'Stop Making Sense': Still the Greatest Concert Film Ever
Also: How Talking Heads started a Private School Rock Revolution
Ok, here goes. Hot take incoming.
Talking Heads is a great band whose musical genius was often obscured by the art-school antics of its lead singer.
David Byrne always seemed to work overtime to focus the spotlight on himself and make sure the cultural conversation was about his personal obsessions and not the wildly inventive musical accomplishments of his bandmates Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison.
Oh, to be fair, Byrne did love to share credit with producer Brian Eno, another art-school weirdo who acted as a fifth member of Talking Heads during its most creative period. Byrne and Eno were so identified as the creative engine behind the band that the press treated their My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify) side project as a Talking Heads LP in everything but name.
Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film and the band’s concurrent live album go a long way towards puncturing the solo artist and his backing band myth, even as it exposes the cracks that would lead to the band’s breakup and a decades-long feud between the singer and his bandmates.
The Stop Making Sense concert movie has been remastered for IMAX and gifted with a spectacular Dolby Atmos surround soundtrack mixed by Jerry Harrison and “Eric ET” Thorngren. I saw the September 11 advance screening before the film’s limited engagement in IMAX theaters around the country starting September 22, 2023, and anyone who’s interested in Talking Heads, the history of concert films, or the sonic possibilities of surround sound should plan to see it in this format. Stop Making Sense will open in non-IMAX venues on September 29.
I’ve been waiting for the film since last spring when I saw a Harrison and Thorngren interview video on the Absolute Sound’s YouTube channel. Jerry quickly drops an H bomb and then tells a story about meeting Jonathan Richman and joining the Modern Lovers before getting to his mix philosophy for immersive audio. Rather than go for the maximum separation possible, Jerry and Eric went for a sound that tries to replicate the glue of the original stereo mixes and use the object-oriented audio placement to highlight specific moments in the performance.
I thought the new mix was magical during last week’s screening, but I’ve been unable to revisit it since then. Well, I could have revisited it with my AirPods Pro 2 earbuds because it’s streaming in Atmos via Apple Music. As longtime Stars readers know, the only way to enjoy spatial audio from Apple is via their AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, or Beats Fit Pro headsets. You can’t yet run it through a home theater system.
When Stop Making Sense finally comes to home video later this year, I hold out hope that these mixes will be available on a Blu-ray, for purchase via digital retailers like HDTracks, or on SACD. In the meantime, your best bet is to get yourself to the theater if you want to listen to these new mixes .
When I first saw the movie in 1984, I thought Talking Heads were annoying old boomers. Forty years later, I’m struck at how impossibly young they were during filming (David: 31, Tina: 32, Chris: 31, Jerry: 33). Even keyboardist Bernie Worrell (39 at the time) looks like a kid, instead of the terrifying embodiment of downtown hipster sophistication he seemed to be when I met him backstage at a Human Switchboard show not long after this tour.
Bernie, guitarist Alex Weir (30, formerly with the Brothers Johnson), percussionist Steve Scales (?), and backing singers Lynn Mabry (25, Brides of Funkenstein) and Ednah Holt (?, the Ritchie Family) appear onstage as equal members of the group. Worrell, Weir, and Scales all recorded with Jerry Harrison on his solo albums and with Chris and Tina’s band Tom Tom Club, so they were close collaborators with band members both in and out of Talking Heads.
That collaboration doesn’t take the edge off the worst moment of the show, one that comes during an epic performance of “Take Me to the River.” The band vamps so that the singer can introduce the other musicians on stage. David Byrne works his way around the stage, standing in front of each musician as he shares their name with the crowd. After making the cycle, he step back up to center stage and…nothing. Eventually he launches back into the song as the evening winds down.
David Byrne has committed the #1 lead singer foul on the seemingly endless list of things lead singers do to alienate their bandmates. Does the marquee say “David Byrne & His Talking Heads? Nope. And yet, he fails to even mumble “I’m David Byrne” or have another band member introduce him. He must think that, since everyone already knows his name, there’s no reason to point to out.
But, of course, there’s a huge reason. Singers who introduce themselves tell the audience that they’re on the same level with the other musicians on the stage and that they’re part of a unit. I haven’t bought a ticket to see Taylor Swift in 2023, but I’m willing to bet that she has the false modesty to say “And I’m Taylor” at the end of her spiel. It’s okay that the modesty is false. It’s the public gesture that counts.
Jonathan Demme filmed the band’s three-night stand at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. The band’s staging was influenced by contemporary theater, especially the work of Robert Anton Wilson. Demme brought handheld cameras onstage and captured close-up angles of all the musicians and created an experience that makes earlier concert films seem static. The impact of Stop Making Sense might be lessened for contemporary audiences because filmmakers have been ripping off Demme’s innovations for the last four decades.
Everyone wants to talk about the iconic “big suit” that Byrne puts on for the band’s performance of “Girlfriend Is Better,” but it’s both the least interesting thing about the set and yet another way for the lead singer to distract from the band’s music. The best thing about the big suit is that Byrne has to exit the stage for the costume change, which allows the rest of the musicians to play the Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love.”
It’s the rest of the stage wear that commands attention in 2023. No one has ever offered up details about the excellent, normal-sized suit that Byrne’s wearing at the beginning of the show. Even more compelling is Tina Weymouth’s miniskirt, tights, and boots outfit, an ensemble that represents peak new wave. Jerry wears one of those ‘80s jackets that looks like a cross between a sci-fi movie costume and a janitor’s jumpsuit and manages to pull it off. Chris, as usual, looks like he’s headed down to the river to watch a rowing regatta in khakis and a polo shirt.
Filmmaker Spike Lee hosted a Q&A session with all four members of the band at the Toronto International Film Festival after the September 11 screening and the event was broadcast live to theaters around the country. I’m not sure what it was like in the room, but the vaunted reunion between the original band members seemed incredibly awkward.
Spike was truly off his game for this interview, asking nonsensical and non-sequitur questions that the band found difficult to answer. “SO, TINA,” Spike didn’t actually quite say, “WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE A GIRL?” Beat. “IN A BAND?” OK, so it wasn’t as weird as that. But it was close. You can find versions of the interview as filmed by audience members on YouTube, but it’s not recommended.
Both on stage for the questions and in all of the red carpet photos I’ve seen, Jerry Harrison seems to be acting as a human shield between David and Chris. The takeaway is that there are so many unresolved issues between the four band members that I doubt there’s enough money in the world to get them to power through the trauma that would be generated by a reunion tour. Hopes were high after the announcement of the TIFF event, but I can’t see them finding a way forward and estimate that the 100% never-happening R.E.M. reunion has far better odds of yielding a tour.
Why Stay in College?
For generations, popular music had been written and recorded by outsiders and working class folks. Think Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, and thousands of other hall of fame artists.
Sure, Yale-educated John Hammond and St. John’s College graduate Ahmet Ertegün were perhaps the most famous A&R executives of their generation, but profiles of either man usually implied that he was slumming by working in the music industry. Rock, R&B, and country records were not a business for our country’s elites.
Talking Heads (3 Rhode Island School of Design, 1 Harvard) caused an earthquake. Of course, popular music had featured plenty of stars with formal training from schools like Berklee or Juilliard, but the record business was generally a wide-open opportunity for everyone who didn’t have those private school credentials.
Once Talking Heads appeared showed up in Rolling Stone and later on MTV, an entire generation of private school creatives decided that popular music was in fact an acceptable career opportunity.
Here’s a brief list of late 20th century bands that feature at least one prominent member who studied at the kind of private college or university whose students would’ve never considered a career in rock in the ‘60s or early ‘70s:
The Airborne Toxic Event, Arcade Fire, Beach House, Bitch Magnet, Black Lab, Bullet Lavolta, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Tracy Chapman, Codeine, Come, Deerhoof, the Del Fuegos, Dumptruck, the Fugees, Robbie Fulks, Galaxie 500, Girls Against Boys, Guster, Helium, Hüsker Dü, Indigo Girls, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, Lock Up, Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories, Luna, the Mars Volta, MGMT, the Moldy Peaches, Jason Molina, OK GO, Will Oldham, Liz Phair, Phish, the Presidents of the United States of America, Pussy Galore, Rage Against the Machine, Rain Parade, R.E.M., Rubber Rodeo, Sammy, Seam, Semisonic, Duncan Sheik, Sonic Youth, Spin Doctors, the Strokes, Tortoise, Trip Shakespeare, Jen Trynin, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
We’re talking the Ivy League, NYU, Oberlin, Bennington, Stanford, Wesleyan, Emory, Reed, and a few other schools that require high SAT scores and either wealthy parents or substantial financial aid eligibility for admission. For generations, your family had expectations that you would follow in their footsteps or that you wouldn’t blow this opportunity to change the trajectory of your life.
Is the private school invasion of popular music a bad thing? It wasn’t for me, because I had the opportunity to work with quite a few of the artists on that list and I’m reasonably sure that part of our connection was based on our shared experiences.
Talking Heads gave permission to a lot of private school fuckups to follow our instincts and make popular art instead of advertising or financial trades. My mom never quite got over my choice to follow that muse, but I did feel like there was safety in numbers. There sure were a lot of us who signed up for the record business, and most of us never grew up and got a real job.
What we never had in the United States was the sort of publicly-funded art school education that made creative pursuits possible for a generation of British rock stars. As mentioned in my Art vs. Science in the 20th Century post, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, David Hockney, David Bowie, David Bailey, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Freddie Mercury, Vivienne Westwood, Keith Richards, Pete Townsend, Charlie Watts, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, Eric Burdon, and Jeff Beck all went to art school before becoming rock stars.
Private schools don’t seem to be recruiting the same sort of unfocused, possibly talented kids these days. There’s an even more impressive roster of comedy writers who went to college with me, a group that far outnumbers the rock stars produced during the era. The world needs its strivers, but the real talent may be moving away from the high-debt, low-reward world of private education.
(Before anyone rushes to point out my omissions, here are some American private school outliers who rocked out before Talking Heads: Tom Rush, Art Garfunkel, Tom Scholz, Lou Reed, Chris Stamey, Gram Parsons, Steely Dan. That’s a few, not a lot.)
8-Track of the Day
This Columbia House record club edition of Stop Making Sense is so rare that it’s never been sold on Discogs.com. Tapeheads will note the wildly shuffled sequence created in a failed attempt to even out the four programs and wonder exactly where the mechanical clunk happens in the divided version of “Slippery People.”