Last month, a screening of Stop Making Sense—Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert film—lit up the UCSC Quarry. This weekend, Talking Heads keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison joins up with guitarist Adrian Belew for the Remain in Light Summer Tour, hitting the Quarry stage with an 11-member band to play iconic selections from the 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light, plus songs from their respective discographies.
Talking Heads were part of the punk explosion at CBGB in New York City during the mid ’70s. David Byrne (guitar and vocals), Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Harrison combined African rhythms, electronics and social criticism in a revolutionary way. Remain in Light was the fourth album from Talking Heads. In 2018, singer Angélique Kidjo released her own version of the album.
Belew has recorded with David Bowie, King Crimson and Frank Zappa. Jerry Harrison has produced numerous bands, including No Doubt, and will be performing “Rev it Up” from his 1988 solo album Casual Gods. Guest musicians include members of Turkuaz, bassist Julie Slick, percussionist Yahuba Garcia-Torres and special guests Cool Cool Cool.
Harrison, who lives in Marin, talked about the tour, including which songs will be performed. “We’re playing songs from the 1980 Remain in Light tour, when Adrian played with Talking Heads,” he said, as well as material from Fear of Music (1979), More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) and 77 (1977), and “Thela Hun Ginjeet” (from King Crimson’s 1981 Discipline).
“We’re doing a version of ‘Slippery People’ from the Speaking in Tongues album [1983]. Mavis Staples covered that song. The two women singing with us [Shira Elias and Sammi Garett of Turkuaz] take lead on that and do a very nice job. There’s a million possibilities because we’ve all done so many different projects.”
Good Times: 1980 was an exciting time for new music. Even before you went to New York to join the Talking Heads you played with proto-punk Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.
Jerry Harrison: When we were in the Modern Lovers, we felt we were all alone out there in Boston! Obviously, we were very influenced by the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, who stood apart from the music that was happening at that time.
By the time I joined Talking Heads (1977), they were part of the seed that CBGB had begun to form. Four bands—Blondie, the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads—were the initial vanguard at CBGB.
What was interesting at the time was that, though stylistically these bands are not particularly similar, there was an ethos that stood apart from what had become popular in music, which I might describe as an over-professionalization.
Bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer came from the music academy and their shows would have very grandiose lights and costumes. Everybody in the band would do a 15-minute solo. Two solos on one of those records and the Ramones could play 15 songs!
Punk was about being short and sweet and to the point. Punk was a move back to the roots of rock and roll—that excitement, raw energy and getting a point of view or a story across very quickly.
The music at that time gave many of us the sense that the revolution might actually happen. Bands were critical of militarism and other issues. I recall the piece you did with Bootsy Collins using the recording of Ronald Reagan, saying he was bombing Russia (“Bonzo Goes to Washington”). Back in the ’80s, what were you thinking music can do in the world?
I actually thought that coming out of the ’60s, somehow new music had become the heartbeat of the society. Musicians very often would write songs that were commentary on life and politics. This is after the Vietnam War period and the civil rights movement.
Musicians were connected to the demonstrations and to what was going on. I thought that musicians like Bob Dylan or the Beatles were more important than John Kennedy in determining what people were thinking. So, I was excited to make music.
I didn’t actually think I’d be a professional musician. It wasn’t until I met Jonathan Richman, I went, “Wow! I can do this.”
When I met Jonathan, I understood he was doing something that nobody else in the world was doing and I knew how I was going to create parts that would go with what he was doing. The same thing was true when I joined Talking Heads. I understood that my sensibilities about music fit with theirs. I didn’t try to change the band; I tried to enhance the band.
The rhythms on Remain in Light are wonderful. It reminds me of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). I read that Brian Eno played Fela Kuti’s album Afrodisiac for David Byrne and suggested that it be the template for Remain in Light. Is that accurate?
We were all in love with Fela Kuti. But I don’t know if Brian is the one who introduced us to it. Everyone in the band loved African music, like Manu Dibango and King Sunny Adé. I’d say if there was one single African artist I fell in love with it would be Fela.
When Talking Heads recorded “I Zimbra” on the album Fear of Music, that was African-influenced. We all realized we were really excited about that track and that we wanted to do more of that.
So, when we got to doing Remain in Light, that was part of how we set it up. There was also this idea that we were not going to compose everything ahead of time. We wanted to capture things as they were created in the studio.
We had noticed on demo tapes that when we created new music, there was something innocent or special about it, but that when you played it over and over again, you lost something. You gained confidence and clarity but maybe lost innocence and tenderness. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is post Talking Heads doing “I Zimbra.” So, we were already into African music before that.
Remain in Light has the song “Listening Wind,” which always sends chills up my spine. The words bring to mind American colonialism and imperialism in a vivid way. Will you be playing that?
We will not be playing “Listening Wind.” The second half of Remain in Light is a bit more somber and if we’d been doing just theater shows in 1980, maybe we would have done the entire record, but we wanted to keep people dancing. With that said, I agree with you.
It’s an amazing song. Peter Gabriel does a great version of it as well. The song is about the development of thinking of someone perhaps becoming a terrorist. I think maybe we’d be investigated by some part of the government if we wrote that song today!
I don’t think it’s particular to American colonialism or imperialism. It’s the idea of someone being disenfranchised. The Chinese, the Arab nations and lots of countries have this ability and are doing this all over the world right now. The US held that particular position in the ’50s when so much of the rest of the industrialized world was damaged by World War II. Of course, they made massive mistakes, in my mind.
Many governments have displaced people and now millions around the world are saying, “We want our land back.”
Yes, that’s true. The difficult thing is how many generations of land stealing are we going back to? Sometimes there’s multiple land seizures. Many places have had a clash between Indigenous, nomadic people and others who arrive and establish property rights and laws. And very often it’s Indigenous people that lived off the land, usually with less density, that lose out. This obviously happened here in the United States. It’s no fun being on the receiving side of that.
Remain in Light: Concert at UCSC Quarry Amphitheater
Aug. 16 at 7pm. $60.97-$117.62. quarryamphitheater.com.
Listen to this interview with Jerry Harrison on Thursday at noon on “Transformation Highway” with John Malkin on KZSC 88.1 FM/kzsc.org.
