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Summary
Summary
Two iconic bands. An unforgettable life.
One of the most dynamic groups of the '70s and '80s, Talking Heads, founded by drummer Chris Frantz, his girlfriend Tina Weymouth, and lead singer David Byrne, burst onto the music scene, playing at CBGBs, touring Europe with the Ramones, and creating hits like "Psycho Killer" and "Burning Down the House" that captured the post-baby boom generation's intense, affectless style.
In Remain in Love , Frantz writes about the beginnings of Talking Heads--their days as art students in Providence, moving to the sparse Chrystie Street loft Frantz, Weymouth, and Byrne shared where the music that defined an era was written. With never-before-seen photos and immersive vivid detail, Frantz describes life on tour, down to the meals eaten and the clothes worn--and reveals the mechanics of a long and complicated working relationship with a mercurial frontman.
At the heart of Remain in Love is Frantz's love for Weymouth: their once-in-a-lifetime connection as lovers, musicians, and bandmates, and how their creativity surged with the creation of their own band Tom Tom Club, bringing a fresh Afro-Caribbean beat to hits like "Genius of Love."
Studded with memorable places and names from the era--Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, Stephen Sprouse, Lou Reed, Brian Eno, and Debbie Harry among them-- Remain in Love is a frank and open memoir of an emblematic life in music and in love.
Author Notes
CHRIS FRANTZ is a musician, producer, and songwriter and founding member of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. He is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and hosts the radio show "Chris Frantz the Talking Head" on WPKN. He and his wife Tina live in Connecticut.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Talking Heads drummer Frantz delivers a bright memoir that reads more of an entertaining greatest-hits compilation than complete life chronicle. He discusses his early musical influences (R&B, Fela Kuti, and Kraftwerk) and how the band first came together in 1973 at the Rhode Island School of Design as a herky-jerky art-rock trio called the Artistics, with singer-songwriter David Byrne and bassist Tina Weymouth (whom Frantz later married). The band moved to Manhattan the next year and its burgeoning punk music scene, where, Frantz notes, the Talking Heads "were not afraid to appear straight." His account of their 1977 Europe tour with the Ramones, studded with set lists and bright detail, is particularly thrilling ("we were post-punk before there even was punk"). In 1991, the band broke up when Byrne left. (Frantz writes of Byrne's self-aggrandizement and suggests he is on the spectrum.) Later sections on Frantz and Tina's epochal dance-band, Tom Tom Club, and their time recording and producing in the Bahamas, are replete with fun cameos (the Clash, Robert Palmer, Grace Jones). Fun, cheerful, and eventful, this memoir has just the right amount edge. (May)
Guardian Review
A winter afternoon, Providence, Rhode Island, 1973. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz are art students and madly in love. They're working on their paintings when they're interrupted by Chris's new bandmate, an awkward dropout with homemade trousers and home-cut hair by the name of David Byrne. He wants help with a song, and so Tina offers to write a section in French, tossing in as an afterthought the shouted line: "I hate people when they're not polite". Chris chips in with lyrics too, and by the end of the afternoon they have come up with "Psycho Killer", the first defining masterpiece of one of the greatest rock bands of all time - though at the time they are still labouring under the hapless name of the Artistics. Within a year, all three were living in an unregenerated loft on Chrystie Street, in the wilds of the Lower East Side (1,700sq ft on the ninth floor, with views of the Empire State Building - yours for a cool $289 a month). Weymouth's car battery was regularly stolen and there was no heat in the building after 5pm, but the neighbourhood was a Who's Who of the avant garde. Ornette Coleman, Lauren Hutton, William Burroughs, John Giorno and Robert Mapplethorpe all lived on the Bowery, while the painter Robert Rauschenberg owned a former orphanage around the corner. Best of all, there were bands everywhere, from the Ramones to Angel and the Snake, fronted by a local beauty called Debbie Harry. After much persuasion, Weymouth agreed to learn bass. Armed with a 1963 Fender Precision, she joined the band, now renamed Talking Heads. The next element in their explosive alchemy was not a person but a place: CBGB, an unprepossessing dive bar on Bowery that stank of dog shit and roach spray, mixed with wafts of Chanel No 5. The letters stood for Country Bluegrass Blues, the owner Hilly Kristal's preferred music, but somehow the bar had become the sweaty centre of the emerging new wave and proto-punk scene. Frantz spent much of that first Manhattan winter jammed in the back room, watching Television, the Ramones and Patti Smith strut their stuff, the hairs on his neck standing up when the latter first launched into "Gloria". By spring he was ready. For their debut outing on CBGB's tiny stage, the trio eschewed classic rock star costume, dressing instead in what would become their trademark so-ordinary-it's-weird style. Byrne was in Levi's and Hush Puppies, a look that squared with his tense, hyper-earnest delivery as frontman. Frantz, like the preppie he was, wore a Brooks Brothers shirt for his shift as drummer. "I felt clean cut, but hip." "Yeah, they suck," he overheard Johnny Ramone say. "They'll make us look good." Oh Talking Heads! You want to freeze them there, or maybe two years later, by which time they had acquired Jerry Harrison on guitar, a refugee from the breakup of the Modern Lovers. They didn't look like anyone else, and they didn't sound like anyone else either, though they certainly shared genetic material with the Velvet Underground, infused with deep draughts of gospel, funk and soul. Brainy art rock you could dance to, bubbling and fraying at the edges, their huge, utopian sound at odds with the alienated, bitter lyrics. The downtown demimonde was quick to get on board. Lou Reed tried to persuade them into a bad record contract; Andy Warhol invited them up to the Factory for cookies. When they toured Europe with the Ramones, Dee Dee Ramone turned up at the airport walking with a cane, because his girlfriend Connie had just stabbed him in the backside. Although the cane turned out to be packed with painkillers that had to be forcibly disposed of before they could board, he was a sweetheart, who loved visiting castles. Johnny Ramone, on the other hand, hated the scenery and loathed the food ("'What the fuck is this?' I said, 'Johnny, that's a salad. It's lettuce and tomato.'") It was the spring of 1977, and all across Europe there were signs of punk's arrival. In Zurich, Frantz saw audiences pogoing for the first time. In Manchester the kids were wearing bin bags, and showed their appreciation by gobbing at the stage until the instruments were slick with spit (it was this unhygienic practice that gave Joe Strummer hepatitis). Back in New York, they recorded Talking Heads: 77 and by 1980 had made three more albums, all produced by Brian Eno, with whom the tongue-tied Byrne had developed an intense friendship. For 1978's More Songs About Buildings and Food, they moved to the "unhurried out island ambience" of a quiet village in the Bahamas, where the legendary Chris Blackwell of Island Records had just established his Compass Point studio. The island and its musicians played a significant role in the band's evolving polyglot sound. They had never heard most of their songs played back before, and each evening they would take the rough mix home to their bungalow and "dance and dance and dance". On the day they had signed their first record contract, Weymouth and Frantz had got engaged, marrying a few months later. Both their fathers were in the armed forces, his a general and hers an admiral. Byrne came from a more regular, suburban background, though class was by no means the only faultline in the band. It would be nice if the casually communal process that created "Psycho Killer" had been Talking Heads' ongoing MO, but it soon becomes clear that the "remain" and "love" of Frantz's title are pointed ripostes to an increasingly unhappy story. Byrne, he complains, wanted to be in charge from the off. He took credit for other band members' work, perhaps accidentally, and insisted on sole writing responsibility. According to Frantz, he claimed this was because he couldn't sing words with conviction if he hadn't written them, though the decision, Frantz observes, came after their lawyer explained the financial breakdown between music and lyrics. He tried to make Weymouth re-audition to stay in the band. He trashed a room in their favourite hotel. He even tricked the others into wearing muted colours for a big show, before appearing in "the biggest white suit anyone had ever seen", to hog the limelight. At the end of 1979's Fear of Music tour Byrne quit Talking Heads altogether, leaving a journalist in Russia to deliver the bad news to his bandmates. After he and Eno had made their own album, the beautiful, unsettling My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Frantz persuaded them both over to his loft for a low-key jam with Weymouth and Harrison, the results of which were so alluring that everyone packed up and went back to Compass Point to record Remain in Light, an album that drew even more deeply on African music and rhythms (for the song "Crosseyed and Painless", Frantz introduced Byrne to "this new thing called rap"). "We were about to take the world to church," he exults. Instead it was the divorce court. While Byrne focused on solo albums, Frantz and Weymouth drifted back to the Bahamas, worked as producers and formed their own spin-off outfit, Tom Tom Club, whose playful first song "Wordy Rappinghood" became a unexpected hit in Europe. A blue note starts to slide between Frantz's lines. Sure, he has two kids, adores his wife, buys a farm in Connecticut on the advice of his accountant, followed by a yacht to tool around the Bahamas. ("She was yar," he says, a phrase last uttered by Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story.) But he was also flat-out bingeing on cocaine, "mourning for the Talking Heads dream I'd had". The band periodically reconvened in the 80s, making four more acclaimed albums, but in 1991 Frantz answered another call from a journalist, asking once again for confirmation of Byrne's statement that the band had broken up. This time it was final. "David stopped taking our phone calls and all communication from him ceased." This is a very different book from Byrne's swarming memoir of ideas, How Music Works. Even on the far side of recovery, the ache lingers, palpable in the longing energy Frantz invests in set lists and outfits from long-ago gigs. I love Talking Heads. I danced to them at my wedding, and I want them played at my funeral too, but I'm not sure the grains of bitterness and sorrow that make their music so entrancing are quite so appetising in the raw.
Kirkus Review
A music memoir that is as much about love as music. Frantz's highly detailed, "true inside story" begins with a pleasant boyhood. Born to a military family, he moved around, went to good schools, enjoyed listening to music--especially the Beatles--played drums, and joined various bands. While attending Rhode Island School of Design, he met fellow art students Tina Weymouth, his future wife, and the aloof David Byrne, who, Frantz writes, "got into music to get out of himself." Weymouth and Frantz helped Byrne write lyrics for "Psycho Killer," and Frantz wrote "Warning Sign," which Byrne later took sole credit for. Throughout, the author offers a devastating portrait of Byrne as a back-stabbing liar who aggrandized himself while disrespecting his band mates. Their first band, the Artistics, played some venues, and they moved to New York's Bowery in 1974, where they got a regular gig playing as Talking Heads at the CBGB club, their all-time favorite venue. A keyboard player, Jerry Harrison, formerly of Modern Lovers, joined them. The star-struck Frantz began meeting people like Patti Smith, John Cale, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, and Andy Warhol. Throughout the narrative, he proves to be an inveterate name-dropper. Frantz describes the band as "pioneers" in the "Punk/New Wave/Post-Punk music" scene. In 1976, they played 76 gigs. At this time, Byrne wanted to kick Weymouth out of the band, but as the author rightly notes, her inventiveness on bass "was one reason Talking Heads sounded so unique." In 1977, they recorded their first album and toured Europe with the Ramones. Afterward, Frantz and Weymouth got married. Though not the most elegant stylist, the author offers entertaining stories about Stop Making Sense, Jonathan Demme's documentary about the band; the origins of the Tom Tom Club; Byrne's big white suit; and the day, in 1991, Byrne "sneaked out of Talking Heads." Although written in mostly colorless prose, this is a gold mine for fans of the 1970s and '80s music scene. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Mixing punk, new wave, pop, dance, and world music, Talking Heads were one of rock's great innovative bands as well as commercial and critical genre favorites in the later 1970s and 1980s. Here, drummer and cofounder Frantz recounts his own life and the band's story in a rich, entertaining memoir. Frantz met his future bandmates David Byrne and Tina Weymouth (whom he married) at art school in Rhode Island, and, along with Jerry Harrison, Talking Heads performed early gigs in New York, eventually recording albums and touring Europe with the Ramones. With an eye for detail, Frantz presents sharply drawn pictures of the nascent punk and postpunk world of New York City, life on the road, and, later, the work he and Weymouth did in their group Tom Tom Club. He blends thumbnail portraits of notables he met with tidbits about daily life that charmingly meander from food to travel. VERDICT Frantz's absorbing, vivid book will reward Talking Heads fans and those interested in the postpunk and 1980s music scene. [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/19.]--James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L., NJ
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
Preface | p. xi |
1 The Best Seat in the House | p. 1 |
2 How Did I Get Here? | p. 4 |
3 It's Got to Have Soul | p. 18 |
4 Back to Pittsburgh | p. 22 |
5 Kentucky Love | p. 30 |
6 RISD | p. 35 |
7 Martina | p. 41 |
8 Words in Papers, Words in Books | p. 45 |
9 Artistic Days Go By | p. 49 |
10 The Beginning | p. 54 |
11 Free Cocktails! | p. 62 |
12 Summer Again | p. 64 |
13 Life on the Bowery | p. 72 |
14 Early Days in New York | p. 79 |
15 Talking Heads' First Show | p. 90 |
16 The Record Companies | p. 94 |
17 The Stars of CBGB | p. 97 |
18 Lou Reed | p. 106 |
19 The Artist's Lunch with Andy Warhol | p. 110 |
20 The Talking Heads Look | p. 113 |
21 Finding Jerry | p. 115 |
22 The Spirit of 76! | p. 119 |
23 Words of Faith and Tell Me Straight | p. 125 |
24 Sundragpn Studio | p. 127 |
25 The Blizzard of '77 | p. 130 |
26 Talking Heads '77 | p. 133 |
27 On Tour with the Ramones | p. 136 |
28 Talking Heads in London | p. 158 |
29 Deeper into the UK | p. 165 |
30 Our Wedding in Washington, Kentucky | p. 181 |
31 Honeymoon Interrupted | p. 186 |
32 The Summer of Sam | p. 191 |
33 Gary | p. 195 |
34 Mini Tours | p. 198 |
35 Let's Work! | p. 202 |
36 California | p. 212 |
37 From XTC to Dire Straits | p. 220 |
38 Buildings and Food | p. 230 |
39 Planet Ciaire Has Big Hair | p. 237 |
40 Dick and Phil | p. 245 |
41 Fear of Music | p. 248 |
42 Paris to Japan | p. 254 |
43 Remain in Light | p. 259 |
44 The Big Band | p. 267 |
45 Tom Tom Club | p. 274 |
46 Genius of Love | p. 282 |
47 Burning Down the House | p. 287 |
48 Life at Compass Point | p. 297 |
49 Stop Making Sense, Please | p. 311 |
50 Little Creatures and Trite Stories | p. 318 |
51 James Brown Comes to Town | p. 330 |
52 Naked in Paris | p. 334 |
53 Lou Reed with Tom Tom Club at CBGB | p. 345 |
54 Happy Mondays | p. 349 |
55 Strangers in Paradise | p. 355 |
56 Without Adventures We Won't Have Stories | p. 360 |
Index | p. 369 |