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Burning Down the House by Jonathan Gould tells the story of the American new wave band and the fertile scene they came up with, but does the book risk reduing the city and everyone in it to a backdrop for the group’s mercurial lead singer? asks Elizabeth Wiet
If Talking Heads have a magnum opus, it is surely 1980’s Remain in Light. More than a mere maturation in the band’s sound, the album marks the culmination of frontman David Byrne’s intellectual tête-à-tête with producer Brian Eno. The two met in London in May 1977 while the Heads were on tour with the Ramones. Eno’s avant-garde credentials gave gravitas to the scrappy Heads, who were still ambling on stage at CBGBs and
had yet to release their debut album. He became an unwitting Pygmalion to the bookish Byrne: on sojourns to California and the Caribbean, they discoursed at length on cybernetics and Afrobeat.
The benefits brought by the Eno collaboration were felt by other band members, too. His Cageian tendency toward happenstance in the studio gave agency to bassist Tina Weymouth, keyboardist Jerry Harrison, and drummer Chris Frantz, who had each been frustrated by Byrne’s need to exercise control and treat them like also-rans.
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