Remain in Love Page 7
He went to work for a forward-thinking design group in Providence called REDE—an acronym for the Research & Design Institute. I liked him a lot and Tina’s mother was especially wonderful. They gave Tina a little old blue Plymouth Valiant with Florida plates to drive. Tina was kind enough to use it to help me move my drums around. Her father had renovated the carriage house and put in a bathroom and shower. She was kind enough to let me set up my drums and practice there. I had been keeping them in a huge loft downtown on Pine Street, but I couldn’t really afford the rent anymore. Tina’s carriage house was ideal because Tina was there to encourage me and no one ever complained about the noise.
Tina’s carriage house at RISD.
One beautiful September day, my friend Marc Kehoe, who knew I played the drums, asked me if I would help him create some music for a student film he was making about his girlfriend being run over by a car. I told him I would love to and asked him to meet me over at Tina’s place. He said he was going to bring another friend, a guy who played guitar.
When Marc arrived with a tape recorder he had borrowed from the RISD Film Department, he introduced me to the guitar player, his friend David Byrne. Marc’s directions to us were simple: Make a cacophonous racket that fades up, builds to a frenzy, and then fades out. I said that I could do that. David plugged in his Fender Musicmaster, which he had covered with leopard-skin contact paper, and we cut loose with the rising and fading cacophony. I think we got what Marc was looking for in the first take. When we were finished, David said that he could play “other stuff,” too. I said great, I had been thinking of starting a new band to play for our RISD friends. Would he be interested? Yes, he said he would.
I barely recognized David even though we’d been in the same dormitory during our freshman year. At that time he had a full Rasputin beard, cut his hair very short by himself, wore secondhand clothes, and rarely spoke to anyone. My roommate, Huey Roberts, called him Mad Dave. David and I didn’t have any classes together so I didn’t really know him. I remember him playing a violin (not very well) with Marc, who went by the stage name Walter Kapusta and played the accordion in front of the RISD Refectory at dinnertime. One of the songs they played was “Pennies from Heaven.” He had dropped out of RISD after freshman year to transfer to the Maryland College of Art and hitchhike across the USA with Marc, but now, a year or so later, he was back. RISD refused to readmit him as a student, but that was okay with David. He thought art school was a scam. He moved in with Marc and Huey and their girlfriends, Naomi and Elisca, in a house on Brown Street. David no longer wore a beard but still had a serious five o’clock shadow, and his hair was bleached blond, almost white, which contrasted with his black eyebrows and the profuse black hair on his arms. He wore black leather trousers that he said he had made himself. It was a wild look, very proto-punk.
David Anderson, a young friend of my family’s from Kentucky, had recently come to RISD. I knew he was a good guitarist, so I asked him if he would be interested in joining our band. He agreed to do so. Then I asked another friend, Hank Stahler, who played bass, to join us. Hank was up for it, so now we had the possibility of a four-piece rock band. A couple of times a week we would gather at Hank’s apartment on Benefit Street to learn and rehearse cover songs. We started with “All Day and All of the Night” by the Kinks and “I Can’t Explain” by the Who. These were two songs that I suggested and everyone agreed that they would be cool to play. When we had more or less mastered them, we learned “Liar, Liar” by the Castaways. Then we decided we needed a song so the audience could slow dance, so I suggested “Tracks of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Digging into the soul vibe, we also learned the current hit “Love and Happiness” by Al Green.
Rehearsals at Hank’s apartment were loads of fun and very relaxed. Even with all the RISD students in the neighborhood, Benefit Street was quiet and peaceful but I don’t recall anyone ever complaining about the noise we made. Hank had a pet rabbit that roamed around the apartment occasionally dropping little pellets. It was a very bohemian scene. We would usually drink a few beers and smoke a few joints to loosen up, except for David Byrne, who always said that the herb made him feel paranoid. He stuck with the beer.
One day, David came to the painting studio that Tina and I shared in a building called Carr House, on the corner of Benefit and Waterman streets. Tina and I were in our final year at RISD and making paintings for our senior show exhibition. Tina was doing her rather large abstract Battleship canvases and I was working on a large abstract painting I called Gene Krupa, after the great drummer who had recently given up the ghost. Even though there was much talk that with the advent of conceptual art, painting was dead, Tina and I still believed. We loved the act of painting and believed it would always be a powerful medium. We still do.
Tina and me during our RISD years.
When David came to us on that winter afternoon, he said he had been writing a song and he hoped we would help him with it. He said he was writing it in a style somewhat like Alice Cooper, who was hugely popular at the time, but that so far he just had one verse written. He showed us his notebook and read to us the first verse: “I can’t seem to face up to the facts / I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax / I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire / Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire.” I really dug this. It reminded me more of Lou Reed than Alice Cooper. David said he had asked a Japanese girl to help him write a bridge in Japanese to emphasize the psychotic mind of this character, but she had freaked out at the prospect and left him standing there. I suggested that since Tina spoke French why not have her write the bridge in French? Tina put down what she was doing and got straight to work on it. She thought that we should look to Alfred Hitchcock, whose Norman Bates character took offense to women that he saw as being loose. These are the lyrics that she came up with for what we call the middle eight, or the bridge:
Ce que j’ai fais çe soir là
Ce qu’elle a dit çe soir là
Réalisant mon éspoir
Je me lance vers la gloire, OK
What Tina wrote has been described to me as very classical poetic French by several different contemporary French writers. They said that nobody speaks or writes like this anymore. The English translation is this:
What I did that night
What she said that night
Realizing my hopes
I launch myself towards a glorious destiny.
The voice of a true psycho killer speaking.
Meanwhile I got to work on writing some other verses and this is what I came up with:
You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it.
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?
And:
Listen to me now. I’ve passed the test,
I think I’m cute. I think I’m the best.
Skirt tight, I don’t like that style.
Don’t criticize what I know is worthwhile.
And:
I passed out hours ago.
I’m sadder than you’ll ever know.
I close my eyes on this sunny day.
Fa fa fa fa, that’s what I say.
David had already come up with the chorus:
Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est,
Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa, better
Run run run run run run run away.
This sounded very cool, like a mash-up of the Velvet Underground and Otis Redding. Tina showed David how to spell “qu’est-ce que c’est.”
Continuing with the psychotic theme as we were brainstorming, I shouted, “We are vain and we are blind! And Tina said, “Yeah, yeah, and I hate people when they’re not polite.” David wrote it all down in his little spiral notebook.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
We are vain and we are blind.
I hate people when they�
��re not polite.
It was our first songwriting experience together and it was proof enough to me that we should do more of this in the future. I was determined, one way or another, to make it happen.
The next song written during this early period was called “Warning Sign.” The song was built around a drumbeat I was playing in rehearsal one day. In retrospect, I realize the beat owes a lot to the one Ringo Starr created in “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I wrote the lyrics, all of them, while lying on my stomach next to the rabbit on the floor of Hank Stahler’s apartment. I imagined the song to be somewhat in the style of the Velvet Underground. This is what I came up with:
Warning sign, warning sign,
I see it but I pay it no mind.
Hear my voice, hear my voice,
It’s saying something and it’s not very nice.
Pay attention, Pay attention.
I’m talking to you and I hope you’re concentrating.
I’ve got money now, I’ve got money now,
C’mon baby, c’mon baby.
Warning sign of things to come (turn it over, turn it over)
Someone’s talking on my telephone (when we’re older, when we’re older)
Hear my voice, move my hair.
I move it around a lot, but I don’t care (what I remember)
Warning sign, warning sign,
Look at my hair, I like the design.
It’s the truth, it’s the truth.
Your glassy eyes and your open mouth.
Take it easy, take it easy,
It’s a natural thing and you have to relax,
I’ve got money now, I’ve got money now.
C’mon baby, c’mon baby.
Warning sign of things to come (turn me over, turn me over)
Love is here but I guess it’s gone now (hurry up babe, hurry up babe),
Hear my voice, move my hair.
I move it around a lot, but I don’t care.
Do you remember
What it is that you remember
Baby remember
Baby remember.
Much later, when we recorded this song for Talking Heads’ second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, David added the words in parentheses and took credit for writing the entire song. It appears that he had forgotten that I wrote these words and when I confronted him, he said he would correct the credits on future pressings.
Anyway, in early 1974, we had enough of a repertoire consisting of cover songs and two original songs to play some kind of show. Since we were all art students and making art was our thing, we decided to call ourselves the Artistics.
11
FREE COCKTAILS!
In our senior year at RISD, we were encouraged to plan a show of our best work at the Woods-Gerry Gallery, an old brick mansion at which student and faculty work were shown. Tina and I had a show planned for the spring, but our friends, Jeff Turtletaub, Marc Kehoe, Naomi Reichbart, and David Byrne, had a group show planned for February 6, 1970. They printed flyers announcing “MOVIES TALENT SHOW COCKTAILS T.V. LIVE BANDS GUEST SPEAKERS” and put them up around Providence’s College Hill. Our band, the Artistics, was supposed to perform and back Marc and Naomi, who would be dressed in gorilla suits while they sang the Marvelettes’ “My Baby Must Be a Magician.” There were three rooms in the gallery, a big room in the front and two smaller rooms, one on the side and one in the back. The show was hung by the four artists themselves so that everyone’s work was displayed equally in all three rooms. I was moving my drums into the gallery and setting up when the word came down from the school’s security force that the opening had been canceled due to the advertisement of cocktails. They were afraid this event might get out of hand. The drinking age was eighteen then and, since it was on school property, they had to be careful not to attract a bad element.
Hearing this bad news, I started packing up my drums while Marc decided to return the gorilla suits to Boston right away so he wouldn’t have to pay the next day’s rental. We left the gallery and Tina helped me to move my drums back to her carriage house in her blue Plymouth Valiant.
I didn’t find out about what happened next until just a few years ago. As I have said, the show was hung so that each artist was equally represented. When everyone else had left the building, David returned to the gallery and rehung the show so that only his work was represented in the main front room. Marc’s, Jeff’s, and Naomi’s work was relegated to the side and back rooms. When you walked into the gallery, you would have thought this was David’s solo show.
As if this behavior was not bad enough, David had not been an actual student at RISD for three years. He had been invited to show his work as a guest by Jeff and Naomi, who were, in fact, students. This incident set an early precedent for David’s seemingly continual need to aggrandize himself at the expense of his collaborators, as if their contributions were not as important as his. Had I known about this at the time, I would have called him out on it, but I didn’t. For some reason, nobody told me. Years later, he treated the rest of us in Talking Heads with similar disrespect, and continues to do so. I have to wonder how his new collaborators will feel. Tina has said that he seems incapable of returning friendship. We learned this from experience.
12
SUMMER AGAIN
Our final year at RISD was almost too good to be true. I moved to a new studio apartment down at the far end of Benefit Street so that I could be alone with Tina. It was a real artist’s garret. Tina helped me build a bed frame of two-by-twelve pine boards with woven rope to support the mattress. Every week or so I had to tighten those ropes because the mattress would begin to sag from all the bouncing we did there.
One day while lying in bed Tina asked me if I would cut her hair. She got up and sat at my little table. Al Green was playing on the stereo. The windows were open, the breeze was warm, and we were nude. Tina said, “Just give me a blunt cut straight across the back.” She passed me a pair of scissors. As I began to make the first cut, I stopped because my hands were trembling. I was panicking, afraid that I would ruin Tina’s beautiful hair. She said, “Don’t worry. I trust you.” Her words and the delicate tone of her voice filled me with love and happiness. As I carefully trimmed her hair, I said to her, “You know, Tina, I feel like we could be married.” She understood what I meant and she replied with one word: “Yes.”
* * *
Walking down Benefit Street one Saturday morning, I decided to stop for a cup of coffee at Joe’s. Sitting outside, I was sipping my coffee when Charlie Rocket from the Fabulous Motels pulled up to the curb and jumped out of his car. Charlie had seen the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars show the night before at the Orpheum in Boston. He was absolutely thrilled by the show and was raving about it. Charlie said, “Rock and roll is changed forever!” He wanted to be a part of the new scene in music and, naturally, so did I. We were in complete agreement about the power of David Bowie, Lou Reed, T. Rex, and Mott the Hoople. It was a good time for music.
Tina in our painting studio.
While operating a video camera for Alan Sondheim for a project of his, we traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to interview Henry Kloss of KLH audio speakers for a series of videos Alan was making of brilliant people. Around the corner from Henry’s studio was a little store selling all types of African products. They sold dashikis, spices, African drums, books, and records. The music playing over the sound system was mind-blowing. I asked the shopkeeper whose music it was and she showed me the album: Shakara, by Fela Kuti and the Afrika 70. Pictured on the cover were a multitude of topless African beauties kneeling in a 7-0 formation with Fela in the middle. Fela, to be fair, was also topless. I didn’t have much money but I bought that record and also one by Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey. The African music became a turntable favorite at parties. Fela really got the dance floors grooving and “Soul Makossa” by Manu Dibango was even on the jukebox at the RISD Tap Room, where we all danced at night.
Me in our painting studio.
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br /> Tina and I worked well in the studio together. We were both preparing a series of paintings for our senior show at the Woods-Gerry Gallery. While we worked we listened to WBRU, the Brown University FM station. WBRU was a formidable station and always played the latest stuff. Tina and I discovered a lot of new music together. We loved this new thing called Reggae, and twice we took the Valiant up to Boston to see a sensational new movie called The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, and featuring a soundtrack that included many of the best reggae acts. There was also a great new band from Jamaica called the Wailers and we dug them, too.
Around this time, Tina and I had the idea to form the Painting Club. We found out that the school would give each student club a budget according to how many members the club had. Everyone we knew wanted to be in the Painting Club and we signed them up. We recruited over two hundred members. We had two club activities in mind. The first was a field trip to New York City to see the Andy Warhol show at the Whitney and John Cage at the Kitchen in SoHo.
The second was a Valentine’s Day Ball with live music by the Artistics. Both ideas were approved by Gordy Allen, who was in charge of student activities, and a modest budget was granted.
We left very early one Saturday morning to drive caravan-style to New York. Tina was behind the wheel of her parents’ extra-long Dodge van. Amazingly, we arrived in New York by 10 A.M.
The Warhol show was pretty fabulous. This was his Cow Wallpaper period. Not everyone in our group was crazy about the idea of wallpaper art, but we all dug the floating, silver Mylar “Pillows.” After a minimal lunch we made our way downtown to the Kitchen, a vast performing arts space in SoHo that featured performances of modern music, dance, and theater. We were about to see and hopefully hear the father of contemporary art music, John Cage. We all sat cross-legged on the floor and enjoyed an intimate performance of his piece “Music of Changes” on piano followed by a lovely chat where he offered each of us a freshly picked wild mushroom and a tiny, thimble-sized glass of his favorite wine. Cage assured us that he had been collecting wild mushrooms for years and these were particularly delicious. We thanked him and walked over to a place we had heard about called the Spring Street Bar. In those days, SoHo was still full of many light manufacturing shops and the streets were crammed with trucks of all sizes picking things up or dropping things off. There were no chic boutiques or bistros. After dark it was a lonely place, except for the artists who came out of their studio lofts to hang out at Fanelli’s Cafe, its walls covered with framed photos of boxers, or the more artistically hip Spring Street Bar. It was cold on the street, but the Spring Street Bar was warm and convivial. As Tina and I stood at the bar, each of us sipping a bottle of beer, I spied the famous gallerist Leo Castelli at the other end of the bar speaking with Jasper Johns. I realized right then that for an artist, New York was the place to be. The art world may be international, but in New York it was a small world where you could meet great artists in the local bar. There was a jukebox playing music but it wasn’t playing anything I’d heard before. Someone had put a handful of quarters in to play the same song over and over again. It was a long, pulsing, electronic song called “Autobahn” by the German electronic band Kraftwerk. Hearing their music for the first time was a mindblower. I made a mental note to buy the album. We got back in the van and Tina drove us all the way back to Providence. On the ride home we started imagining our move to New York City.