The groove of Talking Heads: exploring what makes Tina Weymouth an exemplary bassist
They might be the band that soundtracks the lives of South London art students with trousers hoisted comically above their navels, but Talking Heads maintain their lauded status for a reason. One of art rock’s definitive acts, their fusion of punk, new wave, funk and African polyrhythms proved a potent concoction. Most often, the band’s story concentrates on the somewhat dictatorial leader David Byrne. However, this perspective skews the importance of the other cogs in the machine, like bassist Tina Weymouth.
While there are many notable guitarists littered throughout history, finding a genuinely exceptional bassist is much more challenging. This is due to the instrument’s intrinsic role in the rhythm section, the traditional ballast needed for any artist to place the treble-heavy ornamentation of the guitar and the theatrics of the vocals on top. Furthermore, given the four-stringed nature of the bass, there is less scope to do something completely new. However, some, such as Weymouth, combined their personality with the wood and created history.
For instance, commentators and the more frivolous elements of the Talking Heads fanbase might concentrate on David Byrne’s odd baritone and celebrate him and producer Brian Eno for effectively merging West African polyrhythms inspired by Fela Kuti with the sound of 1970s New York. Yet, without Weymouth’s dynamism, innovation and understanding of serving the song, it is absolutely certain that we wouldn’t be discussing Talking Heads today.
She was their secret weapon, and without her, they were nothing. Of course, her husband, drummer Chris Frantz and guitarist Jerry Harrison also brought vitality to the fold, but Weymouth propped them all up with her unique grooves. For further evidence of her brilliance, you only need to listen to her and Frantz’s side project, Tom Tom Club, to gauge her full power on the fretboard, such as ‘Genius of Love’ and ‘Pleasure of Love’.
In Talking Heads, Weymouth produced many moments of absolute genius on the bass. Her most famous effort is undoubtedly 1977’s ‘Psycho Killer’. It is one of her simplest grooves but does distil her nature as a player in the sense that most of her best lines with the Byrne-fronted group are endlessly hummable.
However, there are so many other great ones outside of this indie floor filler. These include the expression-full, Motown-evoking opener of their debut ‘Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town’, the endlessly danceable groove of ‘Found a Job’ and ‘The Great Curve’, a perfect example of a bassline being a glue that gradually metamorphoses as a track envelops around it. Elsewhere, ‘Sugar on My Tongue’ and ‘Crosseyed and Painless’ are two standouts.
The fascinating thing about Weymouth’s work is that she doesn’t have a definitive bass sound like Paul McCartney, James Jamerson, Carol Kaye, and, indeed, Les Claypool do. While she might be naturally funky, bringing to mind Jamerson, Parliament and other conjurers of intense grooves, her playing has two other vital aspects. Speaking to the Red Bull Academy in Tokyo in 2014, she revealed she’d only been playing bass for five months when Talking Heads first played live, explaining: “I did not take a lesson. Nobody taught me.” Accordingly, possessing natural imagination, being an autodidact and serving the song became the three essential components of her unique approach, not sound.
When I say approach, not sound, I mean it in the way that while her inventive and toe-tapping style remained the same across Talking Heads’ continually evolving career, she would often switch her bass model up, opting to serve the song with either the clank or warmth of its neck length and pickup configuration. For instance, in the early days, she was best remembered for using a Fender Mustang, which was heavily featured on their debut, and the Fender Musicmaster, which she used on Saturday Night Live. While she might have also used Fender instruments, such as the Precision Bass, in 1978, she purchased the single-cutaway hollowbody Höfner 500/2 Club Bass, used a Veillette-Citron in the early 1980s and during the Little Creatures period, weaponised a Steinberger L-Series.
That’s quite a range of sound, but each instrument was utilised to its full effect in giving Talking Heads their rhythmic and melodic undercurrent. For this reason, in tandem with her general vision, Tina Weymouth remains an exemplary bassist.
Find out more about Weymouth’s playing below.