Chris Frantz on the Rise and Fall of Talking Heads

Post Reply New Topic

Precious few rock ’n’ roll stories center around a stable, multidecade marriage. But from its title to its last line, Chris Frantz’s new memoir, “Remain in Love,” is primarily a love letter to Tina Weymouth, his wife of 43 years.

“That’s what I set out to do because my relationship with Tina is my unique perspective as a rock memoirist,” says the Talking Heads drummer, 69, on the phone from their Connecticut home.

Ms. Weymouth was the band’s bassist, so the story of their love affair is also the story of Talking Heads, which blossomed from an underground act into a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group and international superstars on the strength of hits such as “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime.” Mr. Frantz’s book title is an allusion to “Remain in Light,” the band’s 1980 album.

Mr. Frantz grew up and attended prep school in suburban Pittsburgh before studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he formed a short-lived band with singer David Byrne, who had dropped out of the school. He also fell in love with Ms. Weymouth, a fellow child of a military officer. (Mr. Frantz’s father was a West Point and Harvard Law graduate who became a general in the Army Reserve; Ms. Weymouth’s father was a Navy admiral.)

“Tina and I understood things about each other right away, which was reassuring to each of us because it was the peak of the Vietnam War, and there was a lot of antimilitary sentiment among students,” Mr. Frantz says. “We didn’t go around talking about our parents so much, but it was our little secret.”

Ms. Weymouth, Mr. Frantz and Mr. Byrne moved to New York, living and working together in a decrepit, unheated Lower East Side loft, where they shared a bathroom with some sweatshop seamstresses. Their music combined off-kilter lyrics and perspectives with contagious, rhythmic grooves. Their early work was purely collaborative. “Psycho Killer,” the first song they ever wrote, started with a concept and first verse written by Mr. Byrne, and Ms. Weymouth and Mr. Frantz both added lyrics. The song, released in 1977, has now been streamed more than 158 million times on Spotify.

“That song came together very quickly, and we immediately knew that it was something special,” says Mr. Frantz. “Early on, when we appeared on ‘American Bandstand,’ Dick Clark asked Tina what we wanted to accomplish, and she said, ‘We wanna make our mark in music history.’ We were all on board. We sounded different from anyone, because of the sound of David’s guitar and voice [and] Tina being a woman and playing bass in a very unconventional style that’s more related to classical music than it is to Chuck Berry. And I was in the back just trying to make people dance. It was an unusual combination.”

The band members established themselves wearing Lacoste shirts in the fledgling, streetwise punk movement at the New York music club CBGB, alongside the leather-clad, primitive Ramones, the rock ’n’ roll street poet Patti Smith and the eclectic Blondie. Mr. Frantz describes the club as a community of painters, poets and filmmakers as well as musicians, with most acts actively supporting one another.

The New York City of the early and mid-1970s—with factories still humming in SoHo and dead bodies occasionally encountered on the sidewalk—emerges as a veritable character in “Remain in Love.” Characters from Lou Reed and Andy Warhol to Dennis Hopper and Robert Rauschenberg slide in and out of the story.

Talking Heads rode a steady upward arc that culminated in the joyous, high-energy 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense,” in which the director Jonathan Demme captured the band in communion with its audience. By the time the film was released, however, the band was no longer performing. Mr. Frantz says that was Mr. Byrne’s decision. Mr. Byrne declined to comment.

“Talking Heads started as a dream that I was trying to make real, but keeping it together proved to be even harder than getting it together,” says Mr. Frantz. “I thought that the more success we had, the happier everybody would be, but it wasn’t that simple. Usually we got along great, and that’s important to remember. David would stop at nothing to get his performance across to the audience.”

In 1981, when Mr. Byrne and the guitarist and keyboardist Jerry Harrison both recorded solo side projects, Mr. Frantz and Ms. Weymouth decided to also try. Their new wave funk band, Tom Tom Club, produced a commercial and cultural smash with “Genius of Love,” an international hit that had a profound impact on early rap music.

Tom Tom Club’s success forced the music industry to recognize Ms. Weymouth’s contributions, which Mr. Frantz says was particularly satisfying. From behind his drums, he had watched men and women stare at her with lust and jealousy—and seen her skills marginalized. “Sexism was a real thing,” he says. “It was worse then than it is now, but she still feels it from time to time. Certainly not from me!”

On Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Frantz suffered a heart attack at home. He was rushed to the hospital, where he had three stents implanted. His three days in the hospital, he says, provided him with time to reflect on the milestone of summing up his life in a book.

“I was thinking about my family and friends who have always been so good to me, and I felt grateful to have them,” he says. “I’ve worked hard in my life, but I know that I’m also a very lucky guy. I’m feeling better than I have in a decade, and I’m very happy to be here.”