They were ambivalent and so am I. Talking Heads are almost too well regarded for me to be writing about them here. I’m at my best discussing music that is not sold in stores, or at least you can’t count on it being there. I have the same problem writing about the Velvet Underground. I did once and posted it online. Half of it was a quote from Ignacio Julia’s Feedback book. There was little there that could stand on its own, so I deleted it and posted the following:

At this late date, no-one who hasn’t listened obsessively to everything the Velvet Underground ever did has any business attempting to write about rock and roll. They have no idea what they’re dealing with and where everything came from. (That there are people who need to be told this leaves me embarrassed for them.) I would go so far as to say to musicians that they have no business attempting to play it either, for precisely the same reasons. Paradoxically, at this late date there’s nothing left to write about the Velvets. If you don’t know them, you need to, and you can buy the CDs anywhere. If you want to read about them there are several excellent books on the market. It’s all been said. With Sterling’s death there will never again be a VU. Old tracks may continue to be unearthed and reissued but there will nevermore be anything new to say. It’s like writing about the Beatles. It’s exactly like writing about the Beatles.

Though I’m otherwise comfortable with that position, to say no-one has any business sounds fascist. People are going to do whatever they’re going to do. I’d happily read a new VU book. And as the I Ching says, “if the ignorant ask me I instruct them. If they ask the same question a dozen times, they’re a pain in the ass and I tell them nothing.” So I wound up deleting that one, posting a blurb telling people to turn off the damn computer and buy one of their CDs. If that was my last word on the Velvet Underground, what the hell am I supposed to say about Talking Heads? (Heads and Eno are both on the lonnnng list of people heavily influenced by the VU--early Heads were the only other band on earth that should have been allowed to record “What Goes On,” too bad they never did.) There’s not even a question of if you’re familiar with them. If you’re anywhere between 25 and 45 and listen to much rock and roll at all (who else would be reading this?), you’ve heard them already and know what you like. However, you may not have thought about them lately, or you may have been oblivious then and wondering what all the fuss was about, so let’s go tripping down memory lane.

In their early years, they were something very special...they were in the very forefront of the new music, yet reasonably palatable to the masses as well. Their first album was grotesque, exhilarating, appalling and cheerful all at once. It put a subversive spin on all that negativism we kept hearing about, all that nihilism coming out of all those weird new bands from New York City...it was fun!!! Whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop!!! And that recurring, robotic juggajuggajuggajuggajik guitar riff was worth the price of admission all on its lonesome.

It was pumped to perfection on “Psycho Killer.” That tune is such a classic that, like all “classic rock,” a few thousand repetitions have defanged it entirely, rendered it inaudible. I’ve been in a couple bands that played that tune, and nobody got killed as a result. The only time a gun was ever fired at one of my gigs was during an encore of Jeff Beck’s “Freeway Jam,” which has no words at all. Rock critics--gotta love ’em. “Psycho Killer” was a crowd-pleaser every single time I ever played it. Interesting, because it wasn’t a particularly hip audience and “Psycho Killer” had not been a big hit upon its initial release in 1977. They had absorbed it by osmosis. Mainstream rock radio had done test marketing indicating that a few Talking Heads tunes could be worked into regular rotation without causing the system to collapse.

There was a time in the 80s when a good portion of America’s heavy pseudoreligious media talent were able to up their monthly bottom line by a good 10%, all by wringing their hands and bemoaning the effect of such lyrics upon “the youngsters.” The theory was that, even sans subliminals, if the kids listened to such songs a few thousand times, they’d be desensitized to violence and it was only a matter of time before they’d go out and do it. Since this same element was wildly enthusiastic about whatever military adverturism might be in the wind, you’d think they wouldn’t mind, but you’d think wrong. People like that have nothing to think with, they merely react.

What was the effect of a few thousand repetitions of that tune? Nothing much. By the mid-80s and early 90s, nobody gave the words a second thought. I even played it on TV for a telethon once, replete with psychedelic synth freakouts and sirens at the end; when it was all over the announcer just smiled and said, “Wow! [Village Name]’s very own Talking Heads!” And the phones rang with pledges. Nobody gave a damn that it was a first-person lyric about, well, a psycho killer. (If we had done Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” which as he has pointed out is merely a rewrite of the Heads tune, things would have gone differently.) People tapped their feet, because that was a perfectly natural reaction to the music. They sang along as best they could (half the lyrics are in French anyway), an amusing spectacle but hardly the end of the world. It was exactly the same as when the audience at Beatlemania sang along to “I Am the Walrus” without the slightest idea what they were singing about, or for that matter when their parents would sing songs from Oklahoma even though none of them had ever been to Oklahoma and wouldn’t last a week if they ever were. That’s entertainment. And so’s Marilyn Manson--he’s never going to be as big a deal as Alice Cooper was. Why? Because he’s capable of frightening only those parents who shied away from Alice in the early 70s and huddled around Simon and Garfunkel LPs instead. If you check the record collections of sk8punks’ parents, you’ll probably find Cooper and Black Sabbath--poor kids, they have to buy Bosstones discs and skateboards so that mom and dad will have something real to worry about, like a broken neck.

Back in the 80s, I had wanted to do “Psycho Killer” with the band that had been shot at. I don’t recall when I brought it up, though probably not that same week. Marc, the guitarist, wouldn’t hear of it; he was annoyed at the very thought. His stated objection? The lyrics: “I don’t think people should be writing songs like that, there are enough real psychos out there killing people without songs encouraging them to do it.” I was perplexed, because Marc is an intelligent guy and not ordinarily the type to fall for such a line of reasoning, much less expect anybody else to. Besides, the lyrics do no such thing. As with Lou Reed’s “Heroin” (which he had no problem with), they don’t encourage it, merely discuss it. And what of “White Light/White Heat?” We played that one, and he sang it, and not only is it about shooting speed, it glorifies it. There were plenty of other tunes he would have loved to do that we never got around to--Zappa’s “Illinois Enema Bandit” (a true story--it might be funny in the retelling but not for the women who were assaulted), Van Halen’s “D.O.A.,” (“We were sitting ducks for the police man/They found a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can”--no wait, I think he sang that one too), the Stones’ “Midnight Rambler,” (another true story, but if it took place in the 60s then it was OK). What it came down to was far simpler--he didn’t like Talking Heads. Musically. And culturally. He had a respect for their technical ability--“at least they know how to play their instruments.” He was and is a very hot lead guitarist, he grew up in the 70s listening to people like Robin Trower and Randy California, and he didn’t want to betray his heroes. To him, Talking Heads didn’t even look like people who had any business playing rock and roll. Ironically enough, as time went on the Heads came to the same conclusion.

More Songs About Buildings And Food was a typical second album, a consolidation on what they had done before. Blander, perhaps, but more mainstream and, given just what was being mainstreamed, far more subversive thereby. It gave them their first hit, their version of “Take Me To The River.” This is what separated them from Television and Richard Hell and all the rest--they broke through the glass ceiling and got radio play. Without it, they would have broken up at the same time as all the other punk bands. With it, they had a career. It’s my least-favorite Heads album, though; the production is more varied than the debut but there’s not as much energy, no “live” feel to it, and the songs aren’t as memorable as those on the debut. All in all, a typical second album. However, those are precisely the ones that determine a band’s fate--if they get a chance to make a third, they usually are set for the next few years. With their second LP, the Heads scored one of the biggest hits the new wave ever had. No matter how tentative, this was also the first in their Eno trilogy, a series of albums that was one of the high-water-marks of commercial viability for experimental music in some sort of pop context, one that won’t be topped in this century.

The next step was Fear of Music, which was so anxious and neurotic there was serious and widespread speculation about David Byrne’s mental health. He was obliged to announce that he had never been to a psychiatrist and really was feeling fine, thanks. The lyrics, even now, provide legitimate cause for concern--they were about how animals were laughing at people, air was doing something to his skin, someone controls electric guitar, and heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. This band was turning into something fascinating. Under Eno’s influence, they’d taken the minimalism right down to the wire. Some of the drum and bass parts became so repetitive that they might as well have been on a tape loop. (They came to feel much the same way, except that playing them became more tedious than hypnotic.) Over that, Eno was pulling out all the stops--he deployed every trick he’d ever learned to transform a track into a geographical listening environment, from the insect noises to the backwards tapes to the Oblique Strategies to the electronic “treatments” of anything that wasn’t nailed down. Nobody was calling the result “psychedelic” because that wasn’t the correct name to drop, but there wasn’t an album released in 1979 more psychedelic than this.

Then came Remain In Light, which was denser, darker, fonkyfonky, overintellectualized, cutting-edge for that time or this, and black-magickal. Parliament/Funkadelic and Miles Davis had broken the ground, but it remained for the Heads to construct pyramids in honor of their escaping. (Before it was the Byrne/Eno Bush of Ghosts disc, which is some weird kinda joy all its own.) In one year’s time they had moved from 70s psychedelia into 80s progressive rock. None dared call it that either, but no album released in 1980 was more progressive. (Drama, by Yes without Jon Anderson, was an outstanding effort--no matter what anyone says now--but its progressivism was strictly old-school, the final gasp.) “I Zimbra,” Fear of Music’s opening track, had been the musical catalyst, and Byrne and Eno soon found themselves mutually obsessed with the African approach to ensemble playing, in which polyrhythms are not a means to an end but an end in themselves. The live band expanded to nine players, and the typical song consisted of each member playing one heavily syncopated part and repeating it endlessly. Any one element wouldn’t be recognizable on its own, but the way the players meshed together produced the groove, and the groove was omnipotent.

The lyrics were less the portrait of a mental breakdown that never came, and more the sort of thing Eno had been doing for years--words. Just words about any random weird shit, vague and interesting enough for multiple interpretations, but specific enough to seem to be “about” something. Just words, used primarily because after 80 years of pop recordings, people had been conditioned to expect vocals at all times. (As Jon Anderson himself once put it, “it’s not so much about the literal meaning of the words, just that there’s the sound of someone singing.”) Eno had already dispensed with this on his own records, but even if that had been suggested the band weren’t ready for any more radical departures. In fact, they’d had more than enough of them. It had been fun for awhile to be part of Eno’s art statements, but Eno (who avoids ever joining one) forgot that they were above all a band, and they were no longer being treated like one. They mutinied then, they were sick of Eno telling Byrne telling them what to do. Somehow they managed to jettison the “fifth Head” while keeping David Byrne, and the band played on.

Byrne had already retreated from the brink musically and lyrically, and now appeared to be every bit as sane as he’d been reassuring everyone all along, even if he had acquired the habit of Speaking In Tongues and was determined to Stop Making Sense. These were arty but explicitly Party records, irrational to the point of giddiness, and for the first time, unshadowed. I saw the Stop Making Sense film nine times (in the theatre!), and could happily watch it nine more--the only truly entertaining concert film ever made.

Even in the matter of packaging they were innovators, they could always be counted on to give you that little bit extra. More Songs had “The Big Country” (which went, “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me,” amusing since Byrne was born in Scotland) and featured a composite satellite photo of the United States. (They should have captioned it “I can see your house from here,” but it had already been done.) Fear of Music was made to look and feel like a manhole cover. Remain In Light featured computer-distorted band portraits that evoked some kind of digital war-mask. Speaking In Tongues came in a limited-edition oversized transparent plastic cover, with a collage wheel a la Led Zep III, and the LP was pressed in clear vinyl so you could hold the whole thing up to the light. Stop Making Sense included a booklet full of photos and one-liners from Byrne that were as good as anything by George Carlin. Little Creatures, their first non-psychedelic album, had a photo of the band on the back dressed up in the most lurid psychedelic garb Manhattan in 1985 had to offer. They looked as if the photographer had better snap the pic right now before they exploded into the kind of laughter that would shit their paisley pants. Yeah, yeah, every one of them had been an art student so you would expect some interesting album covers, but year after year they did more than any other band to make it fun to browse the “T” section in the record store.

It was all downhill from there, just like the Jefferson Airplane in fact (even unto the graceless Starship-like reincarnation in late 1996 of “The Heads”)...Ah, the same, sad cycle--solo careers...a dwindling of the original Vision...finding oneself replaced by younger faces, ever more fashionably vacuous...watching helplessly from the sidelines as what you’d originally had to say became less and less relevant, and not at all cutting-edge anymore...a far, far, fall from being one of the most innovative bands on the planet. “But they still managed some fine tracks in their declining years, and the best of their work stands alongside the very finest of its generation” blah blah blah thank you and good night.