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Credit: Far Out \/ Sire Records<\/p>\n
Wed 29 July 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n
The further you dive into the career of seminal New York art rock outfit Talking Heads<\/a>, the harder it gets to describe exactly where they were coming from artistically, and the more varied their pool of influences seemed to get.<\/p>\n Having formed in 1973 after the dissolution of frontman David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz\u2019s previous project, The Artistics, Talking Heads essentially began life as a proto-punk outfit<\/a>, playing with a reasonable amount of aggression while also injecting a certain sense of jankiness that would go on to become a defining characteristic of the band. However, in spite of this being their origin, things would rapidly move in a more creatively fluid direction, particularly under the mentorship and production guidance of Brian Eno.<\/p>\n Songs became increasingly abstract in their presentation, forming around single repeated grooves and intense rhythmic interplay, while the lyrics became considerably more obtuse. Never the sort of person to want to make things obvious, Byrne would frequently obfuscate meaning through mixing the surreal and the banal, and even in the more earnest moments, he was still known for having made things sit on the more peculiar side.<\/p>\n With all of this in mind, and the very obviously experimental leanings, it would probably come as a surprise to learn that Byrne was brought up on the regimented blues worship of guitarists like Eric Clapton, and not something more freeform. However, by the time the band were coming together, there were a handful of important touchstones that he, Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison all bonded over and evidently wanted to turn into their main influences.<\/p>\n During a 2025 interview with Louis Theroux for an episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast, he explained how his early reverence for Clapton was not the sort of territory that he felt he ought to be playing with, and went on to divulge some of the music that helped shape the band\u2019s early successes. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to do that,\u201d he said of the Cream and Blind Faith guitarist. \u201cThey do that, and they do it really well, but no, I\u2019m not going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Post-Punk Newsletter<\/p>\n