COVINGTON, Ky. — If you've never seen Talking Heads in concert you can catch the next best thing at The Moore Theatre in Seattle on Tuesday.
Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads is on tour with Adrian Belew, the guitarist who helped make Remain In Light one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
They've teamed up to relive one of the most exuberant times in their lives, the 1980 world tour Talking Heads made to promote the groundbreaking album. A Youtube video from a night in Rome may be low-resolution, but millions have watched it for the exhilaration and Belew and Harrison say it serves as the inspiration for the show they put on with backing band Cool Cool Cool.
"Joy is the word I always use," Belew said over Zoom from his home in Kentucky. "And when Jerry and I talked about it a few years before we were able to put it together I said the world really needs something like this. Music that's intellectual and artistic but also groovy. People get up to it. They're happy. And that is exactly what happened in the 80's and that's exactly what's happening now."
Belew had not yet joined King Crimson but had already toured with Frank Zappa and David Bowie when he says members of Talking Heads and producer Brian Eno asked him to play on Remain In Light.
"I spent one whole day in the studio and I did everything I do on the record in one day," Belew said. "And then I went back home."
Sure the albums sounds like there were a dozen ecstatic musicians all cramped in the same studio, but that's not really how the album was recorded.
After the original quartet roughed out songs by jamming together at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas, David Byrne, Eno and Harrison tweaked the tracks and that's where Belew came in.
"The day that I was there there was no one in the studio but me," he said. "There were no real instructions because the tracks were really all in one key which is so great for a guitar player. Brian said go in the studio and just wait around and see where you think a guitar solo should appear, just play a guitar solo."
About two minutes into what would be "The Great Curve", Belew unleased an otherworldly solo. Byrne, Eno and Harrison were watching.
"And I could see in the control room through the glass all three of them going 'Waaaaaaaaah!'And I thought that would rather well."
Music. It's the closest thing we have to a time machine that can take up back in time. And that's what this Remain In Light Tour offers.
"We are getting such a great response," Belew said. "The audiences love it. Young people are really into the band now, and here's their chance to see it. The people back in our day, who maybe had seen it, here's your chance to relive it!"
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