Chris Frantz never had any doubt the band Talking Heads would make it big.
“We all felt we were doing something we knew was going to succeed, but we were surprised at how quickly it happened for us,” recalled Frantz about bandmates David Byrne and Tina Weymouth during a recent phone interview. “I was prepared to work five years to get to the point where we got in about five weeks. We’d only done a few shows when our picture was on the cover of the Village Voice.”
The 69-year-old drummer and co-founder of the pioneering New York City rock group has a new memoir, “Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina,” available on Tuesday, July 21. On July 28 at 6 p.m. in a Book Soup-sponsored virtual event, he’ll be in conversation with comedian Jeff Garlin talking about the book.
Frantz said he felt previous books about Talking Heads hadn’t provided the true inside story of its history, so he wanted to set the record straight.
“I was there from before we even had a name up until the end (in 1991). I felt like my point of view was something that people might be interested in hearing, particularly our fans,” says Frantz. “They want to know about the real chemistry of the band.”
Frantz said he also wanted “to convey my love” for bassist and wife Tina. The couple married in 1977, and both still lead Tom Tom Club, which formed in 1981 and last released a studio album in 2012.
After reading Ian Hunter’s 1974 book “Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” seven years ago, Frantz was inspired to write his own memoir. The process took about two years.
“I consider myself a very lucky, fortunate guy,” he said, which affected how he told the tale. “The book should have an upbeat tone. People love to read and write about conflict. But from my point of view, there were a lot of sustained, really good times with Talking Heads — dare I say, once in a lifetime experiences. The last thing I wanted to do was write a book featuring a whiny drummer who wants to beat up on the lead singer. That’s just not me. I would never do that type of thing.”
Still, Frantz does seem to want to set the record straight as he remembers it. “The story that there was one songwriter in Talking Heads is a myth,” he writes, describing how both he and Weymouth played a prominent role in co-writing the band’s early hit “Psycho Killer.”
“Talking Heads was always a really good working, functioning collaboration. Everybody had a very important role. David’s role was of the utmost importance, but so was mine,” Frantz says.
Throughout “Remain in Love,” Franz tells fascinating stories from the band’s heyday: Touring Europe with the Ramones; finding a musical home at CBGB in The Bowery along with, Blondie, Patti Smith and others; working with Brian Eno on a run of groundbreaking albums including “Remain in Light”; making the landmark 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense” at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. As well, he includes wild escapades he and Tina endured while producing Britain’s Happy Mondays in the Bahamas.
To help prepare for the memoir, Frantz consulted Weymouth’s old datebooks. As the band’s road manager in the early days, she kept notes about each concert, including “how many encores the band received, because we always felt like how many encores you got determined how much the people like you.”
Weymouth also assisted Frantz in the fact-checking process. “Most of the time, we remembered things the same way,” he says.
While doing research for the book, he learned things he’d never known before, such as when a friend described an incident involving Byrne getting up to mischief following the cancellation of a group art show at Rhode Island School of Design.
According to the friend, Byrne secretly went back and rehung his own work to make it appear it was a solo show.
“I wish I’d known about it sooner,” says the drummer, who suggests that this “set an early precedent for David’s need to continually aggrandize himself at the expense of his collaborators, as if their contributions were not as important as his.”
Born in Kentucky, Frantz’s father was an army officer and his parents met at West Point. “We moved around quite a bit until I was about eight years old. Then that stopped and we stayed in Pittsburgh.”
Frantz played trumpet in elementary school but didn’t excel. A teacher spotted his inclination for rhythm and suggested a switch to drums. While attending boarding school in Virginia in the mid-1960s, some students turned Frantz onto soul music and it made a lasting impact.
“I was into the Beatles, Stones and the Byrds,” he recalls. “These Southern guys said, ‘No man, you gotta get into James Brown and Sam & Dave. That’s where it’s at.’ They gave me records to listen to and it was a no-brainer. I just loved them immediately.”
Returning to Pennsylvania for prep school, Frantz got interested in art and went to RISD, where he met Weymouth in class. They dated as Frantz continued to play drums.
While creating music for a student film, he was unexpectedly paired with guitarist and fellow RISD student, David Byrne. The musicians clicked and decided to start a band together. Weymouth eventually learned bass guitar and joined them. Jerry Harrison, who’d already achieved some fame as a member of the Modern Lovers, was recruited soon after.
Once the band started gigging around NYC, Frantz writes: “David was very raw and awkwardly stiff onstage, but when he got lost in a song, ‘You couldn’t take your eyes off him.’”
Byrne’s magnetism and the band’s unique music resulted in a run of influential albums during the 1970s and ‘80s and led to hits, such as “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” “Road to Nowhere,” “And She Was” and “Wild Wild Life.”
Chris and Tina went on to have success with Tom Tom Club. Their 1981 dance chart-topper “Genius of Love” ended up being sampled by more than 150 rap, hip-hop and R&B acts.
“We were influenced by early hip-hop, reggae, all kinds of dance and disco music,” says Frantz. “Our source of inspiration were bands like P-Funk and Zapp, so the hip-hop thing was not far off. It was so great when all that happened.”
The book ends when Talking Heads reunited for a three-song set at the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York City. Even though Frantz said in our interview that “a lot of people I know would love to see a Talking Heads reunion, and it would be really great if we could do one,” Byrne has never expressed any interest over the years — despite lavish offers.
Once promotional efforts for the book are finished, Frantz said he wants to write a travel book. Weymouth is going to be writing her own memoir. And for Tom Tom Club enthusiasts hankering for new songs, the drummer says, “We have a great studio here at home. I think we might try to do some real electro stuff like you hear in Berlin.”
