by Chris Frantz
Still, they pulled themselves together and created their biggest hit ever with the help of producer Don Was. “Love Shack,” from their album Cosmic Thing, was a great, great song and a huge seller. Also in heavy rotation on MTV were “Roam” and “Deadbeat Club” from the same album. The B-52s were back!
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Tom Tom Club, the musical collective Tina and I formed in 1981, played a few shows with them here and there. We were an excellent double bill. They invited Tina and me to play with them on a couple of songs when they were celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary at Irving Plaza in New York City in 2001, and that was a great pleasure. Yoko Ono sang with them that night, too. Backstage, she was a real sweetheart.
Keith sent Tina and me a bottle of Cristal champagne in 2002 when Talking Heads was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When we drank it, we toasted each of them—Keith, Ricky, Cindy, Kate, and Fred—by name. By the way, they are still touring the world.
40
DICK AND PHIL
In early March 1979, we flew to Los Angeles at the invitation of Dick Clark to perform on his classic teen television show American Bandstand. As usual, we stayed at the Sunset Marquis. We loved to hang out by the pool there and chat with the movie stars like Sonia Braga and director Hector Babenko, who had a hit with Kiss of the Spider-Woman, with music by Wally Badarou; rock stars such as Phil Collins, Bananarama, and Robert Fripp; and other nutty personalities like SCTV’s Rick Moranis. The weather was warm and after a brutal winter in New York, living in a loft with no heat after business hours, I could see why so many people had migrated out there. The living was easier, for sure, at least until you tried to navigate the freeways.
We had a rental car and drove ourselves to the ABC Television Studios, where we were delighted to find the parking lot full of kids of all ethnicities practicing their dance moves and making costume changes. None of them had any idea who we were. Dick Clark taped as many as five episodes in a day and we felt amazed and honored to be featured on this program that we had watched every Saturday for years as young music fans.
Before our segment, Dick Clark himself came to our tiny little dressing room to fact-check the information he had been given about us. He was very bright, friendly, and kind and we were impressed that he had actually done his homework.
We had lip-synched on a few European TV shows, but this was the first time we had done it in America. Everyone on American Bandstand lip-synched and it felt a little bit weird on the rehearsal run-through, but we got settled into it. The song we performed was “Take Me to the River.” Typically, Dick would ask the band a few questions after the performance and he directed the first question to David: “You don’t like to categorize your music, do you?” David replied simply, “Not really, no.” Then Dick asked him, “Are you a shy person?” To which David replied, “I think so.” I couldn’t help but notice that David’s very curt response took Dick Clark by surprise to the extent that the hand he held his mic in started shaking. David had managed to make even the unflappable Dick Clark feel uncomfortable. He quickly pivoted on his heels and turned to Tina. He asked her what we were hoping to accomplish with our band and Tina said, “Well, it may sound kind of highfalutin, but we want to make our mark in music history.”
When you appear on nationally broadcast television, people really notice and show you respect, whether you are worthy of it or not. After appearing on Saturday Night Live the month before, in February, when Bill Murray swept Tina off her feet and danced with her during the closing segment, we went to the after-parties, first at an Upper East Side Italian restaurant, where Tina and I sat with Gilda Radner, who was a very sweet and lovely person. Then we went downtown to an unmarked bar called the Black Rhino Club, owned by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Belushi was being guarded by some big guys to make sure he didn’t do any cocaine. He just stood by the bar like a statue and spoke to no one. Shortly after that we played American Bandstand and Talking Heads became a household name. We had become almost a mainstream band—not quite, but almost.
We want to make music history.
Seymour Stein thought that our next album should be produced by Phil Spector and since we were in Los Angeles he set up a meeting. We did love his “Wall of Sound.” After hearing the well-known stories about Phil and how he treated women, especially Ronnie Spector, Tina had zero interest in meeting him and even less interest in working with him, but she could see that the rest of us were interested, so she went along with us. We arrived on time with Seymour at his favorite upscale Chinese restaurant called the Mandarin and ordered a round of drinks. I asked for a Mai Tai. As we continued to wait, I had another and then another. When Phil Spector finally arrived—over an hour late—we were all pretty tipsy but excited to meet him. Phil Spector is not a tall man, but he had a very tall woman on each arm. He said to Seymour that they were his bodyguards and were trained in karate. He was wearing a gray, double-knit three-piece suit with a purple silk tie and Beatle boots. Was that a wig or a toupée? He made no apology for being late. Tina started to say something and he said dismissively, “Great bass player but you don’t talk. Just keep quiet and play the bass.” Tina looked at me as if to say, “Now you see why I didn’t want to meet this jerk?” After that, if we spoke to him, he whispered into one of his bodyguard’s ears and she would then reply to us. Even Seymour, who had idolized Phil for years and still calls him a genius, was getting weirded out. Finally, I asked Phil what it was like working with John Lennon and he gave me the evil eye and clammed up altogether. At that point, we couldn’t wait to get out of there. Seymour could see very clearly that this was not the meeting of the minds he had hoped it would be. Later on he had better success with the Ramones, who agreed to be produced by Phil and who then, with the exception of Joey, really regretted it. Even though we immediately realized Tina was right, none of us would have predicted that Phil Spector would one day become a murderer. We left the meeting with Phil Spector the genius with the impression that he was crazy. As a producer he was as completely wrong for us as Brian Eno was completely right.
41
FEAR OF MUSIC
We had the idea to record our next album right in the loft where Tina and I lived. The music for the album had been mostly written, arranged, and rehearsed there and we felt that the acoustics of our rehearsal space would make for an interesting contrast in sound to our previous two albums. Eno was keen on the idea, too. We hired the Record Plant Mobile for the occasion. We would record the basic tracks on two separate Sundays when there was very little traffic noise leaking in from outside. Robert “Kooster” McAllister parked the mobile truck outside of our building and ran the mic cables up the stairs to our loft on the third floor.
After getting a good sound on all the instruments, we played each song as if we were playing a live show. Brian sat in the mini control room in the truck with engineer Rod O’Brian, who recorded everything. We had been working on these songs for weeks, and our playing was really energetic and tight. We had two highly regarded albums under our belts and this new one had to live up to our own standards of excellence, never mind everyone else’s.
The songs we recorded most often grew out of extended jam sessions. We developed a process where we would jam until we had a cool groove and tempo happening. Then we would record a snippet of that on our portable cassette tape recorder and call that an A section. We would then return to jamming until we had created a B section, record that, and then practice transitioning between, say, eight bars of A, and eight of B. When we felt comfortable, we would improvise a C, or bridge, section. Then we would arrange the various parts and play them together and record that. The music was a real collaboration. David would take that cassette home with him to write lyrics. In the case of “Life During Wartime,” the song began as a jam between Tina and me. The entire song, including the vocal melody, is based on Tina’s part. It’s also interesting to note that, though he did come up with fantastic lyrics, David later credited himself as the sole writ
er of the song. This happened to us all the time with David. He couldn’t acknowledge where he stopped and other people began. This song about urban guerillas became the hit of what would become the album Fear of Music.
“Heaven” was conceived as a song in the style of Neil Young. We all admired Neil’s songwriting skills. I can remember my roommate from RISD, Huey Roberts, commenting, “If Neil Young’s voice gets any higher he’s going to sound like a newborn kitten.” The lyrics are pretty cynical and it’s ironic that some people have chosen this tune as their wedding or funeral song. Can it really be anyone’s idea of heaven that it is a place where nothing ever happens? Weird.
I can still hear Beatle-esque qualities in the songs “Paper” and “Memories Can’t Wait,” although at the time we would not have heard that. “Memories Can’t Wait” may be the darkest-sounding track on the album and “Paper” may be the brightest, but both of them boasted new sounds for our band. We were reaching a broader scope.
“Animals” and “Electric Guitar” were a return to our nutty, uncompromising art school roots. There was no chance either one would get any radio airplay, but both songs were so out there musically and conceptually that they screamed “Not Selling Out” to our fans.
“Mind” and “Air” were among the most thoughtful and relaxed-sounding songs on the record. The grooves we established in these songs did not have the high-pressured tempos of punk or new wave. They were more laid back while retaining some of that Talking Heads tension. A song about needing something to change someone’s mind was not a new idea, but mixing it up with time, religion, money, and drugs gave the lyrics a deeper meaning. A song about the air not being your friend was one of David’s interesting lyrical points of view. He took something everyone needs to survive and made it into an enemy. I remember him telling us that his Scots grandmother once warned him, “Trust no one, Davy. Even your own asshole will let you down.” I think that’s what this song is about.
After we got the basic track of “Air,” we invited Tina’s sisters Laura and Lani to join Tina on background vocals. The sweetness of their three voices combined was simply wonderful and not lost on me. Tina and Brian decided to credit their background vocals as the Sweet Breaths.
“Drugs” more or less speaks for itself. We had been performing the song around the world as “Electricity,” but I guess David decided to call this song exactly what it is, a song about the influence and effects of mind-altering drugs. The eventual dub-wise mix on the album is really like a drug experience itself.
“Cities” was as close to a touring song as Talking Heads ever did. Beginning with “Think of London, a small city.” Take that, London. Birmingham, El Paso, and Memphis are also brought into the mix with weird David Byrne–style observations about each. David’s scratchy rhythm guitar is punctuated by Jerry’s Yamaha CP-70 electric piano, but Tina’s bass again provides the melody for what is essentially a spoken word vocal.
The album begins with a song called “I Zimbra.” The basic track was recorded as an instrumental. There were no words yet. This particular track, with its Nigerian High Life influences and the way it came into being though jamming, was the template for composing our next album, Remain in Light. When I say the influences were from Africa, that is for sure. But none of us were African. We were rock musicians who were looking for a way out of what had become a very predictable formula for playing and performing rock and roll. The African music we loved had the energy and the passion of rock and roll, but with one big difference. It was not based on Chuck Berry licks. I played my most minimal drum part ever, consisting of only bass drum and high hat playing a funky disco beat. I did this not only because I liked funky disco, but because I was loath to tread on Tina’s, Jerry’s, and David’s beautifully intertwining guitar parts. Dance music, or “Disco,” was wildly unpopular with the punk set, but we never shared this feeling. This song was a giant breakthrough for us, and not a style that I think anyone outside the band had anticipated. We just needed some lyrics. Eno also saw this song as an important move forward for us and suggested we use a sound poem by Dada poet Hugo Ball called “Gadji Beri Bimba.” Hugo Ball, a German poet who wrote the Dada manifesto and founded the infamous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, had performed this poem there in 1916. We adapted parts of the poem to chant over our recorded track:
Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride
E glassala tuffm I zimbra
Bim blassa galassasa zimbrabim
Blassa glassala grandrid
A bim beri glassala grandrid
E glassala tuffm I zimbra
Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride
E glassala tuffm I zimbra
Our loft had different acoustics from those of a proper recording studio, but we liked the sound we got there. It was pretty raw. The project then moved to the Hit Factory for some additional overdubs and vocals. Like Brian, Robert Fripp was now living in New York City. We would see him around town at various clubs and parties. Robert and Brian were good friends. They had made an avant-garde album together called No Pussyfooting, where Robert used a system of delays and guitar effects he dubbed “Frippertronics.” Eno thought he could come up with something interesting to add to “I Zimbra.” We thought this was a great idea and Robert’s part worked out really well. David heard a conga player named Gene Wilder—no, not that Gene Wilder—while walking through Central Park and hired him to play on “Life During Wartime” and “I Zimbra.” That was a nice touch, too.
Two bassists: Tina with Corrine Marienneau of Telephone.
Talking Heads was on tour all summer. The first stop, after a twenty-hour flight, was New Zealand, where we were awarded a gold album for More Songs About Buildings and Food. The record company guy said, “You’re bigger than Rod Stewart down here, mate!” I took a minute to let that sink in. We had a ball in New Zealand meeting delightful people and being chauffeured from show to show in his estate wagon by the promoter himself, Stewart MacPherson. As we drove through the scenic, rolling, green hills and valleys, Stewart would say things like, “I hope you like lamb. Our sheep outnumber our people twenty to one.”
In Australia, every single show was sold out. In Brisbane, David and Jerry came to our hotel room all excited because they had received cassette copies of the mixes Brian had made for our new album. We played them on an excellent Sony boom box that Tina and I had purchased in Japan Town, San Francisco. We had used the same boom box to record live demos of the album before we recorded the basic tracks with the Record Plant Mobile. When we heard the mixes we were shocked. These mixes were not good, in fact they were terrible. They sounded very dull and unexciting and not at all the way we had performed them. Tina and I looked at each other in disbelief. I reached into my carry-on bag and pulled out the demos we had made and compared Eno’s mixes to our portable cassette recorded demos. Guess what? The demos were audibly more exciting and dynamic than the finished mixes. We were a little freaked out. I called our live soundman Frank Gallagher and asked him to come and listen. Frank listened for a while and shook his head. I asked him what he thought. Frank said, “By the sound of it, Eno could nae mix a rice puddin’.”
We decided that after the Australian leg David and Jerry would fly back to New York to watch Rod O’Brian remix the record at the Record Plant. Tina and I proceeded to London, a twenty-four-hour flight with stops for refueling in Singapore and Mumbai. When we arrived in London we freshened up and went to see our friends Dire Straits headline the Hammersmith Odeon. They invited us to join them onstage for an encore of “Gloria.” It was really good times and after the show Mark Knopfler gave us a lift back to the Portobello Hotel in his Volkswagen Beetle. The next day the New Musical Express said how excited the crowd was that David Byrne sat in with Dire Straits. It seems that the music press around the world was complicit in giving David credit for everythin
g that any of us in the band did, even when we were standing right in front of them doing it. I couldn’t hold this against David, but I do remember that he never once spoke up and said, “That was Tina’s idea.” Or, “Jerry gets credit for that.” It seems he never learned about the sin of omission, or if he did, he simply didn’t care.
42
PARIS TO JAPAN
We finished up a summer tour of festivals and clubs in Europe with a show at Le Palace in Paris. Our opening act was the B-52s, who were very well loved by the Parisian crowd. While waiting backstage to go on, we were visited by some VIPs. The great jazz drummer Tony Williams came by to say hello. Francois DuCray, the writer who had been an early champion of ours, brought us a fine bottle of wine from his hometown of Bourges. And, just before we were about to hit the stage, one of the Rolling Stones popped into the dressing room and said, “Hey, guys! You wanna do a line?” The rest of the band wisely demurred, but not me. I was the big Stones fan in our band and I felt like I could use a little pick-me-up, so I said yes. We went into another room and the Stone laid out a couple of lines that we both hoovered up. Immediately, I realized it was not cocaine but it was too late. On the way to the stage I did not feel good at all. Waves of nausea overcame me and, as I climbed onto the drum riser to play, I thought, Why the hell did I do that? I stared out at the audience and counted off the first song. When Tina, David, and Jerry all looked back at me as if something was wrong, I realized I had counted off the song way too slowly. Strangely, this did not worry me. What worried me was that I felt as if I was about to vomit all over my drum kit in front of an audience of thousands. Fortunately, I didn’t. We played the entire set in slow motion, at least that was how it felt to me. The audience didn’t seem to notice; in fact, the reviews the following day said it was our greatest show ever in Paris. These kinds of things make you wonder. Let me also add that if you think I’m referring to Keith Richards, I’m not. Keith was not the only member of the Stones to use heroin.