by Chris Frantz
Tina’s brother, Yann, had told us about the work he had been doing at MIT with an outfit called the Architecture Machine Group. They were inventing software for the US Defense Department and they were creating new graphic images with a humongous mainframe computer. This main- frame computer was as big as a house. Taking a tip from Yann and with his introduction, Tina and I drove up to Boston. We were met by Walter Bender and a charming young guy named Scott Fisher, who showed us around and explained some of what they were doing there. Scott couldn’t tell us everything because we didn’t have the proper security clearances, but he could show us how to create new digital images. Our intention was to create an arresting image that would somehow take the viewer by surprise. We had brought headshots of each band member, which Scott scanned and digitized. Then he scanned and digitized a photo Tina had brought of four Grumman Avenger airplanes like the ones Tina’s father had flown in the Navy. We tried a few ideas but kept coming back to the idea of masks. Scott showed us how we could paint digitally on the headshot of each band member. After several tries with different colors we arrived at an image of the four band members with roughly painted red masks on their faces, and we were excited about that. We decided to keep that one as a possible front cover. Then we took a look at the image of the planes that were originally flying over a gray, flat Pacific ocean. While we worked on painting the masks, another guy from the Architecture Group, working from a different monitor hooked into the mainframe, delighted us by adding a background of the Himalayan Mountains to the photo of the planes. Then he printed the image and brought it to us, very excited to be part of our little collaboration. The working title of the album was Melody Attack, so this combination worked perfectly. Digital technology is commonplace now, but in 1980 it was totally cutting edge. Tina and I were very pleased with these images and, thanks to Scott and the other people at the Architecture Machine Group, we felt certain we had the makings of a great cover.
Returning to New York, we arrived at the studio where David was working on the vocal for “Crosseyed and Painless.” David had come to an impasse: He didn’t know what to do with what would become the “Facts are simple and facts are straight” part of the song. Eno’s deck of Oblique Strategy cards, which had served us well up to this point, were no help. David and Brian were both at a loss. This is why it’s good to have the band members present in the studio. I said to David, “You know, there’s this new thing called rap. You don’t have to sing. You don’t need a melody. You just rap the lyrics. Here, just listen to this!” Then I put a brand-new record called The Breaks by Kurtis Blow on the turntable. “Why not try that in this section?” David went out to the mic and nailed it on the first take. Bam!
While we were in Boston, Adrian Belew, who was on tour with David Bowie, stopped by the studio and overdubbed radically intense guitar solos on “Crosseyed and Painless” and “The Great Curve.” We also added the extraordinary percussionist José Rossy to a number of tracks. Eno’s friend Jon Hassel overdubbed a truly freaky and transporting trumpet solo on “Houses in Motion.” Finally, the great Nona Hendryx added formidable multilayered background vocals and the recording was done. Oh, wait. I remember Dave Jerden secretly asking Tina to replay some of her bass parts that Brian Eno had erased when he and David thought they had a better idea, but their bass parts killed the groove. Dave was seriously bugged by this: The swing was gone. So Tina replayed her original parts and everything was tight, swinging, and grooving again.
Mixing Remain in Light was a daunting task because of the myriad parts that needed to be arranged and edited. It was meticulous work, but Dave Jerden made sure that in the end it sounded new and exciting.
The band and Eno were in agreement that the cover art Tina and I had created enhanced the music and the image of the band. The guys at MIT asked that we not use their full names because they figured that, even though they were big fans of Talking Heads, the US Department of Defense might not like that software designers on their payroll were moonlighting on some rock band’s album cover. Therefore we used their computer handles, HCL, JPD, DDD, WALTER GP, PAUL, and added our own, C/T (which stood for Chris and Tina).
We had been approached by an interesting new graphic design firm called M&Co that said they would oversee the entire cover production for us and make sure Warner’s quality control did its job. Tibor Kalman designed the lettering for the cover from Tina’s instructions and had the clever idea to turn the two As in Talking Heads upside down. We liked that idea. Of course, Tibor, who originally offered to do this job for free, ended up charging us a fortune and taking credit for the whole thing.
Brian had some suggestions for titles; the one we liked the best was Remain in Light. He said he had gotten the idea from an African poet and author he had been reading who was and remains unknown to us.
Brian called a meeting at his label/management office, EG Records, to determine the songwriting splits. We all arrived chipper and clear-headed. Brian said he had determined that if we each wrote down on a piece of paper what we thought the splits for each song should be, then we could average those out and arrive at a fair conclusion. Before we began recording, knowing that all five of us would be involved in the composition of the music, we agreed that the music writing share would be split evenly among us, but Brian and David reneged on that agreement. When we tallied up the splits and averaged them out, Brian was vexed. He stood up and said, “I have never felt so disrespected in my entire life!” Then he stormed out, leaving the rest of us wondering what had just happened. Brian was lucky we agreed to give him anything. In fact, Brian had wanted the album to be called Remain in Light by Talking Heads and Brian Eno. We asked Gary to talk sense to him. Gary said to Brian, “You know there will be a six-month-long promotional tour following the release of the record. Are you ready to commit to that?” Brian replied, “No, I couldn’t possibly do that. I don’t tour.” So Gary said, “Well, we can’t say the album is by Talking Heads and Brian Eno because your fans will be so disappointed that you are not on the tour.”
We all agreed that writers’ credits on the album cover should be “All Songs by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth.” The names were in alphabetical order. When we signed off on the final album cover at M&Co, this is how it was. Well, evidently David couldn’t help himself and probably Brian was in on it, but when we received our advance copies of Remain in Light, the writing credits on the cover had been changed to “All Songs By David Byrne, Brian Eno, Talking Heads.” On the lyric sheet inside the album, the credits had been changed to “All Songs by David Byrne and Brian Eno, except ‘The Overload’ and ‘Houses in Motion’ written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Jerry Harrison.” There was no mention of Tina and me. We had been told another untruth by David Byrne, and so had our listeners. This was especially hurtful because, without our persistence, love, and musicianship, Remain in Light would never have been made.
44
THE BIG BAND
Before we released Remain in Light, we were invited to play a big festival outside Toronto called Heatwave. They called it the New Wave Woodstock. Other bands that were booked were the Clash—who never turned up—Elvis Costello, the B-52s, the Pretenders, Rockpile, Holly and the Italians, plus Canadian bands Teenage Head and the Kings.
David and Brian had insisted that it would be impossible for the original four members of the band to reproduce Remain in Light onstage, therefore there would not be a tour supporting the album. Of course, this was crazy. By working very hard, Talking Heads had established itself as a premier touring band and we had a selection of very exciting new songs to add to our repertoire. There had to be a way.
We decided to try expanding the lineup of the band in order to cover all the parts on the new album. Gary got in touch with bassist Busta “Cherry” Jones, who in turn called up some great players on our behalf.
First he called up Bernie Worrell, the extraordinary keyboard player from Parliament Funkadelic. Bernie had never heard
of Talking Heads, but he’d recently parted ways with P-Funk and was game to try something new. Growing up in Plainfield, New Jersey, Bernie used to sit on his mother’s lap at the piano and was interpreting Mozart by the age of four. He eventually entered the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition to his love of classical music, Bernie liked to get down with jazz and funk. He had perfect pitch, too. We all learned a lot from Bernie, who was a wonderful human being.
When Busta called percussionist Steve Scales, he left a message with Steve’s mom, who took two weeks to give the message to Steve. She was frightened by the gruff sound of Busta’s voice. She thought he might be a gangster and a bad influence on Steve. Steve and his mom lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where you couldn’t be too careful. Steve was a thrilling percussionist and showman. He had spent several years in Vietnam as a drummer in the US Marine Corps Band. The band would stand on the tarmac in extreme jungle heat in full dress uniform waiting for senators and congressmen to arrive from the USA. Steve said guys would keel over left and right. When we met Steve he had just finished a tour with R&B greats Ashford and Simpson. Steve had never heard of Talking Heads either, but he came to meet me at Sigma Sound one day. I gave him a cassette of some of our set to listen to. When he heard our version of “Take Me to the River” he told me he said to himself, “These white people just want to get down and play some funk.” Steve was in.
Dolette McDonald was a tiny thing with a beautifully powerful voice. Stylish and pretty with a charming demeanor, Dolette met Busta working on disco records in New York in the late seventies. Like many soul and R&B vocalists, Dolette was brought up singing in church. Her family lived in northern New Jersey. Her parents were friends with legendary gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her husband, the Bishop, who was their pastor. They were not happy at all when Dolette began singing “the devil’s music” in New York City. Dolette had that pure gospel gift of being able to sing loud and clear with no showbiz affectations. Dolette had soul in abundance. She, too, had never heard of Talking Heads. After getting the call from Busta, Dolette was scared when she first came to meet us. She needn’t have been. She fit right in.
Adrian Belew was a welcome addition on wild-and-crazy guitar. We had invited Adrian to join us onstage at gigs in Carbondale and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, always great fun. Adrian was living in Springfield, and would travel to our gigs. Like me, Adrian was from Kentucky. He had good Southern manners. He told us that he began his musical adventures as a drummer, but then he got mononucleosis as a teenager and was confined to bed. He used this time to teach himself to play guitar. Adrian was a fast learner and became highly inventive on guitar. Frank Zappa plucked him from a bar band after seeing him play in Nashville. Then David Bowie hired him on the recommendation of Brian Eno, who had seen him playing with Zappa somewhere in Germany. Now, after playing his ass off on two songs on Remain in Light, Adrian would be performing live onstage with Talking Heads.
It was not my idea to invite Busta on the tour as the second bass player. I had a good deal of respect for Busta, but this was clearly an attempt to marginalize Tina. Did we really need two bass players? Busta was playing parts that Tina had already written and recorded, and I felt it was a dumb, unnecessary move to merely duplicate all of her bass parts. Tina held her own, though, and remained exemplary. She opened her heart to Busta as well as the other new players and our stage show became a truly unrivaled performance. Our band was making a transformation. Some people have written that the big band was a way for David to marginalize the original band and to aggrandize himself as the star of the show. I have no doubt that this is what David was thinking but, in spite of any Machiavellian plans on David’s part, we were about to take the world to church. In the parlance of P-Funk, we were about to “turn the mutha out!” This felt powerfully good to me.
The idea was to try out the expanded lineup for two shows only: the Heatwave Festival in Canada, and the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park, New York City. While we had always held rehearsals in our loft, the bigger band would need even more space, so we moved our rehearsals down the street to Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row rehearsal space in Long Island City. This building was actually an old movie studio sound stage. Charlie Chaplin had worked there until the movie business moved to Hollywood and better weather. Pink Floyd owned the building and used it to store their mammoth PA system. We had been using part of their sound system for years, so we knew about this place that was right around the corner from the PS1 art museum, also in Long Island City.
Rehearsals were more of a getting-to-know-each-other party with not a lot getting done until I pointed out that we had a big festival gig in five days. This was the first time we had attempted to play the Remain in Light songs live so there was a lot of work to be done, but we got it together.
We flew up to Toronto the night before the show. All the bands were staying in the same hotel, so the scene in the hotel bar was nuts, but fun. It was good to see Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders, who we’d met one night the year before at Le Sept in Paris. They were sweet guys and formidable musicians, but not much longer of this earth. I wish they had taken better care of themselves.
After a pretty good night’s sleep, I woke up nervous, thinking of all the things that could go wrong with our performance later that day. Anxiety is the curse of the performing artist and boredom is the curse of the touring artist. After waiting around the hotel all morning, we were flown by helicopter to the festival. The crowd was enormous. We found out later that upward of 85,000 people were in attendance. Gary had planned it so that Talking Heads would hit the stage right at sunset and then the stage lights would all come on during our show. It was good timing.
To say that we were well charged by the time we hit the stage would not be an exaggeration. The ladies in the band were very circumspect about the rock and roll party favors available backstage. Adrian was, too, but the rest of us guys were partying full on. I remember Adrian was shocked to enter the men’s dressing room tent to find us all huddled over the back of someone’s beautiful guitar chopping out lines of cocaine. Let’s just say that the blow went nicely with the cocktail of champagne, weed, and Molson Ale. I had given everyone in the band sunglasses as a gift, the great big wraparound kind that you wear after having your pupils dilated at the eye doctor. The whole band, except for David, would be wearing these onstage when we made our entrance.
The big band onstage at Radio City Music Hall.
The B-52s finished a blazing set and it was time for us to do our thing. The crew made the changeover onstage. I’ll never forget that Frank Gallagher replaced Tina’s broken keyboard stand with an ironing board when no other was to be found. Frank announced, “Boys and girls, it’s showtime!” We would begin with the four Talking Heads playing “Psycho Killer,” so the audience would get a flash of recognition. All these kids needed was to hear Tina’s bass part intro and we had them going. Next we played “Warning Sign” and “Stay Hungry.” Then, on “Cities,” Adrian, Steve, and Dolette came out onstage to the surprise of some puzzled fans in the front. The crowd was so massive that we could really only make eye contact with the kids down front. After “Cities,” Bernie entered the stage wearing cutoff jeans, snakeskin cowboy boots, a fur jacket, and a ten-gallon cowboy hat! We launched into “I Zimbra” and the audience went delirious. The excitement level escalated through the rest of our set, which was crazy because none of these thousands of people had ever heard “Once in a Lifetime,” “Houses in Motion,” “Born Under Punches,” and “Crosseyed and Painless” before. This was the first time we had performed these songs live. Remain in Light would not be released for two months, but this crowd was getting the raw uncut version right now and they were pulsating in time to the music. By the time we played the final song of the set, “Life During Wartime,” the crowd singing the choruses was drowning out the band. As we left the stage, and heard the overwhelming roar of the crowd, we knew that we were on the right track. We had reached a whole
new level. We returned for one encore only, “Take Me to the River.” The new players helped to take this song higher and higher to the gospel place it had originally come from. As I played this wonderful song and looked over at Tina, I felt a more powerful love than ever before for her and a touch of the divine in my own heart.
The audience wanted more from Talking Heads but we had no more to give. Those were all the songs we had rehearsed. The kids down front lit a garbage fire under the stage. Poor Elvis Costello would have to wait an hour and a half for things to calm down before following our show, and by the time he did, we were long gone.
The next show was a few days later in Central Park. Our good friends, the band from Tokyo called Plastics, opened the sold-out show at Wollman Skating Rink. We loved the Plastics. It was a hot, sticky afternoon in August. Backstage, Tina and Dolette were making fashion decisions because fashion sends an important message. Tina always felt that she shouldn’t wear the same thing that she wore the last time we played a particular town or city, because women in the audience notice these things, so she chose a set of outfits for each different tour. Nona Hendryx joined Dolette on background vocals for this special show. Nona arrived wearing a white Panama fedora and a white unitard that showed off her abundant curves. Seeing that Dolette was upset that she was about to be upstaged by Nona, Tina suggested she wear the fabulous purple Kenzo that Leigh Blake had given her, which was by far the sexier of the two dresses she had brought. Tina would wear the long summer shift my mother had given her to wear to our rehearsal dinner in Kentucky, but she would hike it up to keep cool under the hot stage lights. The two of them looked chic and cool and utterly feminine in flowery summer dresses. It was a girl-power move that made everyone happy. For my part, I wore white jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words NEW YORK CITY.