Chris Frantz

Drummer for Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. His new memoir, "Remain in Love," is being released on July 21st.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Okay, a couple of questions. One, how's your health? Well, uh,
funny you should ask, because uh, yeah, I know you're
a person who takes health issues very seriously. And I'm
I'm going to give you an exclusive okay, because because

(00:31):
Gary Ker first told me a long time ago that
I should pay attention to Bob Letts sets. And um,
I think that was even back when you were on
the velvet rope in those days. Okay, but uh, over
the Memorial Day weekend, I had a heart attack. I
was um, I had been feeling this. The impression I

(00:55):
had was that I had really bad heartburn for a lot,
and it was coming and going for a couple of days,
like it started on a Wednesday night and then Thursday
it was coming and going. And so I said, this
is really uncomfortable. I'm going to call the doctor, and
I set up an appointment for Friday morning. Very good

(01:17):
doctor said, this has all the earmarks of um an ulcer,
but you don't seem like the ulcer type. So let
me real quick take a blood test, will rush it
and we'll see what's really going on. So two hours,
he said, you go home, lie down. I'll call you
two hours later he called me. He said, Chris, you

(01:41):
gotta call get yourself to the hospital. It seems like
you might be having a heart attack. I thought, oh wow,
because my father, I'm I'm sixty nine. My father died
of a heart attack at age sixty seven. So I thought, oh,
I beat it. But oh, anyway, I went to bridge

(02:03):
you know Fairfield. I went to bridge Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital.
They were the cardioc cardiology team was waiting. They tested
me for COVID nineteen and make sure I didn't have that,
and then they wheeled me right into It's not a
surgery room. It was like one of these micro uh

(02:25):
surgical things where they go in through your wrist and
look at everything on video monitors. Oh yeah, yeah, that's
the way they do it now. Yeah yeah. And I
mean there's just a little tiny dot on my wrist
where they went in and so they they found blockage
in my lower coronary artery and um, they cleared it

(02:48):
out and they put in three stints, and uh, three
days later, I was home resting up. But I gotta
tell you, I feel good and I'm very grateful to
the good people at Bridgeport Hospital. So what's the rehab well, uh,

(03:12):
changing to a more plant based diet. For one thing,
I was a guy who I'm a bone vivant, you know.
I like to I love to eat. But I've lost
seventeen pounds since that happened, maybe eighteen. I didn't weigh
myself yet today, and uh, I mean I was too heavy,

(03:34):
It's true. And um, I I probably liked meat uh
more often than I should have done. So anyway, I'm
gonna change my diet. I'm gonna relax, you know, let's
face it, I've got it made. I don't I don't
need to like sweat, like new records or new anything

(04:00):
like new tours. They're not happening anyway. So I'm going
to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labors and
my life. And I was sort of doing that already,
but now I'm really gonna do it now. Since your
father was sixty seven and he died of a heart attack,
had you been tracking this closely? Probably not as closely

(04:23):
as I should have. I was getting warnings, you know,
from blood work and stuff, and I but I don't
really like that anti cholesterol medicine, although I'm taking it now.
Which one are you? Which one? Are you taking pressed
door right that one? Yeah? And uh, you know, the
statins have their pros and cons. But my cardiologist is

(04:46):
a really good guy, and I'm gonna just follow his
advice and keep taking it until the numbers are such
that I can consider easing off. Are you taking the
ubiquinol with it? I don't. I don't think so. No.
Is that a supplement? Yeah, is supplement. It's supposed to

(05:06):
speak to the side effects. It's c It's not c
O two but without going to the other room looking
up and it's something like that. And uh, are you
having any side effects from the Crest store? Not too bad?
Actually none so far. I mean, I know, I know
the side effects can be one. One is depression, another

(05:29):
is memory loss. I really don't want that. Well, the
number one, I you know, I haven't had any issues
with that, but with some of the statins I have
had the leg pains, you get the muscle tightness, Yes, yes,
I've I've heard about that. I haven't had that, thank goodness.
But I didn't want to, you know, talk about health

(05:49):
the whole time. But since you started off with that question,
I thought I better Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the
Bob Left Sets podcast. We started, as I say, we
got an update on Chris's health and he says that's
fine for everybody to hear, so we're gonna leave that
in and any event, my guest today is drummer for

(06:11):
Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. He has a new book,
Remain in Love. It's going to be in stores both
of the UK and the US on July one. Please
welcome Chris France. Chris okay, it's a great pleasure to
be here, Bob Okay. Now, Chris, why the book? Why now? Well, Uh,

(06:33):
I've been meaning to write the book for many years,
like a dozen years or so, and then a couple
of years ago I finally buckled down and said, you
better do this, you know, because you're not getting any younger,
and um, nobody's writing any good books about talking Heads.
So so I did it. I started about two years ago,

(06:58):
and um, you know, my I feel like my story
is a delightful one and I feel like I was
very fortunate, and I feel like, well, I feel like
it's a memorable tale to have been in Talking Heads,

(07:19):
to have been in Tom Tom Clement, to be married
now for forty three years, to Tina Weymouth. Look, I'm
a lucky guy, you know. Okay, one thing anybody who
reads the book will be stunned about is not only
is it comprehensive in terms of the timeline, the detail
is really incredible. Did you have any notes or did

(07:41):
you just remember all that? You know? Most of it
I remembered. But fortunately, you know, I I've been kicking
myself for a long time for not keeping a journal.
I knew during that time that I should be keeping
a journal, and I just didn't. But Tina fortunately had
these not a journal, but date books like you know,

(08:04):
like the calendar book date books you buy at the
Metropolitan Museum that has King Tutt on the cover. She
had one of those, and she she would write down
last night we played the Roundhouse, sold out, three encres,
got paid. It's She also made notes of the hotels

(08:29):
and things like that, like bed was terrible, or shower
was too small, at things like that. So so I
was able to Tina. Tina loaned me her date books
from those those years I guess it was like from
from nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty, and they came

(08:54):
in very helpful because a lot of the information you
get on the internet is a tissue you have lies. Well,
that begs a question. Once you wrote it, I'm sure
you ran it by Tina. Did she remember things the
same way you had in most instances? Yes, although once
in a while she would say, oh no, no, it

(09:15):
wasn't like that. And uh she she has a the memory.
It's very keen, you know. Okay, let's go back to
risdy Rhode Island School of Design. That's where you and
Tina went to college. According to the book, David dropped out?
Why go to risdie? Why go to Risdee? To begin with, well,

(09:38):
I was planning on having uh a life as a painter,
and I had been in bands when I was young,
a teenager. Um, and I loved being in bands, you know.
I started off in elementary school and then the Beatles

(09:59):
came out and everybody had little rock and roll bands.
And okay, well let's leve on a little bit there.
So you were playing in bands before the Beatles. Yes,
actually I was. I was playing in No, I was
playing in my elementary school band before the Beatles. Okay,
let's let's cover something. So you're originally from where, well,

(10:19):
I'm originally from Kentucky. But during my formative years we
moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where my father was from.
And he was going into a law practice, so we
moved back to where he had some connections. And um
so so elementary school, junior high, and part of high school.

(10:43):
Most of high school I was in Pittsburgh. Okay, now
Pittsburgh is very hip. Again, What do I know about Pittsburgh.
You know, there's the book Michael Chaban The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,
which I recommend the darkest movie I've ever seen in
the theater Mrs soulfil in Pittsburgh. But when you were
growing up in Pittsburgh, was it a ship hole or

(11:03):
was it an unknown hip city? Um well, I couldn't
wait to get out of there. To be honest, I
knew that Pittsburgh was not going to be where I
was going to make my mark because I wanted to
be an artist, and I thought, God, Andy Warhol wanted

(11:25):
to be an artist. He was from Pittsburgh, but he
had to move to New York, you know. And uh,
don't get me wrong, I have a lot of good
friends still in Pittsburgh and fond memories of the place,
but I just knew as an artist it wasn't happening
for me. Okay, but you have to get out of there.

(11:45):
But you said, uh, so you went to prep school
for part of your high school. Yeah, I went to
a Shady Side Academy, which is a fine school in
in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. And so you still live
did home at the same time, or do you live there?
I lived at home. I was a day student and
that's where I started painting. I had a great studio

(12:09):
art teacher named David Miller. He went on to teach
at skid More. But anyway, he um he turned me
onto contemporary art, which was something I didn't know anything
about at the time. Like he turned me onto Jasper
John's Rauenberg, I knew about Warhol Ah, people like Ed

(12:32):
Keene Holtz and uh Klaus Oldenburg and uh of course
Willem de Cooning. You know. He turned me onto all
these artists, and I thought, Wow, this is what I
want to do, and that's why I went to Risdy. Okay. Uh,

(12:53):
those are all generally speaking abstract painters. Prior to this teacher,
Mr Miller, did you have an int Aushton art. Were
you did you draw? Did you paint anything like that?
I did draw. Uh. You know. I was born in
Kentucky and my my whole mother's side of the family
in Kentucky, So I I used to draw horses and

(13:14):
stuff like that or my grandfather, you know. And I
would draw on those shirt cardboards that you used to
get when your shirts were laundry laundered. I never really
thought of myself as being an artist at all until
I took that class called studio art in high school,

(13:35):
and all of a sudden, I thought, this is what
I want to do. Okay. So you said you were
in the elementary school band. Is that where you learned
how to play or did your parents give you lessons? Yeah?
I started off on the trumpet and it wasn't really
happening for me. I was trying, I was practicing, but

(13:56):
I wasn't getting anywhere. And I and uh, I had
a very good teacher. His name was Gene Wilmouth. He
was a mallet instrument guy, you know, marimba, vibra, frying,
xylophone and also piano and also drums. And he said, yeah,
I can see it's not really working out for you,

(14:18):
but you have a good sense of rhythm. What do
you what do you say we switch you over to drums?
And I said, cool, let's do it. And he gave
me the little rubber pad and the elementary book of rudiments,
and he gave me a couple of lessons, a little
private lessons, and next thing I knew, I was first

(14:40):
chair and the drum department. Now in the school band,
you're just playing the marching drum whatever they call that, right,
You're not playing a whole kid. Yeah. In the yeah,
there was no drum kit in the In the fall
and the spring, you would do marching and so that
would be a marching drum. In the winter months we

(15:02):
would have orchestra and I would I would hit a
snare drum or a triangle or a tambourine. One time
I played just the symbol, just the ride cymbal. And
so what what what happens when the Beatles arrived? So
the Beatles came and just basically changed everything overnight after

(15:25):
their Ed Sullivan appearance. And uh, I remember the day
after that, the girls on the School of Us were
singing Beatles songs in Unison and they knew all the
words and everything already and I thought, wow, So a
bunch of my friends and I who were in the

(15:46):
school band, just took the stuff to our garage and
started started playing. We didn't just play Beatles, we played
like the Ventures and Dave Clark five and uh what else. Well,
we in my first band, which is called the Lost Chords,

(16:08):
we actually had a trumpeter and a trombone in the
band too, so we could play her Balford and the
Tiawana brass songs. It was really fun. Uh. We we
never really accomplished much other than having fun, but you know,
fun is the best thing to have anyway. So yeah,

(16:29):
so like the Beatles song. Um, so did you ever
have bands that had gigs in high school? We had
one gig with the Lost Chords and that was at
the Presbyterian Church Youth fellowship Hall. Can you imagine a
straighter gig than that? And uh, it was really fun.

(16:52):
The kids went nuts and we had a great time.
But mostly we just rehearsed and either my garage or
my friends basement or you know, a lot of rehearsing,
so you go to Risdy at all times. Maybe in history,

(17:13):
being a fine artist is a challenging career. Did that
occur to you? Yes, it did. One thing they tell
you when you you go to art school is you
know there's no guarantees. Some people say you can't even
teach art at uh. Well, the fact is that some

(17:34):
people can and some people can't. But um Risdi was
not RISTI didn't have any like program that you could
enroll to get a job after after graduation. It was
you're on your own now, good luck. Okay. You played

(18:01):
in bands in high school. It seems based on the
book that very soon after your arrival at Risdy, you
were interesting interested in forming a band. Yes. My second year.
The first year I didn't play any drums at all,
any music except you know, on my record player. But
um I was really missing it, and um so I

(18:26):
asked my dad if he would drive me up to
Rhode Island from Pittsburgh with my drum kit and he
said yes sure, So we brought the drum kid up
and and the first band I joined was in fact
a soul band, I mean a real soul band, and
UH called the Brotherhood. They were all from Boston, from Roxbury, Boston,

(18:53):
but one of them went to Risdy. The trumpet player,
and so he asked me what I what I play
with them? And and uh, we ended up again rehearsing
a lot. And I must admit I was the weak
link in that band because the rest of the guys
were Berkeley School of Music guys, you know. But eventually

(19:15):
I got it and um, I loved soul music. The
challenge for me was the slower tempos. You know. The
slow tempos are for me more difficult than any any
fast tempo. So it took me a while to get
to get it together with the brotherhood. We we we
did one show, which was the Ristey Spring Dance in

(19:40):
the what they called the Refectory, and it was very
great celebration, very celebratory, and the band sounded good and
uh and that was it. That was the last gig
with them. So you have your drum, kid, you're in
pro evidence. What's the next step. Well, the next step

(20:04):
I was just playing by myself a lot with records,
and uh, Tina, Tina Weymouth was kind enough to uh
let me keep my my drums, or to invite me
to keep my drums at her place, which was she
was living in a little carriage house near Brown University.

(20:28):
And it was right by the tennis courts, so nobody
complained about the noise, and um I practiced. I would
play along with the latest Marvin Gay record, or the
latest Brian Ferry record, or the latest you know, goats
Head Soup by the Rolling Stones or whatever. And I

(20:49):
would try to keep in shape doing that. But eventually,
one day a guy came to me, a friend said Chris,
I'm making this film. He was a film student. I'm
making a film about my girlfriend getting run over by
a car, and I need some really cacophonous music. Do
you think you could help me with that? And I

(21:10):
said sure, I'd be happy to and uh uh, I said,
bring your bring your nagare tape recorder over to Tina's
carriage house and we'll do it. And he said, okay,
I'm gonna bring another guy to who plays guitar, a
friend of mine who plays guitar. I said, great. So

(21:32):
he brings this guy over with his tape recorder and
he says, Chris, this is David Byrne. And um, so,
David and I sat down together and Mark's instructions where
I want this rising cacophony, you know, crescendo crescendo and
then diminuendo. So we said, okay, we can do that,

(21:57):
and I think we got it in the first take.
And I had been I had this dream about starting
another band at Risdey since the Brotherhood had kind of
gone to put and I had imagined, you know, David
Bowie had just come out and uh lou Reid who
had this hit with Walk on the wild Side, and

(22:20):
there was a lot of rejuvenated interest in the Velvet
underground by by art students I knew. I thought, hm,
we should start a sort of velvet underground ish band.
And I asked, Uh, I had this dream that we
could have a band that would entertain our friends. You know, no, no, uh,

(22:43):
higher aspirations than that. Really, we weren't thinking about records
or anything. And uh, I said to David, I'm thinking
about starting a band. Would you like to be part
of that? And he said, yeah, I think so. And
uh so we started a band called the Artistics, and

(23:07):
uh we had loads of fun. And did you have
any gigs we did? Our biggest gig was the Rhode
Island School of Design Valentine's Day Ball and we played
that and uh that was very exciting for us. We

(23:33):
we played um that they had lowered the drinking age
to eighteen. So we had a bar at rizzi called
the tap Room and we played in the tap room.
We played a couple of private parties and uh, just
before we graduated, we played outside across from the Ristey

(23:55):
Museum on Benefit Street in this little park on a
nice afternoon in May, and that was our final show.
And who was in the band at that point It
was David myself, a friend of mine from Kentucky named
David Anderson on guitar he's a painter now, and Hank

(24:19):
Staylor on base. Hank was running PS one in New
York um a while back, which is an art museum.
I'm not sure what he's doing now, but uh, and
we and we would have guest appearances by one. One
one of our friends named Tim Beal was a sacks player.

(24:42):
He would sit and sit in from time to time.
And we also had our friends Mark and Naomi who
there um they were a couple. In their song was
my Baby Must be a Magician, So so we would
we would uh play my Baby Must be a Magician
and Mark and Naomi would sing it duet style. We

(25:05):
we had a we had a ball and how often
would you rehearse? Oh, a couple three times a week,
so you were taking it seriously. Let's stay at wristy
for a second. How did you meet Tina? I met Tina.
She came. Well, she came riding down the street. I

(25:26):
was sitting on the grass in this little park and
I saw this beautiful girl coming my way on a bicycle,
a yellow bicycle. Uh you know, old three speed style,
and uh she she rode past. She didn't look at
me or anything, didn't notice me. But I was sitting

(25:49):
with a male model at the school, like an artist
model named Charlie. And Charlie said, I said, whoa Charlie.
Did you see her? Wow? And Charlie said, that's my
friend Martina. Charlie called everybody his friend, you know, and
uh so, uh, I thought I gotta meet her, and um.

(26:15):
The next day I had a figure painting class. It
was it was the beginning of the school year. Had
a figure painting class taught by a guy named Richard Murkin,
whom you may know his work from The New Yorker
or or other places. He was actually on the cover

(26:35):
one of the heads on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club
band fash and a hat because he was friends with
Peter Blake, good friends with Peter Blake. So anyway, he
um Richard Merkin was teaching and uh, it was the
first class of the year, and I looked over and
there in the corner was Tina Weymouth setting up her

(26:59):
easel and so that's where I met her. Now, how
how deep into your career at Risdy, this is what year?
This is my second year? She she transferred in from Barnard,
so she was a new kid. Okay. Now, one thing
that comes up in the book frequently is other men

(27:20):
hitting on Tina. Okay, hey, how did that make you feel?
And be uh, why do you think or what's your
insight into Tina that she stayed with you? I mean,
obviously there are a lot of stories the opposite, if
nothing else, Michelle Phillips and the Mamas and Papa's poor Michelle. Um.

(27:42):
You know, Uh, I was always okay with these guys
who who I could tell they were coming on to
Tina because somehow I felt secure in my relationship with her,
secure enough that I had I didn't have to be jealous.
I think they're I'd have been one or two times

(28:03):
before we got married where I felt a little jealous
of some guy or another. But once we were married,
which was in ninety seven, I, uh, I felt confident
that I didn't have to worry about such things. Okay,
you graduate from Risdy what years at seventy three four?

(28:30):
Then what's the plan? Then the plan is I went home.
I I painted a mural. The plan was to move
to New York. But I knew I had to have
a little money in my pocket to move to New York.
So I went home to Pittsburgh, and through my father's connections,
I got a job painting a mural in a hospital,

(28:53):
the Iron Ear Hospital of Pittsburgh. And the mural had
already been des mined by some other guy and I
was supposed to make blow it up and make it huge,
which I did, and it took a long time up
on a scaffolding, you know, on a stairway. But but

(29:16):
uh I got I think dollars, Well, that's a lot
of money. Yeah, And so I had enough. Then I thought, okay,
I can move to New York now, which was which
I did in in late September, and h or maybe
it was early October. It was early October, and um, well,

(29:41):
David had agreed to move to New York and he,
in fact, he moved there before I did, and uh
Tina had agreed, and the three of us got aloft
together on Christie Street, which which I found after much
searching around New York. And uh uh Tina's brother, who's

(30:03):
an architect, said, Chris, don't bother about the village voice,
don't look in there. Look at the industrial section of
the New York Times on Sunday. So I said, okay,
and he was right. That's where you found the good lofts.
You know that nobody lived in yet. And we got
a nice one on Christie Street, just below Houston on

(30:27):
what is called the Lower East Side, and it was
three blocks from cb GBS, maybe three and a half.
Uh this is my friend who lived across the street
from CBGB said Chris, there's something going on over at
this club across the street. You gotta check it out.

(30:48):
And I went in there and I checked it out
and there was like nothing happening at all. It was
in the middle of the week, but there was a
like four guy is playing pool in the back. And
I went back there and they were Latino guys and
uh one of them was wearing like a shark skin

(31:10):
suit and a tie and had a real sharp crew cut,
I thought, So I asked him, you know what's going on?
Is there are going to be any music tonight? You said,
in a very heavy Mexican accent, No, man, not tonight.
But you come back on the weekend the Ramons will
be here. And I thought, oh, a Mexican band. Interesting,

(31:36):
And uh, well I came back on the weekend the
Ramones were there, and I soon found out they were
not a Mexican band. Well what else would you like
to know? Well, know what, I guess what I'm asking
is when you, David and Tina moved to New York,
is your plan to be a painter or a rock
and roll musician? Well, we we, David and I hoped

(31:59):
to be rock and roll musicians. And because we felt like,
you know, we're we're young. We can do this while
we're young. If if we don't succeed, we can we
can be painters or you know whatever, conceptual artists, whatever
we want to be, and we'll still be considered young

(32:21):
painters at age forty or whatever. Um, we we kept
in touch with the art world. We were we were
very you know, closely knit with the art world, and
in fact, a lot of people that came to c
B GBS to hear us and the other bands play.
We're artists of various types, you know, um, people in

(32:44):
the visual arts, people in the performing arts. You know.
Philip Philip Glass would come to see us, you know,
and at that point in time, he kind of already
was Philip Glass, right, Yes, well it was early on,
but he he already had a very high reputation downtown. Yeah,

(33:06):
so what is everybody doing to stay alive? Um, I
had a h day. We all had day jobs. Mine
was I was a stock boy and shipper for for
Design Research, which we sold fancy European furniture and housewares,

(33:30):
and uh it was really fun because the store was
full of all these beautiful shop girls, you know, uh,
sales girls. And we also sold Merimecho clothing from Sweden,
so they all wore the striped merrime Echo t shirts.
And uh. There are a couple of poets that worked

(33:51):
with me down in the basement where we would we
would unload things off of trucks and then after they
get sold. We put them back on the trucks. Uh,
it was. It was a good, good day job. Nice people.
What did David David David, a friend of ours had resigned.

(34:13):
A friend of ours got a job at the at
the Museum of Modern Art, and he left his job
at an ad agency, also on fifty seventh Street. We
all worked on fifty seventh Street, which is so funny,
but uh so David went help make ads for people
like Prince Macha Belli and um Sergio Valenti and things

(34:38):
like that back in the seventies. And Tina was working
at Henry ben Dell, which was a very exclusive only
recently went out of business because of Trump's you know,
uh screwing up Fifth Avenue and they lost all their business. Okay,
with was David actually designing ads? No, he was operating

(35:02):
a stat machine, you know, photograph, photographing parts of the
ads and putting them together. So how does Tina become
a member of the band. I had actually asked Tina
to become a member of the band when we had
the artistics, when we were forming it, and she said,

(35:22):
oh no, no, no, that's a guy's thing. I'll be
very I'll support you in your efforts, but I don't
want to. No, she she just felt like it was
a bad idea, and um, but I kept after her
because I felt like the band we were gonna I

(35:45):
was forming with David was going to be a very
different type of band in terms of appearance and also sound,
and we weren't going to be like copying The Who
or the Rolling Stones or even the Velvet Underground. Really, uh,
we were going to be uh more unusual, uh than

(36:07):
than what people might have anticipated. You know, that we
were trying to be different and interesting. And I knew
that Tina share the similar aesthetic artistically, that she she
got what we were trying to do even before she
you know, started playing with us. And also I knew

(36:30):
that she had a fantastic sense of rhythm from dancing
with her and just you know, embracing her and you know,
when the records come on, when our favorite songs come on,
we would dance, you know, and I knew that she could,
you know, really feel the rhythm. So I kept asking her,

(36:52):
and I kept asking her, and she kept saying, no, no, no,
not a good idea. It's a it's a boy's club.
But then one day she walked into the loft with
a Fender Precision bass that she'd been putting down like
five dollars a week on for months evidently, and uh,

(37:14):
one of the happiest days in my life. Well, I
think she may have been the progenitor of female musician
bass players in terms of rock bands. I don't remember
anybody playing that role before that. I'm sure people email,
Well there was Susie Quatro was was of course. Well,

(37:36):
I had a couple of Susie Quatro records and on
one of them she even kind of looks like Tina,
And I said, Tina, look at this, and uh but uh,
and of course there's a great Carol Kay who teena
session bass player who Tina admires greatly. Um, and I'm

(37:58):
sure there were plenty others, but yeah, Tina was one
of the first down in uh Lower Manhattan to do it. Okay,
Now Tina is in the act when you finally play
CB GBS. Yes, yes, our first gig. It was in
in May of nineteen seventy five. And how did you
get that gig? I walked in, I asked Hilly Crystal,

(38:20):
the owner, I have this band and we'd like to audition,
and he said what kind of music you play? And
I said, well, we play in a style of our own.
And he chuckled like he'd heard that one before, I think,
and uh he said okay. You know, he had a

(38:41):
very basso voice. He said, okay, I suppose I could
put you on in front of the Ramones. And I said,
all right, we'll We'll take it. And that was our
audition night. Um, which was I think three days later.
So we had to think of a name. We didn't

(39:02):
even have a name yet, so we had to think
of a name, and our are our One of our
friends from Risty was visiting us at the time. He uh,
he now has a job at the Art Institute of Chicago.
But anyway, he said, he said, I've been I was
reading TV Guide and they have a glossary of television

(39:26):
technical terms, and one of the terms is talking head.
It means the the most boring but also the most
informative format of broadcasting. So we thought to ourselves, talking heads,
talking heads, that sounds good and we could relate to

(39:49):
it because it didn't connote any particular type of music
like heavy metal or country or you know, hard rock
or disco. Talking Heads. It could be anything. So we
went with that name, and we put Tina and I
had little t shirts made that said talking Heads on it,

(40:13):
and we walked through uh, Washington Square Park with it
with it on, and people would say, are you guys
in a band? Things like that, and so we thought, hmm,
I think this talking Heads name might work out. And
and that particular shirt of Tina's is now in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which, uh is kind

(40:35):
of sweet. Now, if you read the book, you find
out essentially you met everybody, but in that scene it's
CB G B of course, the guys from television, people
from Blondie, etcetera. Did you have the feeling that this
was in retrospect? Of course, it was really percolating a
big scene, and almost all of those acts got record deals,

(40:56):
some went on to great success. Did you have that
vibe when you were ave it? Yes, I had. I
had the impression that it was, you know, it started
off really small, and even then with television, Patti Smith, Blondie,
the Ramoons, ourselves band called the Mumps, even even when

(41:23):
they were only people in the audience on a given night.
I had the idea. I had the feeling that something, um,
something was getting really cool and good and and that
uh cb GBS was going to be like an incubator
for a scene where bands could sort of play their

(41:48):
play their original songs and maybe maybe they would not
even get through the song without making a big mistake
or something. But the audience was so small that not
that many people notice, and there was no internet, so
you you could make a mistake, you could have a
very awkward performance and uh still come back and do

(42:09):
it again the following week. And so it was that
kind of scene and uh, everybody was kind of, you know,
just learning how to do this, how to be a performer.
Petty Smith was a pretty good performer right from the
yet go because she had been doing poetry readings and

(42:32):
things and she had she had a lot of charisma.
Um But as this has more and more people came
and the band's got better and better, and all of
a sudden you had people from like Japan and London
and Hamburg, Germany, and people coming up from Atlanta, and

(42:56):
it just started to be, uh, a very exciting scene
and and there would be suddenly there would be lines
outside to get in, and yeah, I felt like, uh,
very fortunate to have been in the right place at
the right time. Now, needless to say, as you referenced earlier,

(43:18):
Talking Heads has a unique sound. Did it audience or
didn't resonate with the audience? Did you generate fans from
the beginning? Some people didn't get it. I think some
people still don't get it. But you know, the Kings
of downtown New York rock at that time, or the
New York Dolls and the various spinoffs of the New

(43:38):
York Dolls, and uh, we liked them. They were really
cool and everything, but we we certainly working to be
parading around in platform shoes and like purple trousers and stuff.
So um, there were some people that we were so

(43:58):
a contrary to the New York Dolls aesthetic that they
didn't really get us at first. But then eventually even
even some of the people who really didn't get us
came around. Okay, so how did Jerry get in the band? Well,
you know, Jerry Harrison was in the Modern Lovers, which

(44:19):
was a band that we greatly admired and played their
record a lot. Their record was produced, It was actually
a demo produced by John Kale that was later released
as an album. Uh, and we have been listening to that.
And I went home to Pittsburgh one time and one
of my mother's friends said, you know, Chris, my nephew

(44:43):
is in a band in Boston and they're really good.
And I said, who are they. What's the name of
the band. He said, oh, the Modern Lovers. Now I
knew that The Modern Lovers had broken up. Evidently she
didn't know it yet, but I said, oh, what's your
nephew his name and she said Ernie Brooks. I said, oh,

(45:03):
the bass players. She said yeah, and she she gave
me Ernie's contacts. So I had Ernie's contacts, and UM
went went back to New York from Pittsburgh, and I
like the next day or a couple of days later,
I was in a restaurant owned by Mickey Ruskin, who

(45:26):
who found in Max's Kansas City. But this this was
called The Local and h one of the cooks was
Julian Schnabelieva. Yeah, and uh so they were famous for
their hamburgers and their red wine. So we were having
some hamburger and a red wine, and Tina and David

(45:48):
and I and I looked across the room and who
should I see. But Ernie Brooks. I recognized him by
his big head of curly hair that he had on
the album cover. So I walked over and I said, hey, Ernie,
I was just talking to your aunt in Pittsburgh. And

(46:09):
he said, oh, yeah, the Showers Liz Liz Shower. I said, yeah, exactly,
and she's a friend of my mother's and she said
that I should get in touch with you. So here
I am. And he said, well, what's happening. What do
you guys do and and I said, well, you know,
actually we're looking for a third member of the band,

(46:32):
some somebody who can help us, you know, fill out
the sound and make the songs more beautiful. And um,
he said, well who what what instrument are you looking for?
I said keyboards maybe maybe keyboards and guitar And he
said have you have you thought of Jerry Harrison? And

(46:54):
I said wow, I would love to get in touch
with Jerry Harrison. And Ernie gave me a number, so
I called up Jerry and Jerry said, well guess what. Um,
he said, this is very interesting, but guess what. I
just enrolled in a master's program for architecture here at
Harvard and UH and besides that the breakup of the

(47:19):
Modern Lovers was a very difficult experience for me. So
I'm not going to rush into anything, but I'd be
interested to hear you play. So I said, okay, we'll
we'll plan a gig up and up in Boston and
you can come hear us play, which we did, and
one thing led to another, and when we when we

(47:41):
finally had a recording contract, Jerry said, okay, I'd like
to join the band. He had played with us a
few times before that, you know, so we knew that
it worked well. Uh. You know you mentioned that he's
a single child in the book and he's at Harvard.

(48:01):
How difficult was it for him to drop out? Um?
You know, I I never asked Jerry how difficult it was,
but he did. He did that, I think he did.
I think he did one semester, maybe even did a
full year. He might have done a full year. So

(48:27):
how do you get a record deal? How did we? Uh?
We had people approaching us offering us record deals, and uh,
you know, I can think of three off the top
of my head, and one of them was seymour Stein
of Sire Records. And uh, we had made a couple

(48:50):
of demos, and we we listened back to these demos
and we thought, uh, we're not ready yet. This is
you know, we can rock cb GBS, but we're not
gonna like rock the billboard charts sounding like we do now.
And uh we we knew that if if we put

(49:13):
out a record too soon and it wasn't up to
you know, it wasn't happening, then we might not get
a chance to do do one. We might not get
another chance. So we were very careful. Seymour offered us
this deal and we made him wait for a year
and a half, eighteen months, and he was poor guy,

(49:38):
was so nervous that some other record company was gonna
snatch us up in the meantime. But but we knew,
we had a feeling about Seymour and in his company's sire,
that they were independent, that they were in New York.
They their offices were on a town in a townhouse

(49:58):
on West seventy four a Street, and we could, according
to Seymour, any anyway, We could go there any time
we wanted and talk to him. So we thought that
sounds a lot better than some guy in you know,
l a or at the top of a skyscraper in

(50:19):
New York. Who who you know? We can't even get
in to see him. Uh, and so we decided to
go with Seymour. We had we asked Danny Fields, who
was managing the Ramons. We said, Danny, what's your experience?
The Ramans were on Sire and Dan Danny, what's your
experience with Sire Records? And he said, well, Chris in

(50:43):
a nutshell, Seymour is always done right by us, And
that was like all I needed to know. He's Danny
also said, you know, no record company is perfect. With
any record company, you need somebody to tell them what
to do. But um, uh but Seymour has always done

(51:06):
right by us. So so we signed a deal with Seymour.
And uh, I'm really glad we did because it worked
out great. Okay, so you make the first record. Needless
to say, the first record sounds very different from what
came thereafter talking had sent Were you happy with the

(51:27):
result at the time? Yeah? I was. I I um,
I'm still happy with the result. It's it's a very
sweet um and uh rich that sounding album. I I
think my way of thinking about it is it was
a great start, great beginning, and I when I listened

(51:49):
to it today. If I listened to a song like
Don't Worry about the Government or Psycho Killer or Pulled Up,
I think, Wow, we were we were really something. Okay,
so the first album comes out, do you have a
feeling there's momentum. I we had momentum in uh sort

(52:13):
of like the big cities, but we didn't We didn't
have any worldwide momentum. And I remember looking at the
charts and thinking, uh, well, we're not really doing that great.
But the fact is that that we were, um, we
were making a big impression and establishing a reputation for

(52:39):
being artists, you know. Um and uh we we we
um we we we we. We had sort of like
the best of the best world we could possibly have.
We we had some commercial success, not a huge, huge amount,

(53:00):
but enough that we can make another record. We had
artistic success, which was validated, you know, by the Voice
in the New York Times and by our friends. And
we also had well, we had enough financial success that

(53:22):
we could give up our day jobs. And that's a
very significant thing. Staying with staying with business. Traditionally, the
drummer is the business guy in the group. Was that
the case with you in talking heads. You know. That's
what Gary Kerfer said to me. It's always the drummer
who runs the band. Well, um, I think all of

(53:43):
us had a pretty good business sense, but but maybe
I was the person who who was was comfortable, uh
talking to people about it. But it got to the
point after not very long that that I realized you
can't manage your own band. You have to have somebody

(54:05):
else do it for you. Okay, Now, the first record
makes an impression, second record is a whole new thing.
You work with Eno. You do a cover of taking
Me to the River, tell Us a Genesis and the
story of making that record. Well, um, we were on
a big tour of Europe and the UK with the

(54:27):
Ramones and when we when we came to London, Eno
came to see us and we we met with him.
We had a nice lunch with him, and then we
went to his home and we talked about you know,
music basically, and one thing led to another and we decided,

(54:50):
you know, would be a good producer for us, and
and you know was interested in doing it, and and
so that's how that that's how we got him involved
with Eno. And at the time though he hadn't really
worked with anybody significant. He'd been in uh Roxy music
and he'd done his own solo albums. Correct. Yes, yes,

(55:11):
he had also done uh just around the time before,
right before we worked with him, he was working with
David Bowie on the Low the Low trilogy and also
with Divo. He produced the first Divo album, which he
did in Germany, and um so, so you know, uh,

(55:39):
maybe the record companies weren't thrilled that we were working
with Divo instead of like you know, Roy Thomas Baker
or somebody like that. But but he was right up
our alley. He was our kind of artist, and we
had his records. We collected his record as we admired
his work, and so uh, he agreed to do it.

(56:04):
Now on that second album, more songs about buildings and food.
We had already been performing all those songs live, and
some of them we had been performing for years live,
but they didn't make it onto the first record. So
and we had been touring like crazy. So when we

(56:24):
got to the studio at Compass Point in the Bahamas,
which was delightful, all you know, had to do was
like set up the mics and then he could treat
the various instruments, instruments, mostly the drums, but sometimes other
instruments with this little briefcase synthesizer he had and um

(56:45):
by treating, i mean putting effects and delays and things
like that on the instruments, and that was his main contribution.
But he also helped, like like when we came to
Take Me to the River, which we been playing kind
of up tempo, like Al Green's version is quite up tempo,

(57:06):
but you know, said you should slow this down. You
should play this as slow as you possibly can without
making a mistake. And so we thought, okay, we'll try that,
and we did it and it was super sexy that way,
and uh so that that was uh of course that

(57:28):
became a hit, and it was our first hit and
the whole the whole experience down at Compass Point was
just super cool and everything went smooth and uh we
had a wonderful time. Well, it's all interesting. In the book.
You talked about taking Me to the River. Then ultimately
there sound where you feel like it's underwater, which is

(57:51):
that you described that I've always felt that, you know,
with the guitar, you know, during the solo part. Okay,
the record becomes a hit. How does that change in
the band? Well, um, I don't know that it really
changed us. It just made we were able to get
paid better by nightclubs because we had a song that

(58:14):
was on the radio, so we could get you know,
more money. It wasn't a whole lot more, and it
wasn't a whole lot of money, but it was like
better than we had been doing. And who was booking
who's booking all those tours in those days? It was
a guy named Stu wine trout at William Morris and

(58:35):
uh ste was it was quite a character. But um,
you know what we Gary really I think Gary Kerr first,
of course, was your manager. He was our manager and
I think he pretty much directed Stu. Now, Ste, we're
gonna play here, here and here, you get on the

(58:55):
phone and book it. And um we we played everything
for college campuses, universities to pizza parlors and uh uh
supermarkets that that were out of business and we're empty.
We played all kinds of crazy venues which which um

(59:18):
which uh. Later we were followed by Blondie and by
Elvis Costello and by the Clash. Because there was no
circuit for for bands like us, we were. We were
we weren't very big, you know, we weren't like Foreigner
or something. So a lot of promoters weren't interested. So

(59:39):
we had to find these young indie guys to to
promote our shows. Sometimes we promoted them ourselves, even when
you'd had the second album, etcetera. Yes, yes, uh okay,
third album. Of course, fear of music and of course
this ain't no party, this ain't no just go There

(01:00:00):
ain't no fool around. It brings you to a higher level.
But after the third record is when you start to
get winto the fact that maybe David Byrne is going
to go on his own tech. Yeah. I what I
found out was that David all Along had would prefer

(01:00:21):
to be a solo artist. Um, the group was just
something that he uh, I mean, he was a real
part of the group. We were we were really collaborators,
and we were friends and we were you know, we
lived together in the same loft, and um, we really

(01:00:46):
of the time we agreed on things. You know, we
didn't agree on every single thing. But but now, Bob,
I have to be very careful because I don't want
to sound like the whiney drummer who's who's embittered by
the famous lead singer, because that's not the case. I'm

(01:01:08):
not embittered, and I have great respect for David and
his talents, which are immense. But I still think that
he had his eyes on a solo career from almost
day two, maybe not day one, day two, and uh,

(01:01:31):
you know, some people are like, let's jump forward when
he ultimately does go solo and you form top top club,
you have a hit, and up until his recent uh
mega concert dancing experience, he has not had He's had
a lot of ink, but he hasn't had any huge success.

(01:01:52):
How do you feel? How do you feel about that? Well? Um,
all I can say is our first Tom Tom Club
album was like magic to me. Uh, Chris Blackwell gave it. Now.
One thing Seymour did, which which I can you know,
make a little dig about, was he offered David a

(01:02:14):
solo deal because David wanted to do a solo record.
So then Jerry said, oh, if David's gonna do a
solo record, I'm gonna do a solo record. So he
offered Jerry a solo record, and then Tina and I
were like, well, what are we gonna do? And Gary
ker first went to went to Seamar and said what
can you do for record deal for Chris and Tina?

(01:02:36):
And he said, I can't afford three talking ed solo albums,
and so he offered us nothing, and um Chris Blackwell,
Chris Blackwell of Island Records, who knows the value of
a good rhym rhythm section, said you know what, Gary,

(01:02:56):
I'd love to do a single with Chris and Tina.
Have him come on down. He already knew us from
our recordings at at a Compass Point, and he said,
have him come on down. Cut a single. If I
like it, they can do a whole album. So we
went down to Compass Point and we we made a
record called Wordy Rapping Hood and uh he heard that

(01:03:20):
and he said, okay, I want you to make a
whole album, but first we're gonna release this one as
a single, and uh it it went to well, it
went top ten in about twenty different countries in Europe
and in Latin America. And you know, then we had

(01:03:43):
Genius of Love. And Genius of Love was a huge
hit in America, so so big that, um well, it
continues to be sampled by various hip hop artists and
R and B artists and uh, it was it was
like magic. It was a great, great success for us,

(01:04:07):
and it gave Tina and I. You know, I think
people realized, oh, Tina and I aren't just like David's
little friends. They actually have ideas of their own and
uh and I think, um, I think people realized that
talking Heads was was was actually more of a shared experience,

(01:04:29):
like the the art of talking Heads was more of
a shared experience than than than one particular guy's uh ideas. Okay,
but throughout the book, certainly you say at some point
that you believe David is on the spectrum, but he
does do some very interesting thing. You said, he dropped

(01:04:51):
out of Risdy after one year, he left his significant
other wife after being inducted to the raw could roll
a Hall of fame literally that night. But the most
interesting thing in a business level is you agree that
you would split songwriting credit along with eno. Tell us

(01:05:11):
about the songwriting credit and who really wrote those songs? Well,
those songs were created by the five people who were
in the studio working mostly mostly created by uh, Tina, Jerry, David,
and myself from improvisations in the studio. And then we

(01:05:34):
would and sometimes Brian would be playing something in the
control room while we were out in the studio, but
more often than not he was listening and he would
add things later. But uh, the original basic tracks that
all those songs were on Remaining Light come from. We're

(01:05:57):
improvised by the four musicians in the studio. Then we
took the we arranged, uh, Brian and the engineer mainly
arranged the different jam sessions that we did so that
they would uh evolve into different parts of a song,

(01:06:18):
like an A section, of B section, a C section,
and then we would do some rough mixes of those,
at which point David was expected to write lyrics because
at a certain point, actually pretty early on, he said,
I'm I want to be the one who writes the lyrics.

(01:06:38):
I don't want to sing anyone else's lyrics. So we're like, okay, cool,
and uh he uh. We we all knew after those
compass points sessions on Remaining Light that that we had
something very extraordinary. And he said, you know, this is
so extraordinary. I can't just write like something off the

(01:07:01):
top of my head. I gotta live with these tracks
for a little while, and uh, then I'll be able
to write something. So we said, great, we understood that completely,
and I think he took I think he rented a
car and drove around the country listening to cassettes and
of the basic tracks, and also listening to the radio

(01:07:24):
with evangelical preachers and whatnot on the various regional radio stations,
and he came back with some great lyrics and at
that point Eno helped arrange some of the background vocals
and the U and actually I think he he wrote,
for example, uh, the melody to Letting the Days Go By,

(01:07:48):
you know, the chorus of of Once in a Lifetime.
And he made major contributions. Long story short, when when
when this great album was finally finished and we got
our advanced copies, Tina and Jerry and I am, we're
looking at him. And the agreement had been that it

(01:08:08):
would say music by in alphabetical order, David Byrne, Brian Eno,
Chris Brance, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, but instead it
said music by Brian David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Talking Heads. Well,

(01:08:28):
I thought David was a member of Talking Heads. But anyway,
you could see that the rest of us were being
treated like Sidemen all of a sudden, as if we
hadn't hadn't really contributed to the extent that we had,
you know, so we we had to deal with that.

(01:08:50):
Brian wanted Brian wanted the the front cover to say
Remain in Light by Talking Heads and Brian Eno and
we're like, oh my god, how are we gonna how
are we gonna talk about it this one? And Gary
Ker first went to Brian. He said, you know, Brian,
there's gonna be a nine month promotional tour behind this album.

(01:09:17):
Can you do that tour? And Brian said, oh no, Gary,
I couldn't possibly do that. You know, I don't tour.
And so Gary said, well, then how can we advertise
it as Brian you know and talking Heads if you're
not there? And uh, well that that ended that problem
right there. But despite the credit in terms of in

(01:09:42):
terms of publishing royalties, did you get one fifth? No?
Really no, I did not. So what was the final
split on the payment? You know, I prefer not to
get into the details because off the top of my head,
I don't exactly know what they are. I a good idea,
but you know, uh, you know, it didn't work out

(01:10:05):
the way it was supposed to work out. How about
all the other albums? You know? Are you talking about
performance royalties or I'm talking about publishing royalties? Publishing royalties? Well, um,
I'm afraid David gets gets the lion's share of most
of that, but you do get some. Yes. Now it's

(01:10:25):
like it's almost like Godfather three. It looks like David's
out of the band, and then you and Tina always
seem to find a way to get him back in. Yeah,
well you know you have to use psychology and uh,
and we learned. We learned that if you make David
thinks something's his idea, it might get done. And so

(01:10:52):
what could I say? I think every rock band who's
who's been around for a while has many twists and
turns and ups and downs, and and we had our
share too, Okay. Uh, after true stories, do you say
to yourself and then naked, do you say to yourself
this is ultimately done? Or do you don't always have

(01:11:14):
a hope that, well, we'll do it one more time.
I always had a hope that we do it one
more time? Yes, And has it ever come close? I
wish I could say yes, but I don't think so. No,
a couple a couple of times I got my hopes up,
but lately I'm I'm kind of resigned to the fact

(01:11:35):
that it's not going to happen. Um, although Talking Heads
has a great career on Broadway. Now there's some great
talking Head shows songs being performed on Broadway. So I
have you seen David Extravaganza in person? I have not.
I confess I have not. I had I been invited

(01:11:56):
to the show, I probably would would have been happy
to go, but no invitation was extended and I didn't
want to just drop in. And how how often or
when was the last time you actually spoke face to
face with David. I spoke face to face with David
for the last time in two thousand three, So it's

(01:12:22):
been a good long while. We we cut. We communicate
by email, mostly about you know, what songs can be
used in what movies and what? You know? When was
the last time you had an email from him? Oh?
Probably probably a couple of weeks ago. Okay, So after

(01:12:46):
Talking Heads is behind Tom Tom Club continues to go,
but also you and Tina start producing records. Yeah, how
does that happen? Well? Um, it kind of uh uh.
We hadn't really planned on being producers or anything. But
our good friend Alex Sadkin, who was an extraordinary engineer

(01:13:11):
and producer for Bob Marley and a Third World, and
he ended up producing, engineering and mixing things like I
want to Know what Love Is for Foreigner, you know,
big hits. He was scheduled he had worked with Bob
Marley and he was scheduled to produce Ziggy Marley and

(01:13:34):
the Melody Makers, Bob Marley's Kids and um. He was
down in Nassau Compass Point working with some band when
tragically he was thrown from a open air jeep. Uh,
they had an accident. He was thrown, hit his head
and never came to. So suddenly Virgin America, which was

(01:13:59):
a brand company, Uh, they needed producers for Ziggy Marley
and the Melody Makers. And Tina's younger brother, Lark Weymouth
was was young a and R man there and he
said to uh, Nancy Jeffries. Nancy Jeffries was in charge

(01:14:22):
of the Ziggy Marley and the Melody Maker's project. He said, Uh, Nancy,
have you have you thought about using Chris and Tina
because you know they love reggae. They know a lot
about you know, island culture and stuff. Maybe they would
be good. So we got a call from Nancy Jefferies

(01:14:42):
and she said, would you be interested in doing this?
And we said, yeah, we would be interested because Talking
Heads wasn't touring at the time or anything. And um,
we went down to Jamaica to meet Ziggy. Uh know.
First we we met his mother, Rita Marley, in a

(01:15:03):
sushi bar in New York and she said, she said, Okay,
you guys seem cool to me, and uh she she
remembered meeting us before somewhere and uh she liked her
Tom Tom called music Genius of Love. She loved that,
and um, so she said, you've got to come down

(01:15:24):
to Jamaican meet Ziggy. So we met Ziggy and uh
we flew down there and uh Ziggy said, yeah, man,
you can do it. So uh we started working with
Ziggy the first day, you said to me. This was
at Sigma Sound in New York because we we thought

(01:15:45):
if we if we were produced the record in Jamaica,
things might get kind of out of control. We we
should have it here in New York and and so
we did that and the first day Ziggy came to
me said Chris France, how come you bring your wife
to the studio, man, I said, well, Ziggy, First of all,

(01:16:09):
Tina knows more about music than I do. The second
of all, she's gonna be a great producer, so just
sit back and enjoy it. And uh, in fact, in fact,
it went very well. That record did great. It was
called Conscious Party. Another new signing to Virgin America at

(01:16:34):
that time was Keith Richards. So Keith Richards came in
and played on a song called Lee and Molly, which
is about a interracial relationship, and he was really cool.
And uh we had um q Massakla come in and
arrange background vocals for a group of um Zulu women,

(01:17:00):
young Zulu women who were in town doing a musical
called Sarah Fina, and uh Baba Ola Tunji dropped in.
Um a whole lot of Jamaican uh dance hall artists
stopped by to see what was happening. And the records
sold like millions. So it was a wonderful experience. Okay,

(01:17:24):
so needles to say, Talking Heads doesn't make another record,
you have success with Tom Tom Club. So for the
last twenty five years, how much of that was working,
how much of that was rest and relaxation my last
twenty five years. Well, I've I've taken plenty of time off.

(01:17:46):
I assure you we we like to go sailing. I
know you like to ski. When when our kids were younger,
we spent a lot of time at Crested Butte and
loved it there. Uh and of course also in New England.
Um but as you know, out west is kind of

(01:18:06):
more fun, especially the middle of winter. Uh. We uh
spent a lot of time sailing because we love to sail.
But we've also done several Tom Tom Club albums. Uh.
And we've done plenty of Tom Tom Club tours, sometimes

(01:18:27):
with a package, sometimes just on ourselves, by ourselves. The
last time we we played was I think six years ago.
You know, nobody's breaking down our door for a new
Tom Tom Club album. But we're okay with that because
we're we've already done some good stuff and um I

(01:18:51):
I we're more active in our community here in Fairfield,
Connecticut than we used to be, and we uh we
enjoy that. Tina Tina was really not too long ago
inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. Wow, that's
pretty cool. It's a big deal, and um, I mean

(01:19:15):
she's a really good company there. And uh, then I
decided I would write a book. And that was a
couple of years ago. Okay, well, obviously you've had this
health blip, but are you sailing into the sunset or
do you in the back of your mind, is there
some artistic project that you still want to cook up? Well,

(01:19:38):
Tina and I have been encouraged by what's happening with
electronic music today. Um, I'm not referring to, um, the
kind of music you you necessarily here on uh pop
popular radio. I'm I'm referring more to an underground thing

(01:20:01):
and uh and we dig the underground life. So we're
thinking that we we a few years back we did
a record um for a label run by the Chicks
on Speed and they were friends of ours there from
Holland or they were at the time, and they said,

(01:20:24):
would you do a We're gonna do this album called
girl Monster with with with all girl artists. Well, I know,
I'm not a girl artist, So we put Tina's name
on it and it was it was very well received
on an underground in an underground way, and um, so

(01:20:46):
we we thought, well, maybe we should do like an
electronic duo, or it's just Tina and myself, some electronic drums,
some keyboards, some bass, and some vocals, and we don't
have to have a big production. It can be very minimalist.

(01:21:08):
We don't have to have a big stage show because
maybe we won't even go out on tour, or maybe
we will and we'll we'll have some you know, interesting
little stage production that that um doesn't necessarily look like
a rock and roll show. So we're thinking along those lines.

(01:21:30):
I'm also thinking about writing a book about my beagles
because they travel with us everywhere. Poppy has has crossed
the Atlantic twenty two, no, twenty four times more than
most Americans. And are you painting at all? Well, that

(01:21:52):
you know, my son, uh Egan France is Uh is
doing the painting for the whole family right now. He's
really good, really great. He's got to show up in
Berlin starting next week. I think he's an art bossle.
He's serious, he's serious. And what about your others? Uh?

(01:22:13):
Your daughter? Oh? Oh, we only have two boys. His
name is his name is Robin, his nickname. He's an
electronic artist and he's got his own label called craft
Jerks like craft work but with J and a Z
craftjerks and he's on his like I don't know how

(01:22:36):
many releases twenty and uh and they sell. You know,
they're small batches, but they sell. And he also uh
well lately nobody's performing live, but he also performs live
as kid Jin sing as a DJ. Okay. Now, needless

(01:22:57):
to say, the musical landscape is littered with people who
are of household names and have no money in your
particular case, or the royalties and the sinks uh keeping
you comfortable? Thank goodness. Yes, we Tina and I were
very fortunate and we had a few good years and
we sucked some away. Good to know. Okay, Chris, I

(01:23:20):
think we've covered the basics. If you want to go
into in much more detail, needless to say, learn much
more about the New York scene and what it was
like to be in that and to be happening in
the late seventies and early eighties. Certainly read Remain in Love,
Chris's memoir out on July. Chris, thanks so much for
doing this. Thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure. Until next time.

(01:23:44):
This is Bob left sus