The Oral History of ‘Stop Making Sense’
“A normal floor lamp is meant to go alongside a chair,” he says, springing up and placing his hand on an imaginary object level with his seat. “So it would be about that high off the ground, which, if you’re standing, that’s not a good place for illumination of your face.” Then he points above his head. “We want it to be about here. So we had to artificially extend the lamp to still have it look like a floor lamp.”
Byrne’s Fred Astaire–esque, extra-tall light fixture routine, scored by “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” is still understandably fresh in his memory. Four decades later, it’s one of the many surreal moments in Stop Making Sense that are impossible to shake. Shot over the course of a handful of Talking Heads concerts at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, the late Jonathan Demme’s film is as transfixingly propulsive today as it was when it came out in 1984.
There are no interviews, no breaks, and no fooling around. It’s pure performance. But the way Byrne sees it, the show isn’t just a show. It’s a journey toward selflessness. “As the show builds, the music becomes funkier, and it becomes harder to maintain this self that’s outside of that,” he says. “You just have to surrender to it.”
The frontman starts out on a bare stage, alone with an acoustic guitar and a boom box, and ends up as part of a collective. “As a musician, you strive for that,” Harrison says. “You’re entirely in the moment of that music. You stop being self-conscious because you’re just all there.”
This month, Byrne is back jiggling around in his big suit on the big screen. Thanks to the discovery of the movie’s original negative, A24 is releasing a restored version of Stop Making Sense in 4K in IMAX and standard theaters. Years of tension led Byrne to officially break up the band in 1991, but the members of Talking Heads know that their film will always be around to bring the party. “We’re very proud that this is our legacy, that we have this,” says bassist Tina Weymouth, who’s been married to drummer Chris Frantz since 1977. “And we’re so grateful that Jonathan Demme was the one to approach us and say, ‘Hey, this needs to be shot.’”
Part 1: “What Is This Guy On?”
In the early 1980s, Jonathan Demme was still a decade out from receiving an Academy Award for directing The Silence of the Lambs, but he had already earned a reputation as an artful filmmaker. After his dramatic comedy Melvin and Howard won two Oscars, he was hired to make Swing Shift with Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, and Ed Harris. The production was a disaster: frustrated stars, rewrites, reshoots, and one miserable director. Demme needed a palate cleanser.
Around the same time, Talking Heads was preparing to go on the road to support its new album, Speaking in Tongues. The conceptual tour, which featured a series of slides and images on projection screens and an expanded lineup—including singers Ednah Holt and Lynn Mabry, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir, and percussionist Steve Scales—reflected Byrne and the band’s art school roots.
Adelle Lutz (creative consultant and Byrne’s former wife): The show had been on tour for quite a while. I’d been going to Lincoln Center, the Library for the Performing Arts, quite a bit. I said to Dave then, “Even if it’s only for our records, even if it’s only me with a VHS machine at the back of the theater, it should be documented for the library.” And so he said, “Well, let me talk to our manager.” Gary Kurfirst was everyone’s manager—the Clash, the Eurythmics, Ramones—and so David mentioned to Gary the possibility of filming this. And one of his ideas was “Let me talk to MTV.”
And so David said, “Before you talk to them, I have to watch concert movies on TV.” And so he watched everything. All we had was this little Sony Trinitron. And it had my sticker on it that said, “Kill Your TV.” It was seriously puny. And nothing looked good. Altamont didn’t look good. The Last Waltz didn’t look good. And then he saw Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps. All of a sudden, he knew that it was possible to do a show and film it and project it.
Sandy McLeod (visual consultant): David actually made a concert tour that had a narrative to it, which was pretty unusual. (...)
Byrne: I’m surprised that a lot of people don’t realize this, that the film is basically a document of the tour that we were doing but with a few songs cut out to streamline it a bit. So it’s not like Jonathan came in with the concept. It was there. That’s not to take anything away from what he did, but what you see is what we were doing, and what he did was to bring out the relationships and interactions between all the band members throughout the show and the characters of each, as if it was acting, as if it was a story.
McLeod: Even though it’s very subtle and not a narrative in any traditional sense, it still has this story that evolves with the lighting effects, the music, and the stories that David tells of the songs. I think Jonathan really got that, loved it, appreciated it, and helped bring that forward.
Byrne: That’s what he saw, and I thought, “That’s not something I would’ve seen.”
Jerry Harrison (guitar and keys): It brought an intimacy to it. The camera blows up interactions that you wouldn’t see. (...)
Ednah Holt (backing vocals): I can tell you that I’m getting chills as I talk to you. This is years later, and I still get the chills.
Lynn Mabry (backing vocals): It was really a collective, of course. David being front and center—I think his take on his own style and music and the way he delivered it, or at least shared it with the audience, was very unique and very entertaining. Then you had the band, you had the musicians, and us, the singers, and we added a new flavor. It was a mixture of retro pop and rock ’n’ roll, and then you had R&B in there. It was soulful. (...)
Steve Scales (percussion): We rehearsed, and we rehearsed, and we rehearsed, but nobody inside quite could get what the heck the picture was in David’s head.
Mabry: At rehearsal I would be watching David performing, and then watch him in front of a mirror, coming up with all of those crazy moves. That was weird. It was like, “What is this guy on?” And he was completely straight. He never drank. He never smoked. Water and clean food.
Scales: He would be in my room at night, or somebody else’s room, doing these crazy little things. We said, “Man, you should do that in the show.” And he would do that in the show. He put it in. (...)
Scales: When we did Forest Hills, Mick Jagger changed his seat five times trying to figure out what the hell we were doing.
Weymouth: This stuff does make you scratch your head. Why choose this? And it’s just sort of like, “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just part of the entertainment factor.” And so we just thought, “The people who are working with us, they liked it. The crew liked it. We liked it. Hopefully the fans will like it.”
Scales: The first show we did was in Hampton, Virginia. When we finished playing, we were in the dressing room for at least an hour, and the crew said, “You got to come out and see this.” The upper deck of this arena, one side of it was still there, still singing.
Holt: We had fun every night. Every night. It was so much fun that I actually said, “We’re going to die. This is it. This is our last gig.” (...)
Harrison: David was in the challenging position of having to not only be the performer and play his own parts, but also having to run out all the time and see what it looked like.
McLeod: One of the backup singers decided to get her hair cut for the show, and, of course, their hair was really important in the movement in the show.
Holt: I don’t even know what I was thinking. I had no idea that would be important for the movie.
Lisa Day (editor): David was so beside himself.
Holt: David was real nice. He never showed me that side, but he said, “I think it’d be best if you put your hair back. Because it really worked.” I said, “OK.” He had Lynn find a hairdresser to match what we had.
McLeod: That’s an incredibly laborious situation, to replace the missing locs. It didn’t seem to impair her energy at all. She was incredibly vivacious on stage.
McLeod: One of the backup singers decided to get her hair cut for the show, and, of course, their hair was really important in the movement in the show.
Holt: I don’t even know what I was thinking. I had no idea that would be important for the movie.
Lisa Day (editor): David was so beside himself.
Holt: David was real nice. He never showed me that side, but he said, “I think it’d be best if you put your hair back. Because it really worked.” I said, “OK.” He had Lynn find a hairdresser to match what we had.
McLeod: That’s an incredibly laborious situation, to replace the missing locs. It didn’t seem to impair her energy at all. She was incredibly vivacious on stage.
by Alan Siegel, The Ringer | Read more:
Image: Stop Making Sense via
