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i don't know, i definitely wish they all got along but i can see how they ended up as enemies. i'm sure byrne was really hard to work with in many ways, but he was also just clearly on a different wavelength than the others. watching a few docs, the non-byrnes always emphasize what a collaborative unit they were in their earlier years, before the collaboration circle got bigger and bigger as the ilneup expanded. they seem to have been ok with the expanded lineup, too (making a couple of the best albums of the century probably helped to ease the tension), but they probably assumed that at some point they'd revert to being members of equal standing again. so they all felt burned. but i can see byrne's side of it too. what are you going to do when the other members just aren't as talented but they're demanding an equal share of the creative workload (and credit)? byrne doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would handle that kind of dilemma gracefully.
― Karl Malone, Monday, 23 April 2018 21:05 (six years ago) link
three years pass...
Thought this was pretty awesome. From a 2013 interview in the New Statesman:
Rob Pollard: One of my favourite tracks that you’ve appeared on is Nothing But Flowers. I absolutely love that song. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to work with Talking Heads, and how you came up with that brilliant guitar part?
Johnny Marr: Thanks, I’m really glad you like it, no one really talks about that track! When I got invited to go over to Paris to play with Talking Heads, it came really out the blue and was very much a professional invitation because I didn’t know any of the band personally. It was one of those many moments in my life where I didn’t even have to think for a second because of course it was a ‘yes’. Talking Heads were one of the really important bands when I was a teenager, and I still like almost everything they did to this day, so off I went. When I got there, there was just this modal bass line with no chord changes on it, and a drum groove. That immortal phrase was being banded about: ‘it’s something of a blank canvas’. Usually, that’s music to my ears, but I was listening to it and, it being my very first day, I was a little nervous and not wanting to be inappropriate, but the truth is that I listened to it a good four, five times and I couldn’t think of anything, and I just thought: ‘right, Johnny boy, your moment has come, at the age of 23, that’s it, you’ve lost it,’ so I went for a walk around Paris and I was just beating myself up thinking ‘this is it, you’ve choked’. And that was the first time that had happened. Just as I was going back into the studio I thought to myself it’s because there’s not very much there for me to hang what I do on. So I just turned to Steve Lillywhite, who was producing, and said: ‘do you mind if I just put some chord changes on it?’ And he was like, ‘be our guest!’ David had just nipped out, so I took that opportunity whilst he wasn’t there to just throw a chord change on there, and pretty much treat it like it was my own demo, and take pure liberties, as they say in the north. Once I got a chord change on it, it just had a comical, quirky aspect to it. So I pulled out this 12 string, which now belongs to Bernard Butler, and just went for that amusing, catchy, American type riff.
The best thing about doing that song, was the very start of it when it all falls in and the bass player’s sort of warming up – and this is down to Steve Lillywhite’s great production technique – I just started playing completely absentmindedly, almost lighting a cig whilst talking to somebody because I assumed the machine wasn’t on, and he said: ‘right, OK that’s the intro done, next, verse two’, and I was like, ‘hang on a minute,’ and he just said ‘no, that was perfect’.
Basically, the short version of that is that I just had to throw a load of stuff at it to get to where I could be inspired. It taught me to not be too timid when you’re doing sessions. When I worked with Beck, even though I was totally sleep deprived, I just said ‘plug me in, and the very first thing I record just let me go with it, and let me overplay and don’t be too precious’. But I’m glad you like the track. I couldn’t believe it when he put his vocal on it, it was so inspired. The lyrics are the complete opposite to Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/03/johnny-marr-everyone-should-get-fair-shout-and-no-one-can-tell-me-conservative-party
I'm not a fan of the album, but I love this one track, and after reading this, I'm tempted to give Johnny Marr most of the credit. The guy was hot off of Strangeways, Here We Come while Talking Heads had just done the very uneven True Stories (the first album they did that I didn't like, much less love).
― birdistheword, Monday, 31 January 2022 05:25 (two years ago) link