Chris Frantz

was um, I had been feeling this. The impression I had was that I had really bad heartburn for a lot, and it was coming and going for a couple of days, like it started on a Wednesday night and then Thursday it was coming and going. And so I said, this is really uncomfortable. I'm going to call the doctor, and I set up an appointment for Friday morning. Very good doctor said, this has all the earmarks of um an ulcer,

but you don't seem like the ulcer type. So let me real quick take a blood test, will rush it and we'll see what's really going on. So two hours, he said, you go home, lie down. I'll call you two hours later he called me. He said, Chris, you gotta call get yourself to the hospital. It seems like you might be having a heart attack. I thought, oh wow, because my father, I'm I'm sixty nine. My father died of a heart attack at age sixty seven. So I thought, oh,

I beat it. But oh, anyway, I went to bridge you know Fairfield. I went to bridge Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital. They were the cardioc cardiology team was waiting. They tested me for COVID nineteen and make sure I didn't have that, and then they wheeled me right into It's not a surgery room. It was like one of these micro uh surgical things where they go in through your wrist and look at everything on video monitors. Oh yeah, yeah, that's

the way they do it now. Yeah yeah. And I mean there's just a little tiny dot on my wrist where they went in and so they they found blockage in my lower coronary artery and um, they cleared it out and they put in three stints, and uh, three days later, I was home resting up. But I gotta tell you, I feel good and I'm very grateful to the good people at Bridgeport Hospital. So what's the rehab well, uh, changing to a more plant based diet. For one thing, I was a guy who I'm a bone vivant, you know.

I like to I love to eat. But I've lost seventeen pounds since that happened, maybe eighteen. I didn't weigh myself yet today, and uh, I mean I was too heavy, It's true. And um, I I probably liked meat uh more often than I should have done. So anyway, I'm gonna change my diet. I'm gonna relax, you know, let's face it, I've got it made. I don't I don't need to like sweat, like new records or new anything

like new tours. They're not happening anyway. So I'm going to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors and my life. And I was sort of doing that already, but now I'm really gonna do it now. Since your father was sixty seven and he died of a heart attack, had you been tracking this closely? Probably not as closely as I should have. I was getting warnings, you know, from blood work and stuff, and I but I don't really like that anti cholesterol medicine, although I'm taking it now.

Which one are you? Which one? Are you taking pressed door right that one? Yeah? And uh, you know, the statins have their pros and cons. But my cardiologist is a really good guy, and I'm gonna just follow his advice and keep taking it until the numbers are such that I can consider easing off. Are you taking the ubiquinol with it? I don't. I don't think so. No. Is that a supplement? Yeah, is supplement. It's supposed to

speak to the side effects. It's c It's not c O two but without going to the other room looking up and it's something like that. And uh, are you having any side effects from the Crest store? Not too bad? Actually none so far. I mean, I know, I know the side effects can be one. One is depression, another

is memory loss. I really don't want that. Well, the number one, I you know, I haven't had any issues with that, but with some of the statins I have had the leg pains, you get the muscle tightness, Yes, yes, I've I've heard about that. I haven't had that, thank goodness. But I didn't want to, you know, talk about health the whole time. But since you started off with that question, I thought I better Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the

Bob Left Sets podcast. We started, as I say, we got an update on Chris's health and he says that's fine for everybody to hear, so we're gonna leave that in and any event, my guest today is drummer for Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. He has a new book, Remain in Love. It's going to be in stores both of the UK and the US on July one. Please welcome Chris France. Chris okay, it's a great pleasure to

be here, Bob Okay. Now, Chris, why the book? Why now? Well, Uh, I've been meaning to write the book for many years, like a dozen years or so, and then a couple of years ago I finally buckled down and said, you better do this, you know, because you're not getting any younger, and um, nobody's writing any good books about talking Heads.

So so I did it. I started about two years ago, and um, you know, my I feel like my story is a delightful one and I feel like I was very fortunate, and I feel like, well, I feel like it's a memorable tale to have been in Talking Heads, to have been in Tom Tom Clement, to be married now for forty three years, to Tina Weymouth. Look, I'm a lucky guy, you know. Okay, one thing anybody who reads the book will be stunned about is not only is it comprehensive in terms of the timeline, the detail

is really incredible. Did you have any notes or did you just remember all that? You know? Most of it I remembered. But fortunately, you know, I I've been kicking myself for a long time for not keeping a journal. I knew during that time that I should be keeping a journal, and I just didn't. But Tina fortunately had these not a journal, but date books like you know, like the calendar book date books you buy at the

Metropolitan Museum that has King Tutt on the cover. She had one of those, and she she would write down last night we played the Roundhouse, sold out, three encres, got paid. It's She also made notes of the hotels and things like that, like bed was terrible, or shower was too small, at things like that. So so I

was able to Tina. Tina loaned me her date books from those those years I guess it was like from from nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty, and they came in very helpful because a lot of the information you get on the internet is a tissue you have lies. Well, that begs a question. Once you wrote it, I'm sure you ran it by Tina. Did she remember things the same way you had in most instances? Yes, although once in a while she would say, oh no, no, it

wasn't like that. And uh she she has a the memory. It's very keen, you know. Okay, let's go back to risdy Rhode Island School of Design. That's where you and Tina went to college. According to the book, David dropped out? Why go to risdie? Why go to Risdee? To begin with, well, I was planning on having uh a life as a painter, and I had been in bands when I was young, a teenager. Um, and I loved being in bands, you know.

I started off in elementary school and then the Beatles came out and everybody had little rock and roll bands. And okay, well let's leve on a little bit there. So you were playing in bands before the Beatles. Yes, actually I was. I was playing in No, I was playing in my elementary school band before the Beatles. Okay, let's let's cover something. So you're originally from where, well,

I'm originally from Kentucky. But during my formative years we moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where my father was from. And he was going into a law practice, so we moved back to where he had some connections. And um so so elementary school, junior high, and part of high school. Most of high school I was in Pittsburgh. Okay, now Pittsburgh is very hip. Again, What do I know about Pittsburgh.

You know, there's the book Michael Chaban The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which I recommend the darkest movie I've ever seen in the theater Mrs soulfil in Pittsburgh. But when you were growing up in Pittsburgh, was it a ship hole or was it an unknown hip city? Um well, I couldn't wait to get out of there. To be honest, I knew that Pittsburgh was not going to be where I was going to make my mark because I wanted to be an artist, and I thought, God, Andy Warhol wanted

to be an artist. He was from Pittsburgh, but he had to move to New York, you know. And uh, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of good friends still in Pittsburgh and fond memories of the place, but I just knew as an artist it wasn't happening for me. Okay, but you have to get out of there. But you said, uh, so you went to prep school for part of your high school. Yeah, I went to a Shady Side Academy, which is a fine school in

in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. And so you still live did home at the same time, or do you live there? I lived at home. I was a day student and that's where I started painting. I had a great studio art teacher named David Miller. He went on to teach at skid More. But anyway, he um he turned me onto contemporary art, which was something I didn't know anything

about at the time. Like he turned me onto Jasper John's Rauenberg, I knew about Warhol Ah, people like Ed Keene Holtz and uh Klaus Oldenburg and uh of course Willem de Cooning. You know. He turned me onto all these artists, and I thought, Wow, this is what I want to do, and that's why I went to Risdy. Okay. Uh, those are all generally speaking abstract painters. Prior to this teacher, Mr Miller, did you have an int Aushton art. Were you did you draw? Did you paint anything like that?

I did draw. Uh. You know. I was born in Kentucky and my my whole mother's side of the family in Kentucky, So I I used to draw horses and stuff like that or my grandfather, you know. And I would draw on those shirt cardboards that you used to get when your shirts were laundry laundered. I never really thought of myself as being an artist at all until I took that class called studio art in high school, and all of a sudden, I thought, this is what I want to do. Okay. So you said you were

in the elementary school band. Is that where you learned how to play or did your parents give you lessons? Yeah? I started off on the trumpet and it wasn't really happening for me. I was trying, I was practicing, but I wasn't getting anywhere. And I and uh, I had a very good teacher. His name was Gene Wilmouth. He was a mallet instrument guy, you know, marimba, vibra, frying, xylophone and also piano and also drums. And he said, yeah, I can see it's not really working out for you,

but you have a good sense of rhythm. What do you what do you say we switch you over to drums? And I said, cool, let's do it. And he gave me the little rubber pad and the elementary book of rudiments, and he gave me a couple of lessons, a little private lessons, and next thing I knew, I was first chair and the drum department. Now in the school band, you're just playing the marching drum whatever they call that, right,

You're not playing a whole kid. Yeah. In the yeah, there was no drum kit in the In the fall and the spring, you would do marching and so that would be a marching drum. In the winter months we would have orchestra and I would I would hit a snare drum or a triangle or a tambourine. One time I played just the symbol, just the ride cymbal. And so what what what happens when the Beatles arrived? So the Beatles came and just basically changed everything overnight after

their Ed Sullivan appearance. And uh, I remember the day after that, the girls on the School of Us were singing Beatles songs in Unison and they knew all the words and everything already and I thought, wow, So a bunch of my friends and I who were in the school band, just took the stuff to our garage and started started playing. We didn't just play Beatles, we played

like the Ventures and Dave Clark five and uh what else. Well, we in my first band, which is called the Lost Chords, we actually had a trumpeter and a trombone in the band too, so we could play her Balford and the Tiawana brass songs. It was really fun. Uh. We we never really accomplished much other than having fun, but you know, fun is the best thing to have anyway. So yeah, so like the Beatles song. Um, so did you ever

have bands that had gigs in high school? We had one gig with the Lost Chords and that was at the Presbyterian Church Youth fellowship Hall. Can you imagine a straighter gig than that? And uh, it was really fun. The kids went nuts and we had a great time. But mostly we just rehearsed and either my garage or my friends basement or you know, a lot of rehearsing, so you go to Risdy at all times. Maybe in history, being a fine artist is a challenging career. Did that

occur to you? Yes, it did. One thing they tell you when you you go to art school is you know there's no guarantees. Some people say you can't even teach art at uh. Well, the fact is that some people can and some people can't. But um Risdi was not RISTI didn't have any like program that you could enroll to get a job after after graduation. It was you're on your own now, good luck. Okay. You played in bands in high school. It seems based on the book that very soon after your arrival at Risdy, you

were interesting interested in forming a band. Yes. My second year. The first year I didn't play any drums at all, any music except you know, on my record player. But um I was really missing it, and um so I asked my dad if he would drive me up to Rhode Island from Pittsburgh with my drum kit and he said yes sure, So we brought the drum kid up and and the first band I joined was in fact a soul band, I mean a real soul band, and

UH called the Brotherhood. They were all from Boston, from Roxbury, Boston, but one of them went to Risdy. The trumpet player, and so he asked me what I what I play with them? And and uh, we ended up again rehearsing a lot. And I must admit I was the weak link in that band because the rest of the guys were Berkeley School of Music guys, you know. But eventually I got it and um, I loved soul music. The

challenge for me was the slower tempos. You know. The slow tempos are for me more difficult than any any fast tempo. So it took me a while to get to get it together with the brotherhood. We we we did one show, which was the Ristey Spring Dance in the what they called the Refectory, and it was very great celebration, very celebratory, and the band sounded good and uh and that was it. That was the last gig with them. So you have your drum, kid, you're in

pro evidence. What's the next step. Well, the next step I was just playing by myself a lot with records, and uh, Tina, Tina Weymouth was kind enough to uh let me keep my my drums, or to invite me to keep my drums at her place, which was she was living in a little carriage house near Brown University. And it was right by the tennis courts, so nobody

complained about the noise, and um I practiced. I would play along with the latest Marvin Gay record, or the latest Brian Ferry record, or the latest you know, goats Head Soup by the Rolling Stones or whatever. And I would try to keep in shape doing that. But eventually, one day a guy came to me, a friend said Chris, I'm making this film. He was a film student. I'm making a film about my girlfriend getting run over by a car, and I need some really cacophonous music. Do

you think you could help me with that? And I said sure, I'd be happy to and uh uh, I said, bring your bring your nagare tape recorder over to Tina's carriage house and we'll do it. And he said, okay, I'm gonna bring another guy to who plays guitar, a friend of mine who plays guitar. I said, great. So he brings this guy over with his tape recorder and

he says, Chris, this is David Byrne. And um, so, David and I sat down together and Mark's instructions where I want this rising cacophony, you know, crescendo crescendo and then diminuendo. So we said, okay, we can do that, and I think we got it in the first take.

And I had been I had this dream about starting another band at Risdey since the Brotherhood had kind of gone to put and I had imagined, you know, David Bowie had just come out and uh lou Reid who had this hit with Walk on the wild Side, and there was a lot of rejuvenated interest in the Velvet underground by by art students I knew. I thought, hm, we should start a sort of velvet underground ish band. And I asked, Uh, I had this dream that we

could have a band that would entertain our friends. You know, no, no, uh, higher aspirations than that. Really, we weren't thinking about records or anything. And uh, I said to David, I'm thinking about starting a band. Would you like to be part of that? And he said, yeah, I think so. And uh so we started a band called the Artistics, and uh we had loads of fun. And did you have any gigs we did? Our biggest gig was the Rhode Island School of Design Valentine's Day Ball and we played

that and uh that was very exciting for us. We we played um that they had lowered the drinking age to eighteen. So we had a bar at rizzi called the tap Room and we played in the tap room. We played a couple of private parties and uh, just before we graduated, we played outside across from the Ristey Museum on Benefit Street in this little park on a nice afternoon in May, and that was our final show.

And who was in the band at that point It was David myself, a friend of mine from Kentucky named David Anderson on guitar he's a painter now, and Hank Staylor on base. Hank was running PS one in New York um a while back, which is an art museum. I'm not sure what he's doing now, but uh, and we and we would have guest appearances by one. One one of our friends named Tim Beal was a sacks player. He would sit and sit in from time to time. And we also had our friends Mark and Naomi who

there um they were a couple. In their song was my Baby Must be a Magician, So so we would we would uh play my Baby Must be a Magician and Mark and Naomi would sing it duet style. We we had a we had a ball and how often would you rehearse? Oh, a couple three times a week, so you were taking it seriously. Let's stay at wristy for a second. How did you meet Tina? I met Tina.

She came. Well, she came riding down the street. I was sitting on the grass in this little park and I saw this beautiful girl coming my way on a bicycle, a yellow bicycle. Uh you know, old three speed style, and uh she she rode past. She didn't look at me or anything, didn't notice me. But I was sitting with a male model at the school, like an artist model named Charlie. And Charlie said, I said, whoa Charlie. Did you see her? Wow? And Charlie said, that's my

friend Martina. Charlie called everybody his friend, you know, and uh so, uh, I thought I gotta meet her, and um. The next day I had a figure painting class. It was it was the beginning of the school year. Had a figure painting class taught by a guy named Richard Murkin, whom you may know his work from The New Yorker or or other places. He was actually on the cover one of the heads on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band fash and a hat because he was friends with

Peter Blake, good friends with Peter Blake. So anyway, he um Richard Merkin was teaching and uh, it was the first class of the year, and I looked over and there in the corner was Tina Weymouth setting up her easel and so that's where I met her. Now, how how deep into your career at Risdy, this is what year? This is my second year? She she transferred in from Barnard, so she was a new kid. Okay. Now, one thing that comes up in the book frequently is other men

hitting on Tina. Okay, hey, how did that make you feel? And be uh, why do you think or what's your insight into Tina that she stayed with you? I mean, obviously there are a lot of stories the opposite, if nothing else, Michelle Phillips and the Mamas and Papa's poor Michelle. Um. You know, Uh, I was always okay with these guys who who I could tell they were coming on to Tina because somehow I felt secure in my relationship with her, secure enough that I had I didn't have to be jealous.

I think they're I'd have been one or two times before we got married where I felt a little jealous of some guy or another. But once we were married, which was in ninety seven, I, uh, I felt confident that I didn't have to worry about such things. Okay, you graduate from Risdy what years at seventy three four? Then what's the plan? Then the plan is I went home. I I painted a mural. The plan was to move to New York. But I knew I had to have a little money in my pocket to move to New York.

So I went home to Pittsburgh, and through my father's connections, I got a job painting a mural in a hospital, the Iron Ear Hospital of Pittsburgh. And the mural had already been des mined by some other guy and I was supposed to make blow it up and make it huge, which I did, and it took a long time up on a scaffolding, you know, on a stairway. But but uh I got I think dollars, Well, that's a lot

of money. Yeah, And so I had enough. Then I thought, okay, I can move to New York now, which was which I did in in late September, and h or maybe it was early October. It was early October, and um, well, David had agreed to move to New York and he, in fact, he moved there before I did, and uh Tina had agreed, and the three of us got aloft together on Christie Street, which which I found after much

searching around New York. And uh uh Tina's brother, who's an architect, said, Chris, don't bother about the village voice, don't look in there. Look at the industrial section of the New York Times on Sunday. So I said, okay, and he was right. That's where you found the good lofts. You know that nobody lived in yet. And we got a nice one on Christie Street, just below Houston on what is called the Lower East Side, and it was three blocks from cb GBS, maybe three and a half.

Uh this is my friend who lived across the street from CBGB said Chris, there's something going on over at this club across the street. You gotta check it out. And I went in there and I checked it out and there was like nothing happening at all. It was in the middle of the week, but there was a

like four guy is playing pool in the back. And I went back there and they were Latino guys and uh one of them was wearing like a shark skin suit and a tie and had a real sharp crew cut, I thought, So I asked him, you know what's going on? Is there are going to be any music tonight? You said, in a very heavy Mexican accent, No, man, not tonight. But you come back on the weekend the Ramons will

be here. And I thought, oh, a Mexican band. Interesting, And uh, well I came back on the weekend the Ramones were there, and I soon found out they were not a Mexican band. Well what else would you like to know? Well, know what, I guess what I'm asking is when you, David and Tina moved to New York, is your plan to be a painter or a rock and roll musician? Well, we we, David and I hoped to be rock and roll musicians. And because we felt like, you know, we're we're young. We can do this while

we're young. If if we don't succeed, we can we can be painters or you know whatever, conceptual artists, whatever we want to be, and we'll still be considered young painters at age forty or whatever. Um, we we kept in touch with the art world. We were we were very you know, closely knit with the art world, and in fact, a lot of people that came to c B GBS to hear us and the other bands play. We're artists of various types, you know, um, people in

the visual arts, people in the performing arts. You know. Philip Philip Glass would come to see us, you know, and at that point in time, he kind of already was Philip Glass, right, Yes, well it was early on, but he he already had a very high reputation downtown. Yeah, so what is everybody doing to stay alive? Um, I

had a h day. We all had day jobs. Mine was I was a stock boy and shipper for for Design Research, which we sold fancy European furniture and housewares, and uh it was really fun because the store was full of all these beautiful shop girls, you know, uh, sales girls. And we also sold Merimecho clothing from Sweden, so they all wore the striped merrime Echo t shirts.

And uh. There are a couple of poets that worked with me down in the basement where we would we would unload things off of trucks and then after they get sold. We put them back on the trucks. Uh, it was. It was a good, good day job. Nice people. What did David David David, a friend of ours had resigned. A friend of ours got a job at the at the Museum of Modern Art, and he left his job

at an ad agency, also on fifty seventh Street. We all worked on fifty seventh Street, which is so funny, but uh so David went help make ads for people like Prince Macha Belli and um Sergio Valenti and things like that back in the seventies. And Tina was working at Henry ben Dell, which was a very exclusive only recently went out of business because of Trump's you know, uh screwing up Fifth Avenue and they lost all their business. Okay,

with was David actually designing ads? No, he was operating a stat machine, you know, photograph, photographing parts of the ads and putting them together. So how does Tina become a member of the band. I had actually asked Tina to become a member of the band when we had the artistics, when we were forming it, and she said, oh no, no, no, that's a guy's thing. I'll be very I'll support you in your efforts, but I don't

want to. No, she she just felt like it was a bad idea, and um, but I kept after her because I felt like the band we were gonna I was forming with David was going to be a very different type of band in terms of appearance and also sound, and we weren't going to be like copying The Who or the Rolling Stones or even the Velvet Underground. Really, uh, we were going to be uh more unusual, uh than than what people might have anticipated. You know, that we

were trying to be different and interesting. And I knew that Tina share the similar aesthetic artistically, that she she got what we were trying to do even before she you know, started playing with us. And also I knew that she had a fantastic sense of rhythm from dancing with her and just you know, embracing her and you know, when the records come on, when our favorite songs come on, we would dance, you know, and I knew that she could,

you know, really feel the rhythm. So I kept asking her, and I kept asking her, and she kept saying, no, no, no, not a good idea. It's a it's a boy's club. But then one day she walked into the loft with a Fender Precision bass that she'd been putting down like five dollars a week on for months evidently, and uh, one of the happiest days in my life. Well, I think she may have been the progenitor of female musician bass players in terms of rock bands. I don't remember

anybody playing that role before that. I'm sure people email, Well there was Susie Quatro was was of course. Well, I had a couple of Susie Quatro records and on one of them she even kind of looks like Tina, And I said, Tina, look at this, and uh but uh, and of course there's a great Carol Kay who teena session bass player who Tina admires greatly. Um, and I'm sure there were plenty others, but yeah, Tina was one

of the first down in uh Lower Manhattan to do it. Okay, Now Tina is in the act when you finally play CB GBS. Yes, yes, our first gig. It was in in May of nineteen seventy five. And how did you get that gig? I walked in, I asked Hilly Crystal, the owner, I have this band and we'd like to audition, and he said what kind of music you play? And I said, well, we play in a style of our own. And he chuckled like he'd heard that one before, I think, and uh he said okay. You know, he had a

very basso voice. He said, okay, I suppose I could put you on in front of the Ramones. And I said, all right, we'll We'll take it. And that was our audition night. Um, which was I think three days later. So we had to think of a name. We didn't even have a name yet, so we had to think of a name, and our are our One of our friends from Risty was visiting us at the time. He uh, he now has a job at the Art Institute of Chicago.

But anyway, he said, he said, I've been I was reading TV Guide and they have a glossary of television technical terms, and one of the terms is talking head. It means the the most boring but also the most informative format of broadcasting. So we thought to ourselves, talking heads, talking heads, that sounds good and we could relate to it because it didn't connote any particular type of music like heavy metal or country or you know, hard rock

or disco. Talking Heads. It could be anything. So we went with that name, and we put Tina and I had little t shirts made that said talking Heads on it, and we walked through uh, Washington Square Park with it with it on, and people would say, are you guys in a band? Things like that, and so we thought, hmm, I think this talking Heads name might work out. And and that particular shirt of Tina's is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which, uh is kind

of sweet. Now, if you read the book, you find out essentially you met everybody, but in that scene it's CB G B of course, the guys from television, people from Blondie, etcetera. Did you have the feeling that this was in retrospect? Of course, it was really percolating a big scene, and almost all of those acts got record deals, some went on to great success. Did you have that

vibe when you were ave it? Yes, I had. I had the impression that it was, you know, it started off really small, and even then with television, Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramoons, ourselves band called the Mumps, even even when they were only people in the audience on a given night.

I had the idea. I had the feeling that something, um, something was getting really cool and good and and that uh cb GBS was going to be like an incubator for a scene where bands could sort of play their play their original songs and maybe maybe they would not even get through the song without making a big mistake

or something. But the audience was so small that not that many people notice, and there was no internet, so you you could make a mistake, you could have a very awkward performance and uh still come back and do it again the following week. And so it was that kind of scene and uh, everybody was kind of, you know, just learning how to do this, how to be a performer.

Petty Smith was a pretty good performer right from the yet go because she had been doing poetry readings and things and she had she had a lot of charisma.

Um But as this has more and more people came and the band's got better and better, and all of a sudden you had people from like Japan and London and Hamburg, Germany, and people coming up from Atlanta, and it just started to be, uh, a very exciting scene and and there would be suddenly there would be lines outside to get in, and yeah, I felt like, uh, very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time. Now, needless to say, as you referenced earlier,

Talking Heads has a unique sound. Did it audience or didn't resonate with the audience? Did you generate fans from the beginning? Some people didn't get it. I think some people still don't get it. But you know, the Kings of downtown New York rock at that time, or the New York Dolls and the various spinoffs of the New York Dolls, and uh, we liked them. They were really cool and everything, but we we certainly working to be parading around in platform shoes and like purple trousers and stuff.

So um, there were some people that we were so a contrary to the New York Dolls aesthetic that they didn't really get us at first. But then eventually even even some of the people who really didn't get us came around. Okay, so how did Jerry get in the band? Well, you know, Jerry Harrison was in the Modern Lovers, which was a band that we greatly admired and played their record a lot. Their record was produced, It was actually a demo produced by John Kale that was later released

as an album. Uh, and we have been listening to that. And I went home to Pittsburgh one time and one of my mother's friends said, you know, Chris, my nephew is in a band in Boston and they're really good. And I said, who are they. What's the name of the band. He said, oh, the Modern Lovers. Now I knew that The Modern Lovers had broken up. Evidently she didn't know it yet, but I said, oh, what's your nephew his name and she said Ernie Brooks. I said, oh,

the bass players. She said yeah, and she she gave me Ernie's contacts. So I had Ernie's contacts, and UM went went back to New York from Pittsburgh, and I like the next day or a couple of days later, I was in a restaurant owned by Mickey Ruskin, who who found in Max's Kansas City. But this this was called The Local and h one of the cooks was Julian Schnabelieva. Yeah, and uh so they were famous for

their hamburgers and their red wine. So we were having some hamburger and a red wine, and Tina and David and I and I looked across the room and who should I see. But Ernie Brooks. I recognized him by his big head of curly hair that he had on the album cover. So I walked over and I said, hey, Ernie, I was just talking to your aunt in Pittsburgh. And he said, oh, yeah, the Showers Liz Liz Shower. I said, yeah, exactly, and she's a friend of my mother's and she said

that I should get in touch with you. So here I am. And he said, well, what's happening. What do you guys do and and I said, well, you know, actually we're looking for a third member of the band, some somebody who can help us, you know, fill out the sound and make the songs more beautiful. And um, he said, well who what what instrument are you looking for? I said keyboards maybe maybe keyboards and guitar And he

said have you have you thought of Jerry Harrison? And I said wow, I would love to get in touch with Jerry Harrison. And Ernie gave me a number, so I called up Jerry and Jerry said, well guess what. Um, he said, this is very interesting, but guess what. I just enrolled in a master's program for architecture here at Harvard and UH and besides that the breakup of the Modern Lovers was a very difficult experience for me. So I'm not going to rush into anything, but I'd be

interested to hear you play. So I said, okay, we'll we'll plan a gig up and up in Boston and you can come hear us play, which we did, and one thing led to another, and when we when we finally had a recording contract, Jerry said, okay, I'd like to join the band. He had played with us a few times before that, you know, so we knew that it worked well. Uh. You know you mentioned that he's a single child in the book and he's at Harvard. How difficult was it for him to drop out? Um?

You know, I I never asked Jerry how difficult it was, but he did. He did that, I think he did. I think he did one semester, maybe even did a full year. He might have done a full year. So how do you get a record deal? How did we? Uh? We had people approaching us offering us record deals, and uh, you know, I can think of three off the top of my head, and one of them was seymour Stein of Sire Records. And uh, we had made a couple of demos, and we we listened back to these demos

and we thought, uh, we're not ready yet. This is you know, we can rock cb GBS, but we're not gonna like rock the billboard charts sounding like we do now. And uh we we knew that if if we put out a record too soon and it wasn't up to you know, it wasn't happening, then we might not get a chance to do do one. We might not get

another chance. So we were very careful. Seymour offered us this deal and we made him wait for a year and a half, eighteen months, and he was poor guy, was so nervous that some other record company was gonna snatch us up in the meantime. But but we knew, we had a feeling about Seymour and in his company's sire, that they were independent, that they were in New York.

They their offices were on a town in a townhouse on West seventy four a Street, and we could, according to Seymour, any anyway, We could go there any time we wanted and talk to him. So we thought that sounds a lot better than some guy in you know, l a or at the top of a skyscraper in New York. Who who you know? We can't even get in to see him. Uh, and so we decided to go with Seymour. We had we asked Danny Fields, who was managing the Ramons. We said, Danny, what's your experience?

The Ramans were on Sire and Dan Danny, what's your experience with Sire Records? And he said, well, Chris in a nutshell, Seymour is always done right by us, And that was like all I needed to know. He's Danny also said, you know, no record company is perfect. With any record company, you need somebody to tell them what to do. But um, uh but Seymour has always done right by us. So so we signed a deal with Seymour. And uh, I'm really glad we did because it worked

out great. Okay, so you make the first record. Needless to say, the first record sounds very different from what came thereafter talking had sent Were you happy with the result at the time? Yeah? I was. I I um, I'm still happy with the result. It's it's a very sweet um and uh rich that sounding album. I I think my way of thinking about it is it was a great start, great beginning, and I when I listened

to it today. If I listened to a song like Don't Worry about the Government or Psycho Killer or Pulled Up, I think, Wow, we were we were really something. Okay, so the first album comes out, do you have a feeling there's momentum. I we had momentum in uh sort of like the big cities, but we didn't We didn't have any worldwide momentum. And I remember looking at the charts and thinking, uh, well, we're not really doing that great.

But the fact is that that we were, um, we were making a big impression and establishing a reputation for being artists, you know. Um and uh we we we um we we we we. We had sort of like the best of the best world we could possibly have. We we had some commercial success, not a huge, huge amount, but enough that we can make another record. We had artistic success, which was validated, you know, by the Voice

in the New York Times and by our friends. And we also had well, we had enough financial success that we could give up our day jobs. And that's a very significant thing. Staying with staying with business. Traditionally, the drummer is the business guy in the group. Was that the case with you in talking heads. You know. That's what Gary Kerfer said to me. It's always the drummer

who runs the band. Well, um, I think all of us had a pretty good business sense, but but maybe I was the person who who was was comfortable, uh talking to people about it. But it got to the point after not very long that that I realized you can't manage your own band. You have to have somebody else do it for you. Okay, Now, the first record makes an impression, second record is a whole new thing. You work with Eno. You do a cover of taking Me to the River, tell Us a Genesis and the

story of making that record. Well, um, we were on a big tour of Europe and the UK with the Ramones and when we when we came to London, Eno came to see us and we we met with him. We had a nice lunch with him, and then we went to his home and we talked about you know, music basically, and one thing led to another and we decided, you know, would be a good producer for us, and and you know was interested in doing it, and and so that's how that that's how we got him involved

with Eno. And at the time though he hadn't really worked with anybody significant. He'd been in uh Roxy music and he'd done his own solo albums. Correct. Yes, yes, he had also done uh just around the time before, right before we worked with him, he was working with David Bowie on the Low the Low trilogy and also

with Divo. He produced the first Divo album, which he did in Germany, and um so, so you know, uh, maybe the record companies weren't thrilled that we were working with Divo instead of like you know, Roy Thomas Baker or somebody like that. But but he was right up our alley. He was our kind of artist, and we had his records. We collected his record as we admired his work, and so uh, he agreed to do it. Now on that second album, more songs about buildings and food.

We had already been performing all those songs live, and some of them we had been performing for years live, but they didn't make it onto the first record. So

and we had been touring like crazy. So when we got to the studio at Compass Point in the Bahamas, which was delightful, all you know, had to do was like set up the mics and then he could treat the various instruments, instruments, mostly the drums, but sometimes other instruments with this little briefcase synthesizer he had and um by treating, i mean putting effects and delays and things like that on the instruments, and that was his main contribution.

But he also helped, like like when we came to Take Me to the River, which we been playing kind of up tempo, like Al Green's version is quite up tempo, but you know, said you should slow this down. You should play this as slow as you possibly can without

making a mistake. And so we thought, okay, we'll try that, and we did it and it was super sexy that way, and uh so that that was uh of course that became a hit, and it was our first hit and the whole the whole experience down at Compass Point was just super cool and everything went smooth and uh we had a wonderful time. Well, it's all interesting. In the book.

You talked about taking Me to the River. Then ultimately there sound where you feel like it's underwater, which is that you described that I've always felt that, you know, with the guitar, you know, during the solo part. Okay, the record becomes a hit. How does that change in the band? Well, um, I don't know that it really changed us. It just made we were able to get paid better by nightclubs because we had a song that was on the radio, so we could get you know,

more money. It wasn't a whole lot more, and it wasn't a whole lot of money, but it was like better than we had been doing. And who was booking who's booking all those tours in those days? It was a guy named Stu wine trout at William Morris and uh ste was it was quite a character. But um, you know what we Gary really I think Gary Kerr first, of course, was your manager. He was our manager and I think he pretty much directed Stu. Now, Ste, we're gonna play here, here and here, you get on the

phone and book it. And um we we played everything for college campuses, universities to pizza parlors and uh uh supermarkets that that were out of business and we're empty. We played all kinds of crazy venues which which um which uh. Later we were followed by Blondie and by Elvis Costello and by the Clash. Because there was no circuit for for bands like us, we were. We were we weren't very big, you know, we weren't like Foreigner

or something. So a lot of promoters weren't interested. So we had to find these young indie guys to to promote our shows. Sometimes we promoted them ourselves, even when you'd had the second album, etcetera. Yes, yes, uh okay, third album. Of course, fear of music and of course this ain't no party, this ain't no just go There ain't no fool around. It brings you to a higher level. But after the third record is when you start to get winto the fact that maybe David Byrne is going

to go on his own tech. Yeah. I what I found out was that David all Along had would prefer to be a solo artist. Um, the group was just something that he uh, I mean, he was a real part of the group. We were we were really collaborators, and we were friends and we were you know, we lived together in the same loft, and um, we really of the time we agreed on things. You know, we

didn't agree on every single thing. But but now, Bob, I have to be very careful because I don't want to sound like the whiney drummer who's who's embittered by the famous lead singer, because that's not the case. I'm not embittered, and I have great respect for David and

his talents, which are immense. But I still think that he had his eyes on a solo career from almost day two, maybe not day one, day two, and uh, you know, some people are like, let's jump forward when he ultimately does go solo and you form top top club, you have a hit, and up until his recent uh mega concert dancing experience, he has not had He's had a lot of ink, but he hasn't had any huge success. How do you feel? How do you feel about that? Well? Um, all I can say is our first Tom Tom Club

album was like magic to me. Uh, Chris Blackwell gave it. Now. One thing Seymour did, which which I can you know, make a little dig about, was he offered David a solo deal because David wanted to do a solo record. So then Jerry said, oh, if David's gonna do a solo record, I'm gonna do a solo record. So he offered Jerry a solo record, and then Tina and I were like, well, what are we gonna do? And Gary ker first went to went to Seamar and said what can you do for record deal for Chris and Tina?

And he said, I can't afford three talking ed solo albums, and so he offered us nothing, and um Chris Blackwell, Chris Blackwell of Island Records, who knows the value of a good rhym rhythm section, said you know what, Gary, I'd love to do a single with Chris and Tina. Have him come on down. He already knew us from our recordings at at a Compass Point, and he said, have him come on down. Cut a single. If I

like it, they can do a whole album. So we went down to Compass Point and we we made a record called Wordy Rapping Hood and uh he heard that and he said, okay, I want you to make a whole album, but first we're gonna release this one as a single, and uh it it went to well, it went top ten in about twenty different countries in Europe and in Latin America. And you know, then we had

Genius of Love. And Genius of Love was a huge hit in America, so so big that, um well, it continues to be sampled by various hip hop artists and R and B artists and uh, it was it was like magic. It was a great, great success for us, and it gave Tina and I. You know, I think people realized, oh, Tina and I aren't just like David's

little friends. They actually have ideas of their own and uh and I think, um, I think people realized that talking Heads was was was actually more of a shared experience, like the the art of talking Heads was more of a shared experience than than than one particular guy's uh ideas. Okay, but throughout the book, certainly you say at some point that you believe David is on the spectrum, but he

does do some very interesting thing. You said, he dropped out of Risdy after one year, he left his significant other wife after being inducted to the raw could roll a Hall of fame literally that night. But the most interesting thing in a business level is you agree that you would split songwriting credit along with eno. Tell us

about the songwriting credit and who really wrote those songs? Well, those songs were created by the five people who were in the studio working mostly mostly created by uh, Tina, Jerry, David, and myself from improvisations in the studio. And then we would and sometimes Brian would be playing something in the control room while we were out in the studio, but more often than not he was listening and he would add things later. But uh, the original basic tracks that

all those songs were on Remaining Light come from. We're

improvised by the four musicians in the studio. Then we took the we arranged, uh, Brian and the engineer mainly arranged the different jam sessions that we did so that they would uh evolve into different parts of a song, like an A section, of B section, a C section, and then we would do some rough mixes of those, at which point David was expected to write lyrics because at a certain point, actually pretty early on, he said, I'm I want to be the one who writes the lyrics.

I don't want to sing anyone else's lyrics. So we're like, okay, cool, and uh he uh. We we all knew after those compass points sessions on Remaining Light that that we had something very extraordinary. And he said, you know, this is so extraordinary. I can't just write like something off the top of my head. I gotta live with these tracks for a little while, and uh, then I'll be able

to write something. So we said, great, we understood that completely, and I think he took I think he rented a car and drove around the country listening to cassettes and of the basic tracks, and also listening to the radio with evangelical preachers and whatnot on the various regional radio stations, and he came back with some great lyrics and at that point Eno helped arrange some of the background vocals and the U and actually I think he he wrote,

for example, uh, the melody to Letting the Days Go By, you know, the chorus of of Once in a Lifetime. And he made major contributions. Long story short, when when when this great album was finally finished and we got our advanced copies, Tina and Jerry and I am, we're looking at him. And the agreement had been that it would say music by in alphabetical order, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Brance, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, but instead it

said music by Brian David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Talking Heads. Well, I thought David was a member of Talking Heads. But anyway, you could see that the rest of us were being treated like Sidemen all of a sudden, as if we hadn't hadn't really contributed to the extent that we had, you know, so we we had to deal with that. Brian wanted Brian wanted the the front cover to say Remain in Light by Talking Heads and Brian Eno and we're like, oh my god, how are we gonna how

are we gonna talk about it this one? And Gary Ker first went to Brian. He said, you know, Brian, there's gonna be a nine month promotional tour behind this album. Can you do that tour? And Brian said, oh no, Gary, I couldn't possibly do that. You know, I don't tour. And so Gary said, well, then how can we advertise it as Brian you know and talking Heads if you're not there? And uh, well that that ended that problem right there. But despite the credit in terms of in

terms of publishing royalties, did you get one fifth? No? Really no, I did not. So what was the final split on the payment? You know, I prefer not to get into the details because off the top of my head, I don't exactly know what they are. I a good idea, but you know, uh, you know, it didn't work out the way it was supposed to work out. How about all the other albums? You know? Are you talking about

performance royalties or I'm talking about publishing royalties? Publishing royalties? Well, um, I'm afraid David gets gets the lion's share of most of that, but you do get some. Yes. Now it's like it's almost like Godfather three. It looks like David's out of the band, and then you and Tina always seem to find a way to get him back in. Yeah, well you know you have to use psychology and uh, and we learned. We learned that if you make David thinks something's his idea, it might get done. And so

what could I say? I think every rock band who's who's been around for a while has many twists and turns and ups and downs, and and we had our share too, Okay. Uh, after true stories, do you say to yourself and then naked, do you say to yourself this is ultimately done? Or do you don't always have a hope that, well, we'll do it one more time. I always had a hope that we do it one more time? Yes, And has it ever come close? I

wish I could say yes, but I don't think so. No, a couple a couple of times I got my hopes up, but lately I'm I'm kind of resigned to the fact that it's not going to happen. Um, although Talking Heads has a great career on Broadway. Now there's some great talking Head shows songs being performed on Broadway. So I have you seen David Extravaganza in person? I have not.

I confess I have not. I had I been invited to the show, I probably would would have been happy to go, but no invitation was extended and I didn't want to just drop in. And how how often or when was the last time you actually spoke face to face with David. I spoke face to face with David for the last time in two thousand three, So it's been a good long while. We we cut. We communicate by email, mostly about you know, what songs can be used in what movies and what? You know? When was

the last time you had an email from him? Oh? Probably probably a couple of weeks ago. Okay, So after Talking Heads is behind Tom Tom Club continues to go, but also you and Tina start producing records. Yeah, how does that happen? Well? Um, it kind of uh uh.

We hadn't really planned on being producers or anything. But our good friend Alex Sadkin, who was an extraordinary engineer and producer for Bob Marley and a Third World, and he ended up producing, engineering and mixing things like I want to Know what Love Is for Foreigner, you know, big hits. He was scheduled he had worked with Bob Marley and he was scheduled to produce Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, Bob Marley's Kids and um. He was down in Nassau Compass Point working with some band when

tragically he was thrown from a open air jeep. Uh, they had an accident. He was thrown, hit his head and never came to. So suddenly Virgin America, which was a brand company, Uh, they needed producers for Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers. And Tina's younger brother, Lark Weymouth was was young a and R man there and he said to uh, Nancy Jeffries. Nancy Jeffries was in charge

of the Ziggy Marley and the Melody Maker's project. He said, Uh, Nancy, have you have you thought about using Chris and Tina because you know they love reggae. They know a lot about you know, island culture and stuff. Maybe they would be good. So we got a call from Nancy Jefferies and she said, would you be interested in doing this? And we said, yeah, we would be interested because Talking Heads wasn't touring at the time or anything. And um, we went down to Jamaica to meet Ziggy. Uh know.

First we we met his mother, Rita Marley, in a sushi bar in New York and she said, she said, Okay, you guys seem cool to me, and uh she she remembered meeting us before somewhere and uh she liked her Tom Tom called music Genius of Love. She loved that, and um, so she said, you've got to come down to Jamaican meet Ziggy. So we met Ziggy and uh we flew down there and uh Ziggy said, yeah, man, you can do it. So uh we started working with

Ziggy the first day, you said to me. This was at Sigma Sound in New York because we we thought if we if we were produced the record in Jamaica, things might get kind of out of control. We we should have it here in New York and and so we did that and the first day Ziggy came to me said Chris France, how come you bring your wife to the studio, man, I said, well, Ziggy, First of all, Tina knows more about music than I do. The second of all, she's gonna be a great producer, so just

sit back and enjoy it. And uh, in fact, in fact, it went very well. That record did great. It was called Conscious Party. Another new signing to Virgin America at that time was Keith Richards. So Keith Richards came in and played on a song called Lee and Molly, which is about a interracial relationship, and he was really cool.

And uh we had um q Massakla come in and arrange background vocals for a group of um Zulu women, young Zulu women who were in town doing a musical called Sarah Fina, and uh Baba Ola Tunji dropped in. Um a whole lot of Jamaican uh dance hall artists stopped by to see what was happening. And the records sold like millions. So it was a wonderful experience. Okay, so needles to say, Talking Heads doesn't make another record,

you have success with Tom Tom Club. So for the last twenty five years, how much of that was working, how much of that was rest and relaxation my last twenty five years. Well, I've I've taken plenty of time off. I assure you we we like to go sailing. I know you like to ski. When when our kids were younger, we spent a lot of time at Crested Butte and loved it there. Uh and of course also in New England. Um but as you know, out west is kind of

more fun, especially the middle of winter. Uh. We uh spent a lot of time sailing because we love to sail. But we've also done several Tom Tom Club albums. Uh. And we've done plenty of Tom Tom Club tours, sometimes with a package, sometimes just on ourselves, by ourselves. The last time we we played was I think six years ago. You know, nobody's breaking down our door for a new

Tom Tom Club album. But we're okay with that because we're we've already done some good stuff and um I I we're more active in our community here in Fairfield, Connecticut than we used to be, and we uh we enjoy that. Tina Tina was really not too long ago inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. Wow, that's pretty cool. It's a big deal, and um, I mean she's a really good company there. And uh, then I decided I would write a book. And that was a

couple of years ago. Okay, well, obviously you've had this health blip, but are you sailing into the sunset or do you in the back of your mind, is there some artistic project that you still want to cook up? Well, Tina and I have been encouraged by what's happening with electronic music today. Um, I'm not referring to, um, the kind of music you you necessarily here on uh pop popular radio. I'm I'm referring more to an underground thing

and uh and we dig the underground life. So we're thinking that we we a few years back we did a record um for a label run by the Chicks on Speed and they were friends of ours there from Holland or they were at the time, and they said, would you do a We're gonna do this album called

girl Monster with with with all girl artists. Well, I know, I'm not a girl artist, So we put Tina's name on it and it was it was very well received on an underground in an underground way, and um, so we we thought, well, maybe we should do like an electronic duo, or it's just Tina and myself, some electronic drums, some keyboards, some bass, and some vocals, and we don't have to have a big production. It can be very minimalist.

We don't have to have a big stage show because maybe we won't even go out on tour, or maybe we will and we'll we'll have some you know, interesting little stage production that that um doesn't necessarily look like a rock and roll show. So we're thinking along those lines. I'm also thinking about writing a book about my beagles because they travel with us everywhere. Poppy has has crossed the Atlantic twenty two, no, twenty four times more than

most Americans. And are you painting at all? Well, that you know, my son, uh Egan France is Uh is doing the painting for the whole family right now. He's really good, really great. He's got to show up in Berlin starting next week. I think he's an art bossle. He's serious, he's serious. And what about your others? Uh? Your daughter? Oh? Oh, we only have two boys. His

name is his name is Robin, his nickname. He's an electronic artist and he's got his own label called craft Jerks like craft work but with J and a Z craftjerks and he's on his like I don't know how many releases twenty and uh and they sell. You know, they're small batches, but they sell. And he also uh well lately nobody's performing live, but he also performs live

as kid Jin sing as a DJ. Okay. Now, needless to say, the musical landscape is littered with people who are of household names and have no money in your particular case, or the royalties and the sinks uh keeping you comfortable? Thank goodness. Yes, we Tina and I were very fortunate and we had a few good years and we sucked some away. Good to know. Okay, Chris, I

think we've covered the basics. If you want to go into in much more detail, needless to say, learn much more about the New York scene and what it was like to be in that and to be happening in the late seventies and early eighties. Certainly read Remain in Love, Chris's memoir out on July. Chris, thanks so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure. Until next time. This is Bob left sus