U Talkin’ U2 To Me? - U Talkin' Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head? - Stop Making Sense (w/ Jerry Harrison)

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads joins Scott and Scott to discuss Talking Heads’ 1984 live album and concert film Stop Making Sense. They’ll get into when Jerry first heard of Talking Heads, the simplicity of the band’s live shows, and how the band wanted their concert film to be an alternative to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

from ita zimbra this is you talking talking heads? Am I talking heads? The comprehensive and encyclopedia compendium of all things talking heads. This is good rock and roll. Music. Welcome to the show. There it goes. Welcome to the show. There it goes. Welcome to the show. There it was. Welcome to you talking, talking heads to my talking head.

The comprehensive and encyclopedia compendium of all things talking heads. This is good rock and roll music. And we have a great show for you today. We are going to be talking about the seminal, not only album. Hey, we're used to talking about albums on this show. That's our bread and butter. That's our bread and our butter. Records are our bread and CDs are our butter.

Oh, God. But we are also talking about a film by the same name. And in fact, it is the capturing of a concert. Both of these projects. Is there a worse way to say this? Both of these projects are called Stop Making Sense. 1984 Stop Making Sense. We'll be talking about the record. We'll be talking about the movie. But guess what? We also have a special guest on this show. We will be talking to Talking Heads, to his Talking Head. That's right. We have a member of Talking Heads on the actual show. What? That's right.

He's a member of the Talking Heads. show what that's right he's a member of the talking heads he's a member of of naman's other bands uh well i mean little band uh four fellas from liverpool i can't quite What are they called? The lovable lads from Liverpool. That is The Beatles. The Beatles. The Beatles. Thank you very much. And then a sentimental favorite of mine, The Traveling Wilburys, which is a terrific, terrific band and also part of some great comedy bits of mine.

That's right. We've talked about those on previous shows. And also producer of wonderful records like The Violin Femmes and Crash Chest Dummies and The Verve Pipe and Live. A lot of 90s hits. A prolific producer. It's a prolific producer. And then a solo artist himself got sued for his song, My Sweet Lord, I believe, to the tune of several million pounds. That's right.

Because it was in the greatest of Britons. That's right. George Harrison is with us. Amazing to have him on the show. We will be talking to his talking head about Stop Making Sense and what a treat that's going to be. Very excited about that, Adam. Are you excited? Before I introduce you, I want to gauge your level of excitement. I'm very excited. I can't wait to talk to him about all my favorite Wilburys tunes. It's going to be amazing. Traveling Wilburys. tunes. It's going to be amazing. Traveling Wilburys. I'm glad I paused your introduction to hear that little tidbit from you. But let us Terry no further and commence with introducing

the man across from me. And when I say across from me, I mean across town, because he is in his very dimly lit closet with all of his favorite sweaters and probably some of the sweaters that he doesn't like that much. I'm not sure if any of those are sparking joy for you right now. I can pull out my least favorite ones during the program today. That'll be amazing. Yeah. I'm not very good at describing clothes, by the way. As a matter of fact, in every episode of Comedy Bang Bang, the television show, it was a, our main guest, the title of the episode was the main guest and what they were wearing during the show. And I was so bad at it. I eventually had to pass it off to our, someone in the wardrobe department

who ended up working with me as a producer on the Between Two Ferns movie, Corinne. Uh, and she, she basically had to do it each time because I, I, I can look at clothes and not be able to describe them at all. I don't know whether you have that skill, Adam. I do. And I wouldn't mind doing it today. And, uh, I wouldn't mind describing some of my clothes, uh, on the program, uh, today. How would you describe what you're wearing currently right now i am wearing a pair of uh pair of uh cut off army shorts not cargo shorts army shorts it was a pair of what's the army pants well cargo shorts have all kinds of pockets all over them. But our army people, people in the army don't use pockets. They use pockets, but they use pockets in a variety of ways. And the way I'm using them right now is one of the variety of ways that the army uses pockets.

And sorry, is this an episode of how do you use your pockets? I think it might be hey everyone welcome to how do you use your pockets this is scott uh and this is scott do you have to get that no that was what was that was siri thinking i was addressing him. Why can't Siri be a woman? You know what I mean? I just changed it to British male and it's freaked me out a couple times. So you're not comfortable with American women, is that right? You don't like them getting all up in your business?

Yeah, I really don't want them to boss me around. But I'm finding that I'm far more uncomfortable with a british man bossing me around what did you say i mean you would make a terrible batman in that respect but what did you say that triggered uh master siri something about is this an episode of how do you use your pockets no yeah but it didn't do it this time uh oh i wonder you must have said something that sounds like siri and then how do you use your pockets and siri thought the question was how do you use your pocket yeah ask siri how do you use your pockets and see what because this is part of the show by the way hey siri how do you use your pockets okay i found this on the web for how do

you use your pockets check it out siri the web for how do you use your pockets siri you know anytime siri doesn't know anything yeah just yeah just googles no thanks siri yeah i have thank you i'd rather ask jeeves another british fellow yeah jeeves is actually quite knowledgeable yeah you've essentially though just turned your computer into ask jeeves like you've regressed i know backwards i think i'm gonna have to uh change it maybe to another language oh very good um so anyway uh the pockets on these uh pants now shorts uh are really functional they're great because they're really big, but they are not cargo pockets. What I I'm still straining to differentiate between, is it the size of, of, of cargo pockets? Is it where they're located on the short? What, what is a cargo pocket and

what is a, an army pocket and what's the difference between them? Here's the thing. I'm in the category may be slightly off. I call them army pants slash army shorts they're actually camp pants or camp shorts which is sort of a traditional short for camp pendleton or uh just shut up for a second they they seem like you had plenty of time to talk but go sort of a traditional army pant and it's a sort of an army green, and the pocket is sewn on the outside of the pant. You know, that kind of older army pant style. Hold on. Someone's at the door.

Hello, this is the mayor of podcasts. This one has been canceled for being too boring. What? Goodbye. What? Oh. What? Oh, my God. That's never happened to me during a show before. I mean.

Canceled for being too boring. I mean, they don't even get a way more boring. They don't. Yeah, I know you have not in any of mine, though. I think I was directly referring to some of the ones I've been on with you. Okay. They don't even get a theme song to say goodbye. It's just an abrupt cancel.

It just ended. In the middle of a show. I wish more TV shows would be canceled in the middle of the show where just the network president comes on in the middle and goes, shut it down. I'm sorry. This is just too much. You're looking like a, I was going to say a young Jarvis Cocker, but I'm just going to say Jarvis Cocker instead. You're looking dead on at his age. My hair is long and so it goes in my face and I had to get something to take it out of my face.

Your eyeglasses that you're wearing are big like the ones he has now and they're on a uh is that a string or a chain i keep them i keep it on a uh a leather strap and so when i'm done with them all you have to do is let them go and they hang around your uh your neck uh-huh when and when you're done with them you can tie up naomi with them yeah or i can just throw them in the garbage. Sure. How many leather straps do you go through a day? Four, 500. I understand. So you basically kill a cow, what, a week? Yeah. Well, I make my own leather straps and I use them for each time I take on or take off my, put on or take off my glasses, I use a leather strap that I consider disposable. Sure. And do you pick it up using tweezers? I mean, you can't be too careful these days, what with COVID. Yeah. I have those arm extenders that you use at Costco to grab

things off of high shelves. I only handle my homemade leather straps using the arm extenders. So you have an entire herd of cattle out in the backyard? In the backyard. And I have to murder one with my hands every day in order to make leather straps. And I make them in my neighbor's swimming pool. So you actually think it's murder. I always kind of viewed killing cows for meat and for leather goods as like, you know, at best sort of a manslaughter. Yeah. No, I, I consider it stone cold murder. It's premeditated. So I guess you're right. Yeah. Murder one, maybe 100%. And it's aggressive and cruel. Uh, and I'm a vegetarian. I do not use leather in any other circumstance other than, uh, taking on and, and, uh, uh, putting on and taking off my glasses.

But you murder a cow a week to do that. Uh, yeah. One, two cows, uh, every week. Um, depends if there's a holiday or not. Uh, yeah. What happens on holidays? Do you take your glasses on and off a lot more or on holidays? I do it, uh, twice holidays? Do you take your glasses on and off a lot more or? On holidays, I do it, uh, twice as much. I take my glasses on and off twice as much. Cause there's just more, always more to look at, uh, on a holiday just cause you have more time and you can explore your interest. The children's smiling faces. Children's smiling faces. Um, and the world around you is really interesting. So there are more and more reasons to take on, uh, and to put on and take off your glasses. You ever tell one of your kids, like, is the mayor of podcasts going to make an entrance

here? I don't see him. I'm looking at my security camera. I don't, I've seen neither speaking of leather hide nor hair of him. Great. So I think we're good for a little bit more time. Yeah. Let's keep going.

Sure. But yes, you, you look like Jarvis Cocker is what I wanted to say. And good for you. You're getting ready to film a role and you're, you're doing what those method actors do. You're changing your appearance so that when we look at you,

we don't go like, Oh, there's that dork again. That's right. You'll go, hey, that dork's hair is longer. Got sort of a beard. Is it a goat or is it a beard? I can't quite tell.

Lean more towards the camera. I wasn't being serious. I don't care. I do what I'm told. You are a nice podcast partner in that respect. How about you? What's going on with Scott's look these days? Boy, I tell you, it's October and the leaves are falling, my friend.

Is it Rocktober already? It certainly is. And boy, if you look up at the sky, you'll be like, are those orange snowflakes? Those leaves are coming off those trees, baby. Bam, bam, bam. I got to say, it's one of my four favorite seasons of the year. It truly is. Fall is gorgeous. I love fall. That's number one, probably with a bullet. Number two is autumn. I don't like it quite as much. I i love them both number three is spring in australia what happens in australia during the springtime that you oh the leaves are falling the pumpkins

are in season it's just beautiful there um and then number four, I would say probably Summer of 1975. Oh, yeah. No, that was a really good one. Because everyone says 1976 was the Bicentennial. Bicentennial, yeah. I disagree. I disagree. It's like when people say, oh, the new millennium has started when it turns 2000. No. I disagree. I disagree. first thought of when they first started talking about it when they first started going like hey should we start a country yeah and they start like they they drank ale you know oh samuel adams was

in the mix of course he was cooking it up in the back room and they were just all white and horrible and old i mean old old for old for them. And old slaves. Great people. What would you say? Well, they're all well-documented, but they're all in their 30s. But they look like they're 70. Yeah, when you take a look at them, first of all, they're wearing those wigs that were popular back then. Huge trend. I remember Bob Odenkirk, when we were working on Mr. Show, he had a sketch that he was trying to make happen for a long time. That was about the guy, the last guy to ever wear a wig as part of a fashion choice.

And he was like 10 years later when they were out of fashion and people kept going like, hey man, you don't need to wear that wig. Yeah. Why are you still wearing that? So they're all wearing like essentially these old man wigs, but let's look, which guy do you want me to look up? John Hancock himself or? Let's start with the original, the Big Ben, Big Ben Franklin. Oh, Benny F. Let's see how old he was in 1775.

Okay, 1775, Benjamin Franklin. He was born in 1785. He wasn't even born yet. No, no, I'm sorry. He was in office then. He died in 1785, right? Where's his deets? Oh, okay, 1706.

Okay, so in 1775, yeah, he's 69, buddy. That dude lived a long time for such an era. Look at this picture of him. Yeah. Big ol' stomach. Snarling at the camera. You know who he looks like? Ol' Sourpuss.

Oh, boy. Doesn't he? You had to bring him. Look at the way he's... Okay, everyone go to his Wikipedia page. Right now. Go. Excuse me. Making me cough how sickening this photo is. look at the way he's okay everyone go to his wikipedia page right now go excuse me making me cough how sickening this photo is so he's he's first of all i think it's a selfie and he's he's taking this guys all did selfies all of them they all painted their own selfies it's incredible

and he's just like he's glaring at the camera like, I did it again, didn't I? And the other thing is, is he's 82 during the time of this painting, and they're making him look like he's 40. Would you agree? Yeah, that's like a 40-year-old. That's a 40-year-old, yeah. I mean, come on, painter, whoever did that. Oh, Joseph Duplessis? No, thank you.

But the other thing is, is like, smile, dude, or like at least fix the wrinkles on your goddamn vest. I don't know. I don't know why I'm so upset about this. It's like he's hunched over to accentuate his belly. It's like he's flaunting it. Let's look up John Hancock and see what his deal is. Okay, he was born in 37, so in 75 he'd be like 38.

All right. That's what we're talking about, but look at his... He looks like Ron Livingston in this picture. In office space. Yeah. So he's got that terrible gray wig.

Dude is, you know, 38 years old. And he's missing half of his face. He looks like the Phantom of the Opera on his Wikipedia page. He does. Look, is this an episode of Roasting the Forefathers? I believe it is. I will be your father, even with your tiny hand and mind. I will be your preacher, teaching anything you have in mind.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Roasting the Forefathers. This is Scott. And this is Scott. And we are truly, truly. Roasting and toasting. Get out your marshmallows. Get out those Hershey squares.

Those graham crackers. We're roasting these forefathers. Who else do we have? George Washington? Oh, yeah. Let's roast him up. Okay. Put him on the big screen.

Put him on the big screen. All right, everyone. If you're following along, go to his wikipedia page oh look at this guy uh i cannot tell a lie you ugly i can't tell a lie i can smell your wooden teeth from here hey why don't you get back to chopping down the cherry tree uh while the rest of us are chopping down the cherries of the virgins that we're having sex with because like you're a you're a virgin i lost the plot on that totally no that was a good one hey uh can i borrow your jacket just kidding it sucks

um i there's not much more raw material yeah okay what do you got uh who else is a forefather oh man um alexander hamilton alexander hamilton here we go baby hamilton oh man i wish lynn were i wish i wish i could text lynn right now and get him get him on the horn get him on the zoo and get him he's got to be a part of the oh i bet he would love to roast the forefathers is there any hamilton lyric that roasts hamilton uh yeah alexander hamilton i'm alexander hunter hunter hamilton um let's see uh he looks pretty good he does look he does he's pretty handsome yeah let's see what we got here. I don't know. I bet when he's smiling, he looks like he's having fun. When he takes a dump, he's like happy he's in the boom where it happened.

I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of hard. What do we got? This show's too hard. He's great. I love him and he looks wonderful. It doesn't make me feel good either.

I don't love the way he treated uh uh people of color i'll just say that much can we roast him on that let's roast him on that so yeah hey uh uh you were the eighth senior officer of the united states army um that's cool yeah i mean that's actually pretty impressive it It's pretty impressive. I don't know. Doing this show is kind of making me feel bad. I don't like tearing people down in order to build myself up, you know? Yeah. Alright, well,

let's just, we can continue it on the next episode. We'll have a ton of, we have lots of episodes in the future of this particular show. I know, but I don't know if I want to keep doing it. Yeah. No, I get what you're saying. I wish the mayor of this particular show. I know, but I don't know if I want to keep doing it. Yeah. No, I get what you're saying.

I wish the mayor of podcasting would come in here and cancel us. Is there a way to invite him? Or is it just a... I could text him. Yeah, could you? Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Let me text.

Oops. I accidentally sent it to Mayor McCheese. Oh, no. Now he's going to come over? come over fuck he's gonna bring some nice delicious double hamburgers though some quarter pounders with chai what's this YouTube link that

Kevin sent over what do we got here oh Kevin sent over a YouTube link hold on let me stop sharing my screen and it's called did you see the name of the video? No. Okay. Oh, by the way, we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Now I have to share my screen. Okay. The name of this video, Kevin just sent us a video, and it's Cowboy Junkies Southern Rain, parentheses, yeah edition. Oh, I know what this is. Here, let me share the screen so we all can hear it. Okay, I know what this is. This is a few episodes back. you told the story about how you went to go see the Dennis Miller show, Cha-Cha.

Yeah, and this is pre-HBO show. This is his syndicated talk show. This is the one before he beat us for Emmys. He didn't beat me specifically. He beat Mr. Show for Emmys. He beat Mr. Show the year before I was nominated. Chris Rock beat us the one year I was nominated for Mr. Show. But this was his, yeah, it was on KTLA here, was it not? Syndicate.

Yeah, it was, was it on in the afternoon? No, it was night. It was 11 o'clock. It was like, yeah, it was like 11 o'clock, KTLA. He had a talk show and he would have musical guests on. And Adam, Andy Summers was his band leader. Yeah. From the, from ACAB. he would have musical guests on and adam andy summers was his band leader yeah from the uh from uh acab yeah yeah um and uh yeah and uh adam went to go see the cowboy junkies play

was that the only time you went to see this show the dennis miller show yeah or any other show i don't care any other show i don't whatever if you're not engaged enough to know what i'm talking about retract the question if you want yeah i'll retract it anyway so adam it's the only time i went to the dennis miller thank you keep going is that too fucking well you went once yeah you're saying like I didn't keep going back. I went to see Arsenio Hall once, too. Oh, hell yeah. I think we talked about that. You weren't in the dog pound, though.

No, but I did do the dog pound. That's the thing. He only wants the people in the dog pound to do it, but it's too tempting. Yeah, I mean, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Just keep our hands at our sides? No. Did he come out and admonish the rest of you yeah yeah once they cut to commercial he came over to me and there were like three other dudes and uh he said i'm gonna kick you out of here i'm gonna kick you

and jay leno's ass yeah remember remember that entertainment weekly That was scandalous when it happened. And of course, it did not come true. But Adam went to go see Cowboy Junkies. And we talked about it on a previous show. I went to go see the Dennis Miller show. Oh, my God. I feel like you think Dennis Miller was a guest on the Cowboy Junkies television show. No, but I'm saying you didn't.

Did you truly go to see it because it was the Dennis Miller show? Yeah, I did not go because of the Cowboy Junkies. Oh, okay. I was mistaken about that. I thought you went because you were a Cowboy Junkies fan. I mean, I was, but it's like. Oh, my God. No, but it's like a couple years after they were like.

Did Sweet Jane. Yeah yeah this is like 92 and they're past their they're past their their prime okay i there there's so much like they're in the rem vein so i kind of sure so you figure i assumed that you were just like hey you know checking out the dennis miller lineups going oh cowboy junkies Let me go to that one. Yeah. Um, but instead you went even worse, uh, in retrospect, you went to go see Dennis Miller and, uh, uh, but during the cowboy junkies song, uh, they did sort of a fake finish where Adam thought the song was over and he shouted out. Yeah. And, um, we asked for your remixes, um, for any time there was any kind of pause in the song, if we could hear Adam saying, yeah. So someone sent us this.

Someone did this? Yes, someone sent us this. This comes to us from JS, really? Can that be right? That's the only credit we have, but Kevin, if you can find a better credit. But let's hear a little bit of this. This is Cowboy Junkies Southern Rain, Yeah Edition. Yeah Edition. They all said something bluey Nothing changed and headed this way

Bobby Sipsy is morning coffee Says have you finished with the funnest Looks like a storm is coming honey Guess we'll have to stay in bed today I believe there was another one, Kevin, if you could find that one that had had it less often, but your yeah was a little better of a sample. I don't know if we have that one, Kevin, but that was pretty funny. I was pretty funny. Kevin has sent something in the chat. Oh, he's got it, baby. Let's hear this. This is from another enterprising young listener.

Here we go. Kyle. They all said something blue And I've been James And head of his way Yeah And Bobby Sips Is morning coffee Says have you finished With the funnest

Looks like a spore Is coming honey Guess we'll have to stay in bed Today Yeah Let's hear the guitar solo. Going to cut to the guitar solo. Oh, yeah, hold on. She just finished.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I would actually love it if someone did that during a performance. Would an usher come by and tell you to shut up? Or like, just going, yeah! I think it would be so funny. I also think it would be really funny if you played this on a talk show. This is another episode of Great Talk Show Bits.

But if you played this on a talk show and talked about it, and then there was an actual band playing, and you did it during that band, I think that would be like a band with a great sense of humor, like Portugal the Man or something like that. It would be cool to get them in on it. Oh, that would be very funny. Oh, my God. Should we hear the actual one?

The actual? No. Have we done that on the show? Okay, never mind. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Oh, my God.

So funny. All right. We need to take a break. Wait, did we pull out of the Forefathers show? Or is this still on? Oh, my gosh. I don't know. Let's see.

Did we pull out? Kevin, any idea if we pulled out? We did. Oh, thank God we pulled out. Oh, man. I was going to have to go to the store to to get a remedy for that i don't get it no one's ever uh adam you've never joke before adam you've never been to a costco at uh one in the morning costco do you buy it in bulk or a food for less well you, you have to with my situation.

I have a very large penis is what I'm trying to say. All right, look, we need to take a break. This is exciting. We're going to be talking about Stop Making Sense. We also have the legend George Harrison is with us. That is incredible. Member of Talking Heads. We're going to come right back.

We'll be talking about Stop Making Sense on You Talking Talking Heads. To My Talking Head, we'll be right back. Welcome back. welcome back you talking talking heads to my talking head very excited about today's episode we're talking about stop making sense the both the album and the film and we have uh george harrison is going to be our special guest talking about stop making sense uh coming up but uh before we get to that excuse me i think i was yelling in our last segment and uh got a little bit of a throat tickle in there huh that's interesting Interesting. Sorry. Before we get to talk to George Harrison, why don't we talk about the details of Stop Making Sense? What do you say, Adam? That would be great.

I would love that. Let me go backwards here and talk about exactly when it came out. September of 1984. Adam, is this the first Talking Heads record that you ever bought? I guess so. I think it was more like there was a couple copies around because my brother was into it,

and I think my parents may have had it, or maybe I did. Maybe I got the tape because i i remember just listening to it constantly yep and every felt like everyone in the family was like this feels like one of those albums that everyone was into like graceland or something this truly for america this truly felt like one of those albums that Adam's entire family was into. You know, that genre. I remember this album very clearly. This was the first Talking Heads album that I ever listened to. My friend from high school, John, had it. And this was my first

year in high school. It came out right when I started high school. And I remember it very clearly. We used to, I was still in elementary school. Sure, sure you were. We used to, we were in drama together, high school drama. And I believe we were in the show carousel around this time and where i played the star maker the guy who uh essentially he was a god type but they made him a folksy and he was hanging up stars when billy gets to heaven what was his name billy bathgate no billy batson no that's shazam billy bathgate yeah do you know billy bathgate the dustin ho Hoffman movie. Yeah. The gangster. Yeah. Uh, his name was Billy, but, but, but,

but, but not Billy Porter. That's that dude who's saying, uh, that, uh, uh, kick-ass version of what was it?

Uh, what's going on? Billy Bigelow, Billy Bigelow, Billy Bigelow. Um, in any case, so,

so John and I were both in this show, and we would hang out in the parking lot after school, either after drama or waiting for drama to start. We would hang out in his—he had a Firebird. He had a Trans Am Firebird. Okay. And we would hang out listening to albums in his car. And I just have a very, very vivid memory of listening to this record in the Cypress High School parking lot,

super loud, and just memorizing all of these songs and going like, oh my God, I gotta see this movie. This is a movie? Okay god i gotta see this movie this is a movie okay i gotta see this movie somehow okay and and and yeah i have to say your your co-hosting style is like essentially waiting for me to finish talking and then adding a word is that is does that encapsulate yeah i guess so i mean i guess the only question i could ask at that point of the story would be so did you see the movie or or did you not see the movie because i personally did not see the movie

till way later because for whatever reason i think if if you're in, I was just at the age where going to a concert movie felt like I wasn't sure what that was. Like I was 11 or 12. I don't know if I was going to see. Wait, but didn't you go to the us festival and all that kind of at 11 and 12? Yeah. Like even younger, but that was like with my parents because my stepmom had a job to do there and but this was an album the whole family loved they didn't take you to the movie i think i think what i'm thinking of is the couple of years after this came out and it was huge everywhere um but as far as the movie goes i didn't see it till it came out on vhs like really two years later or something oh okay no i i saw the movie um but but way after like the movie

percolated for such a long time they basically put it into just a few theaters around the country and then let it play play for like a year a year or two, sort of like a cult film in a way that you could come back to and re-watch several times over the course of the year. These days, movies, they come out in about, they're gone in two weeks for the most part, unless they're huge hits. And if it were to come out now,

that's probably what would happen. Although if it were to come out now, maybe no one would go see it because uh you know theaters aren't open but uh no i saw it i saw it i saw it a year later in hermosa beach we had to drive all the way up from uh orange county to hermosa beach because it was the only place playing and the only time i had ever spent in Hermosa Beach, I remember I took an overnight church trip to Hermosa Beach to, I don't, someone at our church had a beach house or something, or had access to a beach house. So our entire like junior high church group came up and spent an overnight trip where I remember like hanging out on the roof of this beach house. And then the only other weird thing I remember about it is I went to the local store and they

had a copy of Alpha Flight 12, the comic book there. And I was, I was very excited because, uh, it was an oversized issue and it, and it said someone was going to die in the, in the, in the issue. And so I took it on, I'm on this church trip and I took it back and just solo silently read it alone. And Guardian died. Spoiler alert, but Guardian dies in Alpha Flight 12. In any case, so that was my only experience

with Hermosa Beach. So it was, what an experience. What a social butterfly. What an experience coming back to the town where I had bought Alpha Flight 12 to watch a movie not three years later

um but yeah i i think uh my friend john and i were maybe one of five people in the audience uh but this was like a year after it came out yeah it was like 1986 definitely we i was a sophomore at this point and it was like okay enough fucking around we gotta see this movie hey it's playing it's gonna be a bit of a trip but uh you know pack a bag put on a pot of coffee get some snacks sure but we did it and uh i gotta tell you the race to get home in time for curfew after that movie that's another story talk about fast and furious talk about Talk about the Vin Diesel franchise. Fast Times at Cypress High is a little more funny. Very funny.

But yeah, the movie, I feel like we're dipping into I Love Films here. I believe we are. Hey everyone, this is I Love Films. Welcome to it. And this is Scott. And this is Scott. Welcome to it, everyone. New intro. New intro for this episode. Welcome to it. And we're talking about great films here. We're talking about... Sorry, Scott. I'm sorry to jump in. We're talking about great films.

We are not talking about... films. We are not talking about... No, no, I'm just joining in your reverie of what we do here, which is we talk about great films. That's right. So if you want to come to us and say like, hey, why don't you cover Transformers Rise of the Stupid Bumblebee? Yeah. Uh, look. Wrong show. Wrong show. Yeah, we've seen it. Yes, we love it. Is it my favorite film of that year?

Probably. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's great. Was I able to stay awake during it, unlike most of the shit that we cover on this show? Yeah. This is fucking explosions, dude.

Yeah, I did as, like, an amphetamine yeah i dare you to try to sleep through transformers rise of the bumblebee love it but uh instead we're covering shit like apocalypse now too long as far as i'm concerned godfather three hours godfather two three and a half hours yeah they could easily cut those down to like 10, 15 minutes. Totally. Nothing happens in them. No. It's a bunch of people glaring at each other. No.

Nothing. Shut the door, Kay. Shut the door. Grab the cannoli and shove it up my butt. Like stuff like that. And I'm like, I don't care. God, can you please. Can an alien robot please come and decimate every single one of these characters? Just scorch everything.

Scorch earth. Ashes. Kill me while you're at it, please. Because I don't want to spend another fucking second watching this terrible, terrible film. I can't take it. Film. Film. Film. You know what. Film, film, film. You know what?

Just let it all burn. Let all of society burn, as far as I'm concerned. You know, let burn it all down at this point. You know what I mean? Why not, right? Why not? What good is it? You know, follow the Roman Empire.

It's pointless. It's all fucking pointless. It's pointless. It's all fucking pointless. It's over. All right. Next week, we're talking about Raging Bull. We'll see you then. Bye. Bye.

That was an interesting episode. It was interesting. Yeah. As far as the canon of I Love Films goes, that was, it seemed like a turning point for them. You know what I was expecting with that episode? I thought they were going to be talking about Stop Making Sense, the film. Yeah. But they took a different route.

Yeah, a little detour. And sometimes that can work out. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, just today I was driving somewhere and tried to get on that. Hey, Adam, you ever tried to get on the freeway? You know what you use? One of those, what do you use? An on-ramp. Yeah. And the one that I was trying to get on, guess what happened? I don't know. Closed. Oh yeah. I did that yesterday. Were you over near Universal? I was actually, yeah. So you know the one I'm talking about over on Vineland.

Is that the one? I was going to Healthy Spot to drop my dogs off. You're taking a shit? What? Dropping my dogs off at the pool. So what am I doing? I'm driving around, driving around, driving around, taking surface seats, just looking for a place to shit. Finally, I just pull over by the side of the road.

Anyway, Stop Making Sense. Definitely listened to the album so many times before I saw the movie that the, what I didn't know is that there are nine songs on the album. It's about a 40, no, yeah, 40 minutes, 39 minutes and 37 seconds LP. And I guess I'd assumed that the movie would have to be longer, but I didn't realize there'd be more songs that weren't on the record. And I also didn't know that they cut these songs down on the record, edited parts out. So when I saw the movie, I remember, uh, psycho killer starts, which is the first song on both the record and the movie. And suddenly in the middle of it, there's a big long section where the,

the breaks, the big breaks and, and David Byrne is dancing around. And I was, I was thrilled. Yeah. I'm wondering, cause I was looking through and it's not available on Apple music, certainly, which is the original version of Stop Making Sense.

Yeah, I have it right here. How did you get that? Is it just, did you just rip it from your CD or something? Yeah. Oh, we can't get into this discussion again, Adam, about why you listening to Apple Music is totally inferior to what I do. But yes, I have the original version of Stop is totally inferior to what I do, but yes, I have the original version of stuff. I do, but it's how everyone agrees.

Yes. Cause that's the stop making sense. I used to have was that they've taken it down off of streaming services. So you need to have your old CDs. I mean, I love all the extra songs now, but sure. I love, I also love, I love, yeah. I love the shorter versions too. Yeah.

So do you want to hear a little bit of uh psycho killer so people can hear exactly what we're talking about this is the first track on the original lp this is psycho killer Can't seem to face up to the facts Tense and nervous, can't relax Can't sleep, bed's on fire Don't touch me, I'm a real liar Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa Run, run, run, run, run away

Oh-oh-oh-oh Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay Yeah. Good stuff. Now, when I first heard this, I don't think I was a sophisticated enough listener to know that this wasn't the whole band. Like, I did know what, like, electronic drums were

because my friend, actually, scott kawamura had a an 808 drum machine that we used to fuck around with and we i remember uh around this time we made a uh we made a tape for our friend uh for her birthday of us like doing songs for her using the 808 and it was so good that we eventually asked for the tape back and we were like hey can we can we borrow our tape back because we we were just like why did we ever give her that tape it was so good um so i knew what a drum machine was but i i i not knowing who the talking heads were really all that much i just kind of thought this was a full band performance so when you see the movie mr burns is

essentially he he it starts very close on his feet and pans up and he walks out on stage totally alone with the house lights up with a a big boom box or as what we used to call uh a ghetto blaster which is probably very insensitive at the time oh god yeah you're right that's not great not good um and um he puts it down and plays along with what he says is a tape but obviously the sound uh people in the back triggered um so do you like this version of psycho killer better than the original i do it's interesting though because the this version which doesn't have those breaks in it is the same length as the one with the brakes i think it's because they have maybe more crowd noise or something on this let's hear let's hear the uh i prefer this to the one with the i think the brakes are great for the movie, but it's fine.

For the movie, but yeah, I agree. I think what they did with this record, trimming the songs down and turning it into a 40-minute record because of the constraints of vinyl, these became iconic versions of these songs to us. I mean, especially the ones that we just covered on Speaking in Tongues. Yeah. They just become transcendent.

And then things like Life During Wartime and Take Me to the River, I mean, with the addition of the band, I mean, they just become, you know, transcendent. And What a Day That Was, which was sort of a, it was just a David Byrne song. That version is just incredible.

Yeah, incredible. So let's talk about how this came to be. So Talking Heads, when we last left them, they were doing their Speaking in Tongues tour, and they had additional players during it. in Tongues tour, and they had additional players during it. They had, of course, the great Bernie Worrell from P-Funk and Alex Weir and Steve Scales. And then they had a sort of a rotating crew of backing vocals. What ended up being in the movie was Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry. And they had been doing this tour, and on one of their stops here at the Greek here in L.A., a young filmmaker named Jonathan Demme came to see them and loved the show and said, hey, I want to film that. So it wasn't the band technically like going, oh, we got to film this as much as it was. filmed this as much as it was Jonathan Demme just like happened to see them and said oh this should be a movie and uh came up to them and said hey can we make a movie out of this and they they said

okay but the the interesting thing about this Adam is they financed it themselves right so they technically what they did was it cost eight hundred thousand dollars to start with they borrowed that against their future royalties from the record company. Uh-huh. So... Rather than having the record company pay for it and thus own all the profits. Yeah, they don't get any of the profits from it that way. But it wasn't like they had a million dollars and said, oh, okay, here you go.

You know, run wild with it. They had to borrow it um which turned out to be you know a great business decision for them because yeah everything was their biggest hit essentially right i believe it's their top selling record um i believe well little creatures is like their biggest studio album right but this one's like at the time yeah it was definitely the biggest at the time i'm not quite sure uh if if it ended up being but yeah so they they decided to film this this show that they'd been doing even though they just put out a live record and oh yeah they had like two years prior yeah which is which is a weird thing to do but everyone

just thought like no the show is too good essentially what they've been doing with the show weird thing to do but everyone just thought like no the show is too good essentially what they've been doing with the show was uh mr burns he had seen uh an artist by the name of robert wilson put on some theatrical performances and so he he sort of borrowed or got inspired by robert wilson for the sets and the lights right um and then he had this idea to come out in a big suit midway through the show, which was sort of inspired by Kabuki theater and no theater in Japan, where everyone was wearing like big exaggerated costumes.

And he thought to himself like, oh, okay, that would be cool to come out in like a big, no Kabuki costume, but it's a businessman suit. Right. Now the big suit adam that was i mean that was all anyone talked about for a long time oh and just the the fashion of it was ripped off not ripped off but inspired so much in in fashion for years to come oh yeah the big shoulder pads i don't know whether they would have necessarily you know i mean that is an interesting question do you think like all of those late 80s working girl type fashions with like you know suits and big shoulder pads if that would have happened

without stop making sense i mean i think that was happening already but this kind of made it cool and and interesting brought it to a different level. Well, I remember another thing that cemented Talking Heads is like, okay, this is a band you need to pay attention to was not only my friend John had the record and we would play it all the time, but Rich Hall imitated David Burns, Mr. Burns on Saturday Night Live. And that was the season that I got really into Saturday Night Live because I had never been old enough to watch it I always had to sneak around to watch it or I watched reruns on KTLA here but this this was the first year that I literally watched Saturday Night Live every episode when it was on and it was the Billy Crystal year and the Christopher Guest year and um Harry Shearer and Martin Short. And Rich Hall, he was like... He did squiglets?

He did sniglets, yeah. Sniglets. And it was at deep bench, just the fact that Rich Hall, who's super talented, was like 10th in line or whatever. But he did a sketch where he imitated David Byrne and did all the movements, the chopping on the arm movements that he did in

the once in a lifetime video which i had seen before um and that really cemented it of like okay this is culturally important yeah yeah it was pretty incredible it permeated everything there for a few years i remember even that that um and fans of all of my shows know that in high school, I was doing lipsync contests and I was doing dressing up in homecoming parades. And there's a famous picture of me, I mean, as famous as I am, which is not very, of me dressed as Pee Wee Herman when I'm 14 years old for one of the homecoming shows. for one of the homecoming shows, but I dressed up as David Byrne once and I got like the biggest suit that my dad had who was bigger than me at the time. And it was big on me. And so, and I was super skinny.

And so, and I learned, I slicked my hair back and I did all the movements that I saw. And I hadn't even seen the movie at this point, but I saw Rich Hall do it. So I basically like imitated him doing it yeah that's hilarious you so you were like imitating rich hall who was imitating yes david burn and that's what that's what a lot of comedians i think start out doing is like imitating their favorite comedians and then they find find their own voice i'm still waiting for the second part of that equation. You're still just kind of aping Rich Hall.

Yep. So in any case, they filmed this at the Pantages Theater down the street from us here in Hollywood. And they did it over four nights. I think they had to go back to the record company and ask for another like 300 grand because they wanted to do a fourth night. They had to go back to the record company and ask for another like 300 grand because they wanted to do a fourth night. And a couple things of interest happened during this. So Jonathan Demme was talking about how they had to cut down the show because the normal concert that you would go see by Talking Heads was two hours and 15 minutes long. And it had songs like the one from the Catherine Wheel, the Plymouth song was Blue Plymouth. And it had like all the it had like a full was a full concert.

Yeah. So they had to cut it down. So they cut it down to essentially probably about 90 minutes. And even then, all the songs didn't get into the final film. But there was one part where Mr. Burns had to go change into the suit and they needed something to happen during it. And so Jonathan Demme said to Tina,

like, hey, I want you guys to play the Tom Tom Club song. That's such a big hit. And Tina, said to Tina, like, hey, I want you guys to play the Tom Tom Club song. That's such a big hit. And Tina, according to Tina, she was not thrilled about it. And she was like, no, that's our own thing. We don't want to play it. But then Chris Farts over there, tooting away. He's just cutting cheese.

Wait, let's speak of cutting the cheese i gotta hear that wikipedia pronunciation from one of our previous episodes let's hear that let's go to the wikipedia cutting the cheese here it is ready what where do you think that's real i don't know or was it a dude just doing it let's hear it again let's hear one more time surely it would be funny a second time wouldn't it it it really is i wonder how it would be for the third time. I will never know. But so anyway, Chris farts. He says to Tina, no, we should play it. We should play it.

So they play in the middle of the concert. They play Genius of love that the big Tom, Tom club hit under with the understanding that Jonathan Demme would not put it in the film. That was the deal they made with him. Why, why were they so uptight about this being in the movie? I don't understand. I think because they, they were looking for their own identity a little bit and they were like,

they didn't want, you know, be like backup band to talking heads. Yeah. They didn't even want their solo stuff to be become like sort of submissive to David Burns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Stuff. You know what I mean? So they, they wanted it to be its own thing. So then the other really weird part about that is that, um, Tina says, well, okay, well, what about my sisters? Because they all sang it together on the record. Um, we, we want them to sing it with us, right? And Jonathan Demme said, like, no, we want the backup singers to sing it with you.

Because your sisters aren't used to singing with such a big crowd. They'll be out of tune. You know, like, these are professionals. Let's make sure. So then when they're filming it, Tina's sisters to the second night and she's forgotten to tell them that they're doing genius of love. Uh, and this is okay.

So this is a quote from David Bowman's book. This must be the place on the second or third night. Tina's sisters were in the audience. She hadn't had a chance to warn them about genius of love, which if I were her, it's like you had a chance. warn them about genius of love which if i were her it's like you had a chance i mean it's i don't know so like why does that matter because they sang back up on the album because they're part of the band i think well i think they used to tour with with tom tom club as well when tina took the stage them, the two Weymouth girls were enraged.

This caused a family riff among the Weymouth girls that made the discord among the bloody Lear sisters, that's King Lear. Oh, boy. Look like something out of the Family Circus comic strip. Wait, who wrote this? David Bowman. First of all, David Bowman,

you don't need to bard-ain king lear to me or family or family circus like if anything explain what you mean about family circus because from what i remember there wasn't a lot of family discord in the family circus i mean occasionally that's part of the point is that he's saying it makes King Lear look as conflict free as family circus. No, he's saying he's saying this is literally the quote. It made the discord among the sisters look like something out of family circus. Right. The discord among the Lear sisters look like something out of the family circus.

Okay, you don't need to Bardsplain this either, Adam. But why didn't he- Is it really that big of a deal? I can't imagine. Why didn't he just say, like, the Weymouth family makes the Manson family look like the Adams family? There you go. Okay, we all get that. See, that makes sense.

There is- I was watching the LA Confidential. That's good writing. I was watching the LA Confidential DVD when it came out, and there was an interview with the guy who wrote it, James Elroy, the guy who wrote the novel. Yeah. And he is teeing up a joke with such relish, like it's the best joke of all time. Listeners of this show will relate. And he goes, so I like Confidential.

It's got murder. It's got rape. It's got blackmail. Yeah, a real family film. If your fucking family is the fucking Manson family. Oh, boy. He punched it up by saying fucking it. It was cool.

I think that's as hilarious as James Elroy gets. Did you ever read My Dark Places? I've never read any of his books, no. Oh, boy. Is it funny? It's hilarious. It's great. He's great.'s great but good god good god um so yeah good golly miss molly what's weird about this david bowman book they never follow up on this you never get any closure with it so like what are you talking about if he's not

going to provide context like oh yeah they made up or or maybe they're still mad at each other hey if you're one of the if you're one of the way most sisters write made up or or maybe they're still mad at each other hey if you're one of the if you're one of the way most sisters write in and tell us if you're still mad but why was it so vicious like what happened like i guess never go even go into it he never goes into it i read chris farts's book uh chris farts of course uh Chris Farts, of course. Do we have to play that every single time we say his name? We might. But I read his book to try to see if there was any kind of closure on it.

He never brings it up. So who knows if it's true? Whose book? Oh, the book by this dude his name is chris um so yeah i i i have no idea whether it's true or not but uh um apparently tina was mad when she saw the premiere not the premiere of the movie but the band must have been invited to it before the premiere and she saw the completed movie and the the tom tom club song was still in there and she got really mad at jonathan demi and jonathan demi just kind of went like well yeah it's staying in um right and that was it so

uh and then the only thing chris says about it in his book um is that he wishes he wasn't talking or he wishes he wasn't shouting all the time over the song because i at one point he says i remember thinking it was cool that the tom tom was in there when i saw the movie felt like they're on a lower level no something when i saw the movie i was thunderstruck because I did not realize that Talking Heads, whom I'd been listening to for a year at this point, that the people behind Talking Heads had done the Genius of Love song. So I was like, immediately it made the Genius of Love song, which was a hit that I knew from being played on the radio, like it immediately sort of like made it like, oh, wow, this is an important song that I got.

So it made me go get the Tom Tom Club record and all that. So I thought it was a good part of the movie. But let's hear a little bit of Chris shouting during the Genie of the Wild song. Yeah. Well, he's talking a lot. I got you right now, ladies and gentlemen, the Tom Tom Club, so check it out.

Is that, yeah?, that's it. Well, he's kind of doing that in the original. Not really. What you gonna do when you get out of jail? I'm gonna have some fun. What do you consider fun? Fun. Nasty fun.

The girls can do it too, y'all. He gets even more towards the end let's cut pretty probably pretty coked up well that is something that we should talk about because he does talk about in his book um he says that all of the men in the band were incredibly coked up during the filming of the uh of the of the movie well watching the movie now which i watched a few weeks ago first of all this movie is like pure joy on the screen it's just everyone having such a good time the audience is having a good time you're you have a good time it's incredible But you can also look at it and just assume that they are all just coked out of their brains. Well, Chris says none of the women on stage were. It was all just like every one of them.

Every one of the men were. That tracks. about how the other reason that they did the Tom Tom Club song is because Mr. Burns would not only change into his big suit, but he needed to take a Coke break. And he would say, time for my big suit and my little toot. Oh my God, really? That's so funny. I don't know if that's true, but that's in the book and the book is based on interviews i guess but my big suit and my little dude oh my god um other things that happened when they were on tour with this um chris uh tells a funny story about how uh they were all on the plane and and bernie wore l they didn't think he was on the plane with them and so they had uh one of the the guys run out and go to the airport bar to go find him. And they grab him at the last minute and drag him on the plane. And then when they look at him, everyone's like, dude, that isn't Bernie. That's Ray Charles. Are you serious?

Yeah. Is that in Chris Fartz's book? Yes. I don't remember that at all yeah that's in there and it's like they were blind and not like ray charles is just like all right i'll go wherever anyone leads me to go but um yeah so that that was uh interesting uh this uh the dp of blade runner did this uh yeah jordan jordan cronen with and then sandy mcleod was i guess the visual consultant but chris talks about how demi was fighting with goldie hawn

about swing shift during this period and so he didn't even show up to a lot of the performances that they filmed he just kind of like planned it all out and let sandy uh uh actually direct it is according to chris we don't know did you ever see swing shift i have never seen it have you seen it no it's weird that jonathan demi directed i don't really think of you ever see Swing Shift? I've never seen it. Have you seen it? No. It's weird that Jonathan Demme directed it. I don't really think of it as one of his movies. Yeah, so he did a couple of Roger Corman films that were cheapo exploitation films. And then he did Melvin and Howard, which was an indie film and was great. And then St. Virgin won an Oscar.

Yeah. She's great, too. Do you know about her, I don't think it's an accident, but what's going on with her brain now where she hears everything in music? You know what? I know a little bit about this. I didn't know that was like, what did she say about it? Well, she's gotten an Oscar nomination for best song for a movie because of it, because she now hears like everything as music. And so she's writing songs constantly because of it. And she's written so many songs that she, there was this song, I forget what movie it was for, but it was a movie

with a bunch of music and they were looking for songwriters to submit songs. And she wrote this song and sent it to them and they used it and it got an oscar nomination and and it's just fascinating i didn't even know about that's it's i forget exactly what the medical term for it is but a few people have it and she it just kind of like happened i forget exactly how well i think that that had just started happening to her when we were doing stepbrothers because she was talking about it. And, but it was a fresh thing that she was trying to explain.

And she had just started like getting into music a little bit because of this thing that was happening. And it was the most interesting there. If you can read an article about it, because it's, it's fascinating. And it's one of those kind of things i know in our sister show you we talking huey to me we talked to huey lewis about

his challenges with uh you know so with his hearing changing but it's one of those like interesting you know uh uh challenges that she went through and she's you know sort of incorporated into her life in a really fascinating really cool um let's see anything else of cool she's very cool i i think she elevates anything she's ever in uh i would watch her do anything anyway what i was going to say about swing shift is that um demi got offered mainstream movies after that and so he took swing shift which starred goldie hawn um and he directed it kind of like an indie film and when he turned it in goldie hawn hated it i guess and made made him reshoot every single one of her scenes yeah so i've never seen it but uh he was going through that while stop making Sense was being filmed. And honestly, like Stop Making Sense is the thing that catapulted Demi into like being.

Mythic. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely saw Something Wild when it came out a couple of years later because it was the director of Stop Making Sense. It was just the best thing. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about Stop Making Sense? I mean, we could listen to some of the other songs if you want.

Is there one that you think is... Well, I think this version of This Must Be the Place, which was in the movie, not the album until much later, is... I love this version. Let's hear a little bit of This Must Be the Place, a.k.a. Naive Melody. Like, they really change up these songs. Everything just feels more full and

warm. Yeah. And joyous. Yeah. And cokie. Yeah. and cokie yeah I was hoping that was coming. Yeah, there it is. It's great.

It's great. Well, listen to the backup singers. It's just so good. We should also play What a Day That Was because we played it during when we covered the solo records and it's kind of cold on on record

but it's an incredible version Yeah, it's one of my favorites on the record Kind of has a Life During Wartime feel Yeah, and I like this version of Life During Wartime the most as well. Yeah. I mean, these are all great. Well, I'm dressed up so nice

And I'm doing my best And I'm starting over I'm starting over in another place Let me tell you a story A big chief with a golden crown I'm starting over in another place. Let me tell you a story. A big chief with a golden crown. He's got rings on his fingers. And he walks up to the throne. He's making shakes with his hands.

And don't you dare sit back. And don't you dare sit down. Don't you dare speak up. So good. Yeah. I mean, the addition of the backing singers with this just, you know, it makes it like church in a way. Yeah. So it's this great combination of like almost gospel with new wave music that just, uh, you know,

and, and this was our introduction to talking heads. So it's like going backwards and hearing their earlier albums that are a little more cold is, is definitely an interesting experience when this is what you think talking heads is, is this, this group of people,

you know, and this life during wartime too, it's like, uh, it's loosening it up and tightening it up at the same time. Like it's expanding it, but tightening it. It's really weird,

but I feel like this life during wartime is the definitive one. It just feels so much more alive. Let's also hear a little bit of Swamp because you got good old Steve Scales shouting over it a lot which i think is really funny this is what uh donald trump got us out of by the way. He drained it. By the way, uh, um,

that first presidential debate, uh, no, he didn't let him finish. That's what I thought of it. The devil he has a plan A bag of bones in his pocket Get anything you want No dust, no rocks

The whole thing is over All those beauties in some emotion. All those beauties, they're going to swallow you up. Let's go. High, high, high, high, high. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah, that's great. High, high, high, high, high, high. Yeah, he does that all throughout the thing just adding like

so good um just a great great record in either form um if you if you can only if you only have like 40 or 45 minutes to listen to an album, though, check out the original CD version. The original CD is 46 minutes. The original LP is 40 minutes. And it just encapsulates everything that Talking Heads is all about. And the movie? I mean, if you want to see. It's on Amazon.

It's on Amazon. You can buy it on iTunes. Oh, is it for free on Amazon? Yeah. Like Prime or whatever just check it out it's just one of the um if not the best concert film of all time although you know mr burns has his american utopia coming out uh next week so oh is that next week yeah so we'll see how that uh stacks up but um one thing that I wanted to, before we go to break,

because we have a big show, we have George Harrison coming up on the show to talk. One thing that I wanted to play, since we're talking about this period of Talking Heads, a lot of people sent us this clip and I wanted to play it. This is maybe one of the best versions of Burning Down the House,

best cover versions that I've ever heard. So just want to play this. So here we go. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Tool Time. I am, and for the last time, Tim the Tool Man Taylor. And of course, you all know my assistant, Al will be doing infomercials for a living, Borland. That should be a nice show. It's our last show.

Of course, we all hope to be on to bigger and better things. As a matter of fact, Al here is getting married this weekend. Yes! We have a great last show for you today. Binford. Binford wants us to intentionally overload a household outlet like this. Thereby starting a fire and burning the entire set down. Instead, I'm gonna show you the right way to do this.

Folks, just get a surge protector. Duh. End of segment. Get out, everybody! Wait, that can't be the end. This is the last show. Oh, I know what you're thinking. Come on, last tool time? Just plugging in a toaster? Come on, aren't you going to light anything on fire?

Of course we're going to light something on fire. We're going to burn this place down, baby. With everybody that helped us build it. These diehard fans dropped whatever they were doing to be on this last tool time with us. Let's have a warm tool time welcome for America's favorite all-tool band, the K&B Boys! Oh, shit, the K&B Boys! All tools? All-tool band, the K&B Boys! Oh, shit, the K&B Boys! The all-tools? All-tool band?

The all-tool band! Is this the last episode or something? This is the final episode of Home Improvement, which, by the way, I auditioned for this episode. And so here's what happened. I got word that I had a last minute audition over at cbs radford where they filmed home improvement and um it was last minute because they needed someone really good to step into this role of like the tv network person who cancels the show

and and i think they had fired the person that they had before. So they needed someone super last minute. So it was, they were like, we're only bringing three people in and, um, whoever gets it has to immediately go from the audition and film it. Right. So three of us go into the, uh, waiting room. Okay. And it's all three of us. And we're, and we're, we're talking to each other and we're like, so it's going to be one of us, huh?

Like one of us has to go do this thing. And you're like, ha ha, well, you know, good luck, you know, camaraderie, nice, uh, auditioning. And this is before I'm offer only, of course. Um, and, uh, you, you know, Adam, of course that I'm offer only. And along with that comes caveats of, I will not learn lines. Uh, I will not sign a release for the production, so you'll have to blur me out. I will not work on this until I start getting paid, so don't expect me to be prepared. I need stacks and stacks just even before I start even thinking about the role. But in any case, so me and two other guys are in the waiting room, and they bring in the first guy. And you can hear him doing the lines in the other room.

And then they say, okay, by the way, everyone is going to have to come back here and wait until we decide who's got it. So the first guy comes back, and he finishes his audition. He sits back down in the waiting room. I'm third, right? They bring in the second guy. You hear him doing his audition. He sits back down in the waiting room. I'm third, right? They bring in the second guy. You hear him doing his audition. He never comes back to the waiting room. He, I guess, just went immediately to the set from there.

It was almost as if he had like a giant trap door opened up in the middle of the floor and you just went bloop and it just like deposited him at the set and so the the the woman auditioning comes back out for me and he's like okay you ready and i'm going like why bother you've already taken that guy to go do this but i went and did it and of course you know they bring me back to the the waiting room they come back and tell the two of us that neither of us got it. Oh, that's awful. And what was the part? Do you remember?

Is it in the sequence? It's not. We won't hear it, but it's the network executive who cancels the show, I think. So I think I watched it to see how it turned out, but I don't remember. Anyway, we're getting to the Burning Down the House cover. Here it is. All through, how many times did they show the drummer by the way is the guy who played one of the drug dealers on justified and he's great and justified yeah and he was in a pilot that i did uh in 96 forget his name he passed away oh great great actor here we go Watch out! You'll know what you're after. Cool baby.

Strange but not a stranger. I'm an ordinary guy. Burning down the house. Don't get a thief! Ladies and gentlemen, on Staple Gun, Master Impulsor, Sparky Henderson. Fuck yeah, Sparky Henderson is on this show. Oh my God. Oh my God. Our show absorber, Eddie from Eddie's Body Shop.

God. Look at all these white people. Oh wait. Nope. He's only the 15th person on stage. And on horn, Mario Andretti! Mario Andretti, the race car driver,

is pretending to... pretending to turn a steering wheel. One, two, one, two, three, four! Hold tight till the party's over Hold tight

you're in for nasty weather There's someone just opening and closing an umbrella. Look at the house The party's over. Oh, yeah. You're in for nasty weather. Someone just opening and closing an umbrella. Did they actually light anything on fire? I don't know. This is so depressing. Oh, my God. Oh, boy.

This is up there with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn singing Happy Birthday. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. That's a good clip. What's better, the Parks and Rec finale or this? I don't know. It's a toss-up. It's a tie. Oh, my God.

They do set something on fire. And then immediately the fire marshals come and put it out. I mean, what are they saying? I mean, this is... Yeah. Anyway, thank you to our listeners for sending us that. I cannot believe they gave them the rights. I mean, they must have paid them so much money.

Incredible. All right, we need to take a break. This is exciting, Adam. When we come back, George Harrison, a Beatle, is going to be on this show. I do feel the Parks and Rec finale is far better than that just to be 100% clear well let's agree to disagree we will be

right back with more you talking talking heads to my talking head with George Harrison himself will be here right after this we'll be right back. Welcome back. You talking talking heads to my talking head.

And we have a great big important guest coming up. A member of talking heads will be with us. But I wanted to say during the great, big, important guest coming up. A member of Talking Heads will be with us. But I wanted to say during the break, Adam, something happened with your recording there at home. Your computer crashed and you're unable to keep recording your own vocals. But we have the Zoom vocals here. But people will notice a little bit of a difference. Is that right? Yeah, I'll sound shitty. But that's okay. I mean, look, people are not listening to bit of a difference. Is that right? Yeah, I'll sound shitty. But that's okay.

I mean, people are, look, people are not listening to the show for you. That's true. Nor for the quality of my voice. No, and they're not even listening for me. They're listening because we have a great, big, important guest coming up. And I am so excited about this.

I mean, we've had special guests over the years, have we not? We have. And I just have to say i'm a little uh blown away that we're that we have uh this particular guest here this particular guest we've we've you know on our sister shows we've had let's count them down we had you two on you talking you two to me they on the show. We had three quarters of the members of REM on are you talking REM Rimi? We had Huey Lewis on Huey talking Huey to me. And we had Todd Glass on stained glass. Yeah, most importantly. So we knew when we did this show, we were hoping

against hope that one of the members at least of Talking Heads would join us and uh this is very exciting because the the minute we started doing the show uh we got a message that uh our guest is was excited to appear on it and it is our pleasure to introduce him he has been I mean let's list his bands that he has appeared in. Okay, we have, first of all, the lovable lads from Liverpool, the Beatles. The Quarrymen, too, before the Beatles. Before the Beatles. And the Silver Beatles, of course, as well.

The Silver Beatles. We have, maybe even better than the Beatles, the Traveling Wilburys. Right, one of my favorites. One of my favorites. Incredible. It's a super group they call Traveling Wilburys. That's right. And then somehow in between those two bands, the Beatles and Traveling Wilburys,

he fit in being in Talking Heads. This is so exciting. Please welcome George Harrison. Hello, George. Oh, it's so nice to be here. I mean, let's not forget that The Modern Lovers was another project I slipped in there, too. The Modern Lovers, Beatles, Traveling Wilburys, The Quarrymen, The Silver Beatles. You know, I had this problem in The Modern Lovers is that they wouldn't let me do My Sweet Lord.

And it was, it was... Well, it was the copyright. It just didn't fit with the kind of punk sound. So I took on this pseudonym of Jerry Harrison at that point, and then I used that in Talking Heads. And then went back for Traveling Wilburys. Of course, of course. That makes sense.

Well, this is incredible. I mean, to have a guest of your stature on this show is just such an honor to have you for us. And welcome to the show. First, we want to say that. How's your quarantine going? It's going pretty well. I'm fortunate enough to live where there's fabulous hiking right across the street from me. So I could get exercise very easily in pretty places where it's not that crowded. Where do you live? Mount Everest? Well, I live in Marin County

across the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, okay. I live sort of across the street from Mirror Woods. Oh, fantastic. I grew up right down below you in Santa Cruz. Ah, another beautiful location. Yeah. Is this an episode of Beautiful Locations?

I believe it is. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Beautiful Locations. This is Scott. And this is Scott. And we have a very special guest on Beautiful Locations today. We have George, quote, Jerry, unquote, Harrison. And we're talking beautiful locations. Jerry, you've been all around the world. You traveled Europe with the Ramones. What is the most beautiful location you've ever seen? Well, there's sort of spectacular beauty and then there's charming beauty. I mean, I think the coast of Italy, the towns like Portofino and

Positano and Ravello are certainly in the most amazing. And then I would say for spectacular beauty, sort of really here in California, some of the national parks and ocean views. I mean, I've been a lot of places that are beautiful. I found Japan incredibly beautiful. And, you know, then cityscapes like Paris or Amsterdam just, you know, completely captivate you. Textbook episode of, what was the name of this show? Beautiful Locations. Beautiful Locations. That's right. Okay. we'll see you next time. Thanks, bye. Bye.

That was a good episode. Oh, yeah, that was great. We got a nice kind of trip around the world. Trip around the world, amazing. That's right. Jerry, so, of course, we're talking about Stop Making Sense in this episode, but we want to expand a little bit

and talk about your entire career, especially with Talking Heads. So, so many questions come to mind. And Adam and I have been talking for the past couple of weeks when we learned that you would be on the show about what are we going to ask Jerry? What are we going to ask Jerry? We've been emailing back and forth. Okay, you ask him this, I'll ask him this. And really, the one thing that was kind of paramount on our minds was, we really wanted to ask, when did you first hear of talking heads? It was, I believe, reading about them in 1975. I was living in Cambridge post The Modern Lovers and working for a software development company called Cambridge Computer. And then I met them in the summer of 1976.

And fortunately, the Modern Lovers record that had been recorded in 1972 came out in 1976 and in some ways was a blueprint, but also very embraced by the kind of developing punk scene. to stand in contrast to what I would call mannerist rock and roll, which is a lot of progressive rock I would include in that, which was all about bombast and having learned to play in the academy and incredible technique on your instruments, but sometimes ridiculous lyrics based on old English, you know, myths lord of the rings and lord of the rings and things like how many how many songs have you written about the lord of the rings would you say in total none none because i i sort of i thought swamp could have been about the lord of the rings especially like where they meet gollum uh well, I had not thought of that. Possibly.

So that had just come out and was a very successful record. And so is the story basically that they were looking to expand the three-piece lineup with a keyboardist and they were asking around and someone mentioned you, right? That's right. I know that Steve Paul, who had had the famous club in New York called Steve Paul Scene, which was a mid-60s club where famous jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck took place, and various other people that happened to be in town. Actually, the engineer I work with, Eric E.T. Thorngren, had a band, Bulldog, and Jimi Hendrix came in, jammed with his band. Why do they call him E.T. Thorngren, by the way? Is that because of the movie E.T.?

No, it's... Well, he has one nickname. He calls it Extra testicle is why. Extra testicle. And he also says every time. And I think he said it was because sort of he always delivers. So when you join Talking Heads, I know you mentioned that Modern Lovers kind of broke up because Jonathan wanted to go in another direction with his performing. The stories sort of say that you were pretty reticent to start another band or join another band because of your experience with Modern Lovers.

Is that safe to say? It's safe to say that I was, I had sort of made the switch in my mind that I was going to do something different. And I was just entering architecture school when I met the Talking Heads. And I kind of thought, like, I better go to school while I still have a little bit of the, not so far away when I was an undergraduate. bit of the, it's not so far away when I was an undergraduate. And so just as I was starting, so they were very, very nice to let me do a semester in a way of, of I kind of, and over that semester, it became concrete that I would join. Okay. I went down to the first rehearsal I had with them was in the summer of 76. And they were living down in the loft on Christie Street, where I have to say it somewhat freaked me out. I mean, I had spent quite a bit of time in New York, both in college, but also in the Modern Lovers.

But, you know, being in a loft where you had to go out into a black, dark hall to go to the bathroom, where you had no idea who was there in the middle of the night, was a little on the unnerving side. So was no ensuite this was uh no there was no ensuite bathroom and there was like a bullet hole in the window where a stray bullet had gone through so that's great no it set the stage for and actually i showed up at the rehearsal because the only way i could get there i had really i had spent a lot of money on the Modern Lovers and we never really got our advance from Warner Brothers. So I was really broke and I ended up moving. To get to New York to do the rehearsal, I had to help Ernie Brooks from the Modern Lovers. We had the band Van. We moved a family to New York. And when we finished packing the van,

there was no room for my keyboard. So I just showed up with a guitar. They go, we're looking for a keyboard player. And I said, oh, I do that too. But all I could fit in the van was a guitar player. But let's just start playing. The keyboard is like the flattest instrument that there is. Why couldn't it fit?

Could you put it above your head? Well, some of the newer ones would fit, but this was a little bit bulkier. Couldn't figure out. Yeah. So you start with Talking Heads, and there also was a story that you told them you didn't want to join until they had a record contract. Is that correct as well? I don't recall that specifically being a barrier. I saw it as that that happened while I was doing this first semester at Harvard Graduate School of Design. And I was in the process of like, am I willing to just give, I got to give it up again. Okay, I'm going to go back to music. And it became pretty clear. After we, I played the show at the Ratzkeller, there was no question in my mind that this was what I wanted to do. What was it about the band that you,

you just really intrigued you and made you shy away from a very promising architectural career? It was that I knew they were entirely unique and there was nothing in the world like them. I mean, it was really the same thing that brought me to the modern lovers. So I was playing music all through college, but still thinking that it probably wouldn't be a career. And then Jonathan came into earning my apartment

and I was making a film about alienation and I decided to put him in it. A short film or a feature or? No, it was a little documentary for a documentary film class I was making. Because they made a movie called Alienation with Mandy Patinkin, I believe, that came out. So you didn't make that. James Gunn. That was much later.

Okay. They stole my idea, obviously. James Gunn. That was much later. Okay. They stole my idea, obviously. And I started listening to this music that I had recorded of Jonathan and him talking, and he started hanging around. And just at a certain point, it's like, there's nothing in the world like this.

So I had the same feeling when I met Talking Heads. And then when I played with them, it was so apparent that we had sympathetic views on austerity about parts and not stepping on each other's toes. And I think that one of the things that made me appeal to them is that other keyboard players, when they had tried out, spent a lot of time to try and show how good they were at their instrument, which caused them to play long solos or to play complicated parts. And whereas when I started playing with them, and this also could have come from playing guitar first, which I was less, well, I spent much more time playing keyboard, so I had much more facility on it.

And I just would watch what, I would look at what David was playing and listen to it and listen to what Tina was playing. And I would come up with a sometimes a hybrid of something they were doing that reinforced whatever was going on. And so their sound didn't feel like, oh, my God, it's gone off to left field. It's like this is this is just us, but a little bigger and fuller. It's still sounds like us so uh you guys put out uh obviously you weren't on the first single but you're on the first record talking head 77 and um i heard you talking about how one of the things that made talking head such a success was the fact that uh you guys didn't spend any money which, which is really interesting because most bands, when they get the advance, you know, start blowing it on limos and coke and doing naughty things with naughty, naughty women.

Yeah. And maybe you guys did that, too, but you were more frugal about it. We were very, very frugal. Tina was the road manager when I joined the band. And after a year or two, I took over and was the road manager when I joined the band. And after a year or two, I took over and was the road manager. And we. Was that because you wanted to spend less money than she was spending? No, it was just I was willing.

Maybe she was tired of it or I said, I'll do this. You're actually willing to do the boring. And but it meant that we didn't have anybody traveling with us. You know, there was no one making, you know, I or we'd make the arrangements for the hotel and get there ourselves. We didn't have any babysitters, so to speak. And we had only two crew. We had no lighting person. We would just go into any place and say, please take the gels off, aim them at where we are on the stage.

When we walk on stage, turn them on. And when we walk off, turn them off. And I remember having discussions with the union lighting at Radio City. And they go, well, what about spots? And I went, we don't need spots. And they go, well, we have to pay them anyway. I said, okay, then have them put no gels, just have them open it up and light the stage from the front. And they go, it is more efficient when you can have one do two. I said, okay, then have them put no gels, just have them open it up and light the stage from the front. And they go, it is more efficient when you can have one do two. I said, okay, then have them all just light up the front of the stage.

So I think I got probably it was the most minimal crew that Radio City ever had for a band. What did you have against gels? Was it you'd seen other bands use colored and gels for the people for the people listening that is the sort of uh colored cellophane is it made of cellophane or uh that you put in front of a light to sort of make make the spotlight have a different color on it yellow or but what did you have against them i think what we had against them was that them? I think what we had against them was that unless you got to the point that it was designed and so integrated into a show and you had a really expert lighting designer and operator, that they always seemed sometimes slightly out. Like when, if you would go in and the local

lighting person for the club did it, he was always a moment. He didn't know when you would change. So he was. A beat off. They'd either do things just moving to the beat, flashing lights, or they, you know, and it was always just looked unprofessional and corny. And you didn't want to pay for a guy to travel along with you who knew what was happening. We had two crew, one person who mixed the sound and one who was on stage. They set the

music up. We traveled in the beginning in a station wagon and they drove in a van. We just kept it simple. And we did that all the way through the end of Fear of Music. But that became part of your whole aesthetic, didn't it? It became a part of what set you apart. It was this just bright white light on all of you for the show. It was so different from what everyone else was doing. And sort of anti-rock

in that, you know, became part of your aesthetic with the way you address too, with your sort of like norm core, what we call norm core now, which is just eyes on shirts yes i would uh it was part of our aesthetic i mean you you saw some things like this in the theater i mean coming from you know things that were in black box theaters and theater of the absurd and where there was a lack of artifice and it was sort of up to the, you wanted

to see every facial reaction of everybody on stage. And it was about the, I'm not going to try and cover it up in any way by the drama of the lighting. I think that one of the great things that happened with this is that every member of the Talking Heads had a fan that particularly, let's say, were drawn to them. I mean, David and Tina obviously had the most, but Kristen and I had people that would watch us intently. But you always had ability to see what anybody was doing in the band at the same time. And so you were really able to see the interplay. And as great as I think Stop Making Sense is, and of course, that's the focus of this, you know, there were some times where it was weird where I'd go, Bernie and I are in the

dark. And it's almost like you'd be playing and I'm going, Bernie, what are you doing after the show or something like, you know, I mean, it's like you it took away your constant intensity at the audience. Right. Whereas I think I think that when you felt so naked and just that white light, there was just nothing but concentrating on the music you were playing, the people, the other musicians and then the audience itself. Almost like de-elevating the idea of rock stars. Like there's so much goes into rock stars of their fashion and putting the right lights on them and making it seem like everyone's a rock god. And you guys were trying to say like, hey, no, we're just like you, the audience. Well, I think that that's something we shared with the punk ethos.

I think the punk ethos in general was. If I have something to say, I will find the means to say it and you out in the audience you could do this too i'm we're all just i'm just like you i just happened to have gotten up stage and done this you know i remember uh i think and i'm sure the influence uh a lot of the influence came from you guys one of the most striking moments talking about a previous band we've focused on in the u2 tour in like 2000 was when they started the show yeah yeah by walking out on stage with all the house lights up and playing a full song right uh without any lighting and just playing you saw them walk from backstage to get onto the stage. It really was like, hey, there's no artifice here. This is just...

That's right, yeah. Well, they had done a... They opened for us a number of times, and we're good friends with theirs. And I think that they certainly absorbed us as one of the many influences for them. Yeah, yeah, sure. As well as R.E.M.

Huge Talking Pads fans. Well, we need to take a break, if that's okay. Now, Jerry, we haven't even gotten to Stop Making Sense. We have to get to Stop Making Sense, of course, because that is the episode we're talking about. When we come back, we are going to be continuing our

conversation with George, a.k.a. Jerry Harrison. We will be right back with more You Talkin' Talking Heads to My Talking Head. After this, we'll be right back. Welcome back. You Talkin' Talking Heads to My Talking Head. Adam and I are here with the legendary. You hear people called the fifth Beatle a lot, but you're like the third Beatle, which is incredible.

Yes, that's right. How many fifth Beatles were there? There was Pete Best. There was Brian Epstein. There was who played uh a keyboard uh billy uh billy preston billy preston so many fifth beetles but we're talking to one of the original four beetles here george martin yes yes george george martin just certainly considered was there anyone else you considered to be a fourth beetle or a fifth beetle no? No, I think that you... That covers it? Well, maybe John's wife, but...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was around. Did she really break up your band? Well, I think that John became pretty infatuated and certainly distracted. Yeah, boy, it always happens. The Plastigono band's so good, it's almost worth it, right?

I'm not sure about that, but... I mean, after all, I'm not John, I'm George. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. Of course. But it allowed me to go out and play with Clapton and Bobby Delaney and, you know, that was really, really fun. Buddha Khan, all those great things. Yeah, I mean, those, you know, all those things. And, you know, as well, this gave me time

to get more involved in my meditation and the Hare Krishna movement and, you know, all those things. And, you know, as well as gave me time to get more involved in my meditation and the Hare Krishna movement. And, you know, just. Very important. Very important. You know, I think that John and George, John and. Paul was his name. Everyone else had become sort of, you know, when they kind of saw what they thought was Maharishi behaving badly, they had just thrown up their hands at the whole thing, but I still saw some value in it.

Yeah, they never totally got it anyway. No, not like you. You had to have a quieter soul to be able to do that. So we're talking, of course, about Jerry's whole career with Talking Heads and beforehand and everything, but the focus of this episode is Stop Making Sense, which when we asked you which album you'd like to cover,

we heard Stop Making Sense is pretty much what you wanted to talk about. Why is that? Well, partially because you just done Fear of Music. I think I would have chosen that first. But I think that Stop Making Sense for many people was sometimes their introduction to talking heads. It was mine. Mine as well.

The people who had not who were maybe a little younger or just had not. It was one that penetrated. we actually succeeded at doing something that i was really trying wanted us to do with this film which was not replaced but be an alternative to the rocky horror picture show i wanted to be the the film that a theater could play every saturday night and people could come and so one of the things was so essential was not to have any talking in it. To have it just be music. I heard you talking. Yeah, I heard you talking about that on the DVD of Stop Making Sense.

But you didn't mention like which films did that a lot. Is that which previous rock documentaries had a lot of talking over them That you can remember Well the one that really drove me crazy Was the film about Jimi Hendrix Where they would go into a You know One of the other songs Recorded at Monterey Pop That's not featured in Monterey Pop

Which is of course only Wild Thing And Then they would cut back to People who had known Jimi in high school and i'm going who gives a shit yeah slightly interesting but like you just cut it short just as he was going to the best part of the solo here's a here's a guy doing something no one else in the world can do and let's talk to one of his buds yeah and And you see it in almost all of the documentary films that they never let the songs play all the way through. I always feel that way about biographies of people as well.

We're usually reading a biography of someone because they've done extraordinary things. Right. And when they start off with five chapters about their dumb life growing up i'm always like okay get to get to the talking about when you were like doing these incredible things that i the reason i bought it so so you guys just wanted to do a movie that was just pure music that's right and really we had a we had a very visual show. And so we wanted to really just capture what we were doing. And Jonathan thought that was a great idea. This is Jonathan Demme, the late Jonathan Demme. And he brought in a fabulous director of photography, Jordan Cronenworth. And he just enhanced what was already going on on stage every night.

So this was the Speaking in Tongues tour that... Well, we had already done a tour for Speaking in Tongues. So this was a second tour designed with this kind of ideas that we'd explored on the Remain in Light and then particularly on the Speaking in Tongues tour of starting with a stripped-down psycho killer and people joining the band. In the Remain in Light tour, we did a few songs as a four-piece, and then people came out. But we took it one step further with David doing the first song and then Tina joining him and then Chris and me.

So anyway, it was a conceptual piece. And we just thought it, you know, it would be an amazing tour. And it turned out to be just an amazing tour. And so Jonathan saw it and he goes, I want to film this. And so we really did it at the end of the American tour. i think we only did two more shows after that at a festival in new zealand and at a festival in australia wow so that was that was right at the end that's crazy yes yes it was four nights at the pantages theater in hollywood by the way where i saw shrek the musical um i see. And I saw the producers. Nice. I always, I was so surprised.

It wasn't until recently that I found out it was at the Pantages. I always figured it was this enormous place. It's not like the Pantages is tiny, but I've been there many times. It doesn't, in the movie, it feels like an arena. I just always pictured it at a giant you know arena or huge huge place and it's it's actually a probably a great place for for filming because you can control it yeah and the sound was good as well and and we could control it and we filmed it over four nights the first night was a rehearsal where people were wandering around, you know, candle, but like kind of checking out camera angles. Like, you know how directors go with like looking through a lens and loop.

Yeah. And then they set up a track because it was filmed in 35 millimeter for like a panoflex camera to roll down and they had to take the seats out. So one night they did stage left, one night they did the center, and one night they did stage right. And then so when we went into the editing process, the first thing was to do was to pick which performance was the best performance. I think most of them were the final night. But there were a couple times where we edited or chose another one. We did do a few repairs when there was terrible leakage on a part or something like that. So some of the vocals were redone where you didn't have enough definition.

Was there ever an issue with the timing being different between night to night or were you all on a click track? No, we were not on a click track. Chris listened to a click to start the song. Actually, if you go back and watch it, you'll see with great detail. You'll start to go like, oh, the sync's going out there. So you'll know it's a shot from another night. Would you charge full price for the shows, even though it was a shorter show than you normally did? I had heard that you cut out songs in order to sort of make it a little

more movie length. And then you have all these like special lights and stuff like that. Or was this your normal LA tour stop? We had already played in LA. This was very much, this is going to be a filming. You have to sign something that you're coming in here. I can't recall whether we charged or whether we used some sort of primitive fan club, which none of we ever really had a fan. How much were tickets back then? Weren't they like $18? $20. Yeah. Yeah. They were, they were extremely reasonable. What a deal. I was watching the movie last night and so much of it is and I had forgotten this, so many times the camera is focused on the crew bringing

on in the middle of a song, which is just the opposite of what you would think you would do in a rock movie. You would disguise all that stuff. And yet, during the first four or five songs, you're just taking a break during these incredible musical performance to watch like essentially guys pushing something out on stage, which is it actually draws you even further in. But it's the opposite of what you think would happen when you when you first saw the movie.

Were you ever saying like, Jonathan, why are you focusing on this so much? No, because we I mean, that was part and parcel of the show. The idea that nothing was really hidden. It was very visible. I think also one of the reasons that it stopped making sense as a film has had such lasting power is that it, None of the lighting devices used were sort of a new invention that you then peg to that time period. Right. That was right around the time that Verilights came out, where you started having computer motors move the lights.

Right. I think actually Phil Collins owned that company. Really? Phil Collins? Phil Collins owned that company. Really? Phil Collins? From that point on, you know, that was part of lighting. You'd see lighting, you know, in the way we did it at Stop Making Sense, you would have had a person up there doing the lighting and moving it.

Right. And so the idea of rear screen projections of slides, I mean, I think that had been done since the 20s or the 30s. And just everything about it was sort of almost felt homemade or that like a call. It could have been done in a college production. It almost seemed like it was influenced more by theater than by rock music, which then doesn't date it to whatever was happening in rock music at the time. That's, yeah, that's what I, and that's why I think one of the reasons is that beyond the music standing the test of time, the look doesn't date it. And therefore, except for the shoulder pads that we're wearing and some of our clothes. Let's talk about your clothes.

Like when you, when you watch the movie now, I mean, you're, you're wearing a, I mean, it's kind of like a jumpsuit. It's almost like an Eddie Murphy and raw without the red color in a way,

but it's very right now. It's like perfectly in style and 2020. It's so cool looking. Yeah. I don't think I'm wearing a jumpsuit. I think I'm just wearing gray pants and a gray shirt most of the time. There's a time where I have a jacket on. There was an idea that we would be all in gray so that we wouldn't distract from the lighting.

Of course, I think Chris said, fuck that. Yeah, because isn't he wearing like a red polo or something like that? I think he's wearing a turquoise Lacoste shirt. Just like a drummer, right? Always kind of saying like, I'm just going to do my own thing back here. Independent. At least he didn't take the shirt off, which is what most drummers do. Like they'll come out in whatever the band has agreed to wear.

And then like one song in they just take it off and they're shirtless the entire time it gets hot playing drums you gotta take but it gets hot doing anything and your pants off as far as the album goes jerry until the special edition came out and home naive melody and those other songs were included the one we grew up with was quite a bit shorter was that sequencing tough to do to make it's not the sequencing that is in the movie it's no yeah we we made the album stand on its own and the earlier one was shorter because of the confines of vinyl yeah of course and and in fact it was when there was when we decided to do a dvd it was a period of time where Chris and Tina and I had done that album called No Talking Just Heads.

Which is what I wanted to do. I didn't want to have a band name. I just wanted to say No Talking Just Heads. I always thought it was everyone's idea of a perfect date and uh but the record company required us to and we ended up using the heads uh i think we should have used shrunken heads but david ended up suing us over the use of the name and over the use of the name head the head the heads because there would be confusion with talking heads but there wasn't i mean right but so there was the kind of one period of my life

where i really didn't have uh i sort of was on the david and i were on the outs with each other and i was in new york with a good friend of mine david beal who was working for Chris Blackwell. And they were really into sort of music with video, so DVDs that had performances being a new art form. And we started talking about the Stop Making Sense film, and I said, we ought to do it. And then I saw that David was playing down at the Ditting Factory, so I just said, well, why don't we go down and talk to him? So David and I went down, and that sort of broke the ice.

And we went. So then we, David was probably more interested in re-releasing the film. So a great deal of the money that would have gone into the production of the DVD went into remixing the record for, I think, whatever theaters could do then, but what basically was compatible with what became 5.1 sound. Right. And included in that was mixing then the rest of the songs that we were not going to include in the record.

So E.T. and I then met up in L.A. and mixed the other tracks. And then E.T. had gone to the mix in New York of the film, and I felt it was too ambient. And so E.T. and I, I said, I want to do an alternate mix. But of course, there was no budget. So I had a little studio that i rented by the month and i then i went to a music store and actually bought three sets of speakers and et and i did a new five one mix and then i returned the speakers at the end of the month and we we did that in the studio so you would see on the dvd

or on the blu-ray that there's the sort of movie mix and there's an alternative mix. Oh, interesting. And my view is that the earlier songs, which have fewer instruments on them, I like the movie mix now. But the minute that the whole band is out there, I prefer the mix that E.T. and I did. And so as far as the songs that were on the original shorter record go, the way we listen to it now, are those the original mixes that we listened to in the 80s? And then on the CD, on the expanded edition, it still is those. It's the same mixes remastered and then the additional mixes that E.T. and I did in L.A. to do the other songs. Because those are just, I know it's a little bit different in the movie, but those are just, you know, for guys like Adam and I, we listened to that record and those became kind of the official versions of the songs over the years. Because I listened to that record for probably nine months before I saw the movie. Yeah, me too. the movie yeah and it and it became just kind of you know the the the parts that were cut out of

songs uh like in psycho killer and you know those it sort of became the official talking heads album to us right doing that mix we were at soundtracks it was one time that et and i it was so weird it's like you know you're so dialed in and et like moved like the bass drum like a quarter of a dB or a half a dB or something like that. And suddenly it was like the entire mix went away. And it was about five in the morning. And I think we kept working on it. And we both fell asleep on the console. Really?

We both woke up an hour later. And we kind of kept up. And so it took just hours to get it back to where it had the same feeling what if you what if you had fallen asleep on the console and then when you woke up like everything that your head had all the buttons your head had pressed had made it sound awesome and you were like oh my god yeah yeah well that would have been better it would have been a better story like wow it's not 1985 with uh cocaine anymore we're falling asleep on the boards well look um uh we have to take a break.

Another break, if that's okay, Jerry. We're going to take another break, and when we come back, we will continue our discussion about Stop Making Sense. This is Slippery People from Stop Making Sense, of course. We'll be right back with more Jerry Harrison after this. to this welcome back you talking talking heads to my talking head we are here with jerry harrison of talking heads and uh we're talking about stop making sense. And we have a few, shall we say, rapid fire questions.

This is our rapid fire question. Whose idea was it to come out one at a time? David's. David's. And was that based on a theater production he had seen or was that just an idea? I think it was building on the idea that we had done starting with the Remain in Light tour of the band. Back then it was sort of began with the four of us

and then people being added as needed. Right. And just sort of taking, what's the logical extension of that? How did it feel coming out fourth? Did you ever say like, can I come out second? Would that be okay i think it

was in the order of the people who joined the band it was yeah and i think it's also david wanted a completely naked stage when he walked out and so having it just being david in the boom box it could do that it also made sense on heaven for it to just be uh acoustic guitar and a bass just for you know it was kind of a nice way to to creep into the songs right actually chris joined the band before tina so there is a mix up there but there's also lynn mabry is singing background vocals offstage on Heaven. So this idea that you came out fourth because you joined the band fourth, that's just kind of what they told you in order to make it go down easier? No one talked about it, but I mean, well, I don't think, I think it made sense just the way it was.

It was great the way it was. Did you feel like the person who joined the band last throughout the career of Talking Heads? Or at a certain point, did you feel like, oh, no, we are a foursome. I'm not the new person anymore. Did that ever go away? I felt that they were very embracing. So therefore, I felt like a complete member of the band. But you never take away the history that people have together and a certain kind of connection. But on the other hand, then, you know, I also had the freedom to develop, you might say,

my own relationship with each person in the band that was not, didn't include going to RISD together and didn't include all of these things. And David, you know, David and I shared a room for a couple of years. I was probably, that's probably the closest I was to him. So. Is David the person that you felt closest to in the band overall, or did it kind of change per year? Well, I had lived at Chrysanthina's Lofts for when I first moved down to New York, because I'd been moving, I'd been living in Cambridge. So it took me a little bit of time where I actually got my own place. So there was, you know, I felt really close to them as well. And that was also where we rehearsed. And so, I don't know, I felt like I had a tight relationship with each person in the band. a little bit of like you can never penetrate the joint you know thing that is that is the

chrysanthina couple did you view chrysanthina as sort of like a voting block okay so this happens in in in reality shows like survivor where when people pair up people want to split them up because they're always going to vote together. And in Monty Python, you had two writing teams of, you know, John Cleese and Terry Jones were together. But then you had Eric Idle, who didn't have a partner. And so he felt like he was always being outvoted. Was there ever a thing of like, well, Chris and Tina are always going to agree. So did you and David tried to team up because of that? Or were there any kind of internal politics like that? Of course. Yes, there was. It was not 100% of the time that they

would vote the same, but it was certainly more than 90%. And because they would have pre-discussed something. Sure. And that was frustrating because it's sort of the best that David and I could do was tie. Right. I brought this up early in the band. I made the suggestion that since David was the main songwriter, maybe he should get two votes so that we'd have an odd number. Right. But then wouldn't that make, that would make you the tiebreaker all the time.

Well, you see, I was the only one who understood that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I was actually giving myself more power. Right. That's what Eric Idle ended up being in Monty Python is, is he would always be the one to vote which way everything went because he was the solo person. Very smart. Very smart. But they didn't go along with it. Do you feel like bands like,

again, with our previous bands, we've focused on you two and Aria making the decision early on to share all songwriting credit from the very beginning, no matter who writes the songs. Do you see that as a wise decision as far as keeping a band together? Well, I certainly think that all for one and one

for all certainly is a very, you know, it's I just watched this documentary that Jim Jarmusch made about Iggy and he was talking about how the Stooges were a communist band, so they had to split things evenly. I mean, talk he had wasn't like that. David, and I think that Seymour Stein was involved with this too, is that when they signed to Sire, David and Seymour had a publishing company called Index Music, and with Seymour being the administrator, and then we became signed as artists, so to speak, or writers to that. So we never shared in the publishing. And yeah, that had the potential to create some tension.

I also, when live, when I produced live, they shared everything evenly. And I remember right before throwing copper, Ed feeling like he was doing all the work and going, this really isn't fair. So it can go the other way a lot of times. You know, it's just really unfair. And I remember having a conversation with Paul McGinnis, U2's longstanding manager, about this. And I said I kind of thought it was generous of Bono to share everything. And he goes, fuck that. No one would have ever heard any of Bono's songs if these guys hadn't sat in the basement and worked with him and, you know, made it so that he could realize the fact that he had the confidence and the talent to do this.

the confidence and the talent to do this. So I do think that it's implicit when individuals get the songwriting for there to be competition on whose songs go on a record. And you see also in bands where the singer seems to have two or three times as much money as the rest of the band. And that can be, make you really resentful when you're on the road. We had a similar thing, though, it was not about, when we first started out, Gary Kerfirst, our manager, found a guy in Connecticut named Gary Schofield, who had a studio, so he knew about mixing, but he also owned a van. And he had gotten this van because a friend of his had been stopped on the Connecticut Thruway, and the policeman had shot him in the head. And so the van was just sitting in the parents' garage for years. And Gary finally went over and going,

what are you going to do with that van? And they go, just take it. And so we hired Gary Schofield, including his van. And so it was a great deal for us. And, you know, he carried equipment. And it was one other guy with him. It was the beginning of our very stripped down version and we drove in a station wagon but we'd go out to eat and the rest of us were on these very tight per diems we'll say where it's like i'll have a cheese sandwich or i'll have a hamburger

but nothing to drink and gary gary scofield will go i'll have the prime rib. And it was like, you know, because he made much more than we did on each week of touring, you know. So I do think, I think of bands also as the only successful communist art form. As well as bands, you've got multiple people to deal with things. You've got multiple people to deal with things. I mean, I think that bands have also the advantage that rarely does a band make an artistic decision that is just so embarrassing later. I mean, you think of absolutely brilliant solo artists, say Prince, but the film Under the Cherry Moon is a completely embarrassing film. I mean, Purple Rain was great, but Under the Cherry Moon is like them being- What about Graffiti Bridge? Where do you land on that?

It's better than Under the Cherry Moon. Sure. I mean, I think- You hate Under the Cherry Moon, essentially. I think the song Kiss is an incredible song. Sure. I think the song Kiss is an incredible song. The idea of them being in the south of France as bon vivants, trying to sort of emulate F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda and, you know, as pictured in Tinder as the night is like, it's just preposterous. And, you know, it's and you see solo artists getting an idea in their head and they're so surrounded by people who always usually don't want to say no. And in bands, there's usually always someone, usually the drummer who goes like, I'm not going to be in that video.

I'm not going to do that. That's just that you look, you know, you look. Well, Chris, I look like an idiot. Chris talks about in his book about how you were all offered to be in True Stories. And they offered Chris and Tina the part of a pimp and a hoe. And he was like, I think I'll pass on this. Well, that was an interesting thing. I think that we, I mean, first of all, we'd already started doing videos. I think that we, I mean, first of all, we'd already started doing videos.

And David, first of all, with Tony Basil and then with Julia, I can't remember her last name, Phillips, I think, did on Speaking in Tongues, did Burning Down the House. And so when we got to Little Creatures, I remember saying to Gary Kerfer, David can't own all of our videos. So I said, tell Warner Brothers we need to do four videos. And each one of us is going to direct one. And he goes, they're never going to go for that. And I go, well, then just tell them there's no album. We're not going to turn it in until they agree to it. And so he came back and he goes, I got you three, but you can only spend $40,000 each. And we had an interest also just to diverge. David, because he'd gotten so into videos, was starting to want to churn out so many videos

that Warner Brothers got worried that David would spend too much money, but they didn't want to say no. So I think we're the only band that owned its videos and leased them back to the record company. That's smart. Yeah. But it was because we scared them with how many we might do. But so going back to True Stories, we made the decision not to be actors in it because we felt that it would undermine band dynamics to have david as the director of the film and us as actors him being in charge of you essentially yeah and of course then but when we went out to do the videos that are part of uh that uh for wild wildlife and love for sale the the crew that had been on true Stories all came to us and going, you guys were so great at these videos.

Maybe we made a mistake. You should have been in the film. But by that point, it was already filmed. We're kind of talking about your dynamics within the band and you mentioned that you know after the no talking just had uh heads album you were in a bad place with david and then you got back together to do the the dvd which i was watching the press conference uh last night it's it seems kind of fraught with tension it almost seems like you're in between chris and tina and and david like you're sort of the buffer yeah there's an element there's an element of me being switzerland of me being Switzerland by this point at the band, yeah.

Is that, I mean, how are your relationships with everyone now? They're fine. I mean, David and I don't talk to each other all the time, but, you know, I'll call him up when I'm in New York and we'll have dinner and he comes through San Francisco and we get in touch. So it's perfectly cordial. I did an initiative to sort of do re-releases of Talking Heads t-shirts and some of our other merchandising and worked with both David and Chris and Tina, but more David had because he was touring at that

point. So he had all these ideas about which t-shirt manufacturer to use and things like that. And also because I oversaw various things. I oversaw the mastering of Sand in the Vaseline. I oversaw, I did all of the remixes with E.T. that became the surround mixes of all of the Talking Hits albums. It's actually really wonderful in DVD audio. The 5-1 mixes are amazing, but I had to get the approval of everybody else. So I was always I was in a position of.

I felt I've sort of there was new technology in places for the the art that we had done to be reformatted and come out again. And I was the one who usually took on those tasks. But that put me in a position of having to coordinate things between everybody. Did you ever, did you get a chance to see the American Utopia on Broadway show? I did not see it on Broadway. I saw it when it was here in San Francisco before he went to Broadway. And I happened to be in New York the first month it came out, but I'm well aware of what a pain in the ass it is when you're playing in your hometown to get tickets for all the people that are asking. Right. But, I mean, you wrote a lot of those songs.

Yes, I did. I did. And there was, there's always, I can't say that when it's going down that it would be nice to be credited that I'm there. Right. But, you know, I think that this is the most successful version of playing talking hit songs David has done so far. Right. And it's obviously really beautiful. And the lighting is incredible and the choreographed movements are incredible.

is incredible and the choreographed movements are incredible. The way it goes back to the earlier version of Talking Heads is that you were so aware of it as an art piece, I think. But because of that dynamic, it doesn't have the free- flowing joy that Stop Making Sense has, where I guess every every, you know, you might say that the performers have a little bit more freedom to just be themselves. That is one thing about Stop Making Sense, just watching it again, that really struck me. And and was it was actually moving watching the movie, just the joy and the life that's just kind of bursting from this movie everyone seems like they're just having so much yeah and that that actually that that that brings me to uh some questions that i uh i wanted a previous guest who was on our episode where we were talking about remain in light right her name is tawny newsome and she's uh currently in the

steve carell show space force as well as uh star trek lower decks she's a talking head super fan and she um was actually in a uh talking heads cover band that started out as uh a stop making sense recreation and uh she she is one of the singers in it and she had. And she was kind enough to record questions for you if you wouldn't mind answering. And these are very, very specific. And the first one, you'll see why I segued to it because it's about the fun that you guys are having.

But let's hear Tawny ask these questions for Jerry. Hi, Jerry Harrison. I have a question about the move that you do in Stop Making Sense during Burning Down the House. I can only describe the move as bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, jump. Yep. And then you go to the other side, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, jump. I want to know who came up with that move. Thank you. beginning and he had ideas and then it was someone who would when we were doing rehearsals who was sort of looking from off stage and then them talking and so the idea was that everybody on stage would do the same thing at certain points. And, you know, I don't think that, you know,

of course, when David goes into his sort of Shiva move where he's moving his arms like this, that didn't get picked up by everybody else. So there was a decision. There was a decision to... There were certain things that you guys all wanted to do together, like running in place during lifetime. That's right.

But, right. Here's question number two from Tawny. And this is about you guys having fun. I believe I want to know who was having the most fun during Stop Making Sense, because from the looks on everyone's faces, I think it's a tie between Alex Weir and Edna Holt because their mouths were open throughout the entirety of the film in just just bliss and joy. Hmm.

Well, I think you might have to include Steve Scales in that, the joy scale, because I don't think there's ever been a percussionist who's given more freedom. He comes down stage and yells in the microphone and sings out of tune along with the background singers

and just basically just has, but he has such wonderful energy. It almost makes me feel like, you know, the version of Swamp that's in Stop Making Sense. When you hear the version on speaking in tongues, I miss the little shoutings. Hey! Like all that stuff. It feels like that's the iconic version, you know?

Yeah. It just became a party party tani has one more question uh let's hear this one okay and then my last question is um i was in a talking heads tribute band that's where i fell in love with your music um the band that i was in once fired our percussionist for eating a cheeseburger on stage. Was that something Steve Scales would have ever done? And would you have ever fired him for that or a similar offense? Thank you. I don't think we would have fired him, but I think that...

That sounds like something you should get a promotion for. Yeah, I think that everybody... There was too much running around and too much energy to go to think about eating. Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned Steve Scales having the most joy, There was too much running around and too much energy to go to think about eating. Yeah. It's funny. You mentioned Steve Scales having the most joy. And he gets so many shots in the movie. Like the camera is always cutting to him because he's always making faces.

He's always like jumping up and down. And like at a certain point, I'm like, this guy, he's a canny guy who like really understood. Like the more I move around, the more the camera will cut to me. Yeah, actually, he actually went off and I introduced him to Vicki Wickham, who managed Nona Hendrix. And Nona Hendrix and I were old friends. And he ended up being in Tina Turner's band for a few years. Oh, wow. So he got to have a lot of fun.

He just fit the bill. I mean, partially because Chris was such a disciplined drummer and did not want to fill up every space with a fill and things like this. There was a lot of room for Steve to be there. I think a lot of other drummers would have resented it a little bit more or it would have been, but he was, you know, you know, just the tom-tom roles and burning down the house or something like that. You know, they're working as a team. Yeah. And I know that one of the things I was going to get to

is that I remember when I was assigning some of the parts to people and David was part of this, is that David sometimes wanted the freedom to be concentrated on singing or on dancing. And I know that I didn't always take on, you might say, the most fun or coolest parts. I sometimes would have Bernie play them. Bernie, of course, was just one of the most incredible keyboard players of all time also is a better player than me but beyond that it was also we want to keep these people excited about being on in the show we're not gonna we're not gonna hog all the good parts and fun parts yeah and have them play the the uh the skeleton parts the other parts and i and and i know, whenever we performed, like I mentioned being in the dark, but I always thought that the victory of the whole gestalt of the band, so lit and so forward that there was,

that I got plenty of attention and that, you know, everyone, everyone's success was my success as well. Well, it's great to see, you know, you subverting your ego for the good of the project. And I think that's when you watch Stop Making Sense, it really seems like it's a group of people. And it is the way that Adam and I came to see Talking Heads and so much was written about David being the front man and him being in the big suit that that could overshadow it. But when you watch the film, it just is the work of a group group of people so much so including the crew when the crew comes out at the end and takes a bow um you don't see that usually in in rock shows um it really is just a a joyous uh telling of what a group of people were able to put together well i think it was absolutely a team effort to make it work every night. And, you know, it was, I really felt that we had become the best band in the world at that point.

I wouldn't disagree. I don't think we would disagree. I was very disappointed that David was so wrapped up in trying to think about true stories that we turned down playing at Live Aid because I think that we would have killed it. You could have been like Queen, you know? I mean. And I also think that you see that in particular, you two and Peter Gabriel's careers took off after Live Aid. And I just thought we would have been a great addition to that show. And especially with the integrated band that you had. Yes.

Which was so much, featured people of color, so much more than the English end of Live Aid did, which was all essentially like people like, you know, Adamant and Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. Well, you know, they also, those bands somewhat copied us and started adding background singers. In fact, the police stole some of our background singers. Right.

Yeah. Dillette McDonald is on the Bring on the Night movie, which, you know, is not as good as Stop Making Sense. That's true. They're a great band, but they couldn't measure up quite. Yeah. Well, Jerry, this has been really incredible. We really appreciate you coming on here and talking with us about all of this. Is there

I know 1% chance probably never will happen, but will Talking Heads ever reunite and play again, do you think? I'm certainly not holding my breath. And I think that David's recent

success on Broadway, I don't think that he, I think that for a while, it's not making sense so perfectly captured talking heads that I think that David may have had in his mind, I don't want to mess with this peak that we hit. mess with this peak that we hit. And he was perfectly fine with going out and doing a record of Brazilian music, because it was such an excursion in another direction that it would never be competition. But of course, over the years, he's come back to adding more and more Talking Heads songs to his shows. And then his shows have gotten to be in larger theaters and to be more successful. And this one being the sort of ultimate of that. Right. Well, Jerry, this is has been amazing.

We really appreciate it. Adam, any final final words you want to say? Just real quick. Do you have your favorite Talking Heads record? If you can pick a favorite, I don't know if that's even possible. Well, I always say two and the two are Remain in Light and Fear of Music. And to me, Remain in Light revolutionized how people were thinking about music and allowed for it to go in a lot of other directions that it had not been going in it all the layering of parts and the interplay of parts and i thought that fear of music to a certain degree was the sort of ultimate culmination of us as a four piece cool fantastic um before we go i i just

have to ask what it was like working with bob Dylan and Tom Petty and Roy Orbison in The Traveling Wilburys. Was that a thrill to be with those rock legends? I mean, but look, you're a Beatle. So some would say that you are a bigger legend than them. But how did you feel doing that? Well, you know, they were friends. It was just sort of like going over to someone's house and, uh, you know, and then, uh, I thought it gave a big boost to Tom Petty's career.

Yeah, it did. Certainly put him back on the map. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, uh, George, Jerry, we really want to thank you. This, uh, this has been so awesome for you to come to, on to our little show and talk about, uh and talk about what is one of the more important records in both of our lives. We really appreciate it. I hope you had fun. I did. I did. Fantastic.

We are going to wrap it up for this episode. We will see you next time. And until then, you know, we certainly hope that you have found what you're looking for. next time. And until then, you know, we certainly hope that you have found what you're looking for. Bye. Bye-bye. Hero

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