Harrison Remains In Light

After Fripp bailed after Fear, Belew joined to record an even more Afro-centric Remain. Belew stuck with the band and toured, cumulating in a classic performance in Rome, a glorious document of a band firing on all cylinders. The video, found on YouTube, rivals the band's 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense in greatness. Belew left the following year to front King Crimson. The Heads returned a couple years with a more conventional funkified Speaking In Tongues, the band's commercial triumph. Yet, Remain In Light contains the band's most identifiable song, "Once In A Lifetime," and remains among the band's most beloved albums, with songs like "Crosseyed and Painless" and "The Overload" sounding as vital and rich as they did 40 years ago.

I had the privilege to speak with Jerry Harrison recently, and I started by asking him how this came to be. 

Jerry Harrison: "Adrian (Belew) and I had remarked to each other when we were in the same city at the same time and had dinner. Which happens, like, once a year, and we always come back to that tour and how the filming of the show in Rome in 1980, and what a great feeling there was. We'd always say the world needs us, and we should try to emulate that." He says, "So, that's what we tried to do. We've tried to take that as our guidepost. Then we put together this wonderful 11-piece band. It's really exciting and really fun. We played a show in San Francisco at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, where we played to 55,000 people. It was just extraordinary."

NUVO: Are you surprised people are still enamored with Talking Heads' music? 

JH: "It makes me happy. Because that is what I set out to do in my music career. To have a positive influence on people's lives and to inspire them. So it makes me feel great." 

NUVO: What was it like to sprout from CBGB and that whole early 70s NYC scene? 

JH: "It was a very positive and mutually supportive scene there. In the early days, everybody respected each other because everybody was exploring a different path. I mean, like we obviously didn't sound like The Ramones, didn't sound like Television, didn't sound like Blondie, and we were the sort of the four main CBGB bands. Patti Smith, but she was a little bit ahead of us." Harrison pauses. "Because the record companies were ignoring our scene because they were so interested in things like Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes. There was a year or two that people could like develop without being interfered with by record companies on how they could make it more commercial. That allowed everybody to really put a real stamp on what their style was."

He goes a bit deeper. "We felt within the group of the four of us that when we got together, we weren't thinking about what other people were doing. At least, I sure wasn't thinking about what other bands were doing. It was like what was possible for us to do, and people brought various influences. As we toured, we all became tighter and better musicians. For instance, David's guitar playing and my guitar playing together on the tour for Fear of Music started to get some of the interplay that Tom and Richard had in Television."

NUVO: How did the ideas of Fear Of Music and Remain In Light happen? 

JH: "We always tried on those early albums to do something different with each one. So we decided we were inspired by and excited by African music. We knew that for the next record, we wanted to explore more music like that. We'd been listening to African music, particularly West African music. Then we decided to go into the studio and try to capture the first time we played something because we felt that there was a certain innocence or process of discovery. That only happened the first time you played it."

He continued. "Sometimes, when you played something right when you learned it, it got tighter, and other good things happened. But on the other hand, it got refined. Sometimes there was some kind of, I don't know, an innocence that was a little bit lost. We wanted to include that. So we deliberately went into the studio without writing songs and created on the spot together, sometimes playing ensemble and sometimes one at a time."

NUVO: So then... 

JH: "Then when we put the big band together, we just brought in all these other fantastic players to add to that. It really was just so much fun. I mean, we arrived, and we were part of an instant party. When we would go out after playing, you know, it's like it's the whole band and the crew came; we didn't need anybody else to be at the club. We were an interesting party, and people would gravitate to it because they wanted to join the party. I think that this show is a little bit like an instant party that you want to join." 

NUVO: Where did you find the band backing you on this tour? 

JH: The band is different than when we started; they were working as a group called Turkuaz. I worked with them and produced them. Then the band broke up, and the lead singer and the bass player were no longer part of the group. That actually worked out better because it made more space for Adrian and me to sing more songs. [The reconfigured band will open the show under its new name, Cool Cool Cool.] Then, Julie Slick, who plays with Adrian and his trio and plays in Adrian's Talking Heads cover band joined. She already knew all of the songs. She's also a terrific bass player. Of course, you know, because Tina was a groundbreaking woman working as a musician in a band, having Julie as our bass player makes it more similar to what the original band was to what we were being inspired by."

-Jeff Napier

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