the opening song. She was staring at the stage with her mouth half open. She was transfixed as well.

  I would later learn who all these people onstage were. I would learn that they had emerged out of an art school on the east coast of America in the 1970s. Talking Heads were based in New York City and were almost more of an art experiment than a band. The cool blond woman on bass was Tina Weymouth. She was known for her minimalist art-punk bass lines combined with funk-inflected riffs. She would go on to form the band Tom Tom Club with her spouse—who was also the Talking Heads drummer—Chris Frantz. Tom Tom Club would then write and record the infectious song “Genius of Love,” which Mariah Carey would later reinterpret and record as “Fantasy,” with which she enjoyed a major hit. The animated guitarist who was jumping around onstage was a guy named Jerry Harrison, who also played keys. He had been a founding member of one of the most influential bands of the ’70s, the Modern Lovers (whose “Pablo Picasso” would later be covered by Bowie on Reality). He would go on to produce bands like the Violent Femmes and Foo Fighters. The other musicians onstage were rhythm makers, synth players, backup singers, and another electric guitarist. When I did a proper count, I decided there were nine people onstage in all. Or maybe the number was ten.

  In the middle of all the action stood David Byrne, the lead singer and guitarist. He was the man with the elastic body. He was the kind of person that important critics would forever after call “an enigma.” David Byrne was wearing grey pleated dress pants and a white fitted shirt with a collar that was
buttoned all the way to the top. He was rake thin, and his jerky motions made him look like a puppet on a string. I would later learn that he had worked with the master producer Brian Eno, just like Bowie had in the late 1970s. And that he had the same creative adventurousness.

  By the end of the second song, David Byrne was undoubtedly in charge of the stadium. Everyone was following his lead. And Talking Heads seemed to have it all. World-beat poly-rhythms, enough percussion to fill a drummer’s paradise, futuristic synth sounds, chanting vocals, elements of disco and funk grooves, a punk rock urgency, and David Byrne as the ringmaster. It all combined to create something stunning.

  The whole production of the Police Picnic show was bumped up a notch at this point, too. Talking Heads hit the stage around dusk, and the lights had been turned on and were splashing over the electrified performance area. I was awestruck. The happenings onstage were trumping anything in my life that had come before. It suddenly felt like nothing mattered but what I was witnessing. My Adidas bag, the Joan Jett incident, the intimidation by the older punks, my insecurity around my dream girl … all of it was left behind. This was not what I’d expected. I’d expected the Police Picnic to be about being with Wendy. I’d expected the highlight of the concert to be the Police. I was quickly realizing that my new focus was Talking Heads. That is, as well as being with Wendy. Experiencing this moment with her next to me made it all the more magical.

  “I can’t believe how good this is!” I screamed at Wendy over the music, even though she was standing so close that her shoulder was intermittently touching mine.

  “I know!” Wendy replied with her own version of full volume. “This is so rad. I told you! I told you!”

  We were now jumping up and down to Talking Heads’ third song in their set. It was a tune called “Once in a Lifetime.” I recognized this song from a video I’d seen on The NewMusic. Music videos were just starting to become commonplace and were only seen in Canada on shows like The NewMusic. In fact, The NewMusic, a weekly show based in Toronto that aired on Citytv with hosts J.D. Roberts and Jeanne Beker, had been a pioneering program in this regard. MTV had launched the previous August in the United States, and the Canadian music video channel, MuchMusic, would not be on the air until 1984.

  With the appearance of MTV, and especially after the release of Michael Jackson’s video for “Billie Jean” in January 1983, videos became mainstream and everyone started making them. Music videos very quickly transformed into an obligatory part of the business. As early as 1982, crappy bands began feeling like they had to make videos. These videos were usually crappy. Of course, artists like Madonna and Michael Jackson and Duran Duran would go on to shoot world-famous videos that were a major boon to their careers. But before then, it was largely more artistic acts that made short films to accompany their music.

  Bowie had done this. And so had Talking Heads. And no one who’d seen Talking Heads’ 1981 video for “Once in a Lifetime” would forget David Byrne’s performance as a bespectacled marionette. This included hitting himself in the head each time he repeated the refrain at the end of the song chorus. Now the video and the marionette were coming to life on the stage in front of us.

  “Once in a Lifetime” appeared on the Talking Heads record Remain in Light. That album would later be considered one of the best of the ’80s. It brought with it progressive synthesizer sounds mixed with the influences of “Afrobeat” from Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti. Eno had introduced Fela Kuti’s music to the members of Talking Heads in the late ’70s. “Once in a Lifetime” had a propulsive and hypnotic beat as its template and featured David Byrne speaking over top of the drum and bass groove in the verses. Much of what he was saying in the song was posed in the form of questions. And in the lyrics he would tell you that you might ask those questions as well.

  David Byrne would do all this in his speak-sing style throughout the song. And when he delivered those questions onstage at the Police Picnic in 1982, it was as though David Byrne was speaking to me. And to a certain extent, he really was. Then, at the chorus of “Once in a Lifetime,” Byrne began singing the refrain along with a number of the band members singing backup behind him. He was holding his arms up high in the air like President Richard Nixon before he’d gotten on that plane in disgrace in the 1970s. And then David Byrne would hit his head repeatedly. It was just like the music video, but even better. In the Toronto Star the next day, there was an enthusiastic review of the Police Picnic with a black-and-white photo of David Byrne in his white collared shirt with his arms in the air. The caption read, “David Byrne—kinetically involved.” I repeated those words. Kinetically involved. I’m still not sure exactly what that meant. But it sounded just right. I cut the photo out of the newspaper and stuck it on my wall. It stayed up there for years.

  As I’ve noted, David Byrne’s elastic body was at the centre of the spectacle. I have made a short list of some of the physical positions that David Byrne contorted himself into during the Talking Heads set at the Police Picnic in 1982:

  man being punched in stomach

  man with arms in air like preacher (or Nixon)

  man slapping self on forehead with right hand

  man bending backwards in “camel pose”

  man speaking to talking hand

  man intensely shaking like a vibrator

  As you can see from this list, there was no shortage of physical gestures in David Byrne’s action repertoire. It was captivating. Wendy and I were now fully immersed in the Talking Heads experience. It felt like the whole stadium was moving under the influence of the music and sermons of David Byrne. The songs were magical. And the music was infectious. But well beyond the intoxicating sound emanating from the stage, it was clear that Talking Heads and Byrne were also about something else: theatre. Between the band members’ animated performance and David Byrne’s actions, it all felt like a real stage show. And this was not just any regular theatre … it was experimental theatre. I’d found another element to draw me to my new favourite band. And I’d found it with Wendy at my side.

  9

  “DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME” – CULTURE CLUB

  Wendy and I were no longer simply at a rock concert. By the middle of the Talking Heads set in August of 1982, we were witnessing a theatrical stage show. And it was brilliant. Really. You might think this is misty-eyed nostalgia. It’s not. A band of New York City art school graduates had elevated the Police Picnic and the entire CNE Grandstand into a wild performance space.

  The first rule of achieving cool is to position oneself in proximity to cool. And I had Wendy. Wendy had already known about Talking Heads. She’d been a fan. She had specifically mentioned them as the group to see when I first asked her to the Police Picnic as we stood in the second-floor hallway at Thornlea. That was back in June. I had been scared to talk to Wendy then. But I did. And here we were, two months later. I thought about how young I had been in June. I’d been naïve. I didn’t even know anything about Talking Heads back then, except for identifying them with that song at a party that sounded like they were saying “fuck” in it, even though they weren’t really saying “fuck” in it. I hadn’t put it together that I’d seen the “Once in a Lifetime” video and been captivated. Talking Heads were more sophisticated than the standard band that might end up on a Grade 9 New Wave mix tape. I’d missed out on them until now. But Wendy had known all along. She’d been spot-on. That part was no surprise.

  It made sense that Wendy would’ve already discovered David Byrne and his magical crew in Talking Heads. She was older. She was cool. She was the female Bowie. But with Talking Heads now onstage, I had little time for embarrassment about my former ignorance. I wanted ownership. I’d found my new favourite band and they validated my own curious mixture of interests. They were alternative but still popular. They were rhythmic but melodic. They were strange, but proof that strange didn’t mean bad. They were like Bowie. Especially David Byrne. Just like Bowie, David Byrne would have had trouble fitting in on
any given day in Thornhill. He was artsy and odd. And Bowie was odd. And knowing this gave me confidence. Their existence meant I wasn’t weird. Or rather, that I might be weird, but that it was okay. Or that it was acceptable to want to be weird.

  Wendy and I kept stealing glances at each other and smiling as Talking Heads powered through their set, gaining strength with each new song. It was as if we were sharing something very personal, even if we happened to be sharing it with forty-five thousand others as well. The dramatic flair of Talking Heads was tapping into our mutual interests. Theatre was something Wendy and I had in common. We were both involved in 213 at school. Theatre had become a big part of my life and had led to a challenging test of my identity only one month earlier. I had experienced something of a true theatre debut. It hadn’t exactly been pretty. And I still wasn’t sure how much Wendy really knew.

  MY TWO MAIN PASSIONS in the early ’80s were music and theatre. Well, I also liked politics. And I liked Persian food. And history. And hockey. And girls. And maps. And soccer. But my main passions were music and theatre. It was the theatrical nature of much of New Wave music that brought those interests together. It’s no surprise that I gravitated towards it. And no one embodied that creative blend more than Bowie. Bowie, in his chameleonlike style as a performer, practically was theatre. But when Talking Heads hit the stage at the Police Picnic, I learned that David Byrne and his bandmates were ambassadors of theatre and much more, too. This wasn’t just rock. It was art.