It is hard for me not to express my disappointment in this volume of reminiscences by Chris Frantz, drummer and foundation member of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. I was anticipating a fun and insightful little read but it actually turned into a tedious page skimmer. Yes, sadly many pages were skimmed. Very often with these sorts of memoirs the nuggets are worth the slog, fascinating glimpses behind the scenes or small throw-away anecdotes that astound and occasionally deepen your understanding and appreciation of the subject/object. Ideally these should occur with a decent rate of frequency to keep you interested. Chris Frantz thought “No, fuck that. Here’s a catalogue of restaurants I dined at while touring the world with my famous band,”. And fair enough, that’s his thing. So too, apparently, is holding a near life defining grudge and bitching about David Byrne. More on that later.
His back story that occupies the first quarter of the book is of moderate interest; white, privileged, art school. But none of this has any bearing on the future success he enjoyed nor is it the reason anybody is reading this book. Frantz is an unexceptional and one-dimensional drummer, not better or worse than a million others. His great fortune was to have found himself teamed up with a very talented performer and lyricist. Without this fortuitous pairing it is unlikely he would have a book in him worth reading. His long lasting relationship with wife Tina Weymouth, also very talented, is cloyingly journaled here without revealing much about their dynamic except for a fleeting mention of her threatening to leave him if he didn’t quit abusing cocaine. No prior hint of a harrowing downward spiral had been suggested, just an occasional reference to the clandestine snorting of lines with various band members and crew. After the fact it is revealed that once while his wife was away visiting family overseas he went on a nine day bender mourning the break up of his band, a nonsense bit of junky reasoning if ever there was one. No doubt he’s a likeable guy, however between uneventful tales of haute cuisine, famous stars and sailing his yacht, the episodes of soul-searching range from fragmentary to non-existent. It is here when the promise of a regular stream of tantalising tidbits wholly evaporates that page skimming becomes automatic.
If the man himself is unprepared to expose anything of his own inner life, then at least he should dish the goods on the subject we are really here for. Initially, his story of the formation and pre-fame years of Talking Heads can’t help but be interesting; the band shares a rat infested loft in crime riddled mid 70s New York City alongside desperate artists and musicians, winos, pimps and prostitutes. Local news headlines routinely sensationalise fugitive mass murderers, blackouts and days of widespread looting. Is it any surprise the early songs of Talking Heads were full of tension and laugh-or-you’ll-cry strangeness. David Byrne seemed to embody the anxiety of his environs. The music, while familiar and danceable, was jittery to the point of being undefinable. They were lumped with the early New York punks, but they had to wait for the invention of the term New Wave to find more suitable categorisation. Tales of their early gigs at the then squalid but now legendary CBGB’s and the attendant social milieu of misfits, stop-gap day jobs and all night rehearsals are evocative, no matter how amateurishly conveyed.
The book gradually derails when Frantz laboriously recounts the band’s first European tour in support of The Ramones. Every city and town they stop (and dine) in is detailed and each gig is assessed seemingly on the number of encores they receive. The stories are inconsequential and the cast of characters are so inadequately fleshed out that they are all, particularly fellow band mate Jerry Harrison, merely shadows. The sole exception is Johnny Ramone who, we are repeatedly informed, grumbled a lot about how grim he found everything. From this point the tale has lost all momentum. Managers are recruited, contracts are signed, albums are recorded, without any sense of groundswell or musical development. The band is just suddenly famous.
Sadly, Frantz’s clear motivation is to downplay David Byrne’s obvious strengths and originality at nearly every opportunity, portraying him as a calculating misanthrope whenever he wanders into frame. It’s as if he feels it is necessary to capsize the established public opinion of the influential and revered singer and reposition himself as an equal player or something very close to it. His insecurity about being regarded as an invisible Ringo-esque time-keeper riding on the coattails of one of the giants of 20th century culture is awkwardly obvious. He resents David Byrne for leaving Talking Heads to follow other interests, choosing to overlook the mundane fact that successful bands break up all the time. The early success of his and Tina’s offshoot band Tom Tom Club is related with enthusiasm and pride, and rightly so. Their song “Genius of Love” can be considered one of the cornerstones of the nascent hip-hop scene by virtue of it having been sampled by many pioneers of the era. Elsewhere, though, highlights are only breezily alluded to. Averse to, or incapable of, any worthwhile analysis, what is presented here is a charmed life poorly chronicled.
Jazz of the Spheres 
Bravo! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 now that’s the kind of review I search for! Honest, detailed and far more entertaining than the book. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
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