WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1351 - Jerry Harrison

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers are two of the most influential bands of the ’70s and many would argue two of the best bands ever. And Jerry Harrison was in them both. Jerry and Marc talk about the blending of modern art and rock music that both of those bands helped pioneer and the environment in New York City that allowed groups like The Velvet Underground, Blondie, and The Ramones to thrive. They also get into the tensions behind the scenes with the Talking Heads members and Jerry’s rekindled friendship with Modern Lovers frontman Jonathan Richman. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf what is someone's texting me

what is esther pavitsky what is she asking me What is she asking me? What is she asking me, Esther? Do I ever make my own salsa? Curious what you do when you want a good salsa. I don't know. I guess I have made, why am I asking? I'm answering Esther on a text that's going to be days ago by the time you guys listen to this. I guess Pico de Gallo

I've made. Would you call that salsa? I used to do that. I used to be hung up with that. I used to be like, I got to make the perfect Pico, which is, I don't know if it you call that salsa I used to do that I used to be hung up with that I used to be like I got to make the perfect pico which is I don't know if it's salsa but I think that's what a lot of people call salsa it's basically what is it tomatoes and uh I put some hallies in there some cilantro I guess onions cilantro I guess I wasn't pronouncing something right in my Quebecois. Is that even right? The, where I'm performing in Montreal. It's the, I can't do it.

It's in the Place des Arts. arts place de arts i'm so fucking awful it sold out doesn't matter i believe it sold out i don't know you can go check that's my solo show on thursday and friday july 28th and 29th in uh montreal place seats like nine so i sold out two shows i'm a hero i'm a winner i'm a huge success i sold i sold out a place that's sat that seats 13 quickly fuck it man i gotta go up there next week this week what am i talking about today i'm talking to a jerry harrison jerry harrison was in two of the best bands ever and i got to talk to him he was in the modern lovers and the talking heads and he also produced a lot of records like violent femmes live big head todd and the monster a lot more he's going on tour and he also i found out, is a tech investor and something to do with toxins.

Yeah, it's a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. He's going on tour paying tribute to the remain in light era of the talking heads. And he's doing a show here in Los Angeles at the Wiltern in September with Adrian Ballou, the guitar wizard that is adrian blue so look the talking heads obviously great band for the first few albums amazing i'd say what talking at 77 more songs about buildings and food fear of music uh remain in light remember, I'm trying to remember the first time. Obviously, I think the first time we all heard the talking, it's probably Psycho Killer, Talking at 77.

Then their cover of Take Me to the River. And then, you know, you get into all the other stuff. Needless to say, as time went on and I come to everything late, I got to be honest with you. Mild obsession with Jonathan Richman. Who doesn't have a mild obsession with jonathan richmond who doesn't have a mild obsession with jonathan richmond right the modern lovers record is one of the greatest records ever and there's a mythology behind it i try to get into it a bit

with jerry i think it's still fragmented to me but you know i talked to him about it and uh i listened And I listened to that record so much. And Jonathan Richman, like there's some songs on there like, When you get out of the hospital, let me back into your life. I mean, what? What? She cracked, I'm sad, but I won't. Come on. Hippie Johnny.

Come on, Hippie Johnny. I mean, that Modern Lovers record, that first one, fucking unbelievable. And then you're like, what happened to Jonathan Richman? Then he started doing kind of child songs almost. I'm a little airplane, yeah, yeah. I'm a little airplane, yeah, yeah a little airplane yeah yeah and then like you know the original modern lovers is gone jerry harrison goes on to the heads david robinson goes on to uh

the cars the bass player ernie brooks genius i don't know i i talked to jerry a bit about that but if you listen to the modern lovers recordvers record, that was almost all I wanted to talk about with Jerry Harrison was that fucking Modern Lovers record and Jonathan Richman. Jerry Harrison is genius on the Modern Lovers record. He owns that record. Those keyboards, Jonathan Richman's voice, all of it. It's a fucking great record. And we talk about it a lot, pretty much.

And I'm just fascinated with Jonathan. Like, what happened to that guy? What is that guy? He's a mysterious figure to me. Sort of like a sweet figure, an innocent figure, but like something deep is going on in there. And he put out all those records with different versions of the Modern Lovers, their solo records.

Some of them I think were good, but it got away from me so so me and jerry talk about the modern lovers record and like where he was before that and then getting into the heads and going through the kit you know talking heads discography i don't know that i didn't get the sense of him and burn we're friends i don't know if it's contentious but you know jerry was diplomatic but then the beautiful part about the conversation i have with jerry is you know he's he's friendly again with jonathan and i'm like jonathan what about he's recording again with john you'll hear you'll hear but in all honesty i was excited to talk to jerry because i still listen to the talking heads i'm 58 and it's in my regular rotation. I've been listening a lot to Fear of Music

and actually Remain in Light as well, but mostly Fear of Music. Like recently, a lot. Like once a week maybe. And that was before I even knew that I was going to talk to Jerry. I did listen to the Modern Lovers. I do listen to that,

especially I'm Straight, Hospital, She Cracked, and my favorite old world uh on that record i listened to all those still and that that was even a little before my time but uh i was just excited to talk about this stuff so you get to hear me you get to hear me do that you get to hear me talking about that with jerry harrison and also jerry harrison's solo stuff pretty girl young man old man man with a gun two people in love the rules do not apply do not apply pretty girl young man old man man with a gun. Fucking, those, the Casual Gods record? Good shit.

All right, let's just get on with it. As I said before, Jerry Harrison is doing the Remain in Light tour with Adrian Ballou on September 29th at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Tickets are on sale now. And this is me talking to Jerry Harrison of the Modern Lovers and of the Talking Heads, two of the greatest bands ever.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. I listened to the interview you did with Bonnie Raitt. She's great. She tuned my guitar for me. And she also said about how she did it on her middle finger.

Yeah. I went to college with her. You did? Yeah. At Harvard? Yeah, she used to come over to my house to play guitar with one of my roommates.

And so you knew her pretty well? I know her. Yeah. I know her fairly well. Like, we don't hang out together. Sure. But you knew her in college. I knew her in college a little bit, but she pretty quickly moved off into that whole thing with dick

waterman the folk thing yeah and then but you know and all the blues artists yeah yeah meet through him and then left school i don't think she ever graduated we just had our 50th reunion it's insane did you go i did really like who like like har Like Harvard is such a prestigious kind of a grooming ground for all things. Who else was there that we would know? Chuck Schumer. Oh, really? Yeah. You and Schumer are contemporaries.

That's right. Different paths. And actually, my roommate in college was William Randolph Hearst III. Really? Yeah. Hearst? Yeah, and I was good friends with him, really good friends. Did you guys ever go up to Sam Simeon and swim in the pool?

We went up to the horse ranch, and we would stay there. And actually, we had one adventure that could have gone really bad. I had this Asian girlfriend who was wearing not really proper hiking shoes. And we went up into the mountains. And we were going so slowly, it started to get dark and cold. And we finally said, the only place we can see is to get near the river. And I said, we're going to have to go into the water to see. And I took one step or two. And then I was like swimming. like swimming oh wow it's like now we're wet yeah and it's

gonna drop to 50 degrees so we have to get out yeah now yeah or someone's gonna die well after death yeah what happened you got out we got out but it was it was we all went down it was like took showers for about 45 minutes you know it's interesting, though, because like Hearst, you guys are, but you don't come from that, right? No, I don't. That's the interesting thing about Harvard is you just have smart people that worked hard elsewhere. And then you get these guys whose parents own the world. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Where'd you come from? I'm from Milwaukee. I like Milwaukee. It's a great city. Do you still have family there? I have no family other than my new family, the one I created. Everyone's gone? Yeah.

I mean, I didn't have any brothers and sisters, and I had no cousins. Wow. So I had more distant family, and I'm sure they exist, but we're not close enough that it continued. I just played there at the Turner Hall Ballroom. Sure. It's great. Yeah.

And it seems to be you know like kind of trying to re-arise and you know what the turners are right no they're gymnasts are they they're gymnasts from eastern europe really yeah no i don't know the history yeah and in fact one of my teachers in grade school was uh a turner was always trying to get was there a lot of them i don't know i. I mean... How'd they own the city? How'd they get the name on the ballroom? Because it was there. That's where their club was.

I think they practiced gymnastics at that time. Oh, huh. That's interesting. And then they'd rent it out, too. So were you playing as a kid? Mm-hmm. Interestingly, my high school band... Yeah.

Well, the second one, the guitar player went on and became Leonard Cohen's guitar player for 25 years. Oh. Bob Metzger. Wow. They have an interesting sound. It's like that gypsy sound. And the bass player went on and was Johnny Winter's bass player for 10 years and then played with all these different people. Bo Diddley and all these different people.

John Paris. I know that name. Yeah, totally into the blues. And then the lead singer went on and became the president of the AIA. What's that? The American Institute of Architects. This is your band in high school? Yeah, this is this little suburban high school.

And then the drummer went off and fought as a Marine in Vietnam and then came back and he actually, when David Robinson got so frustrated in The Modern Lovers, he was the drummer for a little while.

Your Marine ex-bandmate? Yeah, so he came back and he was living in, I got him to get out of Milwaukee. I said,

you can't, he was going nuts after he got out of the military and he came back and I said, get out of milwaukee i said you can't he was going nuts after he got out of the military yeah and he uh came back and i said you gotta there's a school called bennington in bennington vermont it's all dancers and beautiful girls we yeah we i've had the best time with my college band going up and playing there yeah he said they just opened it up to boys. Apply. You'll get in. And he did. And then he went there and said that I'd see him when we would play up there. And then he moved to Boston, then moved to New York. We're still friends. He lives in Seattle now.

He was a solid drummer? He didn't have the opportunity to grow into being what he could be, let's just say. I only know him as a high school drummer. And he wasn wasn't there was a guitar player in that band who was very precocious and who was the leader of the band and And what did he end up doing? He became a chef and then he died

a while ago but he would go off there was a guy named Junior Brantley who was in a band called Junior in the Classics

and he now is he's quite elderly now but he's a Little Richards Junior in the Classics. And he now is, he's quite elderly now, but he's a Little Richards impersonator in Las Vegas. That's insane. And his son is a Michael Jackson impersonator. Weird. Where's that documentary?

No, and he came back. They did a show at Summerfest, the big festival there. Yeah. And it was sort of like, let's have the old Milwaukee bands play. So I went back to this. I didn't play at Summer Fest, but they had a concert at Shank Hall. And so Junior was there. And I love this line.

I go, Junior, how you doing? And he goes, I looks good. Yeah. I want to start using sure so but when you left like so you got into harvard and but your plan was what it wasn't music was it it was not music i sold all my musical instruments do you remember what you had do you regret those things of? Of course. Of course. Yeah. I had a showman amplifier. I had a Wurlitzer

electric piano and a locally made organ called a Lessman. Oh, wow. But the Fender distributorship was interestingly in Milwaukee for the entire Midwest at that time. A steel guitar player named Ralph Hansel. Yeah.

So when I got to college, this guy who lived downstairs from me who became, it's Ernie Brooks who was in the Modern Lovers with me. At Harvard? At Harvard. He became my best friend. We joined the Modern Lovers together. Yeah. Still a musician.

He formed a band, and I used to go hear them, and I'd always thought of myself well i'm not really good enough to be a professional musician but i went well i'm as good as these guys so i can have fun doing this so the next summer i went back and went out to west allis music and bought a trailer full of used fender amplifiers yeah yeah so i bought a twin reverb i got a dual showman i got two single showman bottoms with a showman head for, you know, something like $1,300. I got like six amps or something like that, right? You know, and brought it all back.

Yeah. And then we were this college band that we would play outside when the strikes, like when Harvard went on strike about the Vietnam War and things like that. So what were you playing, covers? Yeah, largely covers. I think we had a couple of originals that were not particularly good. So what were you studying at Harvard? I thought at first that I might be interested in oceanography. I thought I'd be a scientist.

Yeah? And I actually, the geology department, this was sort of amazing. So I arrived at Harvard and orientation week, I get this invitation to come to a sherry at the geology department. Oh, yeah. Okay. And I get there. I'm the only undergraduate there. Huh.

It was not a very popular major at this time. So this is one of the best departments in the world. And I appear to be the only person who has noted that I might be interested in oceanography or geology or something like that. So they said, we've got a whole plan for you. And so do you know the author and the paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould? Yeah. So he was my section man. He's like a genius.

That's right. I knew him really well. He was my section man. And he had just come up from Columbia. I think just gotten his PhD. Yeah. He was largely a paleontologist, but he wrote extensively about Darwin and the theory of evolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He had this theory called punctuated evolution. Yeah. But he was also a very clear writer. So he had New York Times bestsellers. Yeah, always. Yeah. Yeah. And he was your guy?

Yeah, he was my guy. And so what was the major that you cobbled together? Well, I ended up deciding I wanted to be an architect. So there was a new major called visual and environmental studies. Huh. And it was a complete mess. Yeah. And so I said, I just have to take control of this.

I talked my way in. I had no work. But my mother and my grandmother were painters. And I did a lot of artwork when I was young with my mother. Yeah, what kind of painter? Abstract, figurative? Abstract and figurative.

My mother could do anything. So you grew up in that world. You grew up in a creative world. What did your dad do? He was an advertiser. Okay. He could draw. He could write.

He could sell. Yeah, and my grandmother and my mother were amazing painters, I think. And my aunt is an amazing photographer. She and Ray Eames were very close friends. Oh, yeah. She died in 1951, so I only knew her for a couple of years. So I talked my way into this major, and then I learned.

So I started my sophomore year taking these courses, and it was all, they tried to make it, you know, it's Harvard, so they don't let you just be sort of about art. It's about how do we get over like being, doing drawing. Let's skip to the theories and stuff like that. Yeah. So there was a guy named Rudolf Arnheim who had this whole thing about perception, about the difference.

A philosopher? Was he a philosopher? who had this whole thing about perception, about the difference. The philosopher? Was he a philosopher? Well, he was more like he was a psychologist and very much predated what we now know from neuroscience.

He talked a lot about gestalt psychology and perception and how your mind, we know that like lenses don't see corners, but our mind knows there's a corner there, so we see a corner. Oh, okay. And this idea that, and I then learned this also in information theory.

I took this course of that, Claude Shannon's work about that. The value of a message is basically how surprising it is. So if it's not surprising, there's very little information. And the more surprising it is, the more information. Yeah, that seems to have taken over culture. But it's also the way the brain works. The brain predicts what's going to happen all the time and then looks for anything that might be break the, which also means why- Break the pattern? Break the pattern. Like, oh my God, there's a lion there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like, oh, there's a car very in here. So how does this play into environmental? So he thought of it as, it was not particularly environmental at that time. Or visual. Or like, how does it play into- So there was painting. There was sculpture.

There were architecture courses. There was filmmaking. There was animation. There was photography. You did all of that? The only thing I didn't do was photography. I did animation. I did filmmaking. You studied it.

Yeah, and I actually got very, I was really into paintings and sculptures. And I took this, I talked my way into this course that was way advanced for me. And I had two professors with six people for six hours a week. And there was only one other woman who really took it seriously.

So really these two professors were like our, you know, we were sort of apprentices to them. hours a week yeah and there was only one other woman who really took it seriously so really these two professors were like our you know we were sort of apprentices what was the course on it was you know advanced design or something like that and it was and then the the elder professor died and this younger professor sort of became my mentor so I took independent studies with him and did my thesis with him. On what? Actually, it was, I did paintings of can openers. I did a whole series of sculptures and paintings about can,

that were like inspired by that simple. Yeah, and they were your paintings? Yes. So somehow or another, you managed to kind of pull together a fairly broad, active visual arts degree out of Harvard. That's right. And, you know, two of my animation teachers both won the Oscars independently.

And so. So this sets you up to being a rock band? Not really. But, you know, and so I was, I met Jonathan Richman. But like you, that's such a diverse, like a diverse kind of like brain filling experience. And so I met Jonathan Richman. But that's such a diverse kind of brain-filling experience. Because you were really in two of the best bands ever, really. Well, thank you.

It's rare that somebody's in two of the best bands ever. Impactful bands for different reasons, I think. But it seems that in the Talking Heads, from the beginning, all that stuff that you put into your head must have played into it. Yes. Because the whole scene was sort of based in something defining what art was at that time. Exactly. And in fact, there was something in the Talking Heads music where they had taken, you might say, a concept that you would have in painting, which was at that time where you would take something that was jarring and put it right next to something else. That there was not a smooth transition. It was like, really? Why?

Oh, yeah. You know, a plaid with a weird stripe. Yeah. But it was purposeful to, you know. Sure. Have an impact. So you think of a song like Artist Only, the parts of it are absolutely, they seem to have no connection.

I mean, one of the things I did when I joined the Talking Heads, they were a trio before I joined, and I helped create some connections between the parts, though. Of them. Of these songs that had been written. Oh, let's do, let's get to that. Let's talk about Jonathan. Okay, so Jonathan wandered into my apartment with a bunch of Andy Warhol superstars. Really?

Yeah. What was he, 12? No, he was, I think, 17 or something like that. Okay. And this was at Harvard? At Harvard. Yeah, well, we were living off campus. Yeah.

And where? On Putnam Avenue. Okay. And this is at Harvard? At Harvard. Yeah, well, we were living off campus. Yeah. Where? On Putnam Avenue. Okay, in Cambridge. In Cambridge. Okay. Same place that Bonnie used to come over and play guitar. Okay.

And he comes in and he's raving about the Velvet Underground and Loaded had just come out and he's explaining why that really only Sweet Jane and rock and roll were sung by Lou because he had left the band and then Doug Ewell sang all the rest of the songs. And also, I talked to Cale, you know,

and Cale really characterized Jonathan as this guy that was always hanging around, the Velvet Underground. That's exactly right. I mean, he had gone down to New York and lived in, I think, the Albert Hotel or something like this. When he was a teenager. Yeah. I think he graduated from high school and then immediately went and did that. He'd come back and we used to see him every once in a while.

He would do these shows on Cambridge Common by himself wearing a plastic motorcycle jacket. And so he wanders in my apartment, and I was making a film. And I go, he needs to be in my film, because he's a contrast to the other people I'm interviewing. He sees something positive, but something that all these other people see, something negative. And so I was listening to the,

and I recorded him, and I was listening to the music, and Ernie comes in, and he goes like, this is really interesting it's really dear it's like not like anything else yeah and he was coming over all the time because he was starved for um conversation Jonathan Jonathan and what because he was living at home was he living where's he from yeah I think he was living in Natick at home oh yeah

and he'd come in and so finally he said to Ernie and me, why don't you join the band? And we said, okay. So both of us dropped out of Harvard second semester senior year. To join the band. To join the Modern Lovers. Fortunately. Did he have a band though? He had a sort of trio that was sort of, it sort of changed membership.

But David Robinson was playing with him by this time. Yeah. And John Felice sometimes would play with him and so we joined the band and we snuck in going to school the next semester we actually rented a house like a someone's house that they lived in in the summer yeah and down on in cohasset so we could make loud music because nobody was there. Yeah. And we would commute back and forth to college. I mean, actually, for me, it was really good. I ended up getting a summa cum laude on my thesis

because I had a year and a half to do it. I know. If you have the time, when you're not stressed out, you can nail it. That's right. And then the band was developing. And then in the spring of 1972, time yeah you know when you're not stressed out you can like nail it that's right yeah and and then the band was developing and then in the spring of 1972 so just after we finished uh that's one semester was when lillian roxson wrote this article about us and that was in the

daily news and then all these people started to come and see us yeah and it's before the record before the record but it was in i think the spring of see us yeah and it's before the record before the record but it was in i think the spring of 72 that we went out and recorded the record that everyone knows now because it was a demo tape for warner brothers and for a and m with uh pablo casso uh yeah roadrunner roadrunner i'm a guy i used to be roommates with just wrote a book on the song roadrunner really yeah he's at uc davis he's like a roommates with just wrote a book on the song Roadrunner. Really? Yeah. He's at UC Davis. He's like a cultural criticism. It's a book about Roadrunner, about where it came from and its impact.

It's a very unique sort of, he's a very high level thinker, this guy, Josh Clover. I haven't quite tackled the whole book yet. I got to go get that though. I'll show it to you. You would dig it, man. Yeah. yeah i gotta go get that though i'll show it to you it's it's you would dig it man yeah because he's sort of contextualizing it you know historically but also uh the impact it had not only on music but he talks about boston a lot he talks about the geography of this of the album

and of the song right you know it's all very specific i listen to that record still i listen to uh uh old world is i love old world and i love uh uh i'm straight what do you want hippie johnny that's right did you know hippie johnny no but it used to be hippie ernie it did and then ernie who was in the band said jonathan do you mind like changing the name it really So you did know Johnny. It was Ernie. And we did look more like hippies. Ernie played bass? He played bass. But he had written the song before he ever met Ernie.

So when you guys showed up, how much songs were written? All of them? Most of the ones on the first record. There were songs that developed as we rehearsed. What was unique about working with him? Why was he, like, because there's an earnestness to it all and a sort of seeming simplicity, but what was it that makes him and that album so special to you?

Well, I think that, to me, the Modern Lovers, in some ways, are the beginning of what of the ethos that became punk music now i know iggy disagrees with us because the stooges are often well that's 69 are part of our part of that but you know it sort of is the velvet underground than the stooges than the modern lovers right pat. And Patti Smith. Right. And then it exploded in my mind. Oh, interesting. Yeah, well, I mean, like, they can, everything can coexist. Yeah. Right?

I mean, because, you know, the Stooges, there's a lot of menace and raw sexuality, whereas Jonathan brought a lot of sort of sweetness. That's right. To the whole thing. And then Patti is Patti. Yeah. She's still Patti. Yes. And Jonathan also, Jonathan wanted, he knew that to get attention, do the opposite of what everybody else is doing.

And so one of the things that was why I realized, it was why I finally realized I could be a professional musician. Because when I was, I'm going, there is no other music in the world that is like this. And therefore, it will have an impact. And I really have this theory. So that goes back to Arnheim in a way right yeah that's yeah and i also i thought that uh that you know the culture was really determined by the musicians more than anybody else i mean i felt that sort of bob dylan and the beatles were more important than john kennedy and sure you know certainly starting in the 60s but maybe even earlier with Elvis and, you know.

That's right. Yeah. And, you know, you know, of course, lining up and to get a record at a record. Yeah. It was the unveiling of this new thing. Yeah. It's so different now. To me, it's like music is the background of people's lives now.

Yeah. I don't know what the hell is going on right now. Yeah. I can't say that I do either. I mean. Yeah. I mean, because I was thinking about you and about the records. Because I listen to, I like the Casual Gods record.

Thank you. You know, I mean, that Man with a Gun. There's a few songs on there that I still listen to. They're still in the mix. And I was just, I was thinking about the heads and everything else. And about when I was growing up. Because, like, you know, I graduated high school in 81. And, you know, I remember going to see Stop Making Sense when I was in college, my second year of college, when it was sort of coming out.

Right. And just that the whole aesthetic of it was elevating what was going to become postmodern art. I mean, and then when David started working with Robert Wilson and that whole world of music and art seemed to be all working together. Well, part of it is that there was a recession in New York City. So there was cheap property and also the economics of unionized labor. In the early 70s. In the early 70s. And so there was a lot of the reason that artist lofts opened up is all of this light industry and a lot of the textiles and things like that.

It got pushed, first of all, to North Carolina and then overseas. And so you could rent was cheap. You could buy a building. That's right. On 2nd Street. I know. For a nickel. I know.

Well, of course, I feel stupid about the things i didn't do but but uh and i had an absolutely beautiful loft on prince street eventually oh yeah so what happens with the modern lovers so like how does that how do you move so that record came out didn't come out to win 76 so we are crazy we had broken up by then as far as the original. Why? Jonathan had moved into his, we'll say his delicate light state. Like, hey, they're little insects. Oh, the children's music. Yeah.

I'm a little airplane. And it was finally like, we were trying to get quieter and Ernie and I tried to be more adaptable. David threw up his hands and he moved back to LA. So we came out here then to l.a we came back out here when we signed with warner brothers and tried to make an album and that with jonathan with jonathan after the first one after well that was a demo tape so we thought we never thought we

had made the real album right and then we it didn't work with Cale because he would say things to Jonathan like, Jonathan, when you play this solo, I want you to be really mean. And Jonathan would go, but John, I don't feel mean. So it was, and then somehow Kim Fowley, who had always been sort of hovering around us, ended up trying to work with us. Hovering in an ominous way? Yeah. He's kind of a creep, right?

Exploit, exploitative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But David and Jonathan kind of lay like talking to him. He's a good talker. Who, Kim? Kim. So we ended up working with him. Actually, interestingly, we worked like where Phil Spector worked at Gold Star.

Yeah. And one of the crickets was the assistant engineer at Stan who did all of- Buddy Howie's band? Yeah. No kidding. Stan who did all of Spector's records with our engineer. But the sessions, there's only a couple of songs. There's that one, The Plea for Tenderness, that came out of that session where the tape runs out.

Yeah. Jonathan hasn't finished. And that came out at some point. So how was Cale's name on that first record because he produced the majority of the songs as a demo tape for warner brothers i did this thing that i we were getting so many people wanting to sign us yeah that i and we had this sort of idea that we we the money would be great and the seeming enthusiasm of an A&R person. Yeah. But we kind of want to understand, is the company enthusiastic?

Yeah. So I somehow convinced A&M and Warner Brothers to share the burden of flying us to the West Coast to meet everyone in the record company. So they each set up a demo session while we were here. And that's how that record came about. That's why they released it. And then they didn't release it. They sold it to Berserkly, this guy Matthew Kaufman.

Yeah. And we all got really screwed. I mean, I made $5,000. That was all. And that stopped there. That was it. That was it. Until years later

where someone had bought it away from Kim and someone wanted. There were some reasons for like Sanctuary to make a deal. Wow. So we made a little more money. And it's like one of the most kind of mythic records. It's like, you know. Yeah. Oh, it's a defining record.

I mean, I have two copies of it. But when I found the original one, I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, even those used copies, it's not cheap used. Yep. Do you have a copy of it. When I found the original one, I was like, oh my God! Yeah. Even those used copies, it's not cheap used. Do you have a copy of it? Yes. Oh, good. So Jonathan wants to do his acoustic

children's music in a way, or whatever that is. And so David left and he moved out and joined a band that was in L.A. Robinson? For a while. He ended up in the cars, right? That's right. So then he moved back to Boston. And then Ernie and I tried playing with Jonathan with this guy, Bob Turner, who had been the drummer in my high school band after he'd gotten back from being- The Marine.

The Marine in Vietnam. Yeah, okay. And then just finally, it was like Jonathan was just being ridiculous about how quiet it had to be. And it was finally, it's like, there's no place for me in here. There's nothing for me to do. And you were playing primarily what? Keyboards at that time.

Although. Was there an organ? What was it? An electric piano? It was an electric piano and an organ. Yeah. And I,

then I went, I had like a little weird, I had a couple of little weird Italian organs and then a little mini compact Farfisa on top of a Fender Rhodes that I ran through a fuzz tone. Oh, wow. And it was, and then I was like little mini compact farfisa on top of a fender roads that i ran through a fuzz tone oh wow and

it was uh and then i was like sort of kicking around cambridge trying to figure out what i was going to do yeah i um you got your degree well i had finished i had gotten my second my degree while in the model lovers and then i asked it right and then i went um well there's another interesting story so the second year we went back to to Cohasset and we talked our way into this, the oldest house in Cohasset. It had 10 bedrooms. Wow. On the beach?

Yeah. It was just, it was insanely beautiful. A tennis court. Oh, wow. And so Ernie and I went down and we brought this friend of ours who's kind of preppy and we wore like blazers and said, well, yeah, we're going to come down. And we go like, do you have a boring work? I think we might sail the roads down from Ernie's place in Maine.

So we move in and Miss Christine of the GTOs, the Frank Zappa group, comes out with the daughter of, I think, what's his name? Walton, who was my favorite Martian. The actor. Yes. And Christine overdoses and dies. At the house. At the house. You were there.

I tried to revive her. Jonathan came and got me out of the shower, and I come running in naked. Jonathan Richman? Yeah. He goes, Christine needs a shower. What? And I come running out, and i can't get her mouth open because rigor mortis has said it oh man so i ran across and found the doctor and

well then the rescue squad came and said we're not supposed to tell you this but she's been dead for hours oh man that's heavy it was and it to degree, I think it created a pall over the modern lovers from that point on. Was that 1970 or after? Fall of 1972. Okay. Yeah. And like, Miss Christine, how did anyone know her? We were at a party with Andy Warhol at Susan Blond's apartment.

Susan Blond had gone to the museum school and then went down to New York and was in Andy Warhol movies. And she was a publicist at Epic and went on to have her own public relations. So everyone was kind of connected. So how did you get from there to the Heads? So, well, there's a little bit. So we went out then to LA and tried to do this album, the whole band. And we moved here, which was a bad idea because we were really fish out of water here. We did not fit in. It was at the time where everybody was going to the Troubadour dressed like in cowboy boots and like...

Oh, so the Tinder songwriter thing? Yeah, and there was... Carole King, James Taylor, Nielsen. Yeah, and, you know, Jackson Brown. Jackson Brown Jackson Brown right right you know and David Geffen

who wanted to work with us had introduced us to Jackson Brown who I'm still friends with

that yeah we're very cordial when we see each other and but we just

like were you know we were New York I mean we were Boston we were

East Coast and we just felt like we didn't have also we never really got the money from Warner Brothers so we were sort of hungry I mean like we would do Boston. We were East Coast. It just felt like, and we didn't have, also, we never really got the money from Warner

Brothers, so we were sort of hungry. I mean, like, we would do things like go to the Cafe Figaro because we could get pea soup, and then the waitresses would bring us, like, a pile of bread this high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Just so you could eat the bread. And it would be, like, 90 cents or something like that. It's so weird that, like, you know, even with Jackson Brown, given whatever he was involved

with here and at that time, you know, he, like, in some he, in some weird fluke, ended up writing that song that Nico covered. Yeah. Right? Was it These Days? Is that what it's called? I think so. Yes, exactly. And he was her boyfriend, too.

Right. For a minute. For a minute. Yeah. And he hung out with Lou. They went to see a Murray the K review. I talked to Jackson. Yeah.

And there's just these little pockets of people connecting before the music business until everybody found these weird camps in the in the 70s exactly wild man so you're eating piles of bread at the cafe that's right yeah and then what happens so anyway so we try to make a record and it just sort of disintegrates and then we go back and i and then we david leaves we try to do this and then basically jonathan it's just it's not going to work and so then basically i put a you know savings into trying to keep the bond and lovers afloat at times so i was in a pretty bad financial situation yeah i ended up then becoming a teaching assistant with this guy who i said was my mentor at harvard at harvard for, yeah. At Harvard for one semester. And then I got a job in a software development company that was...

Yeah. Actually could have become Microsoft. I mean, it was geniuses who... Did you know how to do that shit? I had taken a course in it and I was... I never was a programmer, but I understand computers. Yeah. And I worked in trying trying to in more of their

marketing okay i actually learned to write there but they did technical writing they would write the manuals for like the wang uh computers or digital equipment and so the technical writers when i if i did more than a letter it was something that was going to be, they would review it. And they taught me like, sort of unlike when you take writing at Harvard, where they want it to be fascinating or interesting sentence structures or something like that. They go, we don't care if you repeat it. We just want you to be clear. And they kind of taught me these techniques that I've tried to teach my children about, you know, you can do an awful lot with colons and lists and stuff like that. And suddenly it breaks it down and people understand what you're talking about.

Yeah. And if you try to write it in flowery prose where you connect it with these various things, sometimes- You lose them. What are they? I mean, you know how you read like older English and like the sentence is this long? Sure. And ever since like Hemingway, the sentence is this long. Yeah.

Hemingway, tighten it up. That's exactly right. Straightforward. Short, declarative sentences. So anyway, that was great. And then Ernie and I did an album and went on tour with Elliot Murphy. Elliot Murphy was, he had signed up to Polygram, I think. And there was a moment, he was a big Modern Lovers fan,

and there was a moment where, is Elliot Murphy or Bruce Springsteen going to be the next Dylan? Oh, really? See, I don't even know who Elliot Murphy is. He lives in France now, and he still makes records in France. So I made this record, Night Lights, with him.

I just don't even know why I don't know who he is. Yeah, his first record was called Aqua Show. Okay. And now I've got to go figure it out. Go find it. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, we made an album,

and I had decided I would apply to architecture school because I'm going, everybody within my department, undergraduate department, will forget who I am if another year goes by. So I need to apply, and I postponed that, and so I was just I need to apply. And I postponed that. And so I was just entering that when I met the talking heads.

You were just about to go to architecture school? Right. So I did one semester. I said, they were very nice about this. They let me do one semester so I could then go back. So it was Tina, Chris, and David? Yes. And so then they go, we want you to come down and jam and play us a couple of shows. And just jam. Yeah. So I go, okay, I'm kind of broke.

I got to figure out how to get there. So Ernie was using the band van to move people. Yeah. And so there was a family that was moving to New York. So I helped them do this. But when we got the van full full there wasn't room for my keyboard yeah so i just took a guitar so i walk in with a guitar they go like well we thought you were a keyboard player that's what we're looking for i going it wouldn't fit in the van i'm sorry but

i brought a guitar let's just play some music it went okay it went great it was like i think that everybody else that when they tried out to be in the band was trying to show off their technique. And what I did is I listened to, I'd watch what Dave, I'd listen to what Dave was doing, listen to what Tina was doing, and start by sort of duplicating one of those things that's strengthening that part, and then kind of starting to then, okay okay i'll put a little off of that and so it didn't feel like their whole sound had changed it felt like just was enhanced oh yeah and and that's and then the next time i came down i did bring a keyboard yeah we played two shows once at one of the lower band had notion club and then a private party in new jersey which is that those pictures that are on the name of this band is Talking Heads,

where we're playing in some living room, are from that gig. So the second gig I played with the Talking Heads. Was it like a wedding or something? No, it was just some people having a house party. Wow. And what were you playing? All originals? Yeah.

Really? We did a few things. think sugar on my tongue i don't i can't even remember who did that and i don't know what else we did that would be a that was a cover but basically originals did it feel like like something was amazing again i felt this is different than anything else and this is going to create people will recognize artistically this is a great success yeah no idea what its commercial success will be but i want to be i want to be a part of this and was that primarily because like what i mean do you get along with david now yeah becausehmm. Yeah. Because I interviewed him years ago, and he's an interesting guy. And I don't know what Chris and Tina are like, but I just don't, like, it just seemed that everything was so different about what you guys were doing.

They had, they were, first of all, everybody in the band is very smart and very, and uniquely talented in their own ways. Right. Uniquely talented in their own ways. Right. And Chris is a wonderfully solid drummer. Yeah. Who also has no need or desire to play flashy. Yeah.

I mean. Yeah. His idea, he never plays drum rolls. Yeah. He does a errant like. Bing. You know. Bang. You know. On a tom-tom, you know.

Why? I really don't know why, but anyway. But he has like an unmistakable groove. Yeah. And so, and David has impeccable rhythm. Yeah. So it was, you know, and I think that David Robinson is a very even drummer, but I had an easier time feeling Chris's. And were you playing primarily keyboards?

Well, I had learned to play guitar because when Jonathan started changing his guitar style, I said, who's going to play the parts like the someone I care about when we try and do this record? Yeah. He goes, I don't know. I don't want to do it and I said well I can play those I'll learn to play those parts so actually he gave me my first guitar which I still have yeah it's wonderful Telecaster yeah and I taught myself to play guitar so I could play all of those early modern lovers parts and he was now doing more flourishy uh-huh because he was starting to get into flamenco and all these things that were just the opposite of what he had been a year earlier, right? Interesting, yeah.

Yeah. Do you think there was an element of self-sabotage to that? Well, it's possible. I think that there was a tension in the modern lovers that worked to our disadvantage, which is David Robinson wanted us to be a certain kind of perfection. Yeah. Which he, everything that this car's early sound was, David tried to get the modern lovers to do. Right. The idea of the eighth note bass parts that sound like yummy, yummy and other.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? The Archies and various things like that. Yeah, yeah, sure. You know? Yeah. The Archies and various things like that. And whereas Jonathan and I were more about, like, we would react to the way the sound of the room was.

Right. And we were, so it was really different. Every time we played, it would be different, sometimes really good. Yeah. Sometimes if we couldn't hear each other very well, it wasn't terrible, you know? Yeah. And we should have just made the record right away and then moved on. Right.

But so there was a little bit of this sort of like, well, we have to get these original things that everybody was interested in recorded, right? Yeah. Right. So there was like, you know, you might say it was sort of like conservatism versus like radicalism. Yeah. You know. Sure. Running into each other.

Sure. But it was the tension. And it became a tension. Yeah. And then Jonathan had just moved on. But if we had made that record, you know, I don't know. Look, it worked out great, but we could have made that record. I don't know if it would have ever been the success that the record companies imagined.

Sure, sure. So it's almost like, who knows? But the thing that was left, those demos that became the record. But the times had changed, so those were perfect for the time. The thing is that the modern lovers had, at that moment in music to me, you started to have all these things like Everson, Lincoln Palmer, Yes, Genesis. All of these people who seemed like they had gone to the academy. Yeah. And the solos became really grandiose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we were like, no, simple, direct, short songs. And that's why I say that we're very much like a sort of beginning of punk or the inspiration for that because it's like short and sweet. Yeah. And use whatever you have around. And you don't have to be the best musician, beginning of punk or the inspiration for that because it's like short and sweet yeah and use whatever you have around and you don't have to be the best musician but if you will find a way to express yourself and then like you know after that like whatever happened the modern lovers and then whatever happened like you said it went from there to you know to patty to you know

whatever was going on in new york in the mid 70s so because what what it characterized punk at that time is not what punk is now. I talked to Mike White about it once. It was a sensibility that was not a sound in and of itself. Exactly. So, it seemed like at that time in New York that there were so many different things going on that the talking heads and sort of Tom Verlaine seemed to have this lane. Right. And then there was some other, you know, the full spectrum of stuff.

Obviously, Blondie was a totally separate one. There were bones that were their own. Right. And the dolls were a little earlier. The dolls were earlier. There's a famous show of the Modern Lovers opening for the New York Dolls in New Year's Eve 1972. Yeah. At the Mercer Arts Center.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which collapsed, right? Which collapsed about six months later. And we were up on the top floor of this six-story building. It was on Mercer Street. Yeah. And I'm going, oh, my God, if there's a fire here. The first thing I did was I checked out the exits.

In fact, it was sort of a mediocre series, but that vinyl that was a TV series where the building falls down. Yeah. That was sort of it. That was basically, it looked like a band that looked like the New York Dolls playing. Yeah. And really kind of captured exactly when we played there. Yeah. I can't remember who I talked about.

It must have been Patty. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, So that was earlier. And we were friends with the Dolls. Yeah. And so when the, and we were living here and then it was like really, they came out here and they were like the toast of the sort of groupies at Rodney's English Disco.

Sure. We'd go down there and go like. You can still see him. He's still sitting over at Cantor's. Yeah. Rodney. Amazing he's still alive to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. sitting over at canner's yeah it's amazing he's still alive yeah yeah yeah um but so what you

know because what it just it feels like that the the groove that you guys inhabited it involved like you know you know robert wilson and and laurie anderson at some point that there was definitely a kind of minimalist uh uh attention attention to rhythm and poetry that was very specific to your New York thing. That's right. Arthur Russell. That's exactly right. Yes, Arthur, you know, I knew Arthur well.

He's on a couple of records, right? He's on a couple of my solo records. And Ernie and he worked together a lot. And in fact, we did a session one time with John Hammond, the guy who's signing. You mean John Hammond Sr.? Yes. Oh, no kidding.

At Columbia? At Columbia, yeah. Wow. And it was really, this was sort of an amazing thing. He goes, well, gentlemen, I'm going to have to cut the session short. I just found out that my son has cut his finger off. He's a carpenter up in Massachusetts. And so I'm going to're gonna I'm gonna have to

leave but let's do a couple more takes before I go not the guitar playing son who he didn't have much of a relationship with that's right the other one the other one yeah I love the the guitar playing son yes oh my god but okay so what happens what what begins the swell for the Talking Heads? I think that we worked so hard. We really toured, and we, I think the Ramones and we were the most hiring pop producers like Mike Chapman and then Giorgio Moroder and, of course, the incredible pictures of Debbie that Christine took. Yes. And so they were a sort of publicity pop phenomenon.

Yeah. Yeah. Television, I think, never had this sort of either desire or stamina for wanting to go play. You know, you were starting to get into bigger places, one place, but then you went to some place in Europe, you're still playing this teeny club or Australia or something like that. Whereas we were willing to do that. Yeah. And we liked playing. Put the hours in. And we also, we were very cost conscious.

I mean, for a while, Tina was the road manager. Then for many years, I was the road manager. Oh, really? And we had two crew. And we actually had this, when we first began touring, there was this guy, Gary Scoville, that our manager, Gary Kerfirst, had had found who had basically gotten a van his friend had been shot by the uh connecticut state police and the van had sat in the parents garage for five years yeah finally goes over what are you going to do with that van and he goes oh just take it away so he was our mixer and our van yeah but so we would go out and we and finally

he said he needed someone to help him and he had someone to do it but uh we'd go out and he was making like like we you know we're like uh well do you want to split a chicken sandwich or we'll get a grilled cheese and he'll go i'll have the prime rib but it's like because he was making so much money than any of us we grew to really kind of hate him because but gary kerfers keeps going it's the best deal out of all time you know leave it alone yeah yeah yeah and then and then we uh we moved up to having uh a crew of two one who mixed the song and one who was on stage. I was the road manager, and we would tell the people who always wanted to do the lights, we said, no, just take all the gels off, turn on white lights. We walk on stage, turn them on. When

we walk off stage, turn them off. That's it. So that was intentional. Don't fuck around with it. Yeah, yeah. The idea, and also, one of the things that was great about it is, therefore, everybody could see everybody in the band all the time. So to a degree, everyone started to have their own fans that were a little bit interested in what they were doing, whether they were a musician that did that or a girl who thought someone was cute or a guy who thought Tina was cute, whatever. And it really worked. And then, of course, once we had the big band, that didn't really work as well.

Although it started to be needing to be programmed a little more. And then, of course, we got all the way to Stop Making Sense, where it was extremely choreographed. Sure. But when you did Talking Head 77, you guys had toured extensively throughout the world, and you were just tight as fuck. you guys had toured extensively throughout the world and you were just like tight as fuck. We began Talking Head 77, then we went, we hadn't quite finished it and we went off to Europe and opened for the Ramones.

Okay. All over Europe. How did that go? It was fantastic. It was, you know, I had not gone to Europe always because I was in a band. Yeah. Thinking I could get ahead and like,

you can't leave for a couple of months and it was like, you know, I didn't enjoy the tour until I was 28 so it was like, oh my God, we're going to get to go to Europe.

Yeah, yeah. And we went all over the place like down to Penzance and England and all these weird places that you rarely would go on tour. With the Ramones.

With the Ramones. In 76? 77. It was 77. Yeah. So that was everything, so that must have like, like the Ramones. With the Ramones. In 76? 77. It was 77. Yeah. So that was everything. So that must have like, like the Ramones must have changed everyone over there.

They did. In fact, there's a famous concert, July 4th, 1976, where they opened for the Flaming Groovies at the Roundhouse in London. Yeah. And that was, in many ways, a lot of the early punk bands in England

were at that show. and so didn't the heartbreakers make an impression there too like johnny thunders and those guys yeah but i think it was after it was after there was a little bit after that yeah i think wow yeah so that was it the ramones planted the seed they did plant the seed and you guys opened for them that was a we were back with them a year later okay and then And then- So they were kind of huge. They were popular. I mean- Yeah. Right.

And we- But the people in Europe were reading about us in fanzines. So they were reading about the New York scene. So they were very open-minded. Right. Like, Talking Heads and the Ramones? Cool, right? Wow.

Yeah. We came back and tried to do it in the United States, but people were much harder. No, I'm into the aggressiveness and wearing leather jackets of the Ramones, or I've been to the talk. You're a team. Never the twain, so to speak. It's that team spirit, that team orientation.

Tribal. Yeah. But anyway, so it was just a fantastic tour. The weather was beautiful, and we had just a great time. And so you came back and finished the record? We came back and finished the record, and one thing that happened out of it is that we were finishing every show with Psycho Killer. Yeah. And there's a version of Psycho Killer that Arthur Russell plays cello on.

Right. That Tony Bon Jovi, the producer, thought was what we should put on the record. Right. And I remember having this argument. argument no we have to recut it we have to do it like we're doing it on tour right otherwise people won't recognize it like when we're on tour no we have to do and i prevailed thank god yeah right because it was a totally it added a whole different tone well it was just softer it was like it was much more. It was delicate and drier. I mean, it's not that distorted even, but it's aggressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that became the hit. That became the hit, yeah.

And that put you on the map. That put us on the map. And then Take Me to the River actually was a hit on AM radio, interestingly. Was that on 77? No, that was on More Songs. The song's about billions of food. Right, that was the Al Green tune, right? That's right.

Yeah, then that was huge. It was really big. But we also, I've now played it, the DVD I gave you called Take Me to the River. Yeah. I've got to know the Hodges brothers, and Teeny Hodges wrote that song with Al Green. Yeah.

And they play it, it's all in the upbeat. And Tony Hedges plays, it's like all didactic on the down. Yeah, yeah. It's a very different feel between the original. Oh, of course. You know. Yeah. One sort of a soul gospel tune.

Right. And yours is a kind of. Ours is like a march. Yeah, it's like a minimalist rock tune in a way. And I think, interestingly, David taught me the song, and I learned it, but I never went and listened for more than a year

until after we'd recorded it. To Al? Of the original. Yeah. So I wasn't influenced, which was good, because it's one of the few songs that I sort of dominate, because it's an organ song. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, so you had a clean head about it. So I had a clean head. You did a pure talking heads version. That's right. It's like, Dave, okay, now I know the chords and I know what Chris's beat is. I'm hearing the timing in David's vocal. Okay. Right.

Let's dig that. So how does Bowie come into the picture? Not Bowie, Eno. Eno. come into the picture i'm not bowie you know you know so on this when we went to uh london with the with the ramones kale brought him to see us yeah and then we went over to his house and hung out and we went to this bookstore compendium yeah that was where i finally found this book that i've been looking for called inside scientology that william burroughs had reviewed and then it was like it had disappeared of the United States.

I went to all the bookstores in the United States and tried to write. So you got hip to it from Burroughs? Yeah. Who was like extrapolating the good parts of it and saying like, it's not all bad. Well, yeah, but also a lot of the bad parts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. And so I found it at this.

And so we hung out i think david went over to enos um a little more although i wasn't even aware of it at that time but and then we said we'd like you to make our next record and they go are you sure he was like i love your first record are you sure why would you want to change yeah and we went well tony was great but he sort of never really quite understood us and i think you do yeah well he was all like that's see that's another one of those weird loop arounds because eno's like whole sense of layers was kind of you know planted by the velvets right yeah and then like you know that that kind of thing, it was evolving his chops as well as a producer and then a collaborator ultimately, right? That's right.

And he had just done Devo when he produced those. Interesting, yeah. And then as we did two more records, we became more and more, he could be a little, he wasn't involved at all in writing at all for more songs about Billings and Foo, but he became a little more involved as we went, and of course most involved in the composition process on Remain in Light. Oh, really? Dino was? Well, it was because we wrote it in the studio, so he was there. But Fear of Music is like the record for me, and I've argued with people i've argued with people about it because a lot of people are like remain in light

dude and i'm like no fear of music well i think it's those two definitely yeah but you know you know i i i go that it's sort of like well remain uh fear of music is the the sort of peak of the four piece and then there's a whole new thing oh okay and then remain in light is like an invention of a whole new thing that then all these bands started copying us and all these all these bands well like the police stole our background singers and oh really all these you know the idea of of adding percussion and adding this people weren't doing that until unless they were sort of a certain kind of r&b band or something oh right yeah yeah yeah and so anyway so remaining like that so the big shift was who sat down and made that decision we all did i would say i think that when we were

making fur of music yeah we had finished mixing it and we were leaving for uh new zealand and australia yeah and then we were going to fly and have a week off in europe and then play pink pop in in uh copenhagen outside of copenhagen yeah and we were at the studio i mean i don't know if we were i think we're leaving the next day and i i said can we play that song e zimbra although at that although at that time it wasn't deezer it just was that was that song number five or something like that. It was an instrumental. Yeah.

And we went, all of us went, oh, God, it's got to be on the record. And we go like, well. And so David and I then flew back 30 hours from Perth to finish E-Zimbra. And Brian came up with the Hugo Ball poem. Yeah. And we finished it, and then Dave and I went to the mastering, and then we flew overnight and played pink pop.

Wow. Yeah. But I think that we all knew that eZimbra was where we wanted to go next. That's sort of the beginning of that being influenced by African music. I think we had all discovered Man of Dabango

and Fela and various others. But it's more explicit in that song than it was just infused in the other songs and some of it not at all, right? Because some of the songs on there,

I can't... Like Heaven, I can't... That song is beautiful and hilarious to me and i don't it it is supposed to be funny isn't it it is i think so yeah i mean i and and are certainly like um provocative and tongue-in-cheek a little sure although i i did a version with my daughter that i sent to someone's memorial service after they passed away. They played it in the church. And everyone just, because she sang it so beautifully, people weren't really paying

that much attention. That's just how existentially horrendous it is. They heard the word heaven. And they're like, great. And they go, okay, this is great. That's beautiful. So you do remain enlightened. Now, you're doing this thing with Adrian.

So how does that work? What is it that you're doing? There's a concert, Rome 1980, that's on YouTube. Okay. And Adrian lives in Nashville now. And for a number of reasons, I had to go to Nashville a number of times. Is he British? No.

He's from here? No, he's from Cincinnati, I think. Okay. Yeah. And we talk, and that show would come up and he goes you know my fans they like they get in touch with they go like i don't know what it is but that show makes me the happiest of any music i know what was the show it was the remain in light it was a version of the rain and light band playing in rome the whole album no well whatever

we what we did on that tour just without david no david oh are you talking about now no what the back back then yeah david's at the bed this is 1980s okay oh it's all right so that's in the band it's a full fear of music bernie's in the band right right right okay um you know don't let the full i mean the full Talking Heads. Yes. Right. And so we said, why don't we try and duplicate that? Yeah. Because it's not the same

as Stop Making Sense. It's a very different feel. Yeah. And so that's what we did. And I had produced this band Turquoise who were very well schooled in Talking Heads music

and they had background singers, they had horns, they had, they're a big band. Yeah. So I said, this is what I think we should do because it was a friend of Adrian's

wanted to do it with session players. I go, I don't want session players. Get a band. They're all going to also, they're going to want to charge too much. They don't know who, this band knows who is compatible when they have to share a room,

all these things. Sure. So that's what we're doing with, Turquoise in the middle of it had broke up and so now we're doing it without the lead singer and the bass player yeah um and we've been so we're playing at the wiltern yeah yeah and we're playing it hardly strictly but it's it was all supposed to take place in 2020 and then of course okay yeah yeah yeah okay so that's so that's the deal you're gonna do what's what is the set list it's uh a lot of the songs that were done at a lot of the songs that were done in this show in 1980 uh we don't do all of the older

talking head songs like we don't do uh stay hungry we don't do animals Hungry. Yeah. We don't do Animals. But then we do a King Crimson song. Uh-huh. And we do- From the Blue Period? Yes. Uh-huh. And then we do, I think it's Thala something or other, Gunji. I can't remember how you pronounce it.

Uh-huh. And then we do my song, Rev It Up. Oh, yeah. It's a good one. Yeah. I just listened to that today. And we edit. People love it. They do? It's fun. Yeah. You know, it's fun. And we, and it, people love it.

They do? It's fun. Yeah. You know, it's fun. And now when you do this kind of stuff, do you talk to David about it? I didn't, no. No. I mean, Dave is doing this show on Broadway.

It's like, excuse me, you know. He is doing the show on Broadway. It's like, excuse me, what, I can't play the music too? You know, it's like, you know. Right, right. I mean, at one point I thought I should tell him about it, and then I, I don know i didn't get around to it so i just didn't uh-huh i just noticed something about the discography that and maybe i'm wrong but it almost seems you know that everything with the heads leading up you know through remaining light it almost it's when you look at the rest of the

records it's almost like um uh did david pull a jonathan a a little bit? In the sense that, like, Little Creatures, this becomes more quieter and childlike music. That's true. It's because he, well, he had started thinking about doing True Stories, the moot. Yeah. Writing songs for True Stories. Yeah. Little Creatures are really the songs he wrote that didn't fit True Stories. Okay.

the songs he wrote that didn't fit True Stories. Okay. In fact, when we recorded Little Creatures, when we were mixing Little Creatures, we went and rehearsed songs that were going to be in True Stories, and then we said, we're ready to record it, and E.T., who was mixing the record, would shift gears,

and we would record a song for True Stories, the basic tracks for True Stories. Yeah. And then we completed it later on when he was further into the movie. So that's why the song has kind of turned to that sort of Americana. I get it. Because he was thinking about True Stories.

And when did you guys decide, what was the process of self-producing versus using Brian or anybody else? I think that we felt like we learned enough okay we could uh and we always hired engineers that were like alex sadkin who then went on to be a producer and we hired engineers that had ideas but then by naked you used steve willie white which is kind of interesting we decided then partially because it was a little bit of, the tension in the band was apparent. Okay.

That let's have an outside producer. Maybe I don't want to be. Why was it apparent? What was happening? Well, we weren't going to tour. We weren't touring anymore. Okay. I think, you know, Chris and Tina and I going, well, you know, it's fine to take a year or two off.

But it's like, why aren't we going to ever tour again? Right. And they had done the Tom Tom Club earlier? They had done the Tom Tom Club. And you made a couple? I did Casual Gods. They did the Tom Tom Club. And David did the Catherine Wheel after Remain in Light.

And Knee Plays? That was another year later, I think. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And My Life in the Bushy Ghost? That was right before Rem, I think. Okay, yeah. Okay. And My Life in the Bush of Ghosts? That was right before Rebanon Light. Okay.

And so that was one of the things that maybe began, let's say, not feeling quite so much as a band. Oh, yeah. David and Eno had just done My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Yeah. And so they had this you might say current communication going on yeah

which three of the rest of us weren't a part of right yeah and so that was the kind of

collaboration wasn't exactly the same as it had been before yeah right because he was thinking well they were

influencing each other but the other thing but he wasn't thinking in terms of the band. He was also... They were thinking abstractly about what... That's also why the music became... Well, we were into African music, so we were into layers.

Yeah. And Chris and Tina... I had the patience to just go to the studio every day, even if on those days I didn't do much. Like when we came back to New York, we cut all the basic tracks in three weeks in the Bahamas. ACDC was in the other room doing Back of the Black. Back of the Black, yeah. Oh, for which one?

Naked? For which record? No, for Remain in Light. Oh, really? And so we're... Both great records. I know. I think we did all of the tracks for Rain and Light in three weeks,

and they did one guitar solo and one vocal for the same amount of time. And then Chris and I are going to go snorkeling, and we go, like, you guys want to go? And they go, no, we're from Australia. Sharks. We don't want to go in the water. I would have loved it if the talking heads went snorkeling with ACDC.

That would have been great. Yeah. That would have been great. And so anyway, so we took, unfortunately, I think we took a break and we lost our momentum. So when we got back to New York, I had done all of this negotiating to get us this great rate at Sigma Sound, which is where they made. I had worked down at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia. Yeah. Because Busta Jones and I had become good friends.

And I went down and worked with him on a record. And I produced. My first thing I ever produced was a single for Nona Hendrix. Yeah. And I went to Sigma in Philadelphia. Yeah. And I really liked the professionalism that was there. Yeah.

And it wasn't, some of the New York studios, it was sort of, you'd come in there and like, you know, the tape opera, you know, the assistant would go like, oh, the Rolling Stones were here last week. It was like. Yeah. Yeah. So right. But we're here this week.

It's like, I don't want to hear about the more famous people that you just got to hang out with. It's like, I don't want to feel like a second class yeah. Yeah. So what? But we're here this week. It's like, I don't want to hear about the more famous people that you just got to hang out with. It's like, I don't want to feel like a second class citizen. Right. And also, what I really liked about Sigma is that they had this thing that if there was, if cities always break down and they would always go, this is a half hour problem. Go in the lounge and come back. Or they go like, this is a two hour problem. Why don't you go have lunch? Yeah. Or this is a serious problem problem. Go in the lounge and come back. Or they go like,

this is a two hour problem. Why don't you go have lunch? Or this is a serious problem. Come back tomorrow. Right. But you never were, other studios, you'd be just sitting there going,

is it ready? Is it ready? Is it ready? And you were like really dissipating your energy. Yeah. And they were very good about telling the truth. Telling the truth. Maybe adding a little extra time

so they made sure they would get it right. Right, so you wouldn't burn out, freak out. Yeah, and so it was really effective. Basically, we worked there, I think. Well, we didn't do speaking in tongues there, but then we went back there again. So by the time you guys did Naked, you needed a buffer.

Well, we just thought it might be a good idea. Okay. And that was the last record. It was. And David actually had some songs pre-written for us, and we kind of, I think that Chris and Tina and I, maybe we didn't understand the songs as well, because he told us that later that they had became

what he used in Ray Bomo. But they sure didn't sound like that when I heard them. Oh, you mean one of his solo records? Yeah, the one where he has the Brazilians. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. And so we kind of said, like, well, why don't we do a little bit closer to what we did on Remain Alight and Speaking in Tongues

where we composed music as a group a little bit more. And then we decided, like, it would be fun to go to Paris, and then Wally Batteroo, who had lived in the Bahamas above Compass Point, and we'd gotten to know, that he organized a whole bunch of African musicians to come and jam with us at different times. Oh, wow. That's great.

It was great. Yeah. David, I don't think, has the fondest memories of it, but I thought it was just wonderful yeah and I also think it's a terrific record

I don't think it gets enough credit it's a great record I also think the second side is my favorite really I like the Democratic Circus

I think it's just an incredible song I'm gonna have to like you know whip it out yeah re-listen that's quite a

you know I mean the bulk of work that you did with them and Solo and Modern Lovers and also all the producing and everything. I mean, you know, you've had a pretty amazing career. I think so. And what, now tell me what this stuff is you're doing with the weird old Jonathan. So this idea. I better not say insulting things about him. I love Jonathan Richman.

People always ask me, can you interview him? And I'm like, I don't think so. I don't think he'll do it. I don't know what that guy does. Well, if you want to interview him, I'll tell him he should do it. Okay. Is he a- where is he? Chico.

Okay. People, like, does he talk to anybody? Yeah. He and I have become really good friends again. Okay. Oh. So what's this work? So what happened is that Light in the Attic wanted to put out a Modern Lovers record, the original Modern Lovers record.

Again. But put out every cut, every version that we cut. And Jonathan called me up and he goes Jerry I've been listening to this I think we should do it and he goes I didn't realize maybe because I was singing but like particularly on the ones where I didn't do a vocal yeah how much you and I were playing off each other and I would really I was it's really great I really it's like the interplay is really great yeah I'm gonna be making a record.

Do you want to come and play on a couple of swans? Yeah. And I go, sure. Yeah. So it went really well. And, you know, the other people that were playing. Which record was that? This is Saw.

Okay. And he goes, well, why don't you come back? And the people he was working with is going, God, it's so great, Jerry. Like, you make suggestions and Jonathan actually listens to them. Wow. Like, when we do, he doesn't. Yeah. And he's been through a lot of people.

Yeah. And the studio was less than ideal. And so we got some rough mixes. And I said, why don't we, I have this engineer who I think is the perfect mixer for this. So come over to my house and we'll mix this album. Okay. So we did that. Yeah. So come over to my house and we'll mix this album. Okay. So we did that and he got to love this guy

and then we cut another, we recut Old World, by the way, it was on Saw. The best. Yeah. And then we. How'd you do it?

Is it different, totally different? It's, of course, much more stripped down. How about She Cracked? No, we didn't do that, but I do that, I perform that myself

all the time. Do you know who that's about? No, I don't. Because there But I do that. I perform that myself all the time. Do you know who that's about? No, I don't. Because there's a couple songs on that record where he's clearly talking about a certain woman. Yeah, yeah. And he always was talking about how he wasn't into, like at the period of the Modern Lovers,

like when girls were wearing hot pants and stuff like that. What about Hospital? How great is that fucking song? I know. It's amazing. It's amazing. I just got chills saying it. Yeah.

So when we came down, when we came out to LA, this management firm, Schiffman Larson, who did Loggins and Messina. Yeah. Todd Schiffman had been the Doors agent

and they go, we're going to put you on this concert and it was in San Bernardino we were opening for Tower of Power and Lee Michaels so we walk on stage and you know everyone's going rock and roll rock and roll

we go into the hospital it's like fuck you like stuff is being thrown at us and it starts with you doesn't it When we go into the hospital, it's like, fuck you. Like stuff is being thrown at us. And it starts with you, doesn't it? Hospital. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

When you get out of the hospital, let me back into your life. Will you let me back into your life? Come on. That is so funny. It's a fantastic song. Lee Michaels. I mean, like talk about a miscast. Well, that happens so much with bands.

They just stick bands on these huge bills. One of the things we did with Elliot Murphy is we opened for Shot On Not, which was like... That's bizarre. It was so bizarre. But Jonathan must have got a kick out of that. No, not with Jonathan. This is with Elliot Murphy. Oh, way back.

He's talking about bad bills. The opening act, it's rough. They're like, who can we get cheap who needs to work, right? All right, so, okay, so you're working with Jonathan. So we finished that record, and then we mixed it at my house, did a couple more songs. And then we were going to do another one, and then it was like when the COVID thing hit.

And then so we did it, I think, this year. Yeah. The one you gave me? Yeah, I think it's either this year or last year, but we, and his wife is playing

the Indian instrument, the tambour. Uh-huh. So it's me playing a lot of harmonium and a mellotron. Okay. And Jonathan playing

and Tommy playing. Guitar. Playing guitar. Yeah. Like flamenco style that he likes to do. Yeah. And we recorded it all at once. And he's singing?

In our living room. And it was like, it's just cut live and it's amazing. Is he singing? Yeah. Oh, man. And like I said, both these albums, they just don't sound like anything that's going on in music right now. So that's what, it's just so wonderful. Oh, I'm so'm so curious now yeah it's great that you guys are back together again i know it's great we're like really good friends he'll call me up and start talking about because

i started architecture he's become a mason a bricklayer yeah and so he'll like makes pizza ovens and various things really this and he'll you know, and he's really into like, you got your architecture degree? No, I didn't, but I, you know, he had known I was interested in studying. Sure.

And so he was going, you know, I'm really into the old border like the Romans used, lime. Of course. You know, it's like, you know, Portland cement is stronger,

but there's like weaknesses and it dries out. Like the Romans, they do a different mixture if it's in the sun or if it's in the shade. So what side of the wall is it going to be? You use a different mortar. And he goes, you know, there's a lot of people that maybe are a mason and their hobby is doing music. I'm a professional musician. My hobby is doing masonry. And he does contract work for people?

Yeah. Up around Chico? Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah. I do have other interests. I mean, I have companies I've started and other interesting things I'm doing.

Oh, yeah? Do you want to talk about it? Like what? Sure. Well, I have a company that's antidote. I just came from Venom Week. Venom Week? Yes, where I gave the keynote address.

What's Venom Week? All things about toxins and poisons. What? Yeah. This is a company? You want to talk about this? We're talking about it. Okay.

I had this party where I met these neuroscientists, and I started hiking with one of them, and I said, God, there's a lot of smart people in this, and I'm sort of into the startup scene in San Francisco, and I go, does anyone have any great ideas? And this guy kind of timidly goes, I do.

Yeah. I have this idea about how people don't have to die from neurotoxic snake bites, like cobras. Yeah, yeah, sure. Coral snakes and stuff. And I go,

and they started to explain to me like that. I mean, there's a, like, mosquitoes kill the most people. Humans kill the next most people. Yeah. Snakes are next. Really? 125,000 people a year die of snake bites. Really?

Half a million, at least half a million maimings. That's crazy. Yeah. And the treatment, which anti-venom, was invented in the 1880s, and there really haven't been that many improvements since then. So we've come up with a small molecule that attacks a particular toxin that is one of the most noxious in the sort of, I don't know, every venom is like a sort of spectrum of these toxins. And there's a problem with antivenom in that it has to really come from the exact species.

Otherwise, it's not very effective. It's like a vaccine. And it's also very expensive. Like in the United States, if you get bit by a snake, the pharmacological cost could be $60,000 to $100,000. Yeah. So we have this thing that is going to be, we believe, it will be something you could have in your pocket and you could eat it if you got bit by a snake. And it will definitely help you get to the hospital. And in some cases, with in some cases it would be all it's with certain snakes it might be all you need wow no kidding yeah and so we started this company a decade ago and i thought it was going to be something like i'll just introduce this to a

friend of mine who works at the gates foundation yeah and they'll take it from there yeah but no it's big and they didn't yeah i said we have to start a company because we can't really. Oh, you thought like Gates would get it around to like everybody that needs it in the malaria world? Yeah. Like he's the malaria guy. Yeah. But they went, it's not an infectious disease.

It's not our wheelhouse. Ah. So I was like, okay. So we've been working on this and improving it. And we're actually in clinical trials in India and in the United States right now. That's crazy, man. Like when you start bringing up toxins, I start thinking about Burroughs again, because he was all fascinated with all those toxins, all kinds of bugs and bites and snakes.

So, the other thing is we think it possibly is a treatment for what people die from COVID from, acute respiratory distress syndrome. Oh, really? Because it's an immune suppressant, the same way the steroids are, but it also protects the surfactants of the lungs. The surfactants of the lungs are sort of the grease, because you breathe, all these cells are moving next to each other. Yeah, yeah. And what they call the cytokine storm attacks that. And it's all what's called SPLA-2. We are an SPLA-2 inhibitor, so we're in a clinical trial for that as well. Wow, man. Second life.

Third life. Or another thing. Another thing. Well, you know, I've done a lot of, I was also like on the board of directors of a microprocessor company that a friend of mine for a long time. I started GarageBand.com, which was the, you know, not the thing on Apple, but the thing that was sort of crowdsourcing music. Oh, really? A new way to find developing stars.

Oh, interesting. Those are the 90s. Did you sell that? No, it kind of fell apart, and then it became iLike, and I remained on it, and then it got sold eventually to MySpace. I mean, unfortunately, Apple wanted to buy it for a lot of money yeah and the venture capitalists would invest in it wanted us to make much more money they thought we were we had gone

from like three million to thirty million users in six months yeah so they held out they held out disappeared and steve jobs is like it's like you, that was a one-time offer to get out of here. I'll do it myself. Wow, so you keep really busy. Is music still the most rewarding, though, ultimately? Well, you know, I kind of went, I think that I got into thinking about other things and finding, once again, thinking about science and stuff like that. I'm really liking the fact that this is really stretching my mind.

And to a degree because I started GarageBand.com and I did a couple of albums that never came out and my trajectory as a producer began to decrease. I wasn't getting the bands that would get the support for the record company. Yeah. I did the Von Bondys and I got support. Yeah. And I recently did the Butcherettes who I think

are really fantastic but you start to get frustrated like if you make a record but nobody's going to hear it it's not very rewarding. It's a drag. It's not so rewarding.

Yeah. And so these companies came along and I went this is really fascinating and it's like really inspiring me but then a few years ago

I'm like I'm really missing playing music. I'm really listening and that's why now i'm on tour with adrian oh great i'm missing this it's all gravy now jerry it's all you know what i mean you can have fun i don't know i think i get up and whether i was giving the speech at venom week or i played the concert i still get nervous and it's like i gotta i gotta i gotta perform today i Believe me. He's just talking to you.

Every time I have to talk to somebody or do stand-up or whatever, it's good that you don't want to be too fearless. Because then it's like, am I challenging myself? Am I in this? Am I asleep during this? Or am I engaged? Great talking to you.

Great to talk to you. Jerry Harrison's. How sweet is that? He gave me the record. The Jonathan Richman record. The odd one. And it's like, it's great to hear him singing again. I don't know what to make of it.

I have to listen to it again. But I was very happy to talk to Jerry. Again, he's doing the Remain in Light tour with Adrian Ballou on September 29th at the Wiltern here in Los Angeles. Tickets are on sale now. I'm going to just hang out for one second, please. Thank you. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly.

This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. All right, so Montreal this weekend. I'll be hanging around. I'm going to do the gala or the gala. And yeah, my gala is pretty good.

There's a lot of good people on it. Coincidentally, hold on, I'll tell you exactly who's on it. Rosebud Baker, who's been on this show. Zainab Johnson, who will be on this show on Thursday. Big Jay Oakerson, he's been on this show. Gina Yashir, who I don't know. The Sklar brothers, of course, who I've known since they were children. Rice Nicholson, I don't know. Rob Bevanek, nope. Iman El-Husseini, I don't know. But it's good. I believe there's probably still tickets for it. It's on, what day is it?

It's on July 30th, on Saturday. I think I've got it set in my mind for what I'm going to do. For the gala. And yeah, and the other one, the solo show, Friday, July 28th and saturday july 29th at the uh sao claude le veille uh which is part of the uh place de arts is that right i don't know it's probably sold out but go to hahaha.com or wtfpod.com slash tour

it's weird there's something triggering about going to Montreal. For years, I felt sidelined by the entire business, and now I'm comfortable over here on the side. It's weird. It's not bad over here on the side. I think I prefer it. Actually, it's less pressure here on the side. In August, I'll be in Columbus, Ohio at the Southern Theater on August 4th.

Indianapolis, Indiana, I'm at the Old National Center on August 5th. Louisville, Kentucky at the Baumhard Theater August 6th. I will try not to Baumhard at the Baumhard. Then I'm back at Dynasty Typewriter in L.A. August 14th. Lincoln, Nebraska at the Rococo Theater on August 18th. Des Moines, Iowa at the Hoyt Sherman LA, August 14th. Lincoln, Nebraska at the Rococo Theater on August 18th. Des Moines, Iowa at the Hoyt Sherman Place on August 19th. And Iowa City, Iowa at the Ingwert Theater on August 20th. All those out-of-town shows. I will be joined by Lara Bites. The very funny Lara Bites. Then in Septemberember i'm in tucson arizona phoenix arizona boulder colorado and toronto ontario canada in october i'm in london england and dublin

ireland go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all tour dates and ticket info uh zaynab johnson will be here thursday i enjoyed uh talking to her very much i like her um and uh yeah here's some guitar that took me a long time to record over and over and over again i still didn't quite get it right so what's new so what's fucking new guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. I'm sweating. I'm fucking sweating.