Miles, New Musical Express, 23 April 1977

This is a Minimalist Headline

DAVID BYRNE: "At first, people said we were real intellectual
and only smarties would like us - but then all these kids
came along and liked us and that proves they were wrong!"

Right now Talking Heads are the cult band in New York City,
I went to CBGBs to hear them and half of the new wave bands
in New York were in the audience.

They're splashed all over Punk, New York Rocker and Gig
magazines, not to mention the New York Times and the New
York Daily News. Personally, I think their "Love - Building
On Fire" is the best single released in a twelve-month - even
better than Television's "Marquee Moon".

Talking Heads: David Byrne, lead guitar, lead vocals, composer
of all their songs. A hirsute, tense looking man who folds
his arms, tucking his hands in as if he was in a straight
jacket. When his hands escape, they play nervously with
objects nearby. I have a tape interview of him rustling book
matches.

His speaking voice is quite low - normal - but when singing
it veers toward a high vibrato. Though he's taking lessons
for it, this large but unstable range has been part of the
charm of Talking Heads for their cult fans.

Martina Weymouth is the bass player. She is neat, petite,
has close cropped blonde hair and dresses in Young Conservative
sports wear. She wields a powerful bass which holds the group
together since both drums and guitar are clipped and sparse.

Chris Frantz is the drummer. He talks in a slow, liquid,
campy New England voice as if his vocal chords were hydraulically
controlled. He gestures as though he were holding a Martini
in his hand. His drumming is brisk, terse and pared down to a
minimum - a style which reflects his art school training and
his interest in Andy Warhol and the Minimalists.

The band began at the Rhode Island School Of Design where
they were all three studying. At first David and Chris were
in a party band called The Artistics - playing Smokey Robinson
and Lou Reed songs just for friends. Like Roxy Music, they have
the art school sensibility but whereas Ferry got off on the
Decadent movement, Talking Heads come from, the more cerebral
tradition of New York minimal art: simple shapes and colours.
David, in fact, didn't paint at all - he just used to type out
questionaires as works of art:

"Some were about the United States and some of them were
about Love. Some of them you had to circle different things -
" He gulps back his words - I figured he didn't want to talk
about his work.

But art college wasn't stimulating enough for them. David
dropped out and took a hippy trip around the States. Chris
and David moved to New York City bringing Tina with them and
decided to try and make it as a band. David: "When you're
growing up, you always want to be in a band. Always in the
back of your mind if anyone asked you what you want to be,
you'd want to be in a band. It was always 'Well, that's a
pretty long shot' so it was 'Well, I'll take the chance'.

"After rehearsing for about six months and getting some
material together - we lived near CBGBs and we noticed
that here was a place where few bands were playing at the
time and very few people were coming to at the time. It
was just beginning and at times there would be ten people
in the audience. We thought it would be a fine place for
us to get our thing together and find out what worked in
front of an audience. Relatively quickly after that, there
started to be more and more groups there - " David sat back
sharply- as if he'd already said too much.

When they moved to Manhattan they expected to find a bass
player relatively quickly but this wasn't to be so. Tina,
who was thought of as a singer, was invited instead to
join the group as bass player. It was one of the wisest
moves they could have made since she plays a solid,
hypnotic, repetitive line that supports the rest of them.

I asked them what influence their art training had on their
music. David didn't think too much: "Pretty much normal
things, like trying not to have any breaks - trying not to
have any extraneous musical things going on that aren't
necessary, that don't contribute - and try not to have
everyone doing exactly the same thing if that's not necessary - "

It seems that playing their material live did more to
influence David's writing than art school. "When I first
started writing, my stuff was more, I guess, Structural,
Structuralist, stuff like that. And a lot of it wasn't
very uplifting type sentiments but then, after we played
it, is was just so much fun playing it that I can't say
negative things when I'm having so much fun. So I'm having
to start writing songs which are more fun to sing, which
coincide with us having fun singing."

An example of the negative sentiments David talked about
is "Psycho Killer", the only song in their repertoire
which dates back to Artistics days. "Psycho Killer,
Qu'est-ce que c'est?" (What is it?) - surreal non-sequitors.

"The Artistics was another attitude", Tina says. When
they perform the number live David is galvanized into a
twitching marionette. "My voice does sometimes get a
little high" he admits. He sure doesn't look as if he's
having fun.

They have just added another member to the line-up; Jerry
Harrison who used to be with The Modern Lovers is on their
first album. I asked them how they had gone about finding
a new member after playing for almost two years as a trio.

Chris: "There were a number of different musicians that we
had come up to our loft to make tapes - not necessarily
even for auditions. Like for example we had a cello
player just to see how it would sound on a song - get an
idea of what we were capable of doing with other people.
We met Jerry up in Boston and later met a friend of his
who also used to be in the Modern Lovers, Ernie Brooks, who
said that Jerry would be interested in joining. So we
really heard it through the grapevine that Jerry might
be available."

David: "Just what we wanted. Someone who could play
guitar and keyboards." They definitely needed someone
because David was having to play full chords all the
time, doubling as both rhythm and lead guitarist.
David: "The songs can have more dynamics. If there's
only one guitar what can I do? But if there's more
instruments there's greater variety of texture."

Right now Talking Heads are in the studio working on
their first album just prior to a European tour
supporting The Ramones. They have chosen Tony Bongiovi
to be their producer. Bongiovi has worked with everyone
from Jimi Hendrix though Mitzi Gaynor to The Ramones
and did Talking Heads single "Love - Building On Fire".

The future? Which direction is the band going in?

David: "Better songs. Better performances. More efficient."

- And the subject of future songs?

David: "Just try to be honest, contemporary and things
like that without getting too obscure."