Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  Dinner at The Local.

  On the way up to Cambridge in Tina’s car, we got a flat tire on the overpass on I-95 in New Haven. I pulled over to the breakdown lane. It was April and it was cold and raining. We had to take all the gear out of the trunk in order to reach the spare tire and jack. Cars and trucks were whizzing by at high speed and spraying us with rainwater. As I jacked the car up and changed the tire, David, who had been in a cranky mood, started howling with laughter. Tina and I had to laugh then, too. It occurred to us that David was happiest when things were not comfortable. When things were going well, he would become dissatisfied, the opposite of the way most people feel.

  We finally found the Club with Tina navigating by map. As we set up to do the show, we realized the people at The Club had no idea who we were. A couple of members of Aerosmith had been drinking there the night before and that was all they could talk about. Also, compared to CBGB, the Club was pretty generic and had a mediocre ambience. Still, we were here to convince Jerry that we were a band worth joining. We put his name on our guest list.

  When it was time for us to play, Jerry had still not arrived. We went onstage anyway to a small handful of people. We could tell that most of the audience was not really feeling us. The vibe was less than cool. It was then that I recognized Jerry, standing in the back watching us with great seriousness. He did not look like he was having fun. We played our set and received a small smattering of applause. I went out into the club and brought Jerry back to the dressing room where we all introduced ourselves. Jerry was easygoing, friendly, a good-looking guy. He was circumspect when I asked him what he thought of the band, but said, “Why don’t you come by my apartment tomorrow evening and we’ll go out to dinner? Better yet, come by the architecture building at Harvard first and I’ll show you around.” That sounded promising, so we packed up our gear and drove to a little motel out on Route 128 by the power lines.

  After a good night’s sleep we drove over to Harvard Square and had lunch at the Wurst Haus. My father always joked, “When you’re in Harvard Square, don’t go to the best house. Go to the Wurst Haus. German food! Bavarian beer!” David loved a good sausage, so we lingered there until it was time to visit Jerry at Gund Hall, the impressively contemporary Architecture School building. The interior consisted of several open tiers of studios designed in the hopes that if the students could see and hear one another, collaborations would occur. After searching all around we eventually found Jerry, who was working on one of his assignments. We talked about our show the night before and, although we hadn’t completely blown his mind, he was intrigued. He could hear that we were at least as eccentric and artistic as the Modern Lovers. Without making any promises, he said that he would come down to New York and jam with us. Great, I thought. Mission accomplished. Jerry said, “There’s just one thing: I’m not going to join the band officially until you have a recording contract.” That was fine with us.

  22

  THE SPIRIT OF ’76!

  We played sixty-five gigs in 1976, mostly at CBGB, but also at My Father’s Place out in Roslyn, Long Island; the Ocean Club; Max’s Kansas City; the Showplace in Dover, New Jersey; RISD; the Rat in Boston; and Clark University.

  Hilly had arranged for several nights of recording for a Live at CBGB’s album. We cautiously agreed to be recorded while not agreeing to be on the album. We still had strong reservations about having our songs released on a record at this early stage in our development, but I made the mistake late one night of signing a letter with Hilly that I thought was a release form, but was actually a deal memo. So, there was a moment when Hilly could have forced us to be on the album, but to his credit never did. He did ask if he could still use our picture on the album cover and we agreed to that. That’s why our picture is on the cover, playing live at CBGB, but we are not on the record.

  We first made the trek out to My Father’s Place for the first “CBGB” night on June 26. The bill that night was the Patti Smith Group, Television, the Ramones, and Talking Heads. Can you imagine? For some reason, Tom Verlaine hitched a ride with us in Tina’s Valiant and for most of the drive obsessed on the weather. Thunderstorms had been predicted. Tom kept saying, “If there is lightning, I’m not playing.” I said, “But Tom, it’s an indoor gig.” Tom replied, “Yeah, but what if lightning strikes the building while I’m singing into the mic?” I didn’t want to argue with Tom so, I just said, “Yeah, that would be a drag.”

  We arrived at My Father’s Place and parked under a railway bridge beside the club. The owner, a character named Michael “Eppy” Epstein, greeted us with a mixture of sweetness and sarcasm. In fact, most of the kids on Long Island at the time were still into the Allman Brothers and the Charlie Daniels Band. The new wave had not reached Long Island yet, so Eppy was on the vanguard. He was also booking many great reggae bands that called his club “I Father’s Place.”

  We had been working on some demo records with a guy called J. R. Rost, who was a close friend of the Shirts, so Tina had the idea to ask J. R., who we liked very much, to come out and mix our live sound for us. He agreed and became our first soundman. Many years later, J. R. told me that this was the time David had said to him, “So, I’m thinking of kicking Tina out of the band. What do you think?” J. R. says when he heard this, “My brain froze.” When J. R. asked why, David said, “She’s holding me up and not progressing fast enough.” Tina had been playing bass for just over one year. J. R. recalled how one day when we were recording at the Shirts’ studio and before I got there, David said to Tina for no apparent reason, “I’m gonna play some stuff and I want you to come up with some bass parts.” Tina, realizing that this was some kind of audition, declined. They were exchanging words about this when I walked into the room and David immediately dropped the subject. In fact, all three of us were still learning to play our instruments well. It is true that Tina had not played rock and roll before Talking Heads and did not have a repertoire of standard blues and rock bass licks in her musical vocabulary. Her approach was more classical. To this day, Tina never ever plays the predictable thing. She invents every part anew—this was one reason Talking Heads sounded so unique.

  It was a great night at My Father’s Place. We went on first, followed by the Ramones, who were followed by Television. When the Patti Smith Group hit the stage, they were greeted with a roar of crazy enthusiasm from the not-quite-sold-out crowd. They had toured constantly behind the release of their debut album, Horses, and never sounded better. Tina and I had a great time hanging out backstage with Lenny and Jay Dee before the show and it was a great pleasure to see how hard they rocked.

  Outside in the parking lot after the show, Tina told Dee Dee Ramone’s girlfriend, Connie Ramone—really Connie Gripp, but Dee Dee christened her with the family name Ramone—who was more dressed up than usual, how pretty she looked and asked her, “What is that lovely ornament in your hair on top of your head?” To me it looked like a lovely golden coil glistening in the moonlight. Connie shot us a puzzled look and put her hand on top of her head to feel what it was. It seems that there were pigeons roosting under the railway bridge, and one of them had released a big surprise right on top of Connie Ramone’s pretty blonde head! We tried our best not to laugh while Tina helped Connie clean it up.

  Tina with her Fender Precision.

  On June 30, we played a five-night run at CBGB culminating on July 4, 1976. The American Bicentennial was a major party all over New York City. Tourists poured into the city and all sorts of parades and special events were planned. I don’t know how many of those tourists ended up at CBGB, but definitely more than usual. The place was packed with lines down the block. It was steaming hot on the Bowery and even hotter inside CBGB. Everyone was sweating and guzzling cold beer.

  In between sets the crowd moved out onto the sidewalk under the flophouse to cool off and mingle.

  For those five nights we shared the stage with an interesting band from Boston called Orchestra Luna, led by Rick Berlin. They were signed to
Epic Records. They were very musical, had an Off-Broadway sensibility and they could rock. One of their singers, Karla DeVito, later sang with Meatloaf and Jim Steinman. They were good and different from what we’d come to expect to hear at CBGB.

  At the end of our final set of the week, Tina’s brother, Yann, told us some good news: The loft adjoining his in Long Island City was becoming available. The fellow who lived in the loft, an artist named Bill Barrell, who was a protégé of Red Grooms’s, had decided to move back to his native Australia. Bill was a lovely guy. To make ends meet, he boarded cats in his loft. His favorite client was Diana Ross. Miss Ross would summon Bill to come pick up her cats any time she went out of town, which was often. Tina and I called Bill early the next morning and, for a small fixture fee, he agreed to turn the lease over to us.

  The loft was located at 9-01 44th Drive at the corner of Vernon Boulevard. It was one subway stop from Manhattan and one block from the East River near the big Pepsi Cola sign. We had a view of the United Nations Building and the 59th Street Bridge, but best of all we had our own private bathroom with a shower plus a bathtub in the kitchen! The loft was 2,700 square feet with brick walls and wooden floors, columns, and beams. The ceilings were high and made of white painted tin. The loft had plenty of windows and good natural light. There was a giant freight elevator that opened in our loft, descended to the ground level and then opened right onto the street. This was fantastic for loading our gear in and out. The rent was $300 per month.

  * * *

  None of us were sorry to leave the loft on Chrystie Street, and I didn’t even mind losing my two months’ deposit. David got a nice little studio apartment in the East Village close to CBGB. He was happy to have his own apartment. Tina and I were, too. As I helped him move in, I was strangely touched to see that he had bought matching bath mats and toilet seat covers to make the bathroom nice.

  The word was out at CBGB: “Did you hear what happened to Chris and Tina? David moved out.”

  Hilly had a moving business on the side and kindly let Tina and me use his moving truck. Some people might imagine that Hilly was rolling in dough now, but the fact is he needed extra income to keep CBGB in business. A couple of the guys from The Shirts pitched in to help us and drove the truck across the Williamsburg Bridge and across McGuinness Boulevard through Greenpoint to Long Island City. We didn’t have a whole lot of stuff to move, but as we opened the door to the freight elevator right on the street, there was much oohing and ahhing at how cool a space it was for working musicians.

  Laura, Lani, and Tina Weymouth at CBGB.

  Well, our new loft was a very good thing for Talking Heads. It had great ambience for creativity. Yann Weymouth was just starting his own architectural firm called Red Roof Design in his loft next door. Fortunately, Yann loved music because he was going to be hearing a lot of it. We established a rule of no loud music before noon or after midnight.

  Long Island City was bustling with manufacturing shops, body shops, taxicab garages, and warehouses. Steinway pianos were made there. It was a busy, thriving place with little pockets of residential areas.

  If you arrived by the E or the F train, you would walk through a small Latino area with a small supermarket where we bought our essential things on the way home to our place. If you took the Number 7 train, one stop from Grand Central, you would walk down Vernon Boulevard through an old-fashioned Italian neighborhood with a Catholic Church, and a few restaurants and bars and a pharmacy. Every store was mom-and-pop style. I particularly liked John’s Market, where you could buy big crusty loaves of Italian bread and sausages and great cheeses and fresh produce. John was always very nice to me but became absolutely courtly if Tina was with me. They had a sign by the cash register saying, IT’S NICE TO BE IMPORTANT, BUT IT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO BE NICE.

  It was a workingman’s neighborhood and after work everything shut down. It could be a long, spooky walk from the subway station to our place at night. It was like the set of a horror movie.

  For Tina and me, 9-01 44th Drive became our new home and it was such a vast improvement. I felt like we would be together forever both as romantic partners and as bandmates. For Talking Heads, 9-01 became a composing room, rehearsal hall, and business office. All of our business was done on a single telephone landline, or by talking to a person face-to-face.

  We had a really strong work ethic. If we weren’t doing live shows, we were working on new songs. David came to me not long after our first meeting with our lawyer. Alan Shulman had explained to us how music publishing works and how songwriting is legally defined as words, if there are any, and melody. Up to this point, I had written or cowritten words to some of our songs. As a kid I loved to write. I’d written poetry that had been published in the school literary magazines. I wrote a record review column in my school newspaper that I called “The Listening Eye.” To me, writing went hand in hand with music and art. It was something I loved. So, David came to me and said, “I can’t sing songs with conviction unless I write the words. I want to be the one who writes the words.” When I look back, I believe that I should have stood my ground, that David was simply demanding a bigger piece of the pie. At the time, though, I thought about how off the wall some of his lyrical ideas were and how surprising his word choices were. I also thought about how different his thought process was from my own. He was not able to look me in the eye for more than a very quick glance, but I told him to keep those lyrics coming. I told him that I really liked the words he had written so far, and that I was with him no matter who wrote the lyrics. I was for Talking Heads and whatever was good for Talking Heads. It was as simple as that.

  23

  WORDS OF FAITH AND TELL ME STRAIGHT

  By the autumn of ’76, David and Tina and I felt the time had come to make a record deal. We had a good momentum and we wanted to keep it going.

  Standing on the sidewalk outside of CBGB one night I asked the Ramones’ manager, Danny Fields, what he thought about Sire Records and Seymour Stein. The Ramones had signed a multi-album deal with Sire. Danny was very forthcoming. He said, “Well, you know, with any record company there will be problems. None of them are perfect, but I can tell you that Seymour has always done right by us.”

  This is what I’d been hoping to hear. We felt that Sire—being a small independent company, but with major distribution and with offices in an old brownstone on West Seventy-fourth Street in New York—would be ideal for us. Seymour was as keen as ever and he assured us that he would always be available to talk and would try to help us solve any problems we had.

  My feeling was that our biggest problem was we didn’t yet have a manager. There were a few people lurking around CBGB who were managing bands, but they didn’t seem right for us. I felt that no manager was better than a bad manager and we had a good legal team in place to negotiate on our behalf. We decided to tell Seymour we were ready to make a deal. Seymour has said that this was one of the happiest days of his life.

  On November 1, 1976, we met with Seymour at Alan Shulman’s offices in a skyscraper on the Avenue of the Americas. Seymour arrived right on time, beaming with pride. David and Tina and I signed the agreement and passed it across the table to Seymour, who was quivering with anticipation. He signed, too. Finally! He’d been waiting a year and a half for this, worrying that we would be snatched up by some other company. It wasn’t the world’s greatest record deal for us, but the advance was good enough that we could quit our day jobs and not worry about paying the rent. Alan Shulman assured us that if our first record did well, the deal could be renegotiated. Talking Heads were now Sire recording artists.

  Did I say this was a really big day? Well, yes, we signed a recording contract, but on a more romantic note, Tina and I also decided to become engaged to be married. Ever since that day in Providence when Tina asked me to cut her hair, it had been our plan, but this was the day we made our decision to make it real. We kept it a secret until we could tell our parents on Thanksgiving. I was deeply in love with
Tina and had no doubt that our marriage would be a great one. She was the perfect young bride for me—physically, intellectually, and emotionally. I adored her. We talked mostly about art and music. I enjoyed talking about celebrity gossip, but Tina was not keen on that. When I went lowbrow, she went highbrow. Nothing has changed since then except we discuss politics and the climate crisis even more today.

  24

  SUNDRAGON STUDIO

  Sundragon Sound on West Twentieth Street had the slowest elevator in the city. It took what seemed forever to get up to the eighth floor. When you finally got there and the doors opened, you were blasted with the aroma of really good weed. There were two residences in the front of the building that you had to walk by and one of them belonged to a super-cheerful guy who sold weed. How convenient! As you walked past his place and through another door, you arrived in a tiny recording room. This is where we would set up our gear to play. The Ramones had just recorded their second album here. It was called Leave Home. Seymour had some kind of deal with the producer Tony Bongiovi—either he owed Seymour a favor or Seymour owed him one. Tony was a skillful engineer who at a young age had discovered how to reproduce the Motown Sound in his parents’ garage in New Jersey. After hearing what he had done, Berry Gordy gave him a job. The year before we worked with him, Tony had produced “Never Can Say Goodbye” by Gloria Gaynor. That record was huge in every discotheque on the planet. I was most impressed that he had engineered Good Times by Kool & the Gang. I loved Kool & the Gang and, of course, we loved Tony’s latest production for the Ramones. All of us in the band had eclectic tastes, but at that time I believe my record collection was the biggest and broadest.