Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  * * *

  Once in a while, there is trouble in paradise. In 1983 at the Compass Point Christmas party, we were introduced to the British folk artist John Martyn. He was honeymooning with his new wife, Annie Furlong, and he was going to be recording Sapphire, an album with Barry Reynolds producing. Tina and I did not know much about him, but we understood that he was revered by many in the UK. We offered John and Annie a ride back to Tip Top, where they were staying in the apartment below ours. On the short ride home John started getting belligerent and began insulting Tina and me. Evidently, he imagined we were musical know-nothings and was jealous of our success. I tried to ignore him, but he punched me in the back of my head while I was driving. That was the beginning. Annie managed to calm him down a bit and when we got back to Tip Top we all said good night. Annie seemed all right. She was pretty. She had been the manager at Windmill Lane Studio, where U2 recorded most of their music, but something was not right with Martyn. At night we heard him screaming in tongues. We didn’t know what to think. The sound traveled up the stairwell to our place. Was it Gaelic? Was it nonsense? Was he having the DTs? Whatever it was, it was a horrifying sound punctuated by cackles of manic laughter.

  On New Year’s Day, Lee Perry came upstairs to visit us and see baby Robin, who was just one year old. Scratch sat at my drum set with Robin in his lap and played a one-handed drumbeat while scat-singing some happy-sounding lyrics. It was early in the afternoon when John Martyn burst in, shouting at Scratch that it was time to get going or he would miss his plane. Some fool had put John Martyn, of all people, in charge of getting Scratch to the airport on time. Scratch just ignored him. Then John really got crazy and called Scratch “a good-for-nothing, useless old nigger.” I asked John very firmly to leave, but he just continued cursing at Scratch. Finally, Scratch got up, said goodbye, and left with John following him down the stairs berating him. He seemed to realize that John was even more crazy than he was.

  A few nights later, very late, we heard him screaming bloody murder and saw through his open window, in full view of anyone who walked by, that he was holding his naked wife’s head underwater in the kitchen sink while beating her neck and shoulders with his free hand.

  We banged on the door with a fish cudgel and John Martyn opened it. By this time, a crowd had gathered to see Annie lying soaking wet, bruised and naked on the floor tiles. We were all sickened. Louise and Tina covered her nakedness and took her upstairs to the safety of our apartment where they took pictures and she slept for the first time in days. She told us he had wanted her to stay awake to watch him “work” and watch him sleep. Rather than calling the Nassau police, who had a brutal reputation, the studio staff took over caring for Martyn. Louise, who was traveling the next day, took Annie back to her family in Ireland at her request. But when Annie’s brothers met them at Shannon Airport and Louise tried to explain what had happened, they rudely told her to mind her own business.

  Robert Palmer quickly squeezed a few more vocals out of Martyn and he was sent home. Everyone at Compass Point breathed a great sigh of relief. His album was finished without him.

  That was a terrible and horrifying time, but it was not at all typical of life at Compass Point. More often life there was relaxed and idyllic. Chris Blackwell did his best to make it that way. He built a gorgeous Spanish-style villa on a cliff overlooking Old Fort Bay called Terra Nova. He lived there with his girlfriend, the French actress Natalie Delon, ex-wife of Alain Delon. They hosted the best parties. One New Year’s Eve the guests were Dennis Hopper, Timothy Leary, Elia Kazan and his daughter, Sonia Braga, Robert and Sue Palmer, Wally and Genevieve Badarou, and many other happy revelers. After midnight, I took Sonia Braga and another woman by boat to the Junkanoo parade in downtown Nassau. I knew the waters very well by that time, but it was still a crazy thing to do on a windy, moonless night. I invited Hopper and Leary to join us, but they respectfully declined because they could see how high on rum and cocaine I was. Can you imagine being too high for Timothy Leary? Well, that night I was. We made it back safely, but not until well after noon. Tina, at home with baby Robin, was understandably worried and upset and told me to shape up. She needed me to be a more responsible husband and father.

  One day at Robert Palmer’s place, I was introduced to a new neighbor who had moved into the home where Grace Jones had been living. His name was Emil Schult. Emil was an artist who had worked closely with Kraftwerk. As a student of Joseph Beuys, he had studied at the Academy of Art in Deusseldorf. Emil created the famous Autobahn album cover and many more for Kraftwerk. He also wrote lyrics for them. When I’d met him in 1982, he already had an idea for a song called “Artificial Intelligence.” Always well informed, Emil was full of great ideas. More recently, we visited Emil at his studio in Germany, where he was working on a grand project to be exhibited in China. Tina and I were very happy to join Emil and his family for cakes and coffee on a Sunday afternoon at their home. It’s so great to see your old friends thriving.

  * * *

  One terrible night in Nassau, in July 1987, Alex Sadkin was thrown from a Jeep and killed. He hit his head on a rock and never woke up. We were close friends with Alex by this time. Everyone who knew him was shattered.

  Alex had been scheduled to produce Bob Marley’s kids’ debut album for a new record company called Virgin America. They were called Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. It so happened that Tina’s brother Loric was working at Virgin America at that time and when the search began for someone to produce Ziggy, Stephen, Sharon, and Cedella Marley, he suggested Tina and me. No one could fill Alex Sadkin’s shoes, but we would do our best. We listened to the demos and thought the songs were very good; in fact, we wondered if they might have been written by Bob. We had a meeting over dinner in New York with Rita Marley and the A&R exec from Virgin, Nancy Jeffries. It was decided we should fly to Jamaica to meet Ziggy, who would be performing at the Reggae Sun Splash Festival in Montego Bay. We met very briefly with Ziggy, who decided that we were okay. We produced two albums for him.

  The first, 1988’s Conscious Party, was made in New York, where, on the first day of recording, Ziggy asked, “Why Chris Frantz bring his wife to the studio?” I told him she knew more about musical composition than I did and she was my musical partner, as well as my wife. Ziggy was only nineteen years old and had a lot to learn. Still, the songs were great and the band, a group of young Ethiopians called Dallol, was perfect. We had some special guests, too. The great Hugh Masekela came in with the young South African cast of the Broadway show Serafina to sing on “Dreams of Home.” Keith Richards played lead guitar on “Lee and Molly.” Jerry Harrison played Hammond organ on “Tomorrow People.” Tina and Laura Weymouth sang on “New Love.” The album became a hit, won a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album and, after their father’s Legend album, was the second- best-selling reggae album of all time.

  The Compass Point All Stars with Desmond Dekker, Joe Cocker, and me.

  The next album, 1989’s One Bright Day, was recorded at Compass Point after Ziggy and the band had been touring the world for months on end. The songs were written and they were good, but Ziggy’s voice was shot. He had torn up his throat with a bad singing habit of producing a sound on the inhale as well as the exhale so his vocal cords, perpetually in tension, were shot. He needed to rest his voice. So we just kept recording basic tracks with the band until we had eighteen basic tracks to work with.

  The Marleys were staying in a seaside mansion that Bob had purchased many years before. When Tina and I visited them one evening, the house was lit by candlelight—not because it was romantic, but because Rita refused to pay the electric bill. For some reason she insisted that the studio should pay it. One day we invited Ziggy out for a boat ride on our little motorboat, Cool Runnings. We picked him up at the Marley place and went for a spin around the area. It’s lovely to see the island from the water and we hoped to connect more closely with Ziggy. He had been treating his band with great disrespect and he was not communi
cating well with us. We had a good cruise around the neighboring beaches when I pointed out his home to Ziggy. It was over a mile away. Ziggy asked me to stop the boat and said that he wanted to swim home. I said, “You know, it’s a lot farther away than it looks. Distances can be deceiving over water. Let me take you closer, then you can swim.” No, Ziggy insisted. He would swim from here, and with that he jumped into the water and started swimming. Tina and I decided to keep an eye on him because we really were at least a mile from shore. It’s a good thing we did, too. Ziggy started waving his arms the way a drowning man would do. When we pulled alongside of him his face was contorted in pain. He had a terrible cramp in his leg. I put out the ladder and leaned over the side of the boat to help him climb in. Ziggy, ever contrary, said, “No, man. I’m not getting in. Throw me a line and tow me ashore.” If you’ve ever been towed in the water by a powerboat, you know that it’s no fun. Even at very low speed the water gets up your nose, down your throat, and it’s difficult to keep your grip on the line. It’s like torture, but Ziggy insisted that this is how he would like to go home. So we towed him in as slowly as possible with frequent stops to let him catch his breath. When we finally arrived at the Marley home, Ziggy marched up the stairs to the house without saying another word or even goodbye.

  Tina and I producing Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers.

  Eventually, we had to leave the One Bright Day sessions—which had run way overtime—because we had a Tom Tom Club tour booked. Gary and Chris Blackwell made sure we were paid. When you’re in the music business, people will try to take advantage of you. We were not happy with the final mixes, but the album still won a Grammy and Tina and I felt honored to have worked with the scion of the Marley family and his brother and sisters—even though they had no idea what we’d brought to the success of their greatest two albums.

  The last project Tina and I worked on at Compass Point was in 1994. One day at our home in Connecticut, I got a phone call from a guy in LA named Tomas Cookman. Tomas represented a band from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the nutty name Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. He wanted to know if Tina and I would produce their next album. I told him that I was sorry but I had never heard of them. Tomas explained that they were huge in Latin America. Their last album had been a big hit and they were longtime fans of Talking Heads and especially Tom Tom Club. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said, “The band has a gig coming up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We’ll fly you down to meet them and see them perform live, and if you’re still not convinced, there will be no hard feelings.” Tomas met me at the airport in San Juan, and took us to the Hotel El Convento in the old part of San Juan where I got checked in, and then we went straight to the show. The guys in the band were very sweet and friendly. I apologized for my inability to speak Spanish, but they didn’t seem to care. Some of the guys spoke some English. The lead singer, Gabriel Capello—who went by the stage name Vicentico—spoke a few words to me, as did the tattooed bass player, Señor Flavio, but mostly I spoke with the sax player, Sergio Rotman, who was fluent in English. I found out that it was his idea to ask us to produce them, and that it was the band’s dream to make a record at Compass Point.

  The Cadillacs were phenomenal live. It was a big band, nine people onstage, with horns and percussion. In the outdoor amphitheater, the audience went wild and sang along with every song. When the band played their latest hit, “Matador,” the whole theater seemed to levitate. It was a consummate performance, but with a delightful taste of punk.

  I told Tomas and the band that I was on board, but I needed to double-check with Tina. I called her up, gave her my review of the band’s performance and character, and she was on board, too.

  We booked Compass Point with the new studio managers, Terry and Sherri Manning. We began recording with our favorite new engineer, Doug McKean, who became forever known as Señor Doug. The band was completely professional and so well rehearsed that most of the time Tina and I could just sit back, listen, and say, “That was great!” The drummer, Fernando Ricciardi, is one of the greatest drummers I have ever heard. It seemed they could play in any style. Though they began as a ska band, they had expanded their musical horizons to include rock, reggae, salsa, and thrash metal.

  One thing we could help the Cadillacs with was arranging some special guests. They wanted to invite Debbie Harry, Mick Jones from the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, and reggae superstar Big Youth. I made the calls and everyone said yes right away. Mick Jones was on tour, but would overdub his guitar and vocals on “Mal Bicho” at a studio in Atlanta. Sergio and Tomas flew up there with the tapes and worked with Mick on that. Debbie Harry came to Compass Point and stayed in Wally Badarou’s apartment next door to us. She recorded a fabulous vocal duet with Gabby on a lovely ska version of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The guys in the band were gaga for Debbie and she herself was not unfazed being surrounded by Latin men. She wished she could have stayed longer. Finally, Big Youth flew in from Jamaica and wrote a few lines to toast on a song called “Queen from the Ghetto.” I remember Gabby marveling at how this particular song had evolved to include lines like “She go along like she fat so / but Jah Jah know she’s the Queen of the Ghetto.” Big Youth was something else.

  After the last day of recording, we had a little party by the pool to celebrate drummer Nando’s birthday. The percussionist, Gerardo “Toto” Rotblat, brought some conga drums and shakers and we were having a little impromptu jam session and beach party with beer, rum, and some nice spliffs, when all of a sudden the police arrived. Some silly neighbor had called them to complain. The officer was dressed in his neatly starched, white Bahamian police uniform. His shiny shoes reflected the moonlight. Before he could say a word, Big Youth, who was no stranger to police problems, walked up to him and said very clearly, “Officer, did anyone ever tell you that you bear a strong resemblance to the great Marcus Garvey?” The officer smiled and was completely disarmed. He told us he did not want to ruin the party, but could we try to keep it down so he didn’t get any more complaints?

  Mixing was done in Miami at Blackwell’s new South Beach Studio by Steven Stanley, who blew the Cadillacs’ minds. He even did special dub mixes of every song especially for Sergio. The album, Rey Azúcar, was a hit in 1995; I think it sold platinum in Latin America. And the Cadillacs became our lifelong friends.

  We’ll love Compass Point forever. In fact, I’m writing this chapter from our little apartment at Tip Top on the hill overlooking where the studio used to be. Tina is by my side, working on her book and still looking very beautiful. Some places, like some people, you make a real connection with. For me, Compass Point is one of those places. I’m always happy to be here, and I’m always grateful to be anywhere with Tina. How I adore her!

  49

  STOP MAKING SENSE, PLEASE

  To backtrack a bit, Talking Heads finished recording and mixing the Speaking in Tongues album at Sigma Sound in New York in February 1983, with Alex Sadkin at the controls. David sang his non sequitur–lyric vocals, with Nona Hendryx and Dolette McDonald providing great background vocals to “Slippery People.” Dickie Landry from the Philip Glass ensemble added some heavily treated sax to “Slippery People,” too. I felt that “Burning Down the House” could use a little something extra and invited Steve Scales to add concert toms to the intro and outro. He did and—bam!—we had a hit. The mixes Alex did were perfect.

  We were honored to have one of the greatest living American artists, Robert Rauschenberg, create a limited edition cover and package for us. Without telling us, David made a second album cover for the regular release. We had agreed the cover of the regular release should have been a photo of Rauschenberg’s design, but David, true to form, went behind our backs and by the time we found out it was already a fait accompli. Rauschenberg told Tina and me that he felt hurt that David had worked around him. Still, Bob’s cover was a real thing of beauty and his design ultimately won the Grammy award for best album cover.

  We made a video for “Burn
ing Down the House” at the East Village club called the World. This was the first Talking Heads video that the actual band appeared in. Julia Heyward, who we knew as an important downtown artist, was the ghost director and editor. It’s interesting to note that one of the actors in the video, Rockets Redglare, was later found to be one of the last people to visit Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel on the night in 1978 that Nancy was stabbed to death. Julia did a great job for us and the video went immediately into heavy rotation on MTV.

  Bernie Worrell, Steve Scales, Tina, me, David, and Jerry at the premiere of Stop Making Sense.

  David had big plans for the production of our upcoming tour. We had never had any stage production before so this was a major leap for us. Basically, David raided the ideas from Robert Wilson’s stage productions. He even hired Wilson’s lighting designer. If you have to raid someone’s ideas for staging, Robert Wilson is an excellent source.

  We rehearsed for weeks in what is now known as Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River. The piers were mostly abandoned then, but Malcolm Forbes’s yacht, Highlander, was tied up there and on some mornings the crew would bring us trays of Bloody Marys. They were fans.