The opening of the Talking Heads 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense—a new and improved version of which plays Jan. 10 at Napa’s Uptown Theatre, with a live Q&A with cofounder Jerry Harrison—finds David Byrne on a bare stage performing “Psycho Killer” with an acoustic guitar.
His sole accompaniment is what appears to be a portable cassette player, which actually contains a pre-programmed Roland TR-808 drum machine backing track.
Opening with “Psycho Killer” made sense. With its new-wave sound and unsettling first-person lyric, the 1977 single was the group’s first to break into the United States’ top 100. Two decades later, it was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.” And today, it is by far the band’s most-streamed track on Spotify. There’s also a newly-released video for “Psycho Killer” featuring a new visualizer created by the album’s art director, Tibor Kalman.
But for all its success, the song’s history includes one dark and jarring moment. Just a year after its release, the band was performing it during a free concert at Berkeley Quad when the context of the song’s performance changed. Word began to spread that San Francisco’s Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had been assassinated just miles away at city hall.
This convergence of events—one joyful, one tragic—showed how a performance could exist within a larger, living context. But the group’s real evolution was still to come.
The Jonathan Demme-directed Stop Making Sense perfectly embodies those changes. Over the course of the film, band members Byrne, guitarist Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz are gradually joined by five additional musicians, including the legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell. This expanded lineup, which had been out on the road playing a lot of festivals, allowed the group to bring to life the layered, funky and rhythmic sound of their recent Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues albums.
“I think one of the reasons the film has lasted so long is that it looks like it could have been done in the 1930s,” Harrison said in an early September interview. “It’s normal stage lights, the slide projections; there’s nothing from the ’80s—other than maybe the clothes we were wearing and the instruments that were available at that time. And the Talking Heads music has really stood the test of time. It doesn’t feel dated.”
Harrison was also involved in the film’s sound mixing. “Mixing it and being able to have that spatial placement was really sort of eye opening, so to speak, as well as ear opening,” the guitarist said. “And the new scan, I think, is really beautiful, because we were able to find the original negative and get it cleaned and scanned it in 4k. It really is just beautiful looking.”
For those who want to hear live versions of songs like “Psycho Killer” in their stripped down formative stages, Rhino Records recently reissued the album Talking Heads, Live on Tour ’78.
Harrison still has fond memories of that era.
“There were all of these industrial spaces for rent,” he said. “And so musicians, painters and dancers all intermingled in the downtown New York scene. Most of the buildings had very rudimentary fixtures, and a lot of times not enough heat, but there was a lot of space. It was great; you’d be walking down the street and running into everyone from Robert Rauschenberg to Merce Cunningham to Philip Glass to fellow members of the CBGB scene.”
Harrison is also very enthusiastic about how the group’s sound changed over the course of its 16-year lifespan.
“There’s something great about those live performances,” Harrison said. “I’ve been trying to get Rhino to at some point put out an album of all the versions of ‘Psycho Killer’ that we did live. Because there’s so many guitar parts that David and I are playing that mutate over time more than in other songs. It’s really interesting how much things change.”
The Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison will host ‘Stop Making Sense’ at 8pm, Saturday, Jan. 10 at Uptown Theatre, 1350 Third Street, Napa. More info at uptowntheatrenapa.com.
