BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

A warts-and-all biography of the New Wave legends.

Gould (Can’t Buy Me Love, 2007) begins his biography of art-rock legends Talking Heads with an account of the band’s first show at legendary New York club CBGB, writing that the performance didn’t call “attention to their musical virtuosity, for the simple reason that they had none.” Maybe not, but a few pages later, he allows that the band’s “combination of talent, originality, discipline, self-awareness, and steely artistic ambition would form the basis of a major musical career.” Gould writes about their formation, when drummer Chris Frantz asked singer David Byrne if he wanted to start a band. “I guess so,” was Byrne’s halfhearted answer. He chronicles the band’s early successes, which started with their debut album, Talking Heads: 77, and first hit song, “Psycho Killer,” and continued through seven more studio albums. The portrait of the band that emerges is one marked by acrimony, with Frantz, bassist Tina Weymouth, and keyboardist Jerry Harrison never quite sure what Byrne was going to do; Gould partially attributes Byrne’s caprice and lacking communication skills to his apparent Asperger’s syndrome. (Weymouth, at one point, attributed it to Byrne being “a bully and a coward.”) That the band would break up in 1991, after 16 years, does not come as a surprise; Gould writes about the band’s dissolution with a sense of inevitable sadness that isn’t leavened by their awkward, occasional reunions. The book is necessarily hampered by the fact that none of the Heads was willing to talk to Gould, which might be why he indulges in a series of odd tangents, writing about New York’s political history and, bizarrely, a series of stunts involving the city’s skyscrapers. Nonetheless, it’s well written and informative—not the last word on the Talking Heads, but a respectable try.

Fans of the band will find much to appreciate here.