THE RECORDING OF the Talking Heads’ epochal 1980 album Remain in Light marked a dramatic difference from how the band had previously operated. On prior long-players, singer-guitarist David Byrne, guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz began album sessions with fully or mostly finished songs. This time, the quartet, with producer Brian Eno, spent weeks in Compass Point in the Bahamas creating loops out of improvisations without knowing what the arrangements would ultimately become.
“It presented challenges for David when he wrote melodies and lyrics,” Harrison says, “because there weren’t many chord changes to help him go somewhere. It really was a new way for us to record. And for any band, I think.”
When the Heads returned to New York City to finish the album, they reached out to a new friend, guitarist Adrian Belew, and asked him to
