Jerry Harrison On Stop Making Sense, Remain In Light, Talking Heads At 50

Forbes

12 hours ago

This week, in celebration of their 50th anniversary, Talking Heads released a brand new video for one of their most enduring hits.
Directed by Academy Award-nominee Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, 20th Century Women) and starring Oscar-nominated actor Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird, Little Women), the new 'Psycho Killer' short drops 50 years to the day following an appearance by David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth as opening act for the Ramones on stage at legendary New York club CBGB.
Following his run alongside Jonathan Richman in The Modern Lovers, guitarist and keyboard player Jerry Harrison would enter the fold shortly thereafter, appearing on the group's debut album Talking Heads: 77.
While the group is prepping the release of a super deluxe edition of their 1978 sophomore studio effort More Songs About Buildings and Food (now available for pre-order on CD/Blu-ray or vinyl in a variety of forms ahead of release July 25, 2025), Harrison has been taking a unique look back of his own, pondering the group's legacy via deep dives into both Stop Making Sense and Remain In Light.
Guitarist Adrian Belew (King Crimson) joined Talking Heads in the studio for the creation of arguably the group's most cherished recording, appearing on four tracks on the 1980 classic Remain In Light.
Wrapping up a European tour this Saturday in London, Harrison and Belew will return to the U.S. for a Remain In Light run set to kick off July 23 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with Harrison set to host a series of Stop Making Sense screenings beginning September 11 in Concord, New Hampshire.
Two years ago, Talking Heads re-released the classic Jonathan Demme-directed concert film in 4K, celebrating the restoration with their first appearance together in more than 20 years.
Free of the trappings that tend to define most concert films, tricks like audience reaction shots and band ruminations, Stop Making Sense thrives thanks in part to Demme's character development, a motion picture in which band members are introduced one song at a time, giving viewers time to get fully acquainted with each.
Always ahead of their time, Talking Heads independently produced it, self-financing a budget in excess of a million dollars, while orchestrating a shrewd deal that would find them taking back ownership of the film four decades later.
Stop Making Sense utilized digital audio decades before it was the norm, with Harrison in particular playing an integral role in restoring the film's audio following a lengthy quest to recover negatives and multitrack recordings previously thought lost.
'I think a lot of these screenings are going to be in theaters where people dance. It certainly was in Milwaukee and in Madison,' said Harrison prior to a Stop Making Sense screening and audience Q&A just outside Chicago at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, Illinois. 'The mix took a long time. Because there were just little details. Going to the sort of 13 points that you can go to in Atmos, we had to go back to scratch,' he explained. 'But this is just another level better.'
I spoke with Jerry Harrison about interacting with fans during the Stop Making Sense screenings, improvisation and revisiting Remain In Light. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.
Jim Ryan: How have the Stop Making Sense screenings gone?
Jerry Harrison: Well, the first one, I actually talked for a really long time: for like an hour. What was great about it is there are certain points that you want to make about the film - a discussion of Jonathan Demme, what the show was like leading up to it, things like that. And it's great when the questions provoke that discussion. So, then it's not like a lecture. It's like a naturally flowing conversation.
In Milwaukee, they went off on some tangents - which was perfectly fine. But, because Milwaukee is my hometown, and where I met my wife and everything like that, there were personal questions that could only take place there.
There was a question about my English teacher. Her name was Barbara Gensler. And she cast me in the senior class play. My mother, at the same high school, was in that play. But the senior class play, traditionally, is not the people that are studying acting. They take people out of the general student population and try to get you to do something unusual for yourself and challenge yourself. So, Barbara hired a dancing teacher for me, a singing coach and all sorts of things that, as it went on - and I ended up becoming a professional musician - were really influential. 'Yes, you can sing!'
In fact, the dancing coach said that I was such a good dancer that I should take ballet lessons - which I did for a little while. And then I danced in a show that was like an all Milwaukee show. This was all right before I went off to college. And it was like, 'Wow. I never thought about that...' I didn't go back out for track because I had gotten so into this.
So, she was very influential on, you might say, completing my approach to being on stage.
Ryan: I watched Stop Making Sense this morning on a streaming service. I've seen it before on Blu-ray and different formats. But I haven't seen the restoration yet. The search for the negatives, finding the old tracks - what was it like kind of hearing and seeing that film anew last year?
Harrison: It was thrilling. And here was the most thrilling moment. I had not been there when the transfer to IMAX was made. I couldn't be in L.A. at that moment. And, so, at the Toronto Film Festival, it was also the excitement that we were at the film festival and we were all together again. And, interestingly, it was during the SAG strike - so no actors showed up. So, we were the only performers at the festival. So, of course, it even made us a little more special.
So, seeing it in that light? Ednah Holt's mouth is six feet tall. That was just like, 'Wow!' When we were mixing it and working on it, it never looked better. The scan was beautiful. The color correction was better than ever. All of those things.
The mix took a long time. Because there were just little details. Going to the sort of 13 points that you can go to in Atmos, we had to go back to scratch. And then it was like, 'Well, we used to use this plugin edit - but it doesn't work anymore. We have to listen. How do we get this?'
There was this middle thing. Because you said you saw the Blu-ray. So, 1999, when we did it, we did a re-release of the film. But we didn't find the negatives then. I mean, that 5.1 sound mix is really good. But this is just another level better.
Ryan: And I know that you were pretty intimately involved in restoring the audio - which also required tracking down lost original tracks. What was that process like for you?
Harrison: That's right. Well, we had transferred it to digital back in '84. Because we knew that in film, you have to make copies all of the time. But, at that time, there was this whole thing about two Sony 24 track [tape machines]
When we mixed it originally, we had mag reels as well as the 24 tracks. And it was unbelievable. It was like, you would start mixing - and you'd mix for 15 seconds. And they'd go, 'Sync!' And they had lost sync. You mixed in 15 to 25 second chunks for an hour and a half. So, you never got any sense of the flow while you were doing it. You just backed up a little bit and then, 'OK. Here's where the faders are…'
David and I stayed in L.A. when Jonathan Demme and Lisa Day were doing the edits. Chris and Tina had gone back to the east coast. And so we were there all the way through it. Well, we had hired someone to do the mix - but then we didn't like it. So, after a week of this kind of laborious process, we got someone else - started over.
There was also this sort of Dolby matrix that could kind of give you a surround. But I would go around to the theaters at the festivals to adjust it. Because, if it wasn't adjusted right, a snare drum would fly to the rear and things like that. This was back in '84. Now when you're watching, it's just so clear. You see this and then you close your eyes and go, 'Oh, I can tell someone's over there… And over there. And over there!' It can be an internal thing inside your head as well as allowing stimulation.
I also feel that, for the audience, you ought to go to it twice. Maybe the ideal is you see it in IMAX, which is sort of enlarged. And then the other is you go to a place where everyone's just dancing up a storm. And the aisles aren't too steep. IMAX is very steep. Dancing in an IMAX theater, I think, would be risking your life!
I think a lot of these screenings are going to be in theaters where people dance. It certainly was in Milwaukee and in Madison.
Ryan: In releasing Stop Making Sense independently, you also financed the budget yourselves, right? I can't imagine that was happening a lot at the height of the major label system. What made that the right approach?
Harrison: We did. I think we got like a loan from Warner Bros. We always tried to control our career. And we were kind of unique in this.
Actually, this is sort of an amusing thing. So, when videos began, David really got into videos. And he kept having ideas about it. The first video was with Toni Basil [directing] 'Crosseyed and Painless.' And then they did 'Once in a Lifetime.' But he started saying how many videos he wanted to do. And Warner Bros. was going, 'Well, we don't want to pay for all of those videos…' So, we made the deal that we owned the videos and leased them to them.
I think we're the only band in the world that ever did that. We designed our own album covers too. Which was also unique.
Ryan: In the end, was it more profitable going that route?
Harrison: Storytelling Giant came out with all of the videos. But it was more about control than making money. It's also… I mean, if you own it, then someone else can't do something really bad with it.
Ryan: You guys also got the rights to Stop Making Sense back after 40 years. I know there's that convoluted process where song copyrights can sometimes revert back to the artist. Was this that or did you guys make a concerted effort to go after them from go?
Harrison: No, that's something different. We were right at the beginning of that.
There's a few ways you could go on that. One, you just take the ownership. Another way is you renegotiate with the distributors. And we were at the very early stage of when that was happening - so the case law was… less than clear. So, you had to make decisions based upon how you knew that Warner Bros. was going to really fight.
So, we gave up to them. It improved our position - which was good.
Ryan: It's been fun to watch you revisiting Remain In Light. What's it been like teaming up with Adrian in that way?
Harrison: It's been so much fun. First of all, it's such an amazing record. But that tour was also unbelievable - but in a very different way.
There's this YouTube concert from Rome in 1980 that captures it quite well. In fact, that was kind of the jumping off point, or the blueprint, that Adrian and I used when we put this together.
Ryan: In incorporating horns and some of the stuff that you guys have during these live performances, you're continually finding new ways to push this music forward, even 45 years later. How exciting has it been to do that?
Harrison: Well, it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I felt that nothing had really quite captured the fun of those tours.
When I produced the group Turkuaz, they would always ask me to come out and play with them. And it was always a Talking Heads song. They seemed to know the material really well. So, I talked to their manager and said, 'Would they want to do this with Adrian and me?' So, they were playing at Exit/In down in Nashville. And Adrian lives there. And I told Adrian, 'I think I finally found the solution…' So, I flew down and we went and saw them. After one song, he goes, 'Yep. You're right!'
It's more than that they knew the material and loved it and were excited to play it. It's all of the mechanics of being on the road. Who takes the lower bunk, the middle bunk or the higher bunk? Who can share a room together? Well, they're an experienced touring group. And, if we had done this with studio musicians, they would've all gone, 'I need my own room. I need this or that…' And it's already such a big touring party.
We're doing it for the joy of the music, not as a get rich quick scheme.
Ryan: Obviously, there's a lot of experimentation on Remain in Light. But, initially, a lot of that music developed out of longer instrumental jam sessions. Was there a sense of improvisation there as well, at least initially?
Harrison: We deliberately went into the recording process without a single song written. And we really used the mixing board as the compositional tool. Mixing boards back then had an A and B button - which grouped channels. So, it really became A, and there's this bunch of tracks playing. B, this bunch of tracks playing. And you're kind of going back and forth between them. Now, you might add something else like a keyboard stab or percussion thing that you'd bring in. Stuff like that.
So, it was an album that was difficult for David to write lyrics to - because it has so few chord changes. It's sort of modal. They suggest a chord - but it's not like, 'OK. I'm going up to the four chord or the five chord or minor third.' It doesn't have that normal song structure quality. Which is also why it's sort of like chants.
I actually think that if you would go back to say the Grateful Dead or psychedelic music - or even the end of the Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want,' where they go like back and forth on two chords and it sort of evolves and evolves - it's music like that but with like African notes. So, instead of being five parts, it's like eight or 10 or 15, you know?
But that's also why it's so danceable. And so it sort of touches your heart I think.