Tina Weymouth on the Talking Heads album that disappointed the band: “Didn’t really please any of us”
His work with Talking Heads remains one of Brian Eno’s biggest victories. The band and the acclaimed Roxy Music musician and production pioneer collaborated on three of the group’s biggest releases, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light. As Tina Weymouth shared her thoughts on the group’s process before his helping hand, it seems he saved them.
Before Eno, the group were doing just fine. They were the darlings on a distinct scene, milling around the New York crowd as one of the most interesting outfits playing the punk circuit. With their earliest hits like ‘Psycho Killer’ or ‘Love → Building on Fire’, they established themselves as a future-thinking, genre-smashing group with big things on the horizon.
However, according to Weymouth, the energy wasn’t translated in the process of making their debut album, Talking Heads ‘77. It should have been a huge moment as the band finally put the songs that had been gaining them a strong live reputation on tape for the world to hear. In the life of any band, making the first album should be exciting and freeing, created with little expectation and heaps of potential. But for Talking Heads, it simply wasn’t a good experience, leading to an outcome no one was happy with.
Her reflections on the process of making the record only came about in hindsight after the experience of working with Eno. It seemed that the producer managed to bring the band back to their excited infancy. “With Talking Heads we kind of jam and work up the parts before we enter the studio,” Weymouth said of their typical process, but it was often hard to get David Byrne on board.
“David was off again. In 1979, he’d left the band – he’s the kinda guy who wandered off a little bit,” Weymouth revealed in a 2022 interview with Far Out. But with the presence of Eno, a man Byrne admired, he seemed eager again. “We called David, ‘Guess what, David, Jerry and Brian Eno are coming to jam with us, and we’re gonna write some songs.’ That brought David running,” Weymouth said.
That mutual enthusiasm, paired with Eno’s expertise, made the process of recording a breeze, revealing just how difficult the debut had been. “It was a real pleasure to work with somebody like him as opposed to a hack in the music business, which was what happened on our very first album,” Weymouth told Spinterview, deeming their 1977 debut “An album that really didn’t please any of us.”
Their first album was produced by Lance Quinn and Tony Bongiovi, the cousin of Bon Jovi. “A hack” is a harsh descriptor for a man with a long list of musical credits, working with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Ramones, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne and more. But even with his lengthy resume, it’s easy to see how no one could quite live up to Eno.
Most Talking Heads fans would agree that the band got better after their debut, but it’s always sad to know that a group look back with regret towards an album that the world still loves and reveres, even if they don’t.