For Jerry Harrison, the more things change, the more they rock
Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads and the Modern Lovers returns to the Bay Area to play cuts from the classic Brian Eno-produced Heads’ album Remain in Light. Playing with longtime contributor Adrian Belew, former frontman for King Crimson, the band plays songs from the album along with past and present solo work.
The live shows—and I have seen them—present two masters of New Wave rock, delivering the ethos of punk with the polish of mastery. The band call themselves “Remain in Light” after the groundbreaking album.
With a unique talent for finding the other rhythms of the modern guitar, Harrison never was a guitar player—until he was.
Although he took piano lessons as a kid, Harrison asserted that he was not very good at it. Even as he played keyboards for proto-punk legends the Modern Lovers, he never “tried to pick up the styles of well-known keyboard players,” said Harrison. “I basically just took the knowledge I have from playing music and just sort of made stuff up.”
By that, Harrison means a long career of playing rhythmically layered counterpoint to great signers, playing original, provocative music on both keyboards and guitar.
“I ended up playing keyboards very much as if I was playing guitar parts, like a chord or something like that. When I started playing guitar, I wasn’t really good,” admits Harrison, “but I think those parts are how I learned how to play, so that’s how I did it.”
“When I started playing with Talking Heads, I very much saw myself in this role as providing support,” he added. “Sort of taking what David was playing, seeing what Tina was playing and finding ways to complement and reinforce what they were doing.”
There was plenty to complement and reinforce in the Talking Heads, especially on Remain in Light. Produced by new wave and ambient music god Brian Eno, the album was his third collaboration with the band.
Although Eno was not originally interested in producing a third Talking Heads album, he changed his mind when he heard the band’s new direction in early demos.
Influenced by the 1973 Nigerian album Afrodisiac by Fela Kuti, Remain in Light was one of the earliest albums to incorporate the “world music” sound into American pop music.
The band decided to go into the studio without any songs written. They took a modal approach, allowing each player to explore the sounds of their instrument to build up a co-created song.
“We were already excited about African music, this idea that people would go out and just play one part for, you know, six minutes,” said Harrison, and “the compositions would come together through the use of the mixing board and like muting and turning things on and off.”
It all came off in the album’s droning meta-rhythms holding each other up to support the rants and chants of vocalist David Byrne, a layered rhythm that helped to define the sound of 80s pop music. For many, it is their favorite Talking Heads album—mine are Little Creatures, then Fear of Music, then 77. But really Remain in Light is the highly revered masterpiece that changed it all.
Harrison and Belew have been bringing the album back to the stage as “Remain in Light” since 2021. After a tour in winter of ‘23 and spring of ‘24, the current free show at the China Basin Park is part of the Noise Pop SF Live! series, an initiative to bring free, all ages indie music to streets of San Francisco.
It started just before punk
“You know, bands like Yes, the Electric Light, Orchestra, all these, … you know …,” Harrison tastefully declined to finish his sentence, but we are talking about prog rock here, and stadium rock, all the things that 70s punk was a reaction too, whether by being louder and faster like the Ramones, who Harrison and the Heads opened for on their massively influential ‘77 European tour, or with the conceptually minimal sound of the early Talking Heads.
Speaking on the proto-punk status of his earlier band, Harrison said, “There’s this chain that starts with the Velvet Underground to the Stooges, and the Modern Lovers are next in line.”
All those bands shared a distaste for endless soloing and the generally ornate character of blues-steeped early 70s rock.
“Definitely what we did with the Modern Lovers is we said, ‘No, we want short sweet songs. They grab your attention. Also the ethos of punk has always been, ‘I may not be a very good technician or I may have just picked up this guitar a week ago but I’m going to find some way to express my frustration or my whatever, this emotion I’m trying to express right now with the means that I have right now.”
CDs Messed Up Music
A lot has been written and muttered about the effect of streaming on music artists, but Harrison remembers an unintended consequence of CDs that had a huge effect on the quality of music coming out of the big studios.
“Because CDs could be 72 minutes long, everybody started to make a double album,” recalled Harrison. “On the other hand, there was a sense, ‘Well, if you’ve only got half of what could fit on the CD, are you being ripped off’ because a 72-minute CD” — “The Cure anyone?” I interrupt — “and a 29-minute CD would sell for the same price.”
Vinyl LPs of the time topped out at 23 minutes per side. Anything over 46 minutes back then required a double album. “It meant that it got longer and longer between when everybody released albums,” said Harrison.
“I’m happy that the Talking Heads went through the period where people were [releasing] an album roughly once a year. Your audience then expected you to change, and the idea that if you did something that sounds really a lot like your last album, it would just be a disappointment,” he added.
The Talking Heads were one of the biggest bands in the world when the CD’s emergence occurred, and Remain in Light remains their masterpiece. Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew keep the heart of punk alive in a show that will delight anyone who loves music.
Jerry Harrison and Arian Belew perform Remain in Light 1pm Saturday August 17 at China Basin Park, San Francisco. Free, all ages.
RSVP at sflivefest.com/sf-live-calendar/chinabasin-aug17
