New Talking Heads book: Band's song roots, breakups and makeups

For a band that broke up under a cloud of bitterness, Talking Heads still appreciate a good celebration.

The belated first video for the band's 1977 cult favorite “Psycho Killer” debuted in early June; a live rendition of their thumping rendition of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” from 1978 just landed; and a new CD box set, “More Songs About Buildings and Food (Super Deluxe Edition)” is due July 25 to celebrate the quartet’s 50th anniversary.

The recently released biography “Burning Down the House” (HarperCollins, 512 pages) from New Yorker contributor Jonathan Gould (“Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America”), takes its name from Talking Heads’ biggest hit, an idiosyncratic Parliament Funkadelic-inspired slice of New Wave funk.

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The book's 42 chapters dutifully cover the journey of singer David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth – who met at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, moved to New York and recruited guitarist Jerry Harrison – through years of fractured existence until they disbanded in 1991.

But Gould also digs into the grimy club scene of Lower Manhattan in the 1970s, with colorful reminders of Max’s Kansas City – a club where musicians including Velvet Underground, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel played foundational shows – and the illustrious CBGB, an art rock/punk playground for Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and a burgeoning Talking Heads.

Talking Heads members (from left) Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, David Byrne and Jerry Harrison attend the "Stop Making Sense Q&A" Sept. 13, 2023 in Brooklyn, spotlighting a rare reunion for the band.

“This could be our Cavern Club,” Frantz said when the band played a four-night stand at CBGB in 1977, likening it to The Beatles’ formative haunt in Liverpool.

Major albums augmented by a visual boost from MTV (“Speaking in Tongues” with “Burning Down the House,” “Little Creatures” with “And She Was”) and a landmark 1984 live concert film from Jonathan Demme (“Stop Making Sense,” which revived the singles “Girlfriend is Better” and “Once in a Lifetime”) solidified Talking Heads’ worthiness as Rock and Roll Hall of Famers.

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Here are a few book highlights that showcase how they got there.

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The biblical roots of 'Once in a Lifetime'

Gould explores how the band’s fourth studio album, 1980’s “Remain in Light,” was sequenced dichotomously. The first side of the album brought “a dance party unlike any dance party ever heard on a commercial recording before,” he writes.

But a flip to Side 2 spotlighted Byrne’s influences from months of Bible study for his esoteric solo project with Brian Eno, “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.”

“Once in a Lifetime,” the first song of the album’s second half, is delivered as a sermon almost by default, with each lyric prefaced with Byrne’s spoke-sung, “and you may find yourself …” before the inevitable big question of, “how did I get here?”

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Gould also points out the religious metaphor of the song’s chorus, “letting the days go by, let the water hold me down” as well as its famous repeated refrain, “same as it ever was,” which provides a “born-again edge.” By the time Byrne completes this existential exercise, he’s looking back at his choices and exclaiming, “My God! What have I done?”

"Burning Down the House," a book by Jonathan Gould that takes its names from a Talking Heads song, chronicles the band's history as well as the New York club scene in the late '70s.

The Tom Tom Club offered an escape from Talking Heads

In 1981, Frantz and Weymouth – who married in 1977 – splintered from home base to create Tom Tom Club, named for the Bahamian club where they rehearsed for the first time while on break from Talking Heads.

The spinoff that included Weymouth’s sisters and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew formed because, as Frantz says in the book. “We wanted to make a real musical anti-snob record, because we’re fed up to here with all of the seriousness that surrounds Taking Heads.”

The musical approach inspired by the “happier … Island people,” as well as the kitschy spirit of The B-52s, yielded the dance hit “Wordy Rappinghood,” anchored by Weymouth’s delivery which Gould describes as, “prim elocution of a grade-school teacher intent on imbuing her students with a lifelong love of words.”

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But the lasting takeaway from the project is “Genius of Love,” a blipping ditty that skitters through a lyrical tribute to Bootsy Collins, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley and James Brown.

Its clever hook has been interpolated for decades, from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “It’s Nasty” in 1981 to Mariah Carey’s mega-selling “Fantasy” in 1995 to Latto’s 2021 resurrection of the sample in “Big Energy.”

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A Talking Heads breakup, and brief makeup

The band essentially dissolved in 1991 when Byrne abruptly left, which Frantz says he and Weymouth discovered by reading about it in the Los Angeles Times (“David never called us to say we broke up,” Weymouth recalls).

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Predictably, lawsuits over trademark use of the band’s name followed, along with the equally predictable acrimony between Byrne and the rest of the band. But a 1999 anniversary screening of “Stop Making Sense” provided a brief ceasefire, although the foursome never made eye contact while sitting on a panel to discuss the film.

In 2001, their first year of eligibility, Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Following tradition, a live performance was expected, which would be their first in 18 years.

For three songs – “Psycho Killer,” “Life During Wartime” and “Burning Down the House” – a truce was in place, sparking a standing ovation from the audience filled with music-industry types, the very people, Gould says, whom the proudly eccentric band “had done their best to have as little as possible to do with over the course of their professional careers.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Talking Heads book explores the band's complicated history