![]() I felt like I was pounding away like a carpenter, just nailing away to get it in the groove! Encouraged by Chris, I came up with the bassline – it was a really dumb bass part, but I had to leave lots of space for the cacophony that surrounded me. Even the lovely Robert Palmer, who was in the studio with us that day, jammed with us on guitar and percussion. David played a little R’n’B guitar part which was stripped out afterwards. Brian also played little percussion instruments, and Jerry moved between keyboards and guitar. That was a radical thing to do when everyone was so miserable and grey!įor that jam session, I remember that Brian and Jerry both played Prophet keyboards. It’s saying what a fantastic place we live in, let’s celebrate it. What’s fantastic about David’s lyrics is that he’s using that blood-and-thunder intonation of the preacher, but his words are terribly optimistic. It suggests that people only really enter that intense spirit when they’re talking about religion or politics! It wasn’t the words they were saying, it was the feverish intensity with which they were delivered. ![]() We were also fascinated by the way in which politicians and shock jocks spoke. ![]() For that, we were listening to recordings of TV evangelists, preachers, the Islamic call to prayer, religious people getting into a trance. It was an extension of the stuff we’d been researching for My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. The idea for the chorus melody was mine – I started singing a wordless riff over the top of the bassline. It was exactly what producers do these days with loops and samplers and sequencers. We’d listen to the tapes, isolate the best bits, then learn how to play them over and over again. Most of the tracks on Remain In Light were based around jams. In the Uncut interview, David Byrne says: Eno and the band – inspired by the methodology of Krautrockers Can and Miles Davis’ producer, Teo Macero – then set about ripping that jam session apart, recreating the groove, stripping out certain instruments and superimposing numerous other melodic and rhythmic ideas upon that basic template. It started as a Fela Kuti-style jam, one that you’ll find as a bonus track on the 2006 reissue entitled Right Start. ![]() Uncut Magazine has additional background: Eno felt (correctly) that it was the most exciting music that anyone was making at the time, and he suggested that Talking Heads aim for a similar vibe by recording group jams in the studio and then shaping them into songs afterwards. In this NPR segment about the songwriting process, Brian Eno says that the first time he met with Talking Heads, he played them a Fela Kuti record. The version from David Byrne’s American Utopia is pretty delightful too. The choreography, lighting, cinematography and editing are so dazzling that it’s easy to lose sight of what a stupendous musical performance it is you kind of have to listen to it without the visuals for it to register on that level. Here’s the even more outrageous live version from Stop Making Sense. ![]() Here’s a red-hot live version from The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads: Here is what might possibly be my single favorite song in the world: ![]()
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