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Talking Heads were an American Rock music band formed in New York City in 1975. Talking Heads Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, retrieved November 23, 2008 It consisted of vocalist-guitarist David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, bassist Tina Weymouth and guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Harrison. Described as "one of the most critically acclaimed groups of the '80s," Talking Heads helped to pioneer new wave music by combining elements of punk rock, art rock, funk, and world music with "an anxious yet clean-cut image"; they have been called "a properly Postmodernism band".
Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth met as freshmen at the Rhode Island School of Design, where Byrne and Frantz were part of a band called the Artistics. The trio moved to New York City in 1975, adopted the name Talking Heads, joined the New York punk scene, and recruited Harrison to round out the band. Their debut album, , was released in 1977 to positive reviews. They collaborated with the British producer Brian Eno on the acclaimed albums More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979), and Remain in Light (1980), which blended their art school sensibilities with influence from artists such as Parliament-Funkadelic and Fela Kuti. From the early 1980s, they included additional musicians in their recording sessions and shows, including guitarist Adrian Belew, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, singer Nona Hendryx, and bassist Busta Jones.
Talking Heads reached their commercial peak in 1983 with the U.S. Top 10 hit "Burning Down the House" from the album Speaking in Tongues. In 1984, they released the concert film Stop Making Sense, which was directed by Jonathan Demme. For these performances, they were joined by Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir, percussionist Steve Scales, and singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. In 1985, Talking Heads released their best-selling album, Little Creatures. They produced a soundtrack album for Byrne's film True Stories (1986), and released their final album, the worldbeat-influenced Naked (1988), before disbanding in 1991. Without Byrne, the other band members performed under the name Shrunken Heads, and released an album, No Talking, Just Head, as the Heads in 1996.
In 2002, Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Four of their albums appeared on Rolling Stones 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and three of their songs—"Psycho Killer", "Life During Wartime", and "Once in a Lifetime"—were included among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. The band also ranked number 64 on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In the 2011 update of Rolling Stones list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", they were ranked number 100.
Fellow student Tina Weymouth, Frantz's girlfriend, often provided transportation. The Artistics dissolved the following year, and the three moved to New York City, eventually sharing a communal loft.Simon Reynolds. Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Penguin Books (2005) p. 159. After they were unable to find a bassist, Weymouth took up the role. Frantz encouraged Weymouth to learn to play bass by listening to Suzi Quatro albums. Tina Talks Heads, Tom Toms, and How to Succeed at Bass Without Really Trying Gregory Isola, Bass Player, retrieved December 6, 2008. Byrne asked Weymouth to audition three times before she joined the band.
The band played their first gig as Talking Heads—opening for the Ramones at the CBGB club—on June 5, 1975. According to Weymouth, the name Talking Heads came from an issue of TV Guide, which "explained the term used by TV studios to describe a head-and-shoulder shot of a person talking as 'all content, no action'. It fit."Weymouth, Tina (1992). In Sand in the Vaseline. CD liner notes, p. 12. New York: Sire Records Company Later that year, the band recorded a series of demos for CBS, but did not receive a record contract. However, they drew a following and signed to Sire Records in November 1976. They released their first single in February the following year, "Love → Building on Fire". In March 1977, they added Jerry Harrison, formerly of Jonathan Richman's band the Modern Lovers, on keyboards, guitar, and backing vocals. Gary Kurfirst started managing Talking Heads in 1977.
The first Talking Heads album, , received acclaim and produced their first charting single, "Psycho Killer". Many connected the song to the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, who had been terrorizing New York City months earlier; however, Byrne said he had written the song years prior. Weymouth and Frantz married in 1977.
The collaboration continued with Fear of Music (1979), which mixed the darker stylings of post-punk rock with white funkadelia and subliminal references to the geopolitical instability of the late 1970s. Music journalist Simon Reynolds cited Fear of Music as representing the Eno–Talking Heads collaboration "at its most mutually fruitful and equitable".Simon Reynolds. Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Penguin Books (2005) pp. 163–164. The single "Life During Wartime" produced the catchphrase "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco". The song refers to the Mudd Club and CBGB, two popular New York nightclubs of the time.
Remain in Light (1980) was heavily influenced by the Afrobeat of Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti, whose music had been introduced to the band by Eno. It explored West African , weaving these together with Arabic music from North Africa, disco funk, and "found" voices.Simon Reynolds. Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Penguin Books (2005) p. 165. These combinations foreshadowed Byrne's later interest in world music. To perform these more complex arrangements, the band toured with an expanded group, including Adrian Belew and Bernie Worrell, among others, first at the Heatwave festival in August, and later in their concert film Stop Making Sense.
During this period, Weymouth and Frantz formed a commercially successful splinter group, Tom Tom Club, influenced by the foundational elements of hip hop, and Harrison released his first solo album, The Red and the Black. Byrne and Eno released My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which incorporated world music, found sounds and a number of other prominent international and post-punk musicians.
Remain in Lights lead single, "Once in a Lifetime", became a Top 20 hit in the UK, but initially failed to make an impression in the US. It grew into a popular standard over the next few years on the strength of its music video, which Time named one of the greatest of all time.Simon Reynolds. Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. Penguin Books (2005) p. 169.
1983 saw the release of Speaking in Tongues, a commercial breakthrough that produced the band's only American Top 10 hit, "Burning Down the House". Once again, a striking video was inescapable, owing to its heavy rotation on MTV. The following tour was documented in Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, which generated another live album of the same name. The tour in support of Speaking in Tongues was their last.
Three more albums followed: 1985's Little Creatures (which featured the hit singles "And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere"), 1986's True Stories (Talking Heads covering all the soundtrack songs of Byrne's musical comedy film, in which the band also appeared), and 1988's Naked. Little Creatures offered a much more American pop-rock sound as opposed to previous efforts. Similar in genre, True Stories hatched one of the group's most successful hits, "Wild Wild Life", and the accordion-driven track "Radio Head". Naked explored politics, sex, and death, and showed heavy African influence with polyrhythmic styles like those seen on Remain in Light. During that time, the group was falling increasingly under David Byrne's control, and after Naked, the band went on "hiatus". In 1987, Talking Heads released a book by David Byrne, What the Songs Look Like: Contemporary Artists Interpret Talking Heads Songs, with HarperCollins that contained artwork by some of the top New York visual artists of the decade.
In December 1991, Talking Heads announced that they had disbanded. Frantz said he learned that Byrne had left from an article in the Los Angeles Times, and said: "As far as we're concerned, the band never really broke up. David just decided to leave."Boehm, Mike (September 10, 1992). "x-Heads Say They Got Byrned: Split Still Miffs Frantz, Weymouth, Even Though Tom Tom Club Keeps Them Busy". Los Angeles Times. Their final release was "Sax and Violins", an original song that had appeared earlier that year on the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' Until the end of the World. Byrne continued his solo career, releasing Rei Momo in 1989 and The Forest in 1991. This period also saw a revived flourish from both Tom Tom Club ( Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom and Dark Sneak Love Action) and Harrison ( Casual Gods and Walk on Water), who toured together in 1990.
Weymouth, Frantz, and Harrison toured without Byrne as Shrunken Heads in the early 1990s. In 1996, they released an album, No Talking, Just Head, under the name the Heads. The album featured a number of vocalists, including Gavin Friday of the Virgin Prunes, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde, Andy Partridge of XTC, Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes, Michael Hutchence of INXS, Ed Kowalczyk of Live, Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays, Richard Hell, and Maria McKee. It was accompanied by a tour with Napolitano as the vocalist. Byrne took legal action to prevent the band using the name the Heads, which he saw as "a pretty obvious attempt to cash in on the Talking Heads name". The band briefly reunited in 1999 to promote the 15th anniversary re-release of Stop Making Sense, but did not perform together.
In September 2023, Stop Making Sense was re-released in IMAX with remastered sound and picture to coincide with the film's 40th anniversary. The band members reunited that month for a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival, following limited showings of the film in theaters, and gave subsequent interviews together to promote the re-release. With regard to the possibility of a reunion tour, Harrison told the Los Angeles Times: "Right now, we're concentrating on Stop Making Sense and how much fun we're having revisiting the film. We're living in the moment, so that's all we're thinking about." In January 2024, Billboard reported that Talking Heads had turned down an $80 million offer for a reunion tour, which would have included a performance at Coachella.
In 2023 and 2025 Harrison and Belew toured with a large band performing a set of Remain in Light songs.
Musical style
AllMusic stated that Talking Heads, one of the most celebrated bands of the 1970s and 1980s, by the time of their breakup "had recorded everything from art-funk to polyrhythmic worldbeat explorations and simple, melodic guitar pop". In Pitchfork, Andy Cush described the band as "New York art-punks" whose "blend of nervy postmodernism and undeniable groove made them one of the defining rock bands of the late 1970s and ’80s." Media studies Dick Hebdige said the group "draw eclectically on a wide range of visual and aural sources to create a distinctive pastiche or hybrid 'house style' which they have used since their formation in the mid-1970s deliberately to stretch received (industrial) definitions of what rock/pop/video/Art/ performance/audience are", calling them "a properly postmodernist band." Talking Heads' art pop innovations have had a long-lasting impact. Along with other groups such as Devo, Ramones, and Blondie, they helped define the new wave genre in the United States. Meanwhile, their more cosmopolitan hits like 1980's Remain in Light helped bring African rock to the Western world.
Legacy and influence
Talking Heads have been cited as an influence by many artists, including Nelly Furtado, Eddie Vedder, LCD Soundsystem, Foals, the Weeknd, Primus, Primus press release. Retrieved August 12, 2012. Bell X1, the 1975, Kesha, St. Vincent, Danny Brown, Trent Reznor, Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos, and Radio 4. Radiohead took their name from the 1986 Talking Heads song "Radio Head", and cited Remain in Light as a critical influence on their 2000 album Kid A. Italian filmmaker and director Paolo Sorrentino, receiving the Oscar for his film La Grande Bellezza in 2014, thanked Talking Heads, among others, as his sources of inspiration.
Members
Additional musicians
Timeline
Discography
See also
Further reading
(2020). 9781250209221, St. Martin's Publishing. ISBN 9781250209221
(1987). 9780060962050, Harper & Row. ISBN 9780060962050.
External links
Categories: Official Website, 1975 Establishments In New York City, American Art Rock Groups, American Dance-rock Musical Groups, American Funk Rock Musical Groups, American New Wave Musical Groups, American Post-punk Music Groups, Art Pop Groups, Emi Records Artists, Geek Rock Groups, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winners, Mixed-gender Bands, Musical Groups Disestablished In 1991, Musical Groups Established In 1975, Musical Groups From New York City, Musical Quartets From New York, Philips Records Artists, Punk Rock Groups From New York, Sire Records Artists
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