Four decades ago, the band Talking Heads released Stop Making Sense, considered one of the greatest concert films of all time. The movie features no lasers, no giant screens, and no fireworks. Stop Making Sense is just full of amazing music and movement, as nine musicians line up onstage and go to town.
Jerry Harrison, who played keyboards, guitar and more for Talking Heads, will be in San Antonio on Nov. 13 for a Q&A session following a screening of the remixed and remastered concert film at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Harrison said people still marvel at the energy on stage.
“Recently, someone [told me], ‘I just can't believe how you guys had the energy to be moving for that long!’ And particularly David [Byrne], it's like he's running and jumping the entire hour and a half.”
If there’s one adjective that critics and writers have mentioned over and over again when it comes to Stop Making Sense, it’s “joy.” Joy of performance, joy of music … it just explodes off the screen. Harrison said the time is right for revisiting this movie.
“We live in a pretty dark time these days, where there isn't sort of such an unmitigated joy as often,” Harrison said.
“A little bit of it is, of course, everyone is reminiscing to maybe a simpler time, where people are feeling a little more confident about the future,” Harrison explained. “So it's a little bit [about] bringing back that happiness that they had felt earlier. But it's also just the performance.”
Stop Making Sense screens on Thursday, Nov. 13 at the Empire Theatre, introduced by Jerry Harrison, who’ll also answer fan questions following the movie. Details are at MajesticEmpire.com.
To read or listen to a longer interview with Harrison, where he talks about the development of the film and more, scroll down. [Interview edited for length and clarity.]
Nathan Cone: If there's one common thread that I always see about Stop Making Sense, is that this concert and the film express boundless joy. It just explodes off the screen. And I was wondering if you were feeling that at the time when you were performing?
Jerry Harrison: I think that we felt that with the big band … just the rhythms are infectious. I think the fact that all of us are sort of dancing sometimes in our own world on stage means that it gives license to everybody in the audience to start dancing themselves. I think it's a very special and joyful experience. And I have to say, the tour I've been doing with Adrian Belew, we've been getting a similar reaction. People walk away from [the show] going like, “I just can't tell you how happy this made me,” or how much fun I had.
You know, we live in a pretty dark time these days where there isn't sort of such an unmitigated joy as often. And so I think a little bit of it is, of course, everyone is reminiscing [back] to maybe a simpler time, where people are feeling a little more confident about the future. So it's a little bit bringing back that happiness that they had felt earlier. But it's also just the performance, what they see on stage. Recently, someone was going, “I just can't believe how you guys had the energy to be moving for that long!” And particularly David [Byrne], it's like he's running and jumping the entire hour and a half, you know?
There's footage out there of you guys on YouTube, from a 1980 concert in Rome, and you've got the extended band lineup in that show as well. It kind of feels like a precursor to what's going on [with Stop Making Sense].
Absolutely, absolutely, but different and interesting in its own right, which is why Adrian [Belew] and I decided to do our performances. I think that tour was a little less structured, a little less … I mean, obviously it has the inclusion of this amazing soloist as well, but we also lined up on stage in the way that the African bands did like King Sunny Adé. There were moments in that band—because actually we had two bass players of that band to try and emulate what we did on Remain in Light—but it created a little bit of confusion. There were times where it felt like there were two jam sessions going on, on the left and the right side of the stage, and they only vaguely had any connection to each other! I don't know if there's any good recordings of those things happening, but I'd love to hear one.
I was wondering if you are thinking about the audience experience too, if you were thinking visually about the band as well.
Well, I think that after that [Remain in Light] tour, we started using risers and had like a second line so that there were sort of two sets so that it was a little more concise and more able to take in in one view.
How much of the band and footage had Jonathan Demme seen prior to meeting y'all and getting involved with making this film?
Well, no footage. I mean, it was all filmed at the Pantages Theatre over the course of a few nights. And he'd only seen, I think, one or two performances. There was a woman named Sandy McLeod who was kind of an assistant director, who had traveled with us and written down notes, and who, I believe she would say things like, “Jonathan, something interesting happened stage right at this moment in this song. Make sure we have a camera there. Something happens over here. There's a great thing when David does this with the background singers in this song. Let's get a close up on that.” And so that helped him create a kind of shot list for each song that he kind of could walk in with. And then the first night, I believe that people were just doing things, and [cinematographer] Jordan Cronenweth came to us and said, “We got to turn the lights down. It's too bright for the film.” And so there were all these technical things. We didn't change the show at all for the film. It was exactly the show that we were doing, but we made some adjustments so that it would look as good on film as possible.
I also think that Jonathan recognized how interesting each member of the band was, and so he spent time introducing each person as a person and like he would see little sort of side conversation, sometimes dancing, but you know, it might be even just Bernie [Worrell] and playing and talking to each other, you know? And you just go over there for a second and go, like, this is going on, and this is going on, this is going on, this guy. Oh, let's go back to the whole thing. And, you know, obviously there's a lot of focus on the singers, but I think you get a feeling for everybody in the band and for the excitement and the commitment that everybody felt to the performance.
I’m glad you mentioned Bernie, because his sound that came to the group [was essential], yeah?
What an amazing musician. You know, I learned an incredible amount playing next to him. One of the things about Bernie is he was very generous of spirit and always tried to encourage everybody in the band … but if there was ever a question about the harmonies or about something like that, Bernie was sort of like, just had this quiet authority. He had studied music more than anybody else in the band, and knew more, and we would always defer to him. He and I became very close friends.
Tell me about the restoration of the sound on this film, because as I understand, the elements of the mix were literally all over the place in different vaults.
Yeah, there was a whole thing about a tape... Well, part of it had to do with ones that were properly in sync with this edit ... this is with ET Thorngren, who goes all the way back … he mixed the album for Stop Making Sense. The two of us did that back in 1984 and then he was involved with the mix in 1999 for the Palm Pictures release. But when we made the deal with A24 [for this latest re-release], he was like, “We got to start working on this right away, because I just know there's going to be problems.” And so we had mapped out all the things, like the balances, the EQs, the compression, the placement within the Atmos fields, but we were struggling with sync, until this tape was found at a vault in Kansas City that MGM owned, which is very weird, because MGM is had nothing to do with the film!
If you see [the movie] in an Atmos theater or the IMAX theater, you have a three dimensional quality of the sound, like you close your eyes and you're gonna go, "Oh, I see that person over there, and I can hear that." You know, it's like you can more than kind of hear the part, but you can kind of tune out by your spatial direction and try to, like, delve into something in the music, maybe more than you ever could before.
At these Q and A's that you've been doing, what's one of the most curious questions that you've been asked? Or are you discovering new things by fans asking you questions about the picture?
I've had a couple of people ask me that, and I don't have anything specific but there are really good questions, and some are people giving testimonials how much the band meant to them, or something like that, or "I was there at this show." Those recollections are great.
One of the things I love, speaking of fans, is that in your liner notes for the Sand In The Vaseline set that came out in ‘92, I love that in your essay, you really talk about the fans as being kind of like your friends, that you feel like you could really connect with people that enjoyed the band, and that you would really kind of feel that you could get along with the folks that were interested in the music that you guys were doing. I thought that was really a beautiful thing to say.
Well, it's true, too. You know, when we did our first tour with the Ramones, where we had the only record that had come out with the single of “Love Goes to Building on Fire” and “New Feeling.” When the Ramones came on stage, we'd go to the back of the auditorium to watch them, and then our fans would see that we were there and come back. And we'd usually go out to some little town. … We were in sometimes smaller cities in Europe and England, and it was great. It's like, we'd go out with them. And it's like if you had to come to this town to pick up people to hang out with, these would be the people you'd want to hang out with. You know, the bigger we got, occasionally, you come across people that are, oh, I don't know, so overwhelming. They're overwhelmed by their fandom. So it's different so that it would take longer to kind of break through and go like, I want to know more about you, rather than just them, sort of just, it's like a dog wanting to lick you too much or something!
Tell me briefly about some of these other Talking Heads initiatives that are out there right now. There's this cool new music video with Saoirse Ronan for “Psycho Killer,” and there's a deluxe reissue of More Songs About Buildings and Food.
We've been going through album by album... and finding live performances that were recorded. And, you know, Fear of Music will be next. I think that as we get further into our career, there's fewer of these sort of radio station [shows] like these ones [on the reissue] that we can find, partially because we were probably less likely to sign over the rights of this to like a local radio station or something like that.
It's fun doing these box sets, because you find pictures, you find all these things of that time period. And you know, it's great for us. We all have memories, but you don't spend your time dwelling in the past all the time, [except] when it's a project to do something about the past, then you spend the time thinking about it.
And you referenced it earlier, how goes the Remain in Light tour project with Adrian Belew? Are there more dates ahead?
Well, we have some coming up in Australia. I think we're reaching the point that we should add some more songs if we're going to start going back around the United States. I mean, we've done nearly 100 shows. I mean, the show is great, and we can really do it, even having not played it in months, Adrian's not particularly interested in going to the album Speaking in Tongues, because he had nothing to do with it, and that's really understandable. And yet this band … the big band … is sort of designed to be able to do all the stuff that we did on Stop Making Sense. It would be really great to do songs from Naked, too. So it's a dilemma.
I mean, you could convince him! I mean, doesn't he do a couple of King Crimson tunes occasionally on that show?
Yeah, we do one King Crimson tune, and I'd be happy to do more. I mean, he also played on every one of my solo records, so those would be available. But obviously, you know, if we could add “Burning Down the House,” or “This Must Be the Place,” or some of the most popular songs of Talking Heads, it would be a reason to bring people back in a way that doing an obscure song from one of my solo records wouldn't! Also this is something I brought up, about [doing] King Crimson [songs], and the agent goes, the unfortunate thing is that the audiences are very different. The audience that goes to see the Beat [show] is very much a prog audience. We had a very funny ... we played this one event that was very much part of a prog festival down in Sarasota. And afterwards, this guy came up to me, and he goes, like “Jerry, you guys did the impossible. You got a prog audience to dance!” He said, “Replacement hips and all!”
Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you would want to mention before the screening coming up in November?
The one thing I would say is we encourage dancing. I think that people have a great time when they get up out of their seats and move around as well as watching it. I mean, it's great just to watch it, but it's also great to dance.
Jerry Harrison, I really appreciate your time today, and it was a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Looking forward to it. See you in San Antonio!
