The Catherine Wheel

The first soundtrack album by Scottish-American musician and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, The Catherine Wheel is the score to Byrne’s one-time girlfriend Twyla Tharp’s interpretive dance performance of the same name.

Continuing from the blend of post-punk and avant-funk that defined both Talking Heads' seminal 1980 album Remain in Light and the Byrne-Brian Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts from earlier in 1981, the soundtrack release ended up being so close in style to Talking Heads that they performed at least three of its songs– “Big Business”, “What a Day That Was”, and “Big Blue Plymouth”– on their 1983 tour for Speaking in Tongues (with the former two being filmed by director Jonathan Demme for the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense; while only “What a Day That Was” made the theatrical cut, the conjoined “Big Business”-“I Zimbra” performance can be seen on the film’s extended cut on VHS and LaserDisc, as well as on the DVD and Blu-ray’s deleted scenes section).

Because the full score clocks in at nearly 70 minutes, the initial release of the soundtrack was as a single LP titled Songs from the Broadway Production of “The Catherine Wheel”, owed to the decreased commercial viability of double albums in the ‘80s. However, the full version was put out on a single cassette, now branded The Complete Score from the Broadway Production of “The Catherine Wheel”, with this version making it to all CD and streaming releases of the album as well. Today, the “Complete Score” configuration of the soundtrack is considered the canonical one.