Burning Down the House
Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock
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- ¥2,800
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"Definitive...Not just for Talking Heads fans—it’s a masterful dive into downtown New York in the 70s, and the changing face of rock music.”—Town & Country
"Riveting"—New York Post
"A masterful achievement." —Booklist (starred review)
On the 50th anniversary of Talking Heads, acclaimed music biographer Jonathan Gould presents the long-overdue, definitive story of this singular band, capturing the gritty energy of 1970s New York City and showing how a group of art students brought fringe culture to rock’s mainstream, forever changing the look and sound of popular music.
“Psycho Killer.” “Take Me to the River.” “Road to Nowhere.” Few musical artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational bands of New York’s downtown 1970s music scene, Talking Heads have endured as a musical and cultural force for decades. Their unique brand of transcendent, experimental rock remains a lingering influence on popular music—despite their having disbanded over thirty years ago.
Now New Yorker contributor Jonathan Gould offers an authoritative, deeply researched account of a band whose sound, fame, and legacy forever connected rock music to the cultural avant-garde. From their art school origins to the enigmatic charisma of David Byrne and the internal tensions that ultimately broke them apart, Gould tells the story of a group that emerged when rock music was still young and went on to redefine the prevailing expectations of how a band could sound, look, and act. At a time when guitar solos, lead-singer swagger, and sweaty stadium tours reigned supreme, Talking Heads were precocious, awkward, quirky, and utterly distinctive when they first appeared on the ragged stages of the East Village. Yet they would soon mature into one of the most accomplished and uncompromising recording and performing acts of their era.
More than just a biography of a band, Gould masterfully captures the singular time and place that incubated and nurtured this original music: downtown New York in the 1970s, that much romanticized, little understood milieu where art, music, and commerce collided in the urban dystopia of Lower Manhattan. What emerges is an expansive portrait of a unique cultural moment and an iconoclastic band that shifted the paradigm of popular music by burning down the house of mainstream rock.
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Music historian Gould (Otis Redding) scrupulously traces the rise and fall of rock band Talking Heads against the backdrop of the volatile 1970s and '80s New York City art world. Lead singer David Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth, and drummer Chris Frantz connected in 1973 at the Rhode Island School of Design over a shared love of blues, jazz, and funk music. After moving to New York in 1975 and embarking on a two-year residency at the legendary downtown punk-rock venue CBGB (and adding guitarist Jerry Harrison to the lineup in 1977), they signed with Sire Records, finding their musical footing with a sound shaped by punk, Afro-Cuban, and jazz influences. In 1977, the band released its debut album, Talking Heads: 77, and followed it up with multiple successful albums and solo projects. By the late 1980s, however, the group had begun to collapse under the weight of Byrne's artistic restlessness, which—abetted by communication issues and disputes over song credits—led to their 1991 breakup. Gould delivers a colorful and expansive genealogy of the band and the scruffy downtown music scene they helped form, though his efforts to show how the band influenced New York City culture at large can lead him down distracting tangents, such as an account of Philippe Petit's tightwire walk between the Twin Towers (and the many copycat acts he inspired). Still, devoted Talking Heads fans will want to pick this up.
