5. Talking HeadsSpeaking In Tongues
I feel like there were a few summers in a row when a new Talking Heads record came out. I love all of their records, Fear Of Music particularly where they’ve got more of a left-of-centre angle and are bringing more experimental ideas, but for me Speaking In Tongues was the one where I first started thinking about production. I could hear that it was just an incredibly well produced record. This is more of a funk-based record, it’s got a lovely Compass Point sound to it, very wide and broad with a lot of space. I had it on cassette in my Walkman all the time, as you did as a precocious 17-year-old reading Oscar Wilde, listening to it again and again and again. It’s a real mixture of songs as well. ‘This Must Be The Place’ was always a big favourite. I never got to see them which was a real shame. I could have got tickets for the Wembley show in 1982, but I remember thinking ‘It’s a bit big, I want to see them somewhere smaller.’ You think ‘well, they’re going to come round again,’ and then – ‘oh no!’
It’s quite hard to do melodic parts on dance records where the bassline doesn’t change very much, but I think they do that really well in Talking Heads. Obviously they also do songs where there are melodic bridges and choruses, but I love those ones that keep conjuring up different melodies within the same rhythmic framework, like ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ and ‘Burning Down The House’. I’ve got a classical musician friend who was taking the piss out of me when I was talking about ‘Burning Down The House’. He was going, ‘it’s just two notes!’ Well yeah, if you’re coming from the European classical tradition, but listen to all the other things – the pacing, the timing, the phrasing, the colour of the sound. It’s not just some violins, mate!
