Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  We made an instore appearance at Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Records store. Greg was a music writer, historian, archivist, and publisher. His fanzine Who Put the Bomp was going to do a feature on Talking Heads. He was excited about punk, new wave, and power pop. Greg had a strong connection to Sire Records. He had released early singles by the Modern Lovers, Devo, Iggy Pop, and the Flamin’ Groovies, who were another Sire band, and had written for Rolling Stone, Creem, and the Los Angeles Times. He had come to see us play at CBGB and it was a pleasure to visit his shop in LA.

  We were booked for three sold-out nights at the Whisky a Go Go. We had been hearing about the Whisky for years; in fact, it’s still going strong. Famous shows by the Doors, Janis Joplin, Buffalo Springfield, and Led Zeppelin had happened there. Now it was our turn.

  Gary introduced us to Elmer Valentine, a founding partner of the Whisky, the Roxy, and the Rainbow Bar and Grill. Elmer and Gary were old friends and Gary knew that Elmer could be very helpful to us going forward, and he was. We played the Whisky this time and, if all went well, we would graduate to the Roxy next time.

  Happily for Tina and me, two of our closest friends from RISD were at the first show. Andi Shapiro was testing the Hollywood waters in hopes of becoming an actress, and Mary Lambert was becoming a really superb filmmaker. Both of them were pleasantly surprised that we were even in LA, never mind playing the Whisky a Go Go. We invited them backstage to catch up and it was wonderful to see them.

  We were going to play two sets that night, so we had to pace ourselves and not party too hard. We were sharing the stage with a band called the Heaters. They were a good band with two very talented young women on vocals—one of whom also played bass—and three guys. They played a more traditional form of rock and roll than we did. In fact, every band in LA played a more traditional form of rock and roll than we did. Visiting Los Angeles helped me realize how cutting edge we really were, and it also made me realize that a lot of people in the music business had no interest in cutting edge. After our first night, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote that he preferred the Heaters because they were more listenable. We were simply too weird for him. He didn’t get us.

  We were not discouraged by one less-than-stellar review. We could see most of the people at the Whisky had come to hear us and we could tell they were thirsty for the new. Sometimes the new takes a while to sink in.

  Warren Beatty was at the Whisky that night. He was always on the prowl for something new, but what was really nutty was when we returned to our room at the Sunset Marquis, the phone rang. It was well after midnight. Thinking that it was David or Jerry, I picked up the phone and said hello. A smooth voice on the other end asked to speak to Tina Weymouth. I asked, “Who’s calling, please?” The voice on the other end replied, “Tell her this is Kim Fowley.” I told Tina who it was and passed the phone to her. Kim Fowley, who wrote and sang “Alley Oop” in the sixties with the Hollywood Argyles, was the manager and producer of the Runaways and a legendary LA music biz eccentric. He had been at the show and was so impressed by Tina that he told her, in so many words, “You should quit Talking Heads and make your own album. I’ll produce it and I’ll be your manager.” Tina laughed and said, “Thank you, but I love my band and I’m going to stay with my band. Good night.” Tina hung up the phone, which then kept ringing and ringing until we called the front desk and asked them to hold our calls until the morning.

  We flew home to New York on December 18. Brian Eno was in town and Tina’s brother, Yann, and Julia MacFarlane had a dinner party for him at their loft next door to ours. Brian seemed as delighted to be in our company as we were to see him again. In a couple of months’ time we would be making our second album with him. I looked around the table at the smiling faces of David, Jerry, Tina, Brian, and the rest of the guests and I thought, How fortunate am I? Quite literally, my dreams were coming true.

  37

  FROM XTC TO DIRE STRAITS

  We finished 1977 on New Year’s Eve at the Main Point in Haverford, Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia. This was a great club where we had received a lot of love on our previous visits, but the killing schedule we had set for ourselves was taking its toll. By the time we hit the stage David had very little voice and by the end was coughing up blood. I called Gary Kurfirst the following morning and told him we would have to cancel the New Year’s Day show at My Father’s Place on Long Island. There was just no way we could do it.

  We drove back to New York City to rest up and run errands for our second tour of Europe and the UK, which was to begin in a week. We needed all the rest we could get. David had a bad throat and Tina had bronchitis. Playing a holiday show at the cold, damp, and dusty CBGB Theater had been a big mistake. We never should have done it, but we felt a strong sense of loyalty to Hilly and our New York City fans, so we did it. It’s a good thing we had a week off before departing for Europe on January 9.

  When we met at the KLM counter, we were all in high spirits—even Jerry, who was in the habit of complaining about everything: the hotel, the elevator service, the food, and the weather. Hard memories of the Modern Lovers would stir him to say things like, “This is the type of thing that makes bands break up!” Sheesh. Well, on this day even Jerry was happy. We were flying to Amsterdam and Talking Heads loved Amsterdam. We had chosen an opening act called XTC for the European leg of the tour. They had the reputation for putting on exciting shows and, like us, they were defying a lot of rock and roll clichés. Before even meeting them, we liked their style.

  Our tour manager, Mike Stewart, greeted us warmly at the airport, driving the yellow Ford minivan that we would be spending the next month riding around in. It was just big enough for both bands and our personal things. Everything else would ride in the truck with our soundman, Frank Gallagher, and stagehand, Ian Ward.

  The Apollo Hotel was clean and Bauhaus modern with a wonderfully bright and airy, glassed-in terraced café overlooking the canal where we could conduct interviews with press and radio, eat broodjes (sandwiches), and drink Heinekens to our hearts’ content. There was a lot of press to do, too. The Phonogram people who distributed our record were on the case and doing a good job with publicity, so necessary for any tour to succeed.

  The first show of the tour was at the Diogenes Club in Nijmegen. We met the guys in XTC at the sound check. They seemed cool and were very enthusiastic. Andy Partridge had a naughty sense of humor. His wit would keep us in stitches for weeks. Colin Moulding was quiet and thoughtful, in a George Harrison style. Barry Andrews was energetic and ready for any type of rock and roll experience. Terry Chambers was a salt-of-the-earth, good-natured lad who had no patience for nonsense. All of them were great players and, together, they created a unique sound. Their first album, White Music, was just about to be released. We had much in common musically and after the first show it was clear to all of us that this was a fantastic double bill. We were sold out in advance and we got three encores.

  The following night we had another sold-out show at the Eksit Club in Rotterdam, where, six months earlier, Johnny Ramone had his Perfecto leather jacket stolen. This time we had security watching the stage and it’s a good thing, because punks in the audience were looking to make some kind of trouble. We didn’t take the bait. Talking Heads simply transcended any type of predictable punk behavior. By the end of our set, I felt both Talking Heads and XTC had exceeded the audience’s expectations.

  It’s lucky that we got along well with XTC because it was a long drive in the van to the next show in Hamburg with the windows all steamed up. Mickey Stewart and David were roasting in front by the heater, while people in the very back, Tina and me, were freezing. Andy kept us wildly amused with tales of his youth, his pornography collection, and the secret videos he’d seen from the bathrooms in Chuck Berry’s restaurant. I’m pretty sure this was XTC’s first trip to Europe and it was Talking Heads’ first visit to Germany, land of my paternal ancestors. The gig in Hamburg was at a tiny jazz bar called Onkel Po’s. Artists
who had played there before us were Chet Baker, Don Cherry, Dizzy Gillespie, Carla Bley, and Dexter Gordon, to name a few. It was a real who’s who of jazz. The idea was to pack the place for our first show in Germany. We managed to sell out for two nights, no problem. The wine they served on tap there was called Wiessburgunder, a pinot blanc, and we all had plenty of it. It was great with Schnitzel.

  In Hamburg, of course, we thought of the Beatles and their early days when they would ferry over from Liverpool to play six or seven hours a night, six nights a week for weeks on end at the Star Club and other dives along the Reeperbahn. Mickey Stewart took us on a little tour of those places, but actually, Onkel Po’s was more happening in 1978. Representatives from Phonogram were there at our show and hung out with us in our hotel bar way past everyone’s bedtime. They were so happy to know that we were fans of Can and Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. They were very proud of their “Kraut Rock” and why not? There was a different mind-set in this part of Europe, for sure, and the music of these bands reflected it. Most bands tended to be more cerebral in northern Europe and more romantic in the south. “Kraut Rock” was art music. It was uncompromising and we could dig that very much.

  After the two Hamburg shows, we drove back to Amsterdam to a sold-out show at the Paradiso. I was happy to see that the hash bar in the choir loft was still in operation. XTC kicked the show off really well with their song “Radios in Motion.” They were strong and quirky onstage and got the kids in the audience, all fourteen hundred of them, super excited. After a short break, Talking Heads walked out to a roaring ovation. The sound was difficult onstage, but we were pros at this point and didn’t let that phase us. It was the sound out front that mattered and, by all reports, it was fabulous. Our biggest fan, Hans DeVente of Sony, recorded the show for bootleg posterity and it did sound wonderful to us. We would have loved to hang out in Amsterdam, but we had three shows in Belgium to do.

  We checked into the delightfully fading but still grand Hotel Metropole in the center of Brussels. Every band from the Everly Brothers to the Beatles and the Stones had slept there. While waiting for our rooms to be ready we decided to have a Belgian beer. The hotel bar was irresistibly inviting in a grand, old-world style with a long curved brass and zinc bar and enormous windows looking out onto the Place de Brouckère. Tina and I each had a croque monsieur and a beer, because that was all we could afford. While we ate we admired a framed photo on the wall of Jack and Jackie Kennedy sitting on the same tufted red leather banquette we were sitting on.

  We were amazed to find that, in 1978, the chairs and stools in our very large hotel room were covered in real leopard skin. The bathrooms were also unusually grand with lots of room and a huge cast-iron bathtub that Tina immediately took advantage of. Later, we would wash our clothes in the tub, too. What luxury!

  From the Hotel Metropole, we commuted to our shows in Zeldelgem, near Bruges, and also Liege. On the drives we all had a great time joking around with XTC. Andy Partridge was not shy of teasing David about his obvious eccentricities, and David took it very well, considering that Andy’s barbs were sharp and frequent. Andy also spoke a good deal about his own not very happy childhood, like the time when, as a young teenager, he was practicing his guitar and his mother hated the sound so much she turned off the electricity to the entire house.

  When there was enough daylight in the van, Jerry and David would try to read. Jerry was reading a spy series he loved and David was still trying to read his textbook on systems analysis that I was becoming convinced he just carried around to look smart.

  We were squeezed in too tightly for me to read anything but rock magazines or Lui with Jane Birkin on the cover, and I was easily distracted by the scenery when the windows were not fogged up, which was almost never. Tina was often laughing out loud or rolling her eyes at Andy’s antics.

  The wildest gig of the tour happened at the social hall of an old desanctified church called Le Vieux Saint-Jop. Somehow this room had become the place for punk and new wave shows. At a capacity of six hundred people, it was completely sold out. My mother had asked me to call my uncle Jim, who was chief of staff at SHAPE—Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe—in nearby Mons, Belgium. Uncle Jim was a real music lover. He had played trombone in high school and was very excited to hear our record when it came on the US Armed Forces Network. He came to this crazy old Salle Des Fetes with my aunt Kitty in full military uniform. I think it was obligatory for him to be in uniform at that time. The promoter gave them seats in the tiny balcony next to the lighting man, whose instructions from us were to turn all the lights on full blast at the beginning of the show, leave them exactly like that, and then to turn them off again at the end of the show.

  The audience that night was full of young students who were just on the verge of being out of control. They were full of crazy punk nihilism and they loved the XTC show, but when Talking Heads hit the stage the entire building began to pulse and throb. Several songs into the set we could see that there was a sort of dimple in the crowd. Some of them had managed to pogo right through the floor, landing in the basement below. They would then climb back up the stairs and push the crowd so that the kids in front of them dropped through the hole they had created. Nobody seemed to be getting hurt or asking for help so we just kept on rocking, but we could see a big portion of the crowd, mostly boys, creating a sort of sweaty conveyor belt of punks that kept disappearing into the floor. Even though it was mid-January, Le Vieux Saint-Jop was like a steam bath inside. My aunt and uncle were amazed at what they had just seen and so were we. Who knew that Belgian students could be so fearless and so much fun? Now that we knew, we would be back.

  Mike Stewart arranged for an Italian restaurant to stay open for us after the show and the pasta was very good. I had fettuccini carbonara for the first time and was enjoying a glass of the house reserve, which is usually half the price and just as good as any other wine on the menu. Suddenly, XTC’s drummer, Terry, who was seated across the table from me, started shouting at the top of his lungs, “Where are my chips? I want my fucking chips!” Rock and rollers can be such big babies. He appeared to be on the verge of tears. Frank Gallagher told him that, because the place had been held open late especially for us, there was a limited menu and would he please sit down and stop acting like such a provincial twat! Frank had a good way of diffusing such situations. Terry, still all red in the face, got up and left. Other than that, it was a lovely dinner with XTC.

  In the morning we squeezed into the van and drove to Paris. We would only have one night in Paris, which was a shame, but at least we would be playing at the Bataclan. We completely rocked the sold-out joint. Boys were pushing to the front of the stage to stand at Tina’s feet. Tina was cool about it. The band was on fire and the audience greeted every song with that flash of joy and recognition that only comes from repeated listening. We had some real fans in Paris and they sang along with almost every song. Because it was the last night with XTC, we invited them onstage to join us for encores of “Take Me to the River” and “Psycho Killer.” I wish I had a recording of it. It was really wild and surprisingly good. Later that year, to show our admiration, we invited XTC to support us at our New Year’s Eve show at the Beacon Theater in New York.

  It wasn’t easy to leave Paris and our French fans after only one night, but we had more shows to do. In the morning we took the train to Calais, the ferry to Dover, and another train to London. A UK tour of clubs and universities would begin the next day in Sheffield. Back in New York before we began the tour, Ed Bicknell, our booking agent from NEMS, had sent me a cassette tape of a band he was thinking of managing to see what we thought of them, and if they could open for Talking Heads on this UK tour. On cassette the band sounded a lot like J. J. Cale, with a taste of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton on top. I told him I didn’t know about the UK, but in the States they could be huge on FM radio. I played the tape for Tina, David, and Jerry and they okayed the band to support us on the UK tour. The band was called Dir
e Straits.

  We arrived at Sheffield University and promptly did our sound check. Believing what goes around comes around, Talking Heads were always very conscientious about allowing our opening acts full sound and lights and plenty of time to properly sound check.

  Dire Straits were four serious guys who knew how to play. They were not punks. They had chops. They were still honing their stagecraft, but their sound was fully formed right from the beginning. David Knopfler on guitar and John Illsley on bass were the handsome gentlemen of the group and the most sociable. David had founded the band. Pick Withers on drums was an excellent player, but had the bad habit of carrying his sticks around with him at all times. He was constantly practicing his drum rudiments, even on the back of the headrest of the person sitting in front of him in the van, which was usually me. This drove everyone crazy and when we told him so, he would stop for a while only to begin again. We finally assigned him the seat behind Mickey Stewart, who was driving and made it extremely clear to Pick that he had no patience for paradiddles on his headrest or anywhere else in the van. The quiet one was Mark Knopfler. He was an unlikely front man, but then you could have said that about David Byrne, too. You’d think he would show a little excitement about being on tour for the first time, but no. It was clear that he was not the bubbly type; in fact, he acted like he might be depressed much of the time.