Talking Heads Tina Weymouth

[Iristone]

There's a long-running bass joke in China: to be a good bassist, you must be a good street dancer. I wonder with whom did it begin, Tina or maybe Flea?

Tina's "boyfriend drummer" was, and still is, her husband Chris Frantz.

I admire her for keeping her original family name after marrying, in a culture that encourages otherwise. In China it's common practice, but in some other cultures, well, even Carol Kaye had to follow her husband's name. Also kudos to Chris, it seems they've got deep mutual respect and understanding, which shine through in their music, too.

 

[WG Plum]

Frantz is absolutely crazy about Tina, always has been.

 

[BuddhaFingas]

"Heaven" was one of the first full songs I learned on bass.
Hard to get much simpler, or more perfect to the song.
I always liked the Simply Red version from the 80's, but the Stop Making Sense version has a rare perfection about it.
Great writer, great player, always totally fun to watch and listen to. Performer!

 

[Lobster11]

Did anyone else see the "Remain in Light" tour featuring by Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew? The always-awesome Julie Slick channeled Tina on bass.

 

[Btbp]

I see a lot of the same songs she is known for in this thread, ones I also like, but not the one of hers that has been in my top 100 or whatever number fun things to play for decades is:


If you never heard it you might thank me later. That groove is totally locked in and she totally drives the band.

Sorry / Not Sorry that I don't get the putting of Claypool (who never did anything for me and I see no parallel with Peart) in the same paragraph as Tina. Pointless.

 

[Lo-E]

As if he had the greatest guitar skills or vocal chops.

Actually, I think he was (is) an excellent guitarist and an amazing front man.

The disintegration of the band can be speculated upon ad nauseum but none of us will ever really know what went down. I imagine it was a combination of outsized ego (mostly but not only David Byrne’s), mismatched or unrealistic expectations and the inevitable fact that they had each become a creative force in their own right and each had strong opinions of their own. It’s not so uncommon for hyper-creative collaborations like that to fall apart after a while. I can think of a few guys from Liverpool….

 

[LadyLoveStingRay5]

Actually, I think he was (is) an excellent guitarist and an amazing front man.

The disintegration of the band can be speculated upon ad nauseum but none of us will ever really know what went down. I imagine it was a combination of outsized ego (mostly but not only David Byrne’s), mismatched or unrealistic expectations and the inevitable fact that they had each become a creative force in their own right and each had strong opinions of their own. It’s not so uncommon for hyper-creative collaborations like that to fall apart after a while. I can think of a few guys from Liverpool….

He brought his unique style to the band. He will certainly never make most people’s top guitarist list . Same thing for greatest vocalist . I enjoy him. My point was he was out of the box and it was perfect for that band. Tina’s playing was exactly what the band needed as well. However , I find it very hypocritical to critique anyone else when he surely so out of the box himself .

I suspect he was a bit upset at the attention she was able to get by using the less is more approach. I also find it humorous that her crab walk dance is just as memorable as his big suit !!

Any critique he had about her playing was surely the pot calling he kettle black and/or the green eyes monster rearing his ugly head.

 

[Stylee Mousse]

I saw Stop Making Sense when it very first came out, it was at a very artsy theater in Chicago, it was very cool and very well done.

I was at one of the shows in that tour, on the floor a few rows back from the families of some of the non-band musicians on stage.

The “empty stage” gambit at first worked to a T. We were thinking “are they late? Are we supposed to sit here watching the band load in?” The beauty of the pre-internet times!

 

[Lo-E]

I find it very hypocritical to critique anyone else when he surely so out of the box himself .

For whatever reason …ego, aspergers, cocaine…. He wasn’t very nice to the rest of the band. Pretty unfortunate. I think he’s acknowledged that in recent years.

None of that changes the fact that TW is a great musician. That the whole band was great and she was absolutely integral.

 

[WG Plum]

That band was lightning in a bottle for sure. Byrne has definitely acknowledged his unpleasantness and unfairness in recent years. They all seemed pretty copacetic when they were on Colbert discussing the new version of Stop Making Sense. Frantz is a corndog puppy.

 

[Michedelic]

As if he had the greatest guitar skills or vocal chops. But we now know he has Asperger / Autism.

That’s not any kind of yardstick…he was in and of a movement that was in oppostion to the cliches that “rock” music had become by the mid-70’s, and he(and his style) was original within that movement. They and Television had an entirely different approach from bands like The Ramones or Johnny Thunders and his nervous yelp vocals (similar to Verlaine)became a model in its own right…Ric Ocasek of the Cars certainly picked up on it. Guitar-wise, he was essentially rhythm(that’s why Jerry Harrison got added after their first single), but his playing was a tense interpretation of Jimmy Nolen(James Brown)style funk scratching, mixing in folk style picking.

On the other hand…a hometown band I had been in but still hung out with and helped won the lottery(well, actually, we knew somebody)of opening for the Heads on the Fear Of Music tour. I went along, and witnessed Byrne sternly getting on Tina’s case about her vocals on “Air” during soundcheck. I was taken aback as I thought they would have had that stuff all worked out by that point. He mellowed out after, and I had a brief Twilight Zone conversation with him later waiting around in the dressing room.

 

[sunbeast]

Did anyone else see the "Remain in Light" tour featuring by Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew? The always-awesome Julie Slick channeled Tina on bass.

Yeah I saw them in Denver- it really exceeded my expectations! The YouTube videos of that original Talking Heads RIL tour (particularly the one taken in Rome I believe) are so magical that I expected to be somewhat let down. The band they assembled really knocked it out if the park though given the tall order. And Julie Slick in particular was an awesome choice

 

[tim gueguen]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that she supposedly took lessons from Busta Jones, who eventually was part of the "big band" lineup that toured behind Remain In Light. A lot of musicians wouldn't have deigned to take lessons on their instruments after they became successful.

 

[Btbp]

I think of DB as an artist first and a musician more as a channel for his artistry

 

[Bob_Ross]

Can anyone share for the track “This Must Be the Place”

Is Tina playing with a light flange/phase on the track, or is this almost an effect added to the entire song itself? It sounds so subtle but also so ingrained to the whole song I can’t tell if it’s added post or was part of Tina’s recording

iirc Tina is playing guitar (or some guitar-like instrument...double-course electric mandocello perhaps?) on the original studio track of "This Must Be The Place" and the bass is keyboard synth played by either Bernie Worrell or Jerry Harrison. The live version from the Stop Making Sense film confirms this.

btw, the 1980 tour, with the expanded band lineup, clearly influenced all members of Talking Heads: Tina obviously picked up a lot from working side by side with Busta Jones, but also David Byrne definitely absorbed a truckload of guitar zaniness from working side by side with Adrian Belew. There's at least one moment during that Stop Making Sense film where Byrne, playing a Roland G-303 guitar, is clearly channeling Belew's angular-skronk noise soloing.

...and it goes both ways: Belew definitely picked up some of his idiosyncratic singing from Byrne.

 

[lermgalieu]

I enjoyed her bass playing, but was a little disappointed to learn her bass parts in the concert video were dubbed in. At least that's what I've heard.

All you need to do is watch it to know this is false.

 

[Not Insane]

All you need to do is watch it to know this is false.

FWIW, I wondered about it when I heard it because I watched her hands and wondered if she was actually playing the incredibly clean line. So it was easy to believe. I was also just coming off learning that the bass parts were dubbed in in "The Last Walz". But It turns out that apparently it was not dubbed in Stop Making Sense.

IMO

 

[jerry]

I would bet money there where some fixes in Stop Making Sense.

 

[Not Insane]

I would bet money there where some fixes in Stop Making Sense.

I agree. Playing quality is way too perfect. It's really hard to dance and play the bassline perfectly timed, throughout. Presence of timing errors would "prove" it was the originally recorded sound.

It was comical with The Last Waltz. It was obvious. Danko's hands would be flailing all over the neck while what we heard was a tight bass line that didn't come close to matching his hands. That one disappointed me so much that I threw away the DVD. I need to at least "believe" I'm watching a live performance. And when it is blatantly obvious that I'm watching the equivalent of a music video, well, it ruins it for me.

 

[Michedelic]

I agree. Playing quality is way too perfect. It's really hard to dance and play the bassline perfectly timed, throughout. Presence of timing errors would "prove" it was the originally recorded sound.

It was comical with The Last Waltz. It was obvious. Danko's hands would be flailing all over the neck while what we heard was a tight bass line that didn't come close to matching his hands. That one disappointed me so much that I threw away the DVD. I need to at least "believe" I'm watching a live performance. And when it is blatantly obvious that I'm watching the equivalent of a music video, well, it ruins it for me.

Practically all of the audio to the Beatles’ Shea Stadium concert film was re-recorded in a secret session, where the band had to “loop”(movie soundtrack term)to their own images on screen.