Not Another Talking Head
Few American rock bands have been as original, influential and beloved as the Talking Heads. With their dark lyrics, angular beats and dazzling live shows, they wove together elements of punk, new wave and art rock to create a body of work that has become a cornerstone of classic rock. Critical to their sound was keyboard and guitar player Jerry Harrison, who started out with Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers before joining David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth in the Talking Heads. Harrison later had a successful career as a solo artist and record producer, and more recently has become an investor in technology companies. He sat down with Alta Publisher and Editor Will Hearst — Harrison’s roommate at Harvard — to talk about his career and current passions.
WILL HEARST: I heard that after the Talking Heads you were advising and producing a lot of young musicians.
JERRY HARRISON: After the Talking Heads, I did three solo records. When I met Carol, my wife, I was finishing my second solo record and we were on tour when our oldest son, Griffin, came along. We went to Europe and Japan. Then I did a follow-up record to that. And then I thought: “This is going to be hard to make money and have a family.” I had already started producing records. Carol kind of pushed me, saying, “You know, you’ll be able to be home more.” That was maybe the best year of my life. I ended up producing the Crash Test Dummies and the second album of this band Live. And between those two albums we sold 15 million records. So I suddenly got known as a kind of harder rock, art-rock producer.
HEARST: This was your Quincy Jones period, where you were helping other people, telling performers, “Let’s change this a little bit.”
HARRISON: Because of coming from the Modern Lovers and the Talking Heads, [the record company executives] go, “Obviously, he can take these really artistic singers and songwriters that nobody in this company knows what to do with. And he knows how to relate to them.”
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