Four decades after it was filmed, “Stop Making Sense,” the Talking Heads concert documentary, is still thrilling and strange. “It somehow remains relevant even when it literally doesn’t make sense,” David Byrne, the band’s leader and vocalist, said in a recent interview.
The film, directed by Jonathan Demme, has been restored from its long-lost original negatives and this new version will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday and open in regular and IMAX theaters later this month. An expanded audio album, out September 15, now contains the entire concert set, although two tracks have been omitted from the film: “Cities” and a medley of “Big Business” and “I Zimbra.” The band renews their excellence and hopes to inspire another generation of fans with their irresistible funk grooves and youthful ambitions.
“Stop Making Sense” is both a definitive 1980’s play and a prophecy. His staging helped reshape pop concerts. The music mixed rock, funk and African rhythms, while the broken, disjointed lyrics addressed, among other things, disinformation (“Crosseyed and Painless”), evangelicalism (“Once in a Lifetime”), authoritarianism (“Making Flippy Floppy”) and environmental catastrophe (“Burning Down the House”).
“Sometimes we write things and don’t know what it’s about until afterward,” Byrne said. “There is a sense of foreboding. I’ve looked at the things I’ve written and I’m like, “Oh. It’s about something that happened in my life after I wrote the song.'”
Long before Talking Heads began their 1983 tour in support of the “Speaking in Tongues” album, there were choreographed soul revues and concert spectacles on major stages. But Byrne envisioned something different: a performance influenced by the stylized gestures of Asian theater and the anti-naturalistic, avant-garde stage tableaus of Robert Wilson. (Talking Heads hired Wilson’s lighting designer Beverly Emmons.)
Byrne storyboarded each song. The first part of the show demystified the production, with backstage equipment visible and a stage crew rolling in instruments and risers as the band grew larger with each song. Then, once everyone was in place, the concert transformed into a surreal dance party, capped by Byrne’s performance in an oversized, square, very baggy suit – an everyday American take on the geometric costumes of Japanese Noh theater.
Demme’s cameras were ready to capture the musicians’ every silly move and appreciative look. Since most major concerts are video-ready extravaganzas, this may seem normal. In 1983 it was terrifying.
Just a few years earlier, Talking Heads were unlikely candidates for a tightly planned rock spectacle. When the band made a name for itself with performances at the Bowery club CBGB, its members dressed like preppies and appeared embarrassed and nervous.
Talking Heads was created in the art school atmosphere of the Rhode Island School of Design and always had conceptual intentions. In a video interview from his studio, keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison said: “When I joined the band I knew we would be an important band and that we would be successful artistically.” I had no idea what commercial success we would have would. We were all quite familiar with the art world, where there are painters who have never had financial security in their lives. And that was our goal at that point.”
Byrne was intentionally stiff and nervous on stage. “When the band started, I didn’t want to try to use the movement vocabulary of rock stars or R&B stars,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t do this. They’re better at it. They established it. I need to come up with my own thing that expresses who I am: a slightly angsty white guy.’”
But in the fast-moving inner-city New York culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s—punk! Disco! Minimalism! Hip hop! Art! Theatre! World music! — Talking Heads quickly evolved from a thumping, wailing pop-rock band into something more rhythmic, funky and far-reaching.
Byrne and the band equally appreciated the Southern roots and deep eccentricities of Memphis soul singer Al Green, who wrote the band’s first radio hit, “Take Me to the River,” as well as the calibrated repetitions of James Brown, Philip Glass and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The band hired the equally open-minded Brian Eno as producer and collaborator to expand their sonic palette and songwriting strategies – which in turn led Talking Heads to bring musicians on stage.
If there’s a narrative for Stop Making Sense, it’s that of a freaky loner who eventually finds joy in community. The concert begins with Byrne singing “Psycho Killer” alone to a drum machine track, with a sociopathic gaze. By the end of the show, he’s surrounded by singing, dancing, smiling musicians and singers, carried one groove after another.
“In a culture that’s so much about the individual, the self, and my rights,” Byrne said, “it’s kind of extraordinary to find a parallel that’s really about giving, losing yourself and surrendering to something bigger than yourself.” And you realize, “Oh, that’s what it’s all about in many parts of the world – surrendering to something spiritual, a community, music or dance and letting go of yourself as an individual.” If that happens, you get a real reward. It’s a really ecstatic, transcendent feeling.”
“Stop Making Sense” was released on multiple versions of home video technology – VHS, DVD, Blu-ray – but sound and video were often missing. For the new restoration, the production and distribution company A24 commissioned a forensic film expert to search for the original negatives of the film. They were inexplicably stored in an Oklahoma warehouse owned by MGM, a company that never had any business ties to Talking Heads. The images have gained in clarity, contrast and depth.
“I noticed that you see things that you couldn’t even see in the original version,” said Chris Frantz, the band’s drummer, in a video interview from his home studio. “Now you can see every little detail of the back of the stage.”
When “Stop Making Sense” was first released in 1984, audiences treated it like a concert, applauding between songs and getting up to dance. The band and Demme chose to forego concert film convention and cut to interviews or backstage interactions, or particularly happy, well-lit audience members; They only appear in the last few minutes. Demme avoided this, Byrne said, because “it tells the film viewer what to feel.”
The band and Demme filmed a rehearsal and three live concerts at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. They then selected the best audio and video recordings. They weren’t always the same, but the timing each night was almost exact. “Chris was very consistent, even though he never played to a click track,” Tina Weymouth, the band’s bassist, said in an interview from the home she shares with Frantz, her husband.
“The sync isn’t perfect,” Harrison said. “We could now go digital and do it perfectly. But would we want to disrupt the historical quality to update it with what technology can do today? And of course we decided against it.”
The tour’s technology was primitive by modern standards. The images on the back came from slide projectors; The lights were unfiltered. The show had no choreographer; Byrne and backup singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt had worked out some moves while dancing in his loft before the tour, while others emerged as the tour progressed. The show also didn’t have a costume designer; The musicians were instructed to find clothing in neutral tones, mostly grays. But according to Weymouth, Frantz’s laundry had not returned in time for the first show at the Pantages, and he wore a blue shirt all three nights for continuity reasons.
Still, the band had the foresight to record the music on digital devices from the early stages. Digital recording allowed the sound quality to be maintained across multiple generations involved in the mixing for the film, and that is one of the reasons the film has aged so well.
But the main reason Stop Making Sense has retained its reputation as one of the greatest concert films is the crazy cheers of the performances. The musicians in the expanded band – Alex Weir on guitar, Steve Scales on drums and Bernie Worrell on keyboards – are anything but selfless sidemen; They are happy co-conspirators. And the sheer physicality of the concert, the sweat and endurance of the artists come through on the screen; In “Life During Wartime,” Byrne runs laps around the 40-by-60-foot stage at full speed.
“Looking back at my younger self is a really strange experience,” Byrne said. “He does things that are deeply strange but somehow inventive. But he’s also very serious and focused on what he’s doing.” He pointed out that he didn’t smile much until the last third of the film. “The joy is not visible, but it is there,” he said. “I mean, I have enough memory to remember that.”
Despite its artistic significance, the tour was not profitable. “We made zero,” Weymouth said. There was a large crew and three tractor-trailers full of equipment; Some of the tour proceeds were used to help finance the film. It also turned out to be the Talking Heads’ final tour. “I also think at that point we had the ability to become one of the biggest bands in the world, namely touring bands,” Harrison said. “I think it was a missed opportunity that we all would have enjoyed.”
He added: “There may also have been an element of when ‘Stop Making Sense’ came out so great, you asked yourself, ‘How do we top this?’ Will the next event seem like a disappointment?’ I don’t know if that crossed anyone’s mind, but I know we ended up never touring again.”
Talking Heads made three more albums, the Americana-tinged “Little Creatures” and “True Stories” and the Afro-Parisian-tinged “Naked.” After Byrne broke up the band in 1991 — “an ugly breakup,” he told People magazine — the other three members made an album called “No Talking Just Head,” billed as The Heads. Byrne sued over the name, but the lawsuit was eventually dropped.
In 2002, when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band regrouped for a performance, and the 40th anniversary of “Stop Making Sense” helped push the boundaries further. The band members will appear together in Toronto on Monday to discuss the film.
“Divorces are never easy,” Byrne said. “We get along well. It’s all very cordial and whatever. It’s not like we’re all best friends. But everyone is very happy that this film is coming out again. We all agree that we really love what we’ve done here. So that helps us talk to each other and get along.”