a man in a beige suit walks over the coffin, the stage is undecorated, backstage junk and scaffolding are exposed and illuminated by streaks of light. He puts an eighties boombox on the floor and tells the crowd, “I have a tape I want to play for you.” He presses play and, bobbing his head to a taped 808 beat, launches into a jarring acoustic rendition of a song written from the perspective of a psychopath and sung partly in French.
When he starts stumbling and sliding across the stage with the beats pounding, it all starts to feel like auditioning for a Kookpop 101 class at school in Fame or an outtake from a low-budget edition of America’s Got Mildly Dranged Talent. However, it is the iconic opening of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, filmed over three nights at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in 1983 by director Jonathan Demme and widely acclaimed as one of the greatest live music films ever made. .
How does he get at 40th The cinema’s anniversary re-release this week, presented by uber-hip producers A24 and newly restored in 4K – with singer David Byrne’s iconic broad-shouldered business suit rendered on IMAX screens the size of buses – the arthouse sheen of the conceit remains virtually unrivaled in live music.
David Byrne
/ PR handoutFirst released in 1984, it exceeded expectations on stage in an era when major live performances were increasingly about lavishness. While the rock giants of the seventies and eighties took to the stage in giant UFOs, built 40-foot walls in arenas or staged Arthurian legends on ice, Talking Heads disrupted and reconstructed the live music spectacle – quite literally – with a completely new wave sweep.
From this spare solo intro, Byrne is gradually joined by his bandmates, song by song. Bassist Tina Weymouth comes to Heaven; roll out the drum kit for Chris Frantz to join in on “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel”; Guitarist Jerry Harrison completes the lineup for Found a Job. And yet the show grows. Keyboard and drum podiums, backing singers and a background screen adorned with slogans appear like a roadie strike that gradually resolves mid-set.
On Burning Down the House, the kinetic band are all in place and on fire of funk-pop. Artistic lighting effects and synchronized aerobic exercises are included; When Byrne isn’t dancing with a floor lamp or doing a 5km lap around the stage with a microphone, he turns into a rubber-limbed performer, bending, shaking, shaking and contorting his body and finally donning a giant business suit inspired by some traditional Kabuki, Bunraku and the Noh Theater he visited in Japan between tours.
(Left to right) Chris Franz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, Alex Weir, Bernie Worrell, David Byrne, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry, Edna Holt
/ Jordan Cronenweth, courtesy of A24“I wanted my head to appear smaller,” he said in an interview promoting the film’s 1999 DVD release, “and the easiest way to do that is to make my body bigger, because music is very physical, and often the body is understands.” in front of your head.”
Filmed during the tour in support of Talking Heads’ fifth album, “Speaking in Tongues”, “Stop Making Sense” captures the band at the moment of their breakthrough into the mainstream. Emerging from CBGB’s original New York punk scene as new wave art pioneers, their move into funk and worldbeat rhythms – most notably on the Fela Kuti-inspired 1980s album Remain in Light – helped them break into the global charts with Once in a 1981. Lifetime single and their only US top 10 hit, Burning Down the House in 1983.
But success and expectations at the arena level haven’t dampened their creative inclinations. Before Stop Making Sense, the use of arthouse techniques on stage usually meant underground provocation in the rock sphere. In the Velvet Metro during a screening of Andy Warhol’s films. Early Pink Floyd immersed themselves in kaleidoscopic imagery. Even David Bowie’s Kafkaesque tours of Isolar in the late seventies were associated with his departure from the center of populism in the Berlin era.
(LR) Edna Holt, Jerry Harrison, Lynn Mabry
/ Jordan Cronenweth, courtesy of A24.“Stop Making Sense” proved that art-rock performance and mainstream success could be a combined effort; that a big idea can be as bright and effective as any number of outlandish costumes, pyrotechnics, ostentatious sets and huge props. The film’s very style—a critical sensation and a cult hit upon its 1984 release, earning $5 million at the box office—helped Talking Heads achieve left-wing pop star status. Subsequent hits such as Road to Nowhere, And She Was and Wild Wild Life only strengthened their position before breaking up in 1991.
That a live show, halfway between Devo and James Brown, could be so energetic, joyful and inventive at the same time had a major influence on arena performance for decades to come. Many major artists have been inspired to reinvent what the live stage itself is capable of. On Peter Gabriel’s This Way Up tour in 1986, he battled with his own giant lighting rig positioned at an angle. Bowie was soon seen emerging from the head of a 60-foot glass spider with angel wings. The Pet Shop Boys’ debut tour in 1989 was a theatrical extravaganza full of sets and films directed by Derek Jarman. Art rock became a hit.
Forty years later, Lady Gaga performs multi-act concerts set in futuristic brutalist slaughterhouses, or Billie Eilish leaps out of a minimalist set consisting of a single giant tilting LCD screen, thanks in part, if indirectly, to the breakthroughs of Stop Making Sense. But the buzz surrounding the film’s re-release (a Q&A with Spike Jonze at the film’s presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival last week marked the band’s first appearance together since 2002) is a testament to the film’s ingenious simplicity and frenetic energy. movie. Which since then only one actor has managed to bring to life in a large-scale production: David Byrne.
Byrne’s acclaimed show “American Utopia,” which toured the world, then made several appearances on Broadway and was made into its own movie, is something of a spiritual sequel to “Stop Making Sense.” Taking the concept of an unrooted band to the extreme, the musicians danced around a chain-draped stage, carrying their instruments with them, resulting in a complete deconstruction of the fixed traditional rock stage. In a bright, provocative way… The feeling is restored.
Stop Making Sense is in theaters Friday