Former Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison Discusses "Remain in Light" Before Tarrytown Show
The concert happens on Aug. 4 at The Tarrytown Music Hall
by Christopher L.L. Vaughan
Rivertowns — What’s your favorite Talking Heads record? The band’s former keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison will bring songs from one of their most acclaimed LPs to the Rivertowns when he performs at The Tarrytown Music Hall on August 4. Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew’s Remain in Light tour is designed to get crowds moving with a Talking Heads album that showcases pulsing rhythms on songs like “Crosseyed and Painless” and “Once in a Lifetime.”
Remain in Light was an enormous turning point for Harrison and his former bandmates David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz as they incorporated Afrobeat influences and heavier funk grooves on the 1980 Brian Eno-produced collection. They also recruited King Crimson’s Adrian Belew to play on it and tour with them in an extended nine-piece band at the time. Belew’s guitar acrobatics are once again heard on Remain in Light’s iconic songs as he’s also performing with Harrison along with their backing band Cool Cool Cool.
Had a different Talking Heads vinyl spinning in your college dormitory? The show includes songs from across the band’s celebrated catalog. The restored version of their seminal 1984 Jonathan Demme-directed concert film Stop Making Sense returning to movie theaters last year motivated a new generation of fans to dance in the aisles at screenings. It was also a big moment when the four Talking Heads members appeared in public together for the first time since 2002 to promote the re-released movie.
Harrison’s show aims to inspire more dancing for a Westchester audience with some of Talking Heads' most explosive songs. Maybe the Tarrytown gig will compel a few young Rivertowns residents to pack an old copy of their parents’ Remain in Light LP before heading to college in the fall.
Harrison talks about the long legacy of the influential record with Rivertowns Current:
I see you’re approaching one of the last stops of the tour in Tarrytown. What’s been the biggest highlight of these shows so far?
Harrison: There’s always certain shows that stick out in your mind. Playing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, we had at least 55,000 people watching. It has this vibe in the audience that everyone is in a good mood. People are not trying to push each other out of the way. There was this sort of wave of happiness that went through the audience.”
How has it been playing your Talking Heads songs from Remain in Light?
Harrison: It’s been great. One thing that has been interesting is the only time previous to this tour that we ever did “The Great Curve” live was the tour that Adrian played with us in 1980. It’s something special.
The Remain in Light songs have had such an incredible legacy from the Angelique Kidjo covers record to Chicano Batman’s recent cover of “Crosseyed and Painless.” What do you see as its legacy?
Harrison: It seems to just regenerate every few years. It’s pretty wonderful. I think it’s a very unique album and it’s had a lot of resonance. The re-release of the movie Stop Making Sense brought a lot of attention. We did screenings of Stop Making Sense and you know, most of the audience wasn’t born when we made this, and they’re still really loving it.
There was an outdoor screening of Stop Making Sense the next town over from your Tarrytown tour stop a few years ago in Irvington. This had been in the middle of the pandemic and it was such a communal experience during a difficult time. How are you bringing the spirit of Stop Making Sense to this run of shows?
Harrison: I see them as separate things. We were doing this show even before the work on Stop Making Sense. I think one of the things that’s important about this is the first big band tour we did was for Remain in Light and Adrian was in that band. There’s a wonderful film of a concert we did in Rome in 1980 that you can find on YouTube. It has something that’s different from Stop Making Sense but equally legitimate. I don’t think of Stop Making Sense as the same thing. Alex Weir is a different kind of guitar player than Adrian. It was all about the music in 1980. There was no staging, no particular lights — the lights being on for all tours we had been doing from Talking Heads ‘77 to Fear of Music. By the time we got to Stop Making Sense, it was very much about staging and the lighting and the look of it. That was great to do and really fun but there was also something great about this earlier tour that was a little less theatrical. More about the live performance and nothing else.
Remain in Light was such a big departure for Talking Heads in 1980. How do you think audiences received it?
Harrison: I think they were shocked but loved it. The whole idea of having a band with percussion, background singers, multiple guitar players, multiple keyboard players — it’s just very different from the stripped-down nature of what you would call punk or new wave music.
Did anything change after you worked on remixing Stop Making Sense and after your former Talking Heads bandmates and you did the run of interviews together last year?
Harrison: I think that was fabulous. All four of us hadn’t been in the same room for a decade. Renewing our friendships and the mutual pride we felt in Stop Making Sense and how good the music was and how we each contributed to that has been a real joy. But it hasn’t had a particular effect on the tour that’s coming to Tarrytown.
David Byrne mentioned in the Stephen Colbert interview you did with the band that one of your first shows was at a place called Beefsteak Charlie in Yonkers. Do you remember that?
Harrison: I don’t. I do remember playing The Chance in Poughkeepsie. I played it both on the Casual Gods [solo] tour and with Talking Heads.
What’s your relationship to the Hudson Valley?
Harrison: I have friends in Sleepy Hollow, friends in Tarrytown, friends in Scarborough. On the other side of the river, I know people in Nyack. It’s a very beautiful area that a lot of people don’t know about.
What is the most meaningful song to you on Remain In Light?
Harrison: That’s a hard one. “Once In A Lifetime,” its enduring effect and the fact that it’s been in movies and stuff like that is essential. I’m a big fan of “Houses In Motion.” I like them all. I’ve seen Peter Gabriel do “Listening Wind,” which I thought was fascinating, to see someone’s take on it.
Remain In Light is so diverse, do you approach a stark song like “The Overload” any differently?
Harrison: We’re not doing the second half of the album because when we began, we used the concert from Rome as our blueprint, and on that tour we didn’t play “The Overload,” “Listening Wind” or “Seen And Not Seen.” The reason was that we wanted to keep people dancing.
What other albums are you pulling from for this tour?
Harrison: Fear of Music — we do one song from Speaking in Tongues. We do one song from ‘77 and one song from More Songs about Buildings and Food.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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