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GRAMMYs
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Oral History: 'Peter Gabriel III' At 40 no-self-control-oral-history-peter-gabriel-iii

No Self Control: An Oral History Of 'Peter Gabriel III'

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In honor of its 40th anniversary, the Recording Academy talks to the musicians and engineers who brought the former Genesis frontman's third solo album to life
Ryan Reed
GRAMMYs
May 31, 2020 - 6:00 am

Peter Gabriel's first two albums are full of brilliant moments: the cinematic 7/8 saunter of "Solsbury Hill," the spooky art-funk atmospheres of "Exposure," the creepy-crawly grooves on "Moribund the Burgermeister." But they showcased a songwriter searching for an identity, working with famous producers (Bob Ezrin on his 1977 debut, King Crimson's Robert Fripp on his 1978 follow-up) and exploring new sounds on each song—seemingly to find one that might stick.

That moment arrived in 1980 with his third solo project, another self-titled set best-known by its lavish, Hipgnosis-designed cover art. (In this case, the image of Gabriel's half-disintegrated face earned the nickname "Melt.") Working with producer Steve Lillywhite, producer Hugh Padgham, synth player Larry Fast, drummer Jerry Marotta and a tightly knit ensemble of other players, he crafted a sonic space that, four decades later, remains distinctly his: Songs like "Games Without Frontiers," "No Self Control" and "I Don't Remember" fuse bleak, paranoid lyrics with expansive arrangements (loads of marimba and saxophone) and production techniques that somehow still sound modern.

40 years later, Gabriel's key collaborators reflect on the studio experimentation, happy accidents and deep friendships that fueled an art-rock masterpiece.

Gabriel had a background in progressive rock—a very uncool movement in the era of punk and New Wave. So Lillywhite, who cut his teeth working with hip, edgy bands like XTC and Siouxsie and the Banshees, was shocked the former Genesis frontman would be interested in collaborating.

Steve Lillywhite, producer: Up until that point, I'd worked with these New Wave bands [like XTC], and Peter was the first artist who came to me. His manager actually phoned me up and said, "Steve, Peter Gabriel is interested in you working with him." I thought it was a friend of mine joking! I thought it was someone winding me up.

I remember Peter in Genesis wearing a [fox's] head [onstage], and that was really not cool. And, of course, we all knew he was a public school boy, which made it not very Joe Strummer. [Laughs.] I'd produced XTC's [1979 album] Drums and Wires [with Hugh Padgham as engineer]. Peter heard "Making Plans for Nigel" or something and liked what he heard.

Hugh Padgham, engineer: Steve and I had really hit it off and become friendly. [Drums and Wires] was very well critiqued, and I think that's where Peter had heard of us, particularly Steve. Peter's manager at that time was Gail Colson, and she got ahold of Steve, and Steve said to me, "You won't believe it—I've been asked if I'm interested in working with Peter Gabriel. What do you reckon?" I was a huge Genesis fan. I had some friends who went to the same school as Peter, Charterhouse. The original drummer in Genesis, John Silver, went to the public school I went to. We all sort of thought Genesis was our own band in a way. For me to end up with Peter—and after that end up working with Phil Collins and Genesis—I was, as you can imagine, like a pig in shit. [Laughs.]

Steve accepted the offer, and we were all very excited. We started off recording it using a mobile recording studio owned by Virgin Records called the Manor Mobile. At that point, the Townhouse [studio, where Padgham was house engineer] was brand new. We went down to Ashcombe House, where Peter lived near Bath, England and started the recording there with this mobile truck. Ashcombe had a barn that we did the recording in. I remember it was muddy and rainy. It's a hazy memory, but that must have been the first place I met Peter.

Gabriel's production team was, indeed, brand new—as were some of the album's core musicians (including guitarist David Rhodes, who became a staple of Gabriel's future creative team). But two of the record's most essential performers, synthesizer/processing wizard Larry Fast and drummer Jerry Marotta, were already members of his touring and studio band.

Jerry Marotta, drummer: Peter was a band guy. He'd been in Genesis. I don't think he had much experience with musicians. I never figured out [why Gabriel recruited him]—maybe [bassist/Chapman Stick player] Tony Levin had something to do with it. I don't think it mattered once we got past the first date stage. We just got along well, and it was a good working situation.

Larry Fast, synthesizer player: We'd already encountered each other way back, going back to the early Genesis tours. I did have the first two Synergy [solo] albums under my belt, and those were the days when an electronic instrumental album could chart pretty high as well. [Laughs.] Obviously Peter is more interested in creativity and artistic sentiments than somebody who did well on the charts. We had some overlaps: The label I was signed to, Jem Records, was very instrumental in breaking Genesis in the U.S. through import records. They were fundamentally important to making sure the band got heard because the distributing label Charisma had early on—I don't think they knew what to do with the band. That led to meeting not only with the band members and getting to know Peter a bit, but also the management group for Hit and Run, which would be handling Peter in his solo career as well as Genesis when he left the band. I had a lot of encounters there. I was already beginning to tour as an adjunct member of [prog-rock band] Nektar at that point.

Gabriel's core studio team also included bassist John Giblin (subbing in for regular low-end master, Tony Levin, who was busy filming the Paul Simon movie One-Trick Pony), percussionist Morris Pert and his old Genesis bandmate Phil Collins, who played drums on a few cuts. (More on that later.) And for Gabriel, a dark and innovative sonic vision was starting to crystalize around these versatile players.

Fast: Some of it is an exploration of what the possibilities might be, but he'd explored the ground already with his first two albums. They were really good records in their own way, but there were [other] ideas I heard Peter speak about: We sat down before the first album, and we had a nice meal and talked through a lot of conceptual possibilities. One of the things he mentioned was the idea of no cymbals, which I thought was terrific. It's exactly the way I'd been working in electronic music, particularly in the pre-sampling days. There were no cymbals, and they eat up a lot of sonic space. Peter had speaking about wanting to do that on the first album, but it didn't materialize. I suppose somewhere in conversations that came up and was nixed. Moving on to album two, I don't know if he brought it up again, but same deal: another strong-minded producer in Robert Fripp with a sound of his own. Cymbals were there.

Both Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham were perhaps a little down lower in the hierarchy than a Robert Fripp or a Bob Ezrin, and Peter had had some success under his belt, and they were creative enough to say, "He's the artist. He's the creative one. Maybe we should try some of this." It stuck. And it was a great idea.

Lillywhite: Peter did not want to be complacent on this album. When we met, I said, "What sort of sound do you want on this album?" Right away, he was like, "I don't want cymbals." For me, it was like, "Oh, my god." I'd been starting to experiment with no cymbals on songs. But sometimes I would overdub cymbals because of the sounds I was looking for.

Padgham: I remember distinctly that was rule number one from the beginning: There was gonna be no cymbals on the record. I can't remember any other particular rules. From a rock point of view and a drummer's point of view, it's like cutting off half their arms to ask a drummer not to play cymbals or hi-hats. It was probably quite difficult.

Phil [Collins, who appears on a few songs] sort of took it very much in his stride. Phil is mister fanatically keen, especially in those days. I think Jerry probably found it harder. If I remember, we set up fake cymbals or bits of cardboard or something just so it didn't appear so weird to him.

Marotta: It took me awhile to get used to the fact that I couldn't hit a cymbal when I played something. At the very most, I may have thought, "This is nuts and it's not gonna work." Take the cymbals away and in time, someone will see, "We've gotta put some cymbals back up." But I became very comfortable with that very quickly. I don't remember the moment I got it, but I just got it. I'm obsessive-compulsive, and I have an addictive personality, so if I start doing something, I'm doing it all the time.

I didn't invent that [idea], but I sure did it more and more—to the point where people would get weirded out [in sessions]. When I was playing on other people's records, they'd be like, "Hey man, do you think you can hit a cymbal occasionally?" But who says you have to crash a cymbal at the end of every fill or going into the chorus? Who came up with that concept?

A vibe was emerging: heavy rhythms, experimental effects, heavily processed synthesizers, dark lyrical imagery. But Gabriel, a very un-prolific songwriter, didn't have all his songs finished when the sessions began.   

Fast: Most of the songs were somewhat defined, at least the instrumental tracks, and that goes back to the first album. The working mode would be that we'd go into the studio for the day, and all the musicians would gather in a little room off the main studio, and Peter would sit down at the piano with all of us clustered around with clipboards and notebooks and music paper on our laps and play through what the song was going to be. Often the lyrics weren't completely formed yet, but he'd know where he wanted the chorus, what the melody was going to be, but he was working out the poetry of the song in some cases. That didn't really change. The only difference, by the third album, Peter had already created the drum machine and quick multi-track eversions of these things on cassette. I'd come over for the rhythm tracks after the other guys were already cutting them, and I already had a cassette of about 14 or 16 potential songs for the record. I was familiar with what they'd be, but they'd be recut with the musicians to create the backbone or spine of the song.

There were a couple [songs] that were the beginning of Peter using a drum box. That was something I had. It was a small synthesizer kit company called PAiA, and that was actually owned and founded by a friend of mine who's another synthesizer designer. They had a kit that, to the best of my knowledge, was the first programmable drum box. All the ones prior to that, they were really intended for lounge music and things, so there would be a button you'd push for a cha-cha rhythm or a foxtrot rhythm. It was an accompanist box. Some of them were so corny and square that they were kinda hip in their own way. But [programmable beats] didn't exist until this little PAiA box.

They were electronically generated drum sounds, but it had computer memory in it. You'd push a button and get the metronome tick, and you'd play your drum part and hit the stop button, and it would loop it and remember the drum pattern. It was very small—about the size of a cigar box—and inexpensive. I got one just to play with during the scened album, and Peter became aware of it around the time the second album was finished. He was enthralled with it. [Fast reached out to the company and had them custom-build one for Gabriel.] I remember bringing it to Peter, and about six or eight months later, when the third album cassette tracks were showing up, there was the box used as the spine of a lot of tracks. For Peter, it was a real creative breakthrough because things started being based more on the rhythm.

After their early sessions in Bath, the crew moved into the residential Townhouse studio in London, where their experiments—encouraged and often facilitated by the team of Lillywhite, Padgham and Fast—continued through the album's completion.

Padgham: We were trying to be really experimental. One of the staff had just had a baby or something, and she brought it in one day to show off to everybody. And we said, "Can we borrow your baby for a bit?" We brought the baby in the studio, and it started crying because it was missing its mum, and we were recording it. We slowed the tape down so that it sounded like an old man crying. Then we distorted it and stuff like that. We were doing weird, experimental shit.

Fast: What was really important with Steve and Hugh is they could facilitate Peter's ideas—they could gently point out, as many of us would when something wasn't so practical. But sometimes radical thinking: It's not like doing surgery; it's making records. So why not try it? Why not try to be creative? They gave Peter the space to be Peter. That was so important, and they were also able to help him make an idea even better. The third one was where Peter really hit his stride.

Lillywhite: Peter was enjoying the energy of what we were doing. If we took it to five, he'd say, "No, push it to 10." It was a real art school project.

Of course, the most iconic experiments—the gated drum sound on "Intruder"—helps the album endure as what Lillywhite calls a "sonic flagpole."

The short version: Studio Two at the Townhouse featured a recording console from a new company, Solid State Logic (or SSL), offering compressors and noise gates on every channel. They also featured a "reverse talkback mic," which allowed easier communication between the engineers/producers in the control room and the musicians in the live room. One day, Padgham accidentally—or perhaps by fate—opened the talkback mic at the precise moment Collins was tuning his drums before a session. The sound—a fast shutdown of the drum's natural decay—offered a distinct punch that eventually became one of the defining production techniques of the 1980s. Collins famously utilized the sound on his 1981 solo debut, Face Value, which Padgham engineered and co-produced.

Padgham: We heard this incredible sound suddenly coming through our loud speakers in the control room. The reverse talkback mic circuit had a very, very heavy compressor on it. The effect was remarkable on the sound of the drum that came through. I think we were all in the control room together: Peter, Steve, me, Larry Fast probably, and whoever else. And everybody just went, "Wow, that's bloody incredible!"

Fast: I missed school that day. [Laughs.]

Unfortunately, the reverse talkback mic was rooted to the monitors, not the console, meaning there was no way of recording this jarring sound. Padgham came to the rescue, having the studio's maintenance engineers figure out a workaround in the console.

Padgham: Just for kicks, I went, "Let's see if we can compress it even more." The same button that turned the compressor on effectively turned the noise gate on as well. The noise gate under a certain threshold would cut it off before the decay finished. That's where we all went "wow" again where the sound suddenly shut off. You had this enormous sound, and suddenly it shut off to nothing.

Lillywhite: When the drummer was drumming and we'd put on the talkback mic to talk to him while he was still drumming, it sounded like the best drum sound ever because of the compression on the talkback mic. We got Hugh to plug that talkback mic into the desk. Like I said, if we said we wanted to take it to five, Peter would say, "Take it to 10."

Padgham: Phil came up with a drum part that would enable us to hear the sound shutting off as he was playing. If you play something too quickly, the noise gate never had time to shut off. It would just be open the whole time. In those days, because we didn't have any looping—nothing was digital at all. The only way of him playing in time so it would consistently shut off was to play to a metronome—a good, old-fashioned metronome. We found a tempo that worked, put it into Phil's headphones, he played the drum pattern that worked with all the closing noise gates for about seven or eight minutes, and Peter wrote the song around it.

Lillywhite: In those days, Phil was as good a drummer as anyone in the world. The fact that he can do something like "Intruder," which is so metronomic. That's what I love about Phil as a drummer. There are some great drummers in the world: [Dave Matthews Band's] Carter Beauford is a fantastic drummer, but there's one thing Carter can't do: Carter cannot be Ringo, whereas Phil Collins can be Carter Beauford but also Ringo.

Padgham: It's basically a story of happy accidents. Steve was there, Phil was there, Peter was there. We all sort of took the credit for it, I suppose. It doesn't matter who invented it or didn't invent [the sound].

One of the record's most rewarding experiments came on the dynamic, unnerving "No Self Control," which they built by subtraction rather than addition. The song featured a winding arrangement—inspired in part by Steve Reich—full of eerie Kate Bush backing vocals, steady layers of marimba and highly processed vocals.

Lillywhite: That song originally had drums and everything—every sound you hear at any point—on the multi-track all the way through. When we mixed it, we sculpted it. It was like, "Let's take as much out as we can to make it sound good at the beginning." So we took everything out and left just the marimba and Phil Collins' live bass drum, which we gated so you couldn't hear the rest of the drum kit. [Laughs.] We did about 20 or 30 seconds of the song at a time, with Hugh Padgham at the back of the control room with his headphones on, editing it to the bit before. But we never listened to it—we just trusted him that he did the edit right. I sat at the mixing desk getting the next bit, going, "OK, what should we do now? Let's do this. Let's bring in that." I remember we spent the whole night doing the mix. For the big playback at the end, we brought people in from outside because we knew we had something great. It was like a sculpture. The whole time we recorded it, it had been this big, solid rock. It absolutely came to its beauty in the mix. It was fantastic. Everyone who listened to it was like, "Oh, my god." That was the song everyone loved, loved, loved at the time.

Many of the song's interesting effects were created using the "$9.95" speaker, dubbed as such by the band because Fast purchased it for that price at Radio Shack.

Fast: Radio Shack made a little box—it was basically a transistor radio that had no tuner in it. So it was just a little tiny speaker, a little nine-volt battery, a volume control and an input jack. I could just plug that into anywhere on the modular synth, turn it on quietly in the control room and put it up to one ear like a single-sided headset. I would also use it to set my delay times, reverb depths and other things while waiting to do an overdub so I wouldn't be wasting time. Studio time was expensive! I was doing some processing on Peter's vocals on something, and I had it plugged into the output of something, and Peter's vocals were coming in through a Moog filter or something. They said, "What do you got?" I turned it up, and it was all distorted and horrible-sounding. Peter went, "I love that! Let's use that! Let's put a microphone on it!" I said, "We'll plug it into the board and clean it all up.' He went, "No, no, no!"

Lillywhite: Every single sound on "No Self Control" at the very beginning is the $9.95. Larry used to sit at the back of the control room, working on sounds. He would say, "Check this out, guys." We'd listen to it though the speaker and go, "That's good." Then we'd plug it into the mixing desk, and it sounded average and boring. It was this plastic distortion. On "No Self Control," Peter held the $9.95 up to his mouth, him moving his mouth [makes wah-wah noise] with a microphone there. It was a bit like a poor man's Peter Frampton or something. Peter was holding the thing there, and we retreated it. All the [mouth sounds] is the $9.95. It was the cheapest speaker you've ever heard, but it had this beautiful analog distortion just from the plastic of the speaker.

Fast: We used it a lot. It got really beat up. It was in a little plastic case that fell on the floor a bunch of times. It was held together with gaffer tape. I have it preserved—it's like an archived item. It doesn't get used anymore. I bought another one after that album because the other one was getting too beat up. We processed vocals, synth lines, even drum things. It was exactly like that same thing with the cymbals: How do we conserve sonic space while creating a big sound?

GRAMMYs

Pictured: Fairlight CMI co-developer Peter Vogel in the Manor Mobile with the prototype of the digital synthesizer/sampler used on 'PG III.'
Photo courtesy of Larry Fast

The third Gabriel album didn't have any singles in the commercial stratosphere of "Sledgehammer," but it did spawn a few minor hits, including the chilly, electronic "Jeux San Frontieres," which landed at Number Four on the U.K. charts. That song also featured a memorable backing vocal ("Jeux sans frontières": the song title in French) from a kindred creative spirit, Kate Bush.

Fast: It's based on the "Jeux San Frontieres" TV show, this multi-national game show competition. Instead of war from these various countries, many of which had been combatants during WWII, they would just have games for national pride. So they're "games without frontiers and war without tears." It all factors in. But Peter was drawing these analogies between the shooting wars and the kind of games that are in the words.

I was reading a book in the studio: Michael Herr's Dispatches, which was one of the first reexaminations of how ugly the Vietnam War had been. Peter was fascinated by it, and I don't know if he bought a copy or borrowed my copy, but a couple of the images showed up. One of the most vivid ones was an American G.I. pissing on a dead Vietnamese soldier. And it was a reflection of, "What have we become as Americans that that could happen?" That image found its way into the lyrics, except Peter used "goons in the jungle" instead of [the derogatory] "'g**ks' in the jungle."

As usual, the band went nuts on the recording: jamming the groove for minutes longer than the final version, bashing on instruments, doubling the tape speed of the final section.

Marotta: We kind of played the song and then got into a jam, and that jam went on. It went on to a point where the song was over and we were just having fun. I do remember smashing a milk bottle and either me or Steve Lillywhite wandering around the room screaming and breaking things with a microphone in our hands.

Fast: I did a panel appearance at the Audio Engineering Society Convention with Wendy Carlos, and we were talking about recording. One of the things she'd come up with for [her 1968 album] Switched on Bach and some of the earlier albums was a technique called "hocketing," which took a complex line and exploded it into a lot of separate sonic sounds and played separately and re-combined for a much richer sound that kept the listener's interest. I thought, "If that worked for Mozart and Bach and worked for Haydn," I wonder if we can apply that to something Peter's got?" I broke out a few of the parts in a similar manner on a number of turnaround points. For a simple song, it has a lot of synthesizer overdubs that you wouldn't normally think would be done. It's very fussy and precise—it's more of the way I built electronic records than the way rock records get recorded. But it worked. And he liked it, which was the most gratifying part.

Lillywhite: By the time we finished the album, "Games Without Frontiers" was more like, [groans]. It was like, "We get it. OK, Peter. It's got a chant, and a cute lyric and Kate Bush," but the weirder ones for me resonate with me.

Fast: Everybody was falling all over [Kate Bush]. [Laughs.] I don't know if it was Steve or Hugh—of course, they were huge fans—but it was a huge race getting out to the control room to see who would get there first to adjust her microphones or fix her headphones. She came with at least one of her brothers, sort of her family bodyguards. She was just charming, just wonderful. She did exactly what everyone hoped we'd come up with.

Padgham: I think everybody fancied her really, particularly Peter. I ended up doing some stuff with her on [Bush's 1982 album] The Dreaming. Anyone involved in the sound of Peter's album she wanted as well. She was as much star-struck by him as he was with her. She was literally, musically speaking after that, trying to become the female version of Peter Gabriel, I think.

She was great. She's pretty crazy, as well. She just used to smoke spliff—joints—the whole time. She probably didn't on our sessions, but when I worked with her afterward, I was amazed that anything got done, particularly. She was so sweet, and she had this little tiny voice like this [imitates pixie voice].

Though Lillywhite was nominally the producer and Padgham nominally the engineer, they took an all-hands-on-deck approach to record-making. But it was still a crucial album (and "Games Without Frontiers" a crucial song) for Lillywhite's personal confidence, proving that—even at the young age of 23 or 24—he could earn the respect of a full studio team.

Lillywhite: There was a real person moment on this involving Robert Fripp. Kate Bush is in the studio singing on "Games Without Frontiers," and Robert Fripp is in the control room because he'd come to do a guitar overdub on something. He's gone from producer to session guitarist, but if you know anything about Robert Fripp, he's very confident and full of himself. He's like the alpha male in the room. Kate's doing "Jeux sans frontières," but it doesn't sound great, so I'm coaching her to get the vocal how I want it to be. I hear this voice from the back of the control room, saying, "I'm sure she's got it right by now." I'm shaking inside. This is a real play by him because he's been the producer. I just completely ignored him, pressed the button and said, "Can you try that again please?" It was just a fleeting moment, and no one knows about this except for me. But as a producer, it was a pivotal moment in me keeping to my guns and getting what I wanted.

"I Don't Remember," the album's fourth single, pre-dated the recording sessions and was played on Gabriel's previous tour. It's the album's only appearance from Levin, who dominates the track with his monster Chapman Stick, a string instrument that allows players to simultaneously perform bass lines, chords and melodic lines. (On this track, Levin sticks to the low-end.) It's also one of two tracks featuring XTC guitarist Dave Gregory, who describes himself as a "Genesis fanboy" who was beyond intimidated by the bucket list studio experience.

Dave Gregory, guitarist: The date was October 16, 1979. I remember that was date was printed on my memory. I was in awe of just being in the presence of this man I'd admired for a long, long time. He couldn't have been nicer—a decent man, no pretension about him at all. After we'd gotten over the initial embarrassment and handshakes and cups of tea and basic chit-chat, we got down to to work. He said, "Here's the song I'm having trouble with. I've had a couple guitar players in here, but they've not quite nailed the song I'm looking for." He said, "I'm wondering if we could work on an alternative tuning." The big guitar riff just goes "bang bang bang" and it's this downbeat with a long, ringing chord. I listened to it and thought, "Getting power out of that chord will probably require an open tuning."

We sat around the piano, and I said, "Can you show me the notes you played, and I can see if it's possible to tune the guitar to it?" Unfortunately, it was a six-note chord, and it meant that I had to retune the guitar to the most bizarre tuning alteration I've ever used. I'm winding away, thinking, "Oh, no. This [string] is going to pop at any time." This was a test for the guitar, but it coped OK. I didn't break any strings. When the part modulated halfway through the verse, it was just a simple matter of moving my thumb and two fingers up three frets. It still worked.

GRAMMYs

Pictured: Guitar tuning that Dave Gregory used on "I Don't Remember"
Photo courtesy of Dave Gregory

It was just a couple of hours. I was nervous as hell, as you can imagine. The studio assistants, one of whom who was a German lady named Marlis Dunklaus, was very helpful and reassuring. She could tell I was nervous. We had the amp set up in the stone room, which is where Phil Collins' famous first album was recorded. I was sitting there next to this amplifier, listening to the headphones as the track started. All that was on there was a guide vocal, Jerry Marotta's drums, Tony Levin's Stick, and some keyboard. That was it. It was very, very sparse, but it sounded amazing, just those basic elements. I thought, "I'm gonna f**k this up if I play over this. This is too good. What am I doing here?" [Laughs.] It took a few passes. It wasn't a first-take miracle by any means. I've listened to the song many times since then and thought, "I could have done that so much better if I hadn't been so nervous." There are a few wobbly moments that aren't quite in the pocket. I'd only been a professional musician for six months, and it was a bit intimidating.

Gregory also played a simple part on "Family Snapshot," one of the album's most progressive, elaborately arranged tunes, featuring a scene-stealing solo from saxophonist Dick Morrissey.

Fast: The whole back half of the song was part of an instrumental that grew out of soundcheck jams on the second album's tour. But it wasn't really a song. It didn't firm up until the tour and the third album's writing.

Marotta: It's got that epic [quality]. We were playing it, and the sections were kind of there, but we didn't know where to put them. As we played them, I had the idea, "Let's start here, go here." We played that, and Peter liked it. That solidified it.

Gregory: He said, "I'll play you the part on piano." I just want some electric rhythm guitar in the second verse. I had my notes there and wrote the changes down. They ran the track, and I played along, but I thought, "Oh, my god. Something's wrong. What's happened?" I said, "Sorry, guys, this sound's like it's in a different key." They all remembered, because they hadn't revised the track for a number of weeks, that they'd changed the key so it suited his voice better.

We did start work on a third song, "Bully for You." He said, "I haven't done much of this yet, but see what you can do with it." I was kind of tired—it was late afternoon. I was sort of playing along to what they had on tape and wasn't getting very far. It required a bit more thought because it wasn't straight-ahead chords. Then the phone rang, and it was XTC's manager, who said, "David, don't go back to Swindon tonight. We're been booked for "Top Of The Pops" tomorrow. We'll meet you at the hotel [in London] and go to the BBC tomorrow." My fate was decided. They were talking about coming back in the morning to work on this song. I had to say, "Sorry, guys. We're promoting 'Making Plans for Nigel,' and I've got to do the most important pop show on British television." I couldn't believe I was turning down a studio opportunity with Peter Gabriel to do the television show "Top Of The Pops." I must have arrived! This time last year I was driving a van around Bristol delivering mail, and now this!

GRAMMYs

Pictured: [From left to right] Hugh Padgham, Steve Lillywhite, Peter Gabriel and Atlantic A&R John David Kalodner at Townhouse Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London
Photo courtesy of Larry Fast

The team recruited Paul Weller, guitarist of mod/punk band the Jam, to record a guitar track for "And Through the Wire," one of the album's most straightforward, rock-flavored moments.

Padgham: He was a sort of angry young man. I remember it was very funny when we asked him to come do a session. In the Townhouse, there were two studios, and the Jam was in studio one when we were in studio two. He came down to the session, but he didn't have a guitar. He'd never done a session, but he didn't think he had to bring a guitar! He turned up, and there were no guitars around.

Lillywhite: With "And Through the Wire," one of the problems is that the guitar was overdubbed and wasn't played with the band. It has this sort of overdubbed thing to it—it's not in the DNA of the recording. A lot of the electric guitar that David Rhodes did is fantastic—the "Intruder" acoustic against those drums, the long-note sustained stuff in "Biko" and "Games Without Frontiers." But the worst thing about [the album] is the rock guitar. I'm sorry to say. "And Through the Wire" and "Not One of Us" don't have that classic, mysterious thing. Rock music probably needs cymbals. Maybe that's why there's something a little disconcerting about them.

Penultimate track "Lead a Normal Life" is the farthest vibe imaginable from "rock." Over a chiming piano line and stark marimba riff, Gabriel channels the isolation one might experience in a mental hospital. 

Fast: "Lead a Normal Life" was built by subtracting things until there was virtually nothing left but the essence of the song: a single piano line and a little wispiness. If you heard the original rhythm track, you'd recognize it was the same song melodically, but it's hard to believe the transformation.

There was a big band recording. I don't remember if everybody was live on it, but it was a huge Phil Collins drum [piece], with Morris Pert on percussion, a full bassline. Linearly, it's all there. I have reference mixes over the four or five months that this album was going, and each one becomes more sparse. It's the exact opposite of what most bands do, and that's one of those creative Peter things that was facilitated by the team around him—by Hugh and Steve and me throwing in my ideas. Peter kind of led the transition: "What would it sound like if we took this out?" Until there was almost nothing left.

Lillywhite: "Lead a Normal Life": Oh, my god! Incredible. The second U2 album had the song "October" on it, and it has a similar sort of feel. It really gets you, that stark thing. When I listen to this, it's like I'm in a mental hospital. That's what you want from a record, isn't it? To paint a picture that's just mind-blowing.

Marotta: That was fun to play live because the idea was to annoy the audience by playing that little riff [hums melody] over and over again to make people uncomfortable.

And the album ends with the anthemic "Biko," a sort of eulogy for the South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko, who died in police custody in 1977. The arrangement is thrillingly minimal, each note and beat vibrating with emotion — from the chanted choruses to Fast's climactic solo on "synthesized bagpipes."

Lillywhite: I don't know whether the bagpipes are such an ethnic sound for Africa. It is [a strange combination], but maybe we couldn't think of a better sound to do those sort of pads.

Fast: We had to reverse-engineer the story on that. As it turned out, the drone was a through-piece along with the drums, and there was the big surdo drums and electronic pattern on the PAiA that formed the core of the song. But it had these breaks where there was nothing there. I was playing around with melodic structures over a drone. In the patches, I was working with these narrow-width pulse waves, and it started sounding like a bagpipe if I detuned it enough with harmonizers and things. We said, "That sounds pretty good," and then we tried to figure out how it tied in to this story about Stephen Biko and South Africa. After a little bit of research, it turned out that during the Boer War in South Africa between the British Colonial, Dutch and German forces, one of the Scottish military units was very instrumental. So we went, "OK, there's our hook!" So we had a historical legitimacy to using a bagpipe sound other than "That works musically."

Gabriel isn't always an "easy" collaborator. His slow, often tedious process of analysis and reflection doesn't appeal to everyone. But for the main contributors on his third LP, it's part of the magic that makes him tick.

Marotta: We were very close-knit, kind of a family dynamic. We were around each other a lot, and it could get frustrating. Everybody loved Peter and would do anything for Peter. Everybody at some point wanted to kill Peter. He'd have these ideas he'd want to do, and the last thing you'd want to say to is "You can't do that" because that's exactly the thing he'll want to do. But in a nice way, not in a nasty way. I remember we played a big festival in France, like 180,000 people. And they said, "Whatever you do, don't throw yourself into the audience because from the moment you're in the audience and they're passing you around, we may never see you again. Just don't do that." And, of course, he threw himself into the audience.

Fast: He's one of the few artists where I learned things from him. There are a lot of talented people I've worked with over the years. They'd usually bring me in to layer a little extra something into what they're already doing. But with Peter, it was challenging—learning how to approach things differently, think of things in an unconventional way. He's really good at that, and that's why he's the talent that he is.

Lillywhite: It was a coming-of-age for me as a producer.

Padgham: It was a magical time. It freaks me out that it was 40 years ago.

Gregory: After we'd finished for the afternoon [after his session], we all went to the canteen and had dinner. We had a nice chat around the dinner table, and the subject of touring internationally came up—passports and all that. Someone said, "What occupation have you got on your passport?" Peter said, "I think mine says 'musician,' but when I renew it, I'm going to change that to 'humanist.'" I thought, "That's very interesting because that's exactly who he is." He's such a decent man. They say, "Don't meet your heroes," and that's good advice. But with Peter Gabriel, you make an exception.

Yesterday Once More (Twice Over): An Oral History Of The 1994 Carpenters Tribute Album, 'If I Were A Carpenter'

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John Lennon in 1970

John Lennon in 1970

 

Photo: Chris Walter/WireImage

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'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' At 50 john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-50-year-anniversary

Now That I Showed You What I Been Through: 50 Years Of 'John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'

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After The Beatles' split and before 'Imagine,' Lennon recorded a jarring audio confessional that remains indelible in 2020
Ana Leorne
GRAMMYs
Dec 29, 2020 - 4:25 pm

John Lennon asked The Beatles for a "divorce," and he got his wish. After the group's breakup in 1970, quarreling and competition were the norm between himself, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. In Lennon's case, this tension added to a slightly tainted reputation derived from the public's disappointment upon The Beatles' end, his unpopular marriage to Yoko Ono and an artistic dispersion. The latter resulted from an ongoing quest to find his spot in a world he'd grown frustrated with yet to which he desperately wanted to belong. As evidenced by his songs and remarks, Lennon's efforts to find himself often left him feeling empty, and he regularly lacked unconditional trust or engagement.

Standing in the way of this self-discovery process was an inability to resolve past traumas, which was one of the main reasons why Lennon decided to undergo Arthur Janov's primal scream program. He had the apparent goal of finally dealing with childhood wounds related to his mother's death and feelings of rejection linked to his father's absence. But the treatment also addressed the recent pain of losing his other family—the one Lennon had shared a life with for the past decade. In short, how could he go forward when he didn't know which way he was facing?

Lennon channeled all this into his debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which turns 50 this month. (December 2020 also marks the 40th anniversary of his murder.) Released as a companion to Ono's concurrent solo debut, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's album was therapy in its purest form: raw and self-referential. This intimacy was also apparent in the recording process: Apart from Lennon and Ono, the latter of whom is credited on the album sleeve for contributing "wind," the only other musicians were Starr and bassist Klaus Voormann, along with former Beatles roadie Mal Evans (for "tea and sympathy"), pianist Billy Preston and Phil Spector, who played piano on "Love" and "God," respectively.

When a cycle doesn't end fast enough, there's often a tendency to accelerate it, and Lennon was a man on a mission. The previous year, Lennon had been creatively disengaged from the Let It Be sessions and generally disapproving of the approach McCartney and producer George Martin wanted for Abbey Road, as he attempted to destroy the entity he helped create. This self-sabotaging process, which coincided with his dangerous affair with heroin, often translated into a deafening silence that Beatles scholar Stephanie Piotrowski describes in her Ph.D. dissertation as "part of Lennon's agenda to break The Beatles' myth."

But silence wasn't his sole strategy. It progressively became apparent throughout his solo career—culminating with his GRAMMY-winning final album with Ono, Double Fantasy (1980)—that Ono was his new partner-in-crime in McCartney's stead. For anyone unable to take a hint, in September 1969, he privately told the other three Beatles he was leaving the group. Their financial manager, Allen Klein, asked them to keep this development a secret for as long as possible, fearing the news would undermine sales of the forthcoming album, Let It Be (1970), which was taking forever to mix and master. 

Read: History Of: Walk To London's Famed Abbey Road Studios With The Beatles

Lennon's apparent hurry to break free makes it odd that Plastic Ono Band only came out in December 1970, rendering him the last Beatle to release a proper debut album. (This, of course, if we don't count three previous experimental albums with Ono: Two Virgins, in 1968, and Life With The Lions and Wedding Album, both in 1969. And don't forget the hastily put-together Live Peace In Toronto 1969, which partly consisted of early rock covers and featured Ono, guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Voormann and drummer Alan White.)

Spector was supposed to be producing, but he was missing in action when the sessions began, leading Lennon to publish a full-page ad in Billboard saying, "Phil! John is ready this weekend." His relative absence ended up being a blessing in disguise: Spector's trademark "Wall of Sound" style probably wouldn't have suited the album's ethos. Lennon and Ono's minimalist approach matched the content better, allowing the emotional outpouring to sound adequately barer. 

Revolving around themes of healing, surrender and replacement, Plastic Ono Band is a prime example of Lennon's songwriting particularities. These include his remarkable ability to craft instant hooks, focus on the lyrical element and rely on subjectivity in storytelling, which contrasted with McCartney's general preference for third-person points of view. 

Always with a way with words, Lennon refrained from complicating his message, choosing direct statements ("Hold On," "Look At Me") over the elusive metaphors and cryptic references he often returned to during The Beatles' later years. This aspect made the album vaguely echo his mid-'60s confessional period that produced "Help!" and "In My Life," transpiring as a matured reflection of what it felt like to feel lost in the eye of the hurricane.

For all its sincerity and the psychological commitment that it symbolized to Lennon,

the album encountered a mixed reception at best; it was also quickly eclipsed by the release of Imagine nine months later, in 1971. Similar to what had happened with McCartney's self-titled debut, some critics accused John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band of being a product of self-preoccupation and void egotism. This harsh perception mostly came from the absurdly high expectations following The Beatles' breakup. 

"This is the album of a man of black bile," Geoffrey Cannon declared in a 1970 review for The Guardian. "Lennon's album makes a deep impression, if more on him than us … This is declamation, not music. It's not about freedom and love, but madness and pain."

Read: The Beatles Take Aim With 1966's 'Revolver': For The Record 

Even though Imagine eventually became Lennon's indisputable legacy—the title track was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 1999, seven years after Lennon's posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award—Plastic Ono Band was still properly cherished. Fans embraced its relatability. It's easier to identify with one's idol opening up about their problems of love and loss than hearing them discuss overly abstract concepts, the renunciatory "God" and tender "Love" being exceptions.

But it also helped that the album didn't become as heavy an institution as Imagine did. Less over(ab)used by pop culture and more grounded in both content and form, Plastic Ono Band felt more human and accessible, despite coming from the myth-ridden colossus called John Lennon.

In September 1980, three months before his death, Lennon gave an extensive interview to David Sheff for Playboy magazine. Sheff asked what Ono had done for him. "She showed me the possibility of the alternative," Lennon replied. "'You don't have to do this.' 'I don't? Really? But-but-but-but-but...'" Although he was referring to his temporary retirement from music to dedicate himself to being a house husband fully, one could see Plastic Ono Band as the dénouement of a similar epiphany 10 years prior. It kick-started a new life Lennon knew would be radically different from everything he had previously experienced.

In addition to representing a threshold moment for Lennon, the album underwent a mutation with regard to its critical reception. Over the decades, Plastic Ono Band received praise that was anything but a given at its release. In 2020, the album ranked at No. 85 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list. "Lennon's [...] pure, raw core of confession [...] is years ahead of punk," the list's album entry reads. 

However, perhaps Lennon acerbically summed it up best in his Rolling Stone interview with four words that remain jarring to read: "The Beatles was nothing."

It's Not Always Going To Be This Grey: George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50

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George Harrison c.1970/1971

George Harrison c.1970/1971

Photo: GAB Archive/Redferns

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George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50 george-harrison-all-things-must-pass-50-year-anniversary

It's Not Always Going To Be This Grey: George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' At 50

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On the 50th anniversary of the chart-topping, GRAMMY-nominated album, GRAMMY.com explores all the reasons why 'All Things Must Pass' remains an important landmark in George Harrison's legacy and his most enduring solo testimony
Ana Leorne
GRAMMYs
Nov 27, 2020 - 7:33 am

In 1970, Let It Be, the documentary chronicling The Beatles' final studio album of the same name, hit theaters worldwide, providing a blunt answer to the whys and the hows for those who might still be in denial about the group's inevitable separation. The film unmercifully exposed numerous cracks in their interpersonal relationships, only letting us see fragments of what had once been a cohesive, seemingly indivisible unit. Although incredibly frustrating to many fans, this portrayal proved crucial for an adequate understanding of each member's personal and professional motivations at the time—particularly George Harrison, whose creative persona was undergoing a vital and revolutionary change.

Those sessions, which author Peter Doggett describes in his book, "You Never Give Me Your Money," as "a drama with no movement or character development," showcase Harrison's growing exasperation with the part he'd been given to play within The Beatles' equation as well as a certain impatience and dissatisfaction replacing his acquiescence of previous years. Recently returned from a stay with Bob Dylan at Woodstock to what he would later call "The Beatles' winter of discontent" in "The Beatles Anthology," Harrison continued to see his musical contributions systematically met with disdain from his bandmates. It soon became obvious that challenging the John Lennon/Paul McCartney power axis would be an impossible task while the band was still together—a realization that further accelerated The Beatles' disintegration.

All Things Must Pass is a direct result of this unmaking. Released November 27, 1970, All Things Must Pass was technically Harrison's third studio album yet his first fully realized solo release following two slightly niche LPs prior: Wonderwall Music (1968), the mostly instrumental soundtrack to Joe Massot's film, Wonderwall, and Electronic Sound (1969), a two-track avant-garde project.

The imbalance in group dynamics made evident in the Let It Be documentary is essential to understand the genesis of All Things Must Pass since the two projects are irrevocably intertwined—perhaps more so than Lennon's or McCartney's respective debuts, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and McCartney, which also released in 1970. While his bandmates had long made peace with their prime status as composers, Harrison's mounting refusal to be repeatedly pushed to second best was reaching a boiling point, and his creativity soared in proportion. By then, the material he'd been putting in the drawer was far too vast to fit in a single album alone. 

For The Record: Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass'

For anyone doubting Harrison's ability to stand on his own two feet as a solo artist, All Things Must Pass must have hit like a ton of bricks. Composed of three records, two LPs plus an extra disc titled Apple Jam that mostly contained improvised instrumentals, the album emerged as Harrison's definite and irrevocable declaration of independence. 

Still, the album was colored with references to a painful recent past: These are visible in the cryptic album art showing Harrison in his Friar Park estate surrounded by four gnomes, often interpreted as the musician removing himself from The Beatles' collective identity. There are also the not-so-veiled attacks on his bandmates in "Wah-Wah," the sad contemplation of a breakup in "Isn't It A Pity?" and the inclusion of several compositions that had been turned down by The Beatles, such as "Art Of Dying," "Let It Down" and the album's title track, which Harrison can be seen playing to the other three in Let It Be.

The album, recorded between May and October in 1970, gathered an impressive supergroup of backing musicians that included bassist (and Revolver cover artist) Klaus Voormann, members of Badfinger and Delaney & Bonnie, Let It Be keyboardist Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and even Ringo Starr, the only Beatle who seemed to have no major feud with the other three. 

Although Harrison had a very clear idea of what he wanted, things did not always go so smoothly. By summer, sessions came to a temporary halt as he made regular visits to see his dying mother in Liverpool. At the same time, further pressure came from EMI, who grew preoccupied with the alarming costs that a triple album would ensue. This, combined with Clapton's escalating heroin addiction and infatuation with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, who he would eventually marry, contributed to a strained ambience that might at times have struck a chord of déjà vu for the Beatle. 

Producer Phil Spector's erratic behavior didn't help either: Having been recruited by both Harrison and Lennon for their solo debuts following his impressive work on Let It Be, he was frequently unfit to function or nowhere to be found, forcing Harrison to take production matters into his own hands.

Despite all the delays and behind-the-scenes tension, some of it still resulting from the ongoing legal disputes between the four Beatles, All Things Must Pass triumphed. The album received a nomination for Album Of The Year at the 1972 GRAMMYs, while its No. 1 single "My Sweet Lord," for which Harrison was sued for copyright infringement and ultimately lost, was nominated for Record Of The Year. All Things Must Pass was ultimately inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 2014; Harrison was honored with the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award one year later.

While a triple album could have easily been dismissed as self-indulgence as pop crossed over to the individualistic '70s, the reception of All Things Must Pass was so indisputably solid and favorable that some music critics claimed it eclipsed Lennon's and McCartney's solo efforts. Maybe it was the surprise factor, too. Melody Maker's Richard Williams would best summarize this in his review of the album with the famous line, "Garbo talks! - Harrison is free!"—a reference fitting of how it felt to witness "the quiet one" finally raising his voice. 

All Things Must Pass opened the gates to a world the public had only glimpsed during The Beatles years, proclaiming a coming of age that had been delayed for too long. Encapsulating Harrison's serenity without falling into a trap of passiveness, the album acted simultaneously as epilogue and opening chapter by precipitating both public and personal healing.

But the ghost of Beatles past would still come back to haunt Harrison as he, like the other three, quickly realized one doesn't simply cease to be a Beatle. Recurrent comparisons and undeclared fights both in and outside the charts persisted throughout the years, bringing back the vestiges of a narrative he hadn't fully absconded yet no longer defined him. "We've been nostalgia since 1967," Doggett quotes Harrison as saying at the time of the album's release, commenting on The Beatles' inability to escape a very specific, even if outdated, image that had been crystallized in the public's collective imagination. 

Fifty years later, All Things Must Pass remains an important landmark in George Harrison's legacy and his most enduring solo testimony—something music journalist Paul Du Noyer points out on the text "When 1 Becomes 4" as a slight irony, since the title refers precisely to "the impermanence of things." But more than that, the album is a fascinating and detailed snapshot of the exact moment Harrison officially announced he was willing to move on from a game whose rules had long ceased to serve him.

Celebrating The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's' 50th Anniversary

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My Chemical Romance's 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys' Album Cover

Danger Days Album Cover

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Look Alive, Sunshine: 10 Years Of My Chemical Romance's 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys'

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Released in November 2010, the band's fourth and final studio album is a bold statement that pushed its creators, and their devotees, to new places
Jordan Blum
GRAMMYs
Nov 22, 2020 - 1:03 pm

Founded in Newark, N.J., in 2001, My Chemical Romance (MCR) were at the top of their game by the start of the 2010s. While their 2002 debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, was a promising and successful fusion of gothic rock and post-hardcore, it was their two immediate follow-ups—Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006)—that turned them into full-blown emo emissaries. In fact, those album covers and concepts remain synonymous with the movement, gracing the walls of Hot Topic stores across the U.S. and being celebrated by virtually every genre fan.

Consequently, that also meant that My Chemical Romance's fourth and final studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, largely lived in the shadows of the band's two breakout releases—at least to an extent. Released November 22, 2010, the album evolved MCR's already-winning aesthetic narratively, structurally and musically, which understandably resulted in some polarization among listeners. Ultimately, that's a testament to the boldness and maturity of Danger Days, as it, like all worthwhile artistic endeavors, pushed its creators and their devotees to new places. As such, it's the group's most striving and sundry collection

MCR recorded Danger Days between June 2009 and July 2010. At first, the band worked with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, AC/DC) on their new material; however, those tracks were ultimately saved for a subsequent compilation,  Conventional Weapons (2013). The group enlisted The Black Parade producer Rob Cavallo once again. Likewise, drummer Bob Bryar—who took over for co-founder Matt Pelissier in 2004 immediately after the release of Three Cheers—officially left in March 2010. Interestingly, he's only credited with songwriting here, with John Miceli filling in on drums and percussion on all tracks except "Bulletproof Heart," which features Dorian Crozier. 

Read: Hayley Williams On Going Solo, Alanis Morissette & Trusting Her Intuition

Stylistically, MCR uphold their trademark alternative/punk/pop-rock foundation on Danger Days while also digging deeper into electronic, proto-punk and even psychedelic elements. According to Way, this was an attempt to offer a "stripped down" sound and pay homage to '60s and '70s icons like The Beatles, Queen and David Bowie. Therefore, Danger Days feels like a sibling to its precursors that also evokes the catchier, freer and brighter power/synth-pop vibes of Coheed and Cambria, Panic! at the Disco and modern Green Day.

Like its forebears, the record is a concept album: Danger Days takes place in a post-apocalyptic California in 2019 and follows The Killjoys, a quartet of rebellious reactionaries composed of Party Poison, The Kobra Kid, Jet-Star and Fun Ghoul, as they try to take down the nefarious Better Living Industries. Clearly, that Gorillaz-meets-Mad Max kind of colorful cataclysm is in stark contrast to MCR's previously bleaker storylines; the fact that the sequence is framed around broadcasts from a lively pirate radio host, Dr. Death Defying, adds to the friskiness. This technique also places Danger Days in the ever-expanding lineage of albums that unfold like live broadcasts: The Who Sell Out, Queens Of The Stone Age's Songs For The Deaf, Janelle Monáe's The Electric Lady, Vince Staples' FM. It's not surprise that Way sees the album as their "defining work."

Throughout the album's elaborately hyped marketing cycle, which included "secret shows" and a fanciful trailer, MCR released several singles and music videos; most of those showed up in other forms of pop culture, too, such as in the film Movie 43; TV shows like "Teen Wolf" and "The Voice"; and video games like "The Sims 3" and "Gran Turismo 5." There was also a corresponding 48-page book and a three-track EP, The Mad Gear And Missile Kid, the latter of which guitarist Frank Iero billed as being "what The Killjoys are listening to in the car as they're having those gun battles." (Way also created a comic book sequel, "The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys," in 2013.)

Danger Days sold over 1 million copies worldwide within its first three months, peaking at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts and securing gold certification by the RIAA. It became a Top 10 hit on the Billboard 200 chart and gained comparable chart placements in Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Finland. True, The Black Parade fared much better—a No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 chart and a triple-platinum certification by the RIAA—but Danger Days proved quite popular overall, with outlets like The Guardian, NME, Alternative Press, USA Today and Kerrang! praising it.

Overall, Danger Days is awesome. Dr. Death Defying kicks things off with a flashy introduction in "Look Alive, Sunshine," which is peppered with prophetic dissonance. It segues into the anthemic and spunky "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)," a stadium rock gem that embodies how Danger Days frequently repurposes MCR's beloved foundation into a glitzier and freer environment. Similarly, "Sing" places the group's recognizable antagonism beneath a sparser and lighter vibe. 

Afterward, "Planetary (GO!)" offers a bit of unabashed dance-punk that is irresistibly enjoyable. Meanwhile, "Party Poison" incorporates a glam rock edge into its celebratory ethos, whereas "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W" is a shimmering ballad and "Summertime" is a synthy slice of impassioned romanticism. In general, these tracks, among others, do a pleasing and commendable job of infusing new timbres and styles into their formula.

In contrast, the angsty forcefulness and straightforward strength of "Bulletproof Heart," "Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back" and "The Only Hope For Me Is You" recall more of MCR's earlier DNA. There's even a touch of post-hardcore heaviness on "Destroya," as well as some requisite emo fatalism and hyperbolic sentimentality on "The Kids From Yesterday." Closer "Vampire Money," written in reaction to people wanting them to contribute a song to the Twilight films, evokes the British attitude of The Rolling Stones and The Kinks before oozing classic rock 'n' roll charm, albeit with far more sharpness.

Danger Days may have been the beginning of the end for My Chemical Romance—at least until the band's very public reunion last year. Still, it's surely MCR's artistic peak, with an expansively entertaining storyline, a wide breadth of stylistic approaches and clever promotional tactics leading to a cumulatively greater sense of purpose and imagination. Thus, Danger Days stands as both their swan song and superlative release—that is, until we finally get that fifth studio album. 

What It Meant To Me Will Eventually Be A Memory: Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Turns 20

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Talking Heads in 1980

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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Talking Heads' 'Remain In Light' Turns 40 remain-light-turns-40-artists-weigh-talking-heads-genre-defying-dance-floor-classic

'Remain In Light' Turns 40: Artists Weigh In On Talking Heads' Genre-Defying Dance-Floor Classic

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In honor of its 40th anniversary, GRAMMY.com asked a wild combination of modern acts why 'Remain In Light' remains such a creative touchstone all these years later
Ron Hart
GRAMMYs
Oct 20, 2020 - 11:55 am

In his memoir Remain In Love, Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz opens up the first chapter from the concert stage in Rome, Italy on the tour supporting the band’s fourth album Remain In Light, released 40 years ago this month.

"I figured the book should start off on a really high note," he tells GRAMMY.com. "So I began with that particular night in Rome, which was extraordinary. The whole tour was, but that show stands out as ‘off the chain.' [Laughs.] It was right before Christmas, and everybody was feeling good in the band, and it shows."

The Remain In Light tour was not so much a means to support the new album as it was a physical extension of the new sound Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and David Byrne were exploring on their second studio effort working in collaboration with Brian Eno. It was this polyrhythmic blend of disco, funk, punk and pop that became the platter du jour in dorm rooms and underground club jukeboxes throughout much of the earliest of the early '80s. The incorporation of an expanded troupe of friends, associates and hired guns—which included the likes of singer Nona Hendryx, trumpet master Jon Hassell and King Crimson's Adrian Belew on "stunt guitar"—was also a crucial component to the advancement of the band's signature sound. However, it was the interpolation of African polyrhythms—particularly those attributed to the music of Nigerian jazz-funk pioneer Fela Kuti.

"We were flying by the seat of our pants," Frantz explains. “But I notice that Brian Eno always attributes the African templates to him introducing the band to Fela Kuti’s album Afrodisiac. But, in fact, we had all those Fela records in our possession when we were college students like six years before we even met Brian Eno. I’m glad that Brian takes pride in the fact that he was hip to Fela Kuti and all that. But the truth is, we were already headed in that direction, though we were never trying to emulate Fela and cop those licks because we couldn’t really do it. We couldn’t play at the level Afrika 70 played. But we could use Afrobeat and, quite frankly, American soul music as a springboard. Kind of like what we did with Al Green’s "Take Me To The River." It doesn’t sound like the original song, but it’s clearly a tribute to him and Teeny Hodges and Willie Hutch. Same thing with Remain In Light, because those songs were written before we went into the studio. We really had to dig down and come up with parts we found that inspired us to go forward. We couldn’t just use the regular rock ‘n’ roll links for what we were doing. It wasn’t what we were looking for."

Witnessing how Remain In Light has evolved into this key touchstone across such a vast and varied swath of the music multiverse these last 40 years only confirms its sonic thumbprint on pop's advancements in structure, space and groove since its initial release on October 8, 1980. And in honor of its 40th anniversary, GRAMMY.com asked a wild combination of modern acts just why Remain In Light remains such a creative touchstone all these years later.

Max Richter: It’s such a melting pot, that record, isn’t it? It’s kind of an everything-everything record. It was in that very post-modern moment—1980—and the themes around post-modernism were very in at the time. A lot of it comes from the Fela Kuti inspiration and the Afrobeat world, yes. But there’s also an element of German electronic music in there as well, which is certainly Eno-esque. It also has this sense of paranoia in the whole storytelling of the record. There’s this anxiety, which I guess comes out of the punk thing. It feels very prescient how it holds up a mirror to its time and foretells the future a little bit. There is definitely psychology in that lyrical content. I was 14 when it came out. Punk was officially dead already, but that was just an explosion of heat and noise. But then all of these fragmentations of that energy started to happen. Remain In Light, in a way, is the sum of those things. It has a lot of similar iconoclastic attitudes. But I had never heard anything quite like it, and had no frame of reference with which to understand this music. It’s got atoms of disco, atoms of funk and atoms of African music. It sounded like it was from another world. 

Adam Rogers: Remain In Light is truly one of the great records of the last 40 years. It exemplifies so many of the important elements in the making of a brilliant and creative ALBUM: a total work of art that is the sum of all of its beautifully interlocking parts. A reminder that we, as creators and listeners, should always consider the total production and artistic statement that is a "record." The songwriting, grooves, production and playing are so uniquely thrilling to this day... not to mention the SOUNDS!! The utterly beautiful textures (not the least being Jon Hassell’s trumpets on "Houses In Motion") that punctuate the relentlessly percolating grooves. David Byrne's lyrics and inimitable vocal stylings. Brian Eno's brilliant production. Adrian Belew's fantastic playing both solo-istically and texturally... That contributes so much to the sonic and conceptual aesthetic of the record. Each song is so fully realized, from the incredibly catchy and uplifting "Once In A Lifetime" to the ridiculously funky "Born Under Punches" to the Fela-influenced "Crosseyed And Painless." You can hear all of the powerful influences and they’re expressed through the prism of having been totally assimilated and performed with utter commitment. It is both very much a record of its time and one that is truly "timeless." It stands out to me as one of the most creative and accessible works of popular music. I continue to be inspired by it!

Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Pylon: Sometime in late 1980, I heard "Crosseyed And Painless" at a club in New York. The syncopated African rhythms created a great background to some dancing and spinning taking place. I don’t remember listening to the entire album until some point in 1981. Pylon were on a road trip out to California. All the guys took turns switching out drivers as we made our way across the country. Texas takes a long time to drive across on I-10. At some point Curtis Crowe, our drummer, took the wheel and I stayed up to keep him company. Someone had a cassette of Remain In Light and we put it on autoplay. As the landscape went by and we headed into the desert area of western Texas, the sun started coming up and it was truly magical as we listened to this otherworldly music for maybe the fourth or fifth time.

CAMÍNA: I will never forget the first time I heard the song "Once In A Lifetime." I was six years old and really into space and all things NASA at the time and thought aliens from outer space made this song. It was my first introduction to African polyrhythms and funk. Fast-forward 20 years later, it opened up a whole new world to me in terms of production techniques and approach on how to make samples cohesive. The way they crafted an original and truly unique sound by merging different genres together makes this record a personal inspiration, and I reference its brilliance all of the time. I believe Remain In Light represents what the cosmos would sound like if humans and aliens were in a band and made a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino movie about outer space. I adore the Talking Heads and their influence on the cannon of music and am so glad they paved the way for so many of us weirdos to make music.

Jesse Miller, Lotus: Side A of Talking Heads' Remain In Light still grabs me today and feels as fresh as when I first heard it. There is so much energy there. The relentless, percussive beats have almost no breaks, intro or endings. A one beat shouted "HA" kicks off "Born Under Punches" and then we are plunged into an abyss of groove. The non-narrative, paranoid, dada-ist lyrics and noise-oriented synth and guitar solos emphasize the importance of the underlying looping beats even more. Put those elements in another context and they would have almost no coherence—you most likely won't hear "The Great Curve" reinterpreted at a coffeehouse singer-songwriter open mic. The album is still revelatory in the way it finds musical intersections between electronic dance music, African rhythms and rock. 40 years later, the heat goes on.

Jodi Dunlop, Mise en Scene: The first time I heard a track off of Remain In Light, I was a 16-year-old punk kid in the recording studio, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Occasionally, the producer would play music real loud in the control room before our sessions. The Cure, Roxy Music, The Clash, and The Velvet Underground were among his usual go-to's, but on that particular day, he put on "Once In A Lifetime" by Talking Heads. I had never heard anything so incredibly rhythmic, percussive, genre-bending and straight-up groovy in my life. As a drummer, all of those things mattered to me.

The flawlessly layered instrumentation, the super scratchy guitars, the overall weirdness, and David Byrne's ability to draw you in so intimately with lyrics that at times barely made any sense were what made this record so special. But what I admire most about Remain In Light is the band’s ability to play such considered parts in a way that adds to the groove without distracting or taking away from the wholeness of the music. That's something that I try to bring into Mise en Scene, and something that I think all artists should be conscious of.

"I believe 'Remain In Light' represents what the cosmos would sound like if humans and aliens were in a band and made a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino movie about outer space." — CAMÍNA

Mike Doughty, Ghost of Vroom/Soul Coughing: The two songs on RiL that were world-changing for me are "Houses In Motion" and "Seen And Not Seen." Both so funky and yet so strange. I haven’t heard anything that sounds like those, including in the genres that it’s built out of: P-Funk, West African music, Downtown N.Y. avant-garde funk, even the kind of spoken-word and Robert Wilson-style performance art that the vocals emulate. I was obsessed with TV preachers as a teenager. I began watching them as a pre-teen because they were the only people on TV talking about the kind of dark heavy metal I liked: Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio. I did a rock opera performance of the Book of Revelation at WNYC in 2015, and it was really about that kind of apocalyptic preaching.

So the first declaimed lines on the album, "TAKE A LOOK AT THESE HANDS!!," sucked me into the world of the album immediately.

I listened to "Seen And Not Seen" over and over again—so creepy—by myself in a dorm room. I didn’t even realize that it was my life story—I was so enthralled and compelled and scared.

I didn’t even know what the instruments really were on the album. Are those squealing noises a guitar? Is that uncanny clap a drum machine? Is that spooky horn a synthesizer? I would ask my roommate, who would tell me what they were, and I could only half-believe him.

RiL is the secret story of the Reagan '80s. You hear the headlines about the CIA, the evangelists, the hollow patriotic kitsch, the strange internal twists that turned the 18-year-old kids at Woodstock into the yuppies of the '80s. That transmogrified identity, the tortured interior, the unease that boomers felt as they became adults but still couldn’t think of themselves as anything but young.

Roddy Bottum, Man On Man/Imperial Teen/Faith No More: I was a teenager in L.A. obsessed with ska and only went to the Palladium that night in 1980 to see the English Beat, I didn’t care about the headliner. I just knew they were old and from New York. Most of the sounds and the songs the Talking Heads played that night were from Remain In Light and it was a fusion like I’d never heard. I didn’t know what it was and I couldn’t understand those weird African-sounding beats and squelches from the singer and that rad bass player who was a woman! Tina made all the difference to me and my sisters and I were overwhelmed and fascinated. The record became that high school record to me, the one I still know 100 percent by heart. It takes me back to a time where inclusivity was key and righteous and a compelling, bold new frontier. My sisters and I for the whole year were chanting, "My God, what have I done?"

James Tillman: Remain In Light is an undeniably special album. I first heard it around the time I moved to New York City. 'Listening Wind' is one of my favorite songs of all time. I marvel at how Byrne uses his voice throughout, singing and reciting lyrics that explore the most plaguing societal ills of modern times— over some the most unconventionally funky soundscapes ever heard. Brian Eno’s touch, specifically his use of samples and repetition, no doubt influenced me while working on my debut album, Silk Noise Reflex. Remain In Light was a predecessor to the ‘global’ sound saturating the music scene these days, but still sounds like it's in a league of its own after all these years.

Ben Perowsky: What an amazing and timeless piece of work this record is! A true collaborative effort across the boards on this. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with David a few times over the years in various musical circumstances and have been a long time adoring fan. I could say he’s someone who keeps his eyes and ears open and is paying attention at all times. This seems to be true of most great artists. He’s like an open conduit and a very intelligent and creative one. Bands sometimes have the potential to be even more powerful than one person when making a statement and here he was surrounded by his likeminded friends and collaborators working it out in a studio in the middle of the Caribbean. Eno did an amazing job, not only of pushing into the future with early looping and use of the newly available digital delays, but in the feat of making it in just two months!! Escaping all the distractions and trappings of N.Y.C., they still managed to bring that spirit they had been soaking up while living there. You can hear so many influences aside from the obvious—Fela Afro-pop references, like early hip-hop, Danceteria, Downtown Funk bands, etc. There's the infamous old quote, "Good composers borrow, great composers steal." But even when one takes inspiration or borrows an idea, good art will end up standing on its own as something different. Here is an example of all these people who went out foraging and brought all their findings back to the table for a big futuristic brew. Who says art can't make you dance?

"Who says art can't make you dance?" — Ben Perowsky

Steven Bernstein, The Lounge Lizards/Sexmob: I actually just got a call from a museum to be an advisor on an exhibit chronicling New York music from 1979 to 1985. So I’ve been reconstructing those years in my head so I can remember who I used to go see at the clubs. I used to go to two or three gigs a night back then. So I broke out Remain In Light to remember hearing it in the context of the time, and then it hit me: college parties. That record had just come out during my second year at Columbia University, and when you’d put on that first side, everyone would start dancing. And that is exactly how it first got into Remain In Light, through hearing it hanging out at parties all the time. I didn’t own the record until later on, actually, but I always heard it. I was very interested in hearing the African side to this music, and the bass lines and this syncopation that really moved the body very much like African music does. But this record, to me, was a very social record. It was always on in everybody’s dorm rooms.

Leron Thomas: When I listen to Remain In Light, it reminds me of how heavily the singer-songwriter approach to my music is influenced by Talking Heads. Especially my latest album, More Elevator Music. We can hear everything from Parliament-Funkadelic to David Bowie in Remain In Light. Not to mention the world music vibes, yet there's still an aspect of futurism in the music. "Seen And Not Seen" has a groove that became more prominent in '90s music, as opposed to the '80s. And the project dropped in 1980. Also the cultural acceptance that this album received. I can safely say that as a kid growing up in Houston, one would definitely hear "Once In A Lifetime" being played on Black radio stations including the emerging hip-hop stations. The shit was just hip. That groove. Very unusual and still universal. Not attempted to be emulated again, so far it seems. [It] tells us a lot about ourselves right now. Which is a great segway into the other aspect about this album. It has a message without being too preachy. That's a very hard thing to pull off. My favorite on here for that would be, "Listening Wind." A very Shamanic-like understanding in the message, yet it doesn't care to force itself onto the listener. It even goes as far as to make one self-reflect. These are skills that artists strive for everyday in their work. So yes, Remain In Light: Great Kung Fu. 

Doug McCombs, Tortoise/Eleventh Dream Day: Talking Heads have always been meaningful to me, being one of the first handful of bands that I paid attention to. In the embryonic days of Tortoise, we hoped to take some of our scrappier punk aesthetic and fold it into something like Remain In Light or it’s companion album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, both templates for sure. I can still listen to Remain In Light over and over again without getting tired of it. A masterpiece.

John Herndon, Tortoise: As far as Remain In Light, I was thinking that it’s a very economical record. Lots of layering, but everything in its place. Even Adrian Belew’s guitar solos seem to move with the gears of the band. I really love the pacing of the record too, how it just nose dives into a claustrophobic dirge by the end.

Ishan Parashar, producer (Juletta + Ishan): I must have discovered the record back in 2012 or 2013, when I was around 16 years old.

I was scouring "greatest albums of all time" lists on the internet at the time, just trying to educate myself on what was out there. I listened to a lot of the classics—The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elvis. But when I played RIL on the tinny speakers of my 1997 Chrysler Eagle, it was clear I was on a different ride completely.

I still have a hard time classifying what it is. It’s rock, sure. But it’s funk, it’s punk and it’s art-pop. I can’t help but dance whenever I put it on, and for that reason it has made it into my DJ sets amidst house, techno and disco.

Remain In Light exemplifies what I like in music, and therefore what I search to create in my own music. It’s music that isn’t simply classifiable. It’s music that can’t be easily replicated because it borrows seamlessly from time periods and genres. It grooves fast and hard sometimes, and slow and methodically others. It has sounds I’ve never heard before, it puts words together like I’ve never thought, and at the end of the day, it’s unmistakably original.

Charlie Burg: Remain In Light, in addition to other early Talking Heads records, has been a go-to social gathering soundtrack choice for me. And especially on my newer music, I’ve found David Byrne’s arrangement choices to be inspiring in their intentionality and evocative nature. I’ve always been impressed at the rhythmic diversity of Remain In Light. The percussion on this project is panned around a really well-recorded drum set in a way that accentuates funky syncopations and just makes you want to move your feet. Even the guitar parts are mixed in a way that gets a real percussive tone out of the strings and adds terrific syncopation on both sides. The guitar tones themselves are groovy as heck, and the synthesizers expand the space of each song in a really warm yet ethereal way. It’s got a wooziness, but you can still feel the room in the recordings, which I love. Nothing beats that analog sound and this album serves as a handbook for utilizing analog synthesizers in an intentional, tasteful way. Sparse, but full. Genius!

Mike Deller, The Budos Band: Growing up in Carbondale, Illinois, my pops kept Talking Heads on regular rotation. As a kid, I connected with the combination of various musical traditions and styles. When the band made Remain In Light, they were all going in different directions, working on separate projects. They brought their differences to the table and used them to create an incredible album. Definitely a concept and practice that was ahead of its time.

Dan Whitford, Cut Copy: Remain In Light is an incredible record because it represents the peak of Talking Heads as a band, and also Eno as a producer. It was also one of those rare examples of a classic record that is both incredibly satisfying to listen to, but also completely turns expectations on their head. This album was a huge influence on our third album, Zonoscope, particularly the idea of using the recording studio as an instrument. Talking Heads and Eno pioneered the idea that instead of trying to capture the essence of what a band sounds like playing together, you could use a studio as a place to experiment and discover completely new sounds that neither band or producer could ever have imagined beforehand. This idea is incredibly futuristic, particularly when you think that they were doing it 40 years ago.

Diana DeMuth: I remember being struck by the unique sonics and energy of Remain In Light when I first heard it. There’s something very infectious and ear-catching about the blend of instruments. After a few listens, I was able to focus in on the lyrics which I found equally as provoking and something that has stayed with me and influenced my writing. Lyrics such as, "Lost my shape, trying to act casual, Can't stop, I might end up in the hospital, I'm changing my shape, I feel like an accident" are so unique and draw you in immediately which is exactly what a song should do.

"It has sounds I’ve never heard before, it puts words together like I’ve never thought, and at the end of the day, it’s unmistakably original." — Ishan Parashar

Sean Cahill, The Next Great American Novelist: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to incorporate that signature effect heard in "Once In A Lifetime," where a high-pitched synthesizer plays a polyrhythm that dances over the entirety of a song like a halo. Indeed, we have incorporated that trick on a few songs with The Next Great American Novelist. My introduction to Remain In Light happened in a roundabout kind of way. After all, it was written seven years before I was born.

A few years ago, I was browsing through a store and I saw David Byrne's tell-all, How Music Works, sitting on a bookshelf. I thought to myself, "What an arrogant title." Naturally, I bought it and consumed it as fast as I could. As indicated in the name, what a treasure trove of useful information it was. With insights ranging from what kind of blueprint is needed for a venue to give birth to a music scene, to explaining how Pythagoras once prophesied that the distance between the planets in our solar system would be consistent with the distance between the notes in a major scale. Ok, David Byrne, you have my attention. From there it was a deep dive into his catalog and for me, the monolith in sound was Remain In Light.

Listening to RIL is like overhearing a conversation between two art-school kids. The pioneer of ambient music, Brian Eno, and the king of art-pop David Byrne. In this particular time period, those kids were geeking out on West-African and Middle Eastern influences, as can be heard in the harmonic-minor solos of "The Great Curve." Fela Kuti is no doubt an ancestor of the sound and Afrobeat shows up in the jangling loop of guitars that persist throughout the album. The music feels more like a marathon than it does a series of pop songs. Though somehow it merges the two and paves the way for other artists to follow. For example, Paul Simon, who six years later would create Graceland.

From what I have heard, Byrne hadn't written a single word or note before entering the studio to record Remain In Light. That is very reassuring to me. The idea that a stroke of genius isn’t needed to write a great song or make a record. Actually, if you can find the confidence to just get in front of a microphone, you might be able to show other people "how music works."

Teddy Panopoulos, Dead Waves: After listening to Remain In Light, it made me realize that most of the art-punk-dance-new-wave music I liked from the '80s drew inspiration and sound from that album. As a kid, when I was feeling down or needed to connect to something, every time "Once In A Lifetime" came on the radio I would stop and hypnotically listen to it and it helped fill that void, feeling comfortable in something bittersweet about this life and its passing by, but also feeling eternal in the same essence. It helped me feel comfortable knowing that people are out there making music to help you feel less alone and connect into that certain indescribable frequency. 

Nat Coghlan, Strangelight: My dad introduced Talking Heads to me. I don't think I had started playing guitar yet, so it must have been when I was still in elementary school. He told me that they played CBGB's and that Tina Weymouth used to play the bass until her fingers bled. At that age I knew two things for certain: music was cool and blood was cool. I had to hear this band. I was immediately disappointed that they did not sound like the Ramones (which I still think is a fair reaction to any music), and moved on. Later, a friend in middle school rented Stop Making Sense for a Friday movie night (we were clearly very popular kids) and I found it super compelling. It wasn't what I was into at the time. It wasn't spontaneous, it wasn't messy, it wasn't painfully loud and distorted, but it was weird. It seemed like this very organized and deliberate strangeness. I think that organized and deliberate strangeness is on full display on Remain In Light.

Lastly, "Once In A Lifetime" is still a banger, even though it has been used in every trailer for a movie about a middle-aged man having an identity crisis. If that isn't a testament to their songwriting, I don't know what is.

John Andrew Fredrick, The Black Watch: I often cringed when Talking Heads came on so-called mainstream, alt-rock radio in Santa Barbara throughout the '80s. You'd (if you were me) hear the signature alienish, blippity-blip intro of, say, "Once In A Lifetime" and then Byrne's impossibly chafing voice and either A) switch off the device or B) spin that dial round to Talk Radio, the weather report, the static-tastic college station... anything. My wife at the time—and for that matter, all women of taste with a yen to dance, dance, dance—loved the Heads. She played their records all the time and almost every time she did, I'd leave the house and go to the tennis courts and practice my serve.

At last, they came to Santa Barbara on tour, and she informed me that if I didn't go see this favored band with her at the County Bowl, well, divorce proceedings might proceed. I think we had an immemorially hefty fight after the gig. I took my resentment of her, and of having to endure that band, out on the hardest part of the living room couch and broke my strumming hand with a karate chop to its innocent arm. The entire time we were there I wanted—nay, pleaded with her—to go home. Jesus, I thought then, the herky-jerky nature of every one of these songs is just... so... irksome. The utter pretentiousness! How I wished we were seeing my heroes The Cure or The Smiths! I always hated those Heads of Talking. 

Years and years later, a bandmate confessed he'd hated them too, but then he really sat down with a record called More Songs About Buildings And Food and that LP eased the way, as it were, for a freaky-groovy record masterpiece called Remain In Light. How right he was! Ah, callow youth. What did I know? Only my own pop-goth prejudices, presumably. But the not-so-little girls like my quondam esposa; she understood. I should've listened to her, about some musics, at least. About Kate Bush, too. 

I love Talking Heads now; they amaze me. As does the notion of how our tastes, fortunately, sometimes change for the very much cooler and better. 

Dusty Wright: Back in college, I heard Talking Heads: 77 and was knocked sideways. I couldn't quite understand why their "sound" hooked me, but I knew that this was a special band. A smart band. With weird and smart topics to sing about. As soon as I dropped the needle on the very first track "Uh Oh, Love Comes To Town" it was like nothing I'd ever heard on FM radio. With David Byrne's yelping vocals and angular guitar rhythm groove and then that funky steel drum break... I was dancing around my dorm to a totally new sound. They didn't look or sound like any of the punk bands I was listening to—Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones—yet it didn't matter. By the time I got to track 10, their timeless classic "Psycho Killer," it was quite apparent, I was a fan for life. However, when the juggernaut album Remain In Light was released in 1980, it was a groundbreaking world beat album of extraordinary depth and meaning. The African rhythms added to their heady stew of avant-garde art rock. It was as if David Byrne was fronting Fela Kuti's band with members of P-Funk. I was fortunate enough to see them play at John Carroll College in Cleveland on Halloween, Oct. 31 of that year. David fronting a nine-piece band with many of the players from that remarkable album including Mr. Bernie Worrell from P-Funk on keyboards, Adrian Belew on second guitar, Busta Cherry Jones on second bass, Dolette McDonald on background vocals, Steve Scales on percussion.

They played a handful of tunes from that album, including the relentless Afrobeat classic "The Great Curve" as their second encore. During the course of their career as well as David Byrne's solo career, I have gone to this music time and time again to feel joy and ponder existential questions wrapped in songs that have stood the test of time. And while my own music has a more "Americana" slant, their influence has been enormous. It has fueled my continued exploration of the meaning of life and my place in this life. When I wrote the song "Sometimes I" from my If We Never... album, I was definitely paying homage to this remarkable New York City band. In fact, now that I think of it, they probably were responsible for me moving to New York City. 

Chloë Drallos, Zilched: When my older sister left for college, neither she nor I had much going on socially. Soon as I got my license I’d drive out to the west side of the state just to hang out on weekends as she’d do the same heading back home. This resulted in a shared playlist timed perfectly to the drive (2 hours and 13 minutes) in which she included every track off of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light. It’s worth noting that "Once In A Lifetime" made three appearances throughout said playlist.

During that time, we both felt the burning nothingness of those uneventful years, constantly waiting for your life to begin—hopping into the car and quite literally asking yourself “Well, how did I get here?” It’s the same route every time but it always feels aimless. "Crosseyed And Painless" comes on, only reiterating that state of being: stressed, ranting, anxious, numb. "I’m still waiting, I’m still waiting… I’m still waiting, I’m still waiting." I’ll never forget how she put these things in perspective for me. It’s our soundtrack of a shared experience. An album for true dissatisfied scatterbrains at any stage of life.

Nevan Doyle, Mishko: I'm definitely not your typical Talking Heads fan. In fact, I used to be almost vehemently opposed to them! My parents were baby boomers and I was born in the '90s. I was never exposed to the music of the '80s beyond movies and classic rock radio. The first time I heard Talking Heads, I just could not get into them. I liked aspects, but I think since my perspective on that entire era of music was through a pop culture lens, I only saw cheesy montages in my mind when I put them on. Then I saw David Byrne perform live and everything changed.

Seeing him glide smoothly across the stage barefoot with a commanding presence that felt equally welcoming and freeing–I suddenly understood. I felt a deep connection, seeing so much of myself within David as he crooned and captivated thousands effortlessly. Talking Heads weren't meant to be listened to calmly on headphones. This was the kind of music you put on full blast and get lost in. The next week I put on Remain In Light with an actual open mind and fell in love. This was not just an album, this was a dance party. You close your eyes and find yourself in a pulsating crowd as the band jams on the biggest stage you've ever seen.

I realized that I had gotten so fixated on the electronic side of production, I was losing sight of creating that raw live feeling Talking Heads capture so well. It was like a flip switched and from then on when recording I always visualize myself playing at sunset to a crowded festival. There's really no other way to get a performance that captures that visceral energy of a show. Remain In Light will forever remind me to not worry too much when writing. Vibing out and creating songs that people can just groove and get lost in is where it's at. 

Adrian Acosta, Draag: It’s 2 am, I am up late watching the infamous "120 Minutes" show on MTV. I am dozing off and on comes the video for "Once In A Lifetime." My head explodes, never heard anything like it. The show is over and it’s time for bed, but I can’t sleep. All I want is that song to be played over and over again. I don’t own an iPhone, I can’t look up the song, I can’t stream it. I just have to replay it in my head. The next day I beg my mom to take me to any local record store so I can buy it on cassette (I was not allowed to buy CDs). I find it! I listen to it, and it floors me. Never heard anything like it, I am obsessed, I am curious—who are these people? Summer is over, it’s my first day of junior high school. I am freaking out, everyone is so much bigger than me, the bullies smell my fear. I have my Walkman and in it is Remain In Light. I put it on as I walk to class or go get lunch at the cafeteria. Almost suddenly, no one looks as threatening anymore. All of sudden, everything is all right. 

How 'Hounds Of Love' Finally Gave Kate Bush Her Deserved U.S. Breakthrough

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