David-Byrne-True-Stories-1986. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
New York's new wave giants, Talking Heads, were nothing short of a creative and commercial sensation over their 15 years of service. As former art school students, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz saw a colourful future for themselves but didn't envisage musical careers until the mid-1970s, when punk began its meteoric rise.
"Now I'm in New York, in a band with Chris Frantz and his girlfriend, Tina [Weymouth], and we didn't have a super-duper plan," Byrne revealed in a 2018 interview with Pitchfork. "I had ambitions to be a fine artist and show in galleries, but I was also writing songs. This club, CBGB, had opened around the corner, and there were bands like Television playing, and Patti Smith was doing poetry readings. We thought, 'If we learn some songs, we can play there'."
After a run of well-received shows and their debut single, 'Love -> Building on Fire', Talking Heads welcomed the former Modern Lovers guitarist Jerry Harrison into the fold, setting their sights on a debut album that would house the immortal early single, 'Psycho Killer'.
The debut, Talking Heads: 77, was an instant hit thanks to its fashionable punk sensibilities. Still, it was hard to ignore the colourful artistry and mellifluous composition that served as an antidote to punk's aggression. In 1977, Talking Heads became one of the early leaders of the more artistically inclined post-punk wave and rapidly drew attention from fans and peers alike.
During the interview, Byrne was tasked with selecting some of his all-time favourite records. Among his choices was Low, David Bowie's progressive masterpiece of 1977. The album marked the first of Bowie's critically acclaimed 'Berlin Trilogy' albums, which benefitted from a prolonged collaboration with Brian Eno.
"Bowie was on the radio a little bit, and he was a huge influence for a lot of people," Byrne remembered. "I was aware of all the Ziggy Stardust stuff and then him moving onto the Berlin stuff. Somewhere around this time, in the late '70s, after we made our first record, we met Brian Eno, who had worked with him on Low, and that was very cool for us."
Eno was among Talking Heads' early admirers and took very little time in acquainting himself with Byrne and the band. Having injected some artistic energy into Bowie's oeuvre, he entered a similar arrangement with Talking Heads, producing their three most critically acclaimed albums: More Songs about Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light.
Although Talking Heads had been inspired by funk from the off, the influence became particularly obvious in 1980, with the arrival of Remain in Light. Byrne and Eno had established a shared passion for Afrobeat music as popularised by Fela Kuti and had the ingenious idea of blending these colourful rhythms with contemporary rock styles and the psychedelic funk musings of George Clinton and James Brown.
Naturally, Byrne saved some space in the list of his favourite records for some funk and picked out Parliament's 1975 single 'Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)', describing it as a pivotal influence.
"In Talking Heads, the record collection was filled with Hamilton Bohannon, James Brown, Roxy Music, Funkadelic, and P-Funk, that whole world," Byrne revealed. "George Clinton and his whole crazy P-Funk philosophy was great; they were doing these kind of spectacles."
"As we kept making records, they evolved into more rhythmic affairs, kind of weird, white-person funk," he continued. "We decided that in order to represent this music live onstage, we needed to recruit some real funkers into the band. The size of the band pretty much doubled. It was a big, nervy thing to do, and it was a mess at first. But man, was it fun".
He added: "In this period, I decided to formalise the tour into a show that became Stop Making Sense. And that was about as far as we could go with that idea. It liberated me musically, but also as a person. The music was a lot more ecstatic, almost trance-y; you could get lost in it, way more than you could when it's just a four-piece."
Listen to Parliament's 'Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)' below.
