Customer Reviews

This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

There's some insight here into the origins of David Byrne's lyrics, but it's tough to trust anything beyond that. The author can't spell "The Shaggs" or the German group "Can" or legendary Country singer "Cowboy Copas". He regularly misattributes songs to artists who didn't perform them. He apparently considers the B-52's an all-girl group - whether that's just stupid or some sort of slam against homosexuals is unclear. He makes statements about bands like Fun Boy Three (he doesn't get the name right either) being "obscure", despite the fact that they'd had more hits than the Talking Heads in the UK at that point.

In short, he seems to know very little about music in general. The book concentrates disproportionately on artistic influences on the band rather than musical ones. It's interesting as one rarely gets that point of view.
On the other hand, I suspect his fact-checking relative to artists is as bad as his fact-checking relative to musicians.

Early in the book, he quotes the band members quite heavily, though with a few dozen pages, this disappears entirely. There are hints that the band doesn't like him, with the implication being that all contact with band members is halted relatively early in the process. Much of the book is about the "battle" between Weymouth and Byrne, but it's tough to say whether this was the fundamental crux of the band's problems or not. Despite mentioning it frequently, there's not much substance behind any of it.

In short, this is worth a quick glance, but borrow it from your library like I did. Spend the money on a record instead.

I was very excited to pick up this book. Sadly, I was very let down. Most rock biographies tell the explicit story of a band, their history, etc. However I've yet to encounter one that has such a blatantly bias viewpoint, selectively-informs and discredits any band/musician not directly-related to Talking Heads as this dire item.

The RI band The Fabulous Motels were (pages 32-34) ill-mentioned as The Motels (who did not change their name as much as stated in the book). They later became The Young Adults and Byrne auditioned for both bands not making either. This informantion is pretty well known stuff in RI rock-lore and is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Which strikes me as odd if not questioning how much else of Byrne-related facts were omitted from the book.

Page 244 reads "...an obscure group called Fun Boy 3 (Three). Their music is not important..." Wha? The Fun Boy Three was Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staples of the uber-influential ska band The Specials and as stated below had much bigger and more hits in Europe with two albums than the Heads had with five up until then. They were also a racially-integrated outfit.

And of course Bowman makes no attempt to explain exactly why their music is not important. Big surprise - Bowman's wrong.

And it was in fact Andy Partridge of XTC (mentioned briefly on page 118) - not Tina - who had jokingly came up with the Heads sophomore LP title. Asking them when "More Songs About Buildings And Food" was coming out - to which the heads would routinely laugh at. XTC also opened for them at the December 28, 1978 show at The Beacon (as per the Heads request) and Byrne even introduced them on stage.

For some reason Prince (whose name has been printed next to the word "genius" more times than one can count) gets reamed. "David was smarter than Prince" Bowman states matter-of-factly on page 277. Which, anyway you slice it, is just a dumb (if not vaguely ignorant) statement. Bowman feels constantly compelled to put (far more successful to boot) contemporaries like Prince and Sting down in support of Byrne's "genius". I never thought I'd have to say this but Sting is less pretentious than Byrne (and far less insecure) and Prince - who IS a musical genius regardless if you happen to like him or not - had been integrating white musicians with black musicians at least three years before the Heads did such a "revolutionary" thing.

And while mentioning the birth of Jerry and David's children (given full names and birthdays) Tina and Chris's children are listed as "In August Tina gave birth to a second son" (page 306).
Therin lies an example of obvious bias from Bowman. Regardless of what happened in the band amongst band members Bowman feels constantly compelled to discredit Tina at every given chance. This (along with the above complaints) leaves a bad taste in the readers mouth. Whatever happened in the band - it's a book about all four heads not just David Byrne.

I also don't care about what the author thinks about George Bush Sr. and other un-related parties that take up loads of wasted print. While other Head-related items are virtually ignored. For example the Tom Tom Club album Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom. Mentioned not once in the book while Close To The Bone and the s/t debut were documented. It was made while the heads where still a band so this makes no sense. Neither was Byrne's mid-life crisis video for "Make Believe Mambo" and Harrison's equally silly "Flying Under Radar" video (the latter wasn't even listed in the videography section).

No mention of Talking Heads on the cover of Rolling Stone. Title of story: Is America's best band Byrned out? Relevant? Yes!!

There's also no mention of how the singles did in terms of radio play. A fact of some importance I'd imagine - them being a band that released many singles and all.

There's also no mention of the pop musical landscape around the Heads at the time of their popularity and demise. i.e. The U.S. underground (which produced still-relevant bands like The Replacements and Husker Du), the grunge-movement and the popularity of REAL funk and hip-hop.

Having said all of this I can only hope that an authorized account of ALL things Talking Heads will be written someday.
Bowman's book is an over-long failed attempt that was clearly in the wrong hands. The Talking Heads deserve much better!

Facts don't do what you want them to, but that's about all that makes this book worth picking up. If you want to get the general story of the rise and fall of this band, it's valuable as a collection of details, but from the first chapter I found Bowman's attempts to provide insight and explanation incredibly banal and horribly executed. Bowman *learned* a lot about the band, but Tina is right, he *knows* pretty much nothing about the inside story and his attempts to spin off in literary examinations are pitiful. Just skip it till he gives up and gets back to the basic facts he's managed to collate from photocopying every article he could find at the library.

The interviews and direct sources are equally inadequate. It's very, very clear that no one wanted to cooperate with him, and even those insiders who did speak to him have little of substance to offer.

As a fan of Talking Heads, I enjoyed learning more about their story. But as a critical reader, I'm disappointed that such a poor job was done on this project. I guess the best thing you could say about this Talking Heads biography is that it makes you desperately want to read a much better one.

I'm a big-time Talking Heads fan and I take issue with these messages from the "true" fans. Of course the main issue of the band has always been David and Tina. I remember reading about their fights in Rolling Stone around 1978. Chris was married to Tina. He's going to take her side of course. As for Jerry, Bowman portrays how time after time Jerry and David worked together, independent of the other two Heads. Whether or not you prescribe to Bowman's pro-David view, the pages are mostly about how the Talking Heads created their music in the studio, and that music's relationship to world culture. For example, I take the Walkman for granted, but I laughed when I read that originally it was designed it with two ear phone jacks because they imagined people would listen to the same tape on the street side-by-side? Apparently, no one could imagine Americans isolating themselves by walking down the street wearing headphones! The book is full of these terrifically weird quirky details. I have to say what the book could have used is an in-depth interview with Brian Eno. Eno comes across as a kind of Darth Vader. He's quite the mysterious guy! There are many reasons to read this book, but foremost, to me, is that it is well written and engaging. This is not your average "rock scene" self-indulgent journey. I stopped flagging pages with post-its after using half a stack on this book - it's got that much juicy info.

David Byrne on "This Must be the Place": "I have not read the This Must Be The PLace book (a T Heads bio by David Bowman) and I don't intend to. I was under the impression that he was going to be our Greil Marcus and put the music into a larger social, cultural, etc context- which is what he said was his concept...but it seem he became a different writer and it's a bio as told to...with some mistakes (I overheard someone laughing at Loco de Amor being called Coco de Amor!) Anyway, I'll live through it, as Miss CL said...but what a waste!"

Tina Weymouth on "This Must be the Place": "That yet another "unofficial" TH biographer would fail to know our story should come as no surprise. So much bunk has been written in the absence of knowledge, it would be impossible for an "unofficial" biographer to do little but promote revisionist theories patched together from the hype of a few old music mags while regurgitating past rumors and stale half-truths. Even his biased questioning of band members couldn't bring light to his dark perspective.

Out of his depth, Bowman could only sink to the bottom. Still, you have to feel as sorry for him as for what he does to our group. He might have used a pseudonym when he accepted the only offer he could get in lieu of a novel. Writers who can't otherwise get their books published need to eat same as anyone: to understand this is to forgive, perhaps, an otherwise foolish weakness for the dumbed-down polemics of a tabloid, an immoral exploitation that doesn't care who gets caught in the crossfire."

Talking Heads was my one of favorite bands of the 80s so I was looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately I don't know what to trust in terms of what is accurate or otherwise. How much trouble would it have been to fact check if James Brown actually sang "More Bounce to the Ounce" as Bowman writes? (He didn't. The great funk band Zapp recorded the tune.)

I also would have preferred a little more balance in Bowman's reporting. His bashing of Tina Weymouth puts the integrity of his story into question.

I came here to read these reviews to see if it was just me, or was this book truly that bad. I'm pleased to say that reading these reviews has confirmed two things - yes, the book really is that bad, and also that the majority of the people who've read the book and written a review here can actually write better than David Bowman.

This entire novel reads like an undergraduate essay by someone with half a grasp of his subject matter and not enough research to reach the word limit. It's woefully researched and the only photos from the scant selection offered that aren't from stock sources seem to come from Mark Kehoe - a minority player in the overall story who commands an inordinate amount of space. (Is he a friend of Bowman's?) There are also some dreadful attempts to theorise and contextualise in an attempt to pad out the common knowledge that forms the bulk of the book.

This book would be dreadful if it had been published as a vanity imprint. The fact it's got through an editor and into hardback is a sad indictment of the industry.

The book was terribly engrossing and a quick read, though I question some of the information. For instance, how could David have had a tooth he chipped when he was four or five years old repaired when he was in his 20s? The damaged "baby" tooth would have fallen out and been replaced by an undamaged tooth in the meantime. Others have commented on the author's apparent lack of knowledge the music world of that time. (Calling Patti Smith's second album the worst CBGB-spawned album out at the time is ridiculous unless all the other albums were pure genius: while "Radio Ethiopia" is no "Horses," it is intermittently brilliant.)

The book reads like it was written by a younger Dominick Dunne, with lots and lots of name dropping. Still, nothing else I know of provides so much information about the band. I listened to Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club and David Byrne albums while reading. It left me missing them. I recommend it.

Bowman uses interviews from band members, friends and articles to write the story of Talking Heads. He succeeds about half of the time. While I did get some insight into how the band got together, rose through the ranks of NY bands and made a name for themselves, I also felt a lot was left out. Bowman takes too much time in writing about dance and art and the people that inhabit that world. These subjects are certainly part of the TH's (or mainly Byrne's) history and should be included, but not at the expense of what was let out or not followed up upon. This band had a very dysfunctional relationship between it's members and Bowman does point this out, but leaves several questions hanging. The tense relationship between Weymouth and Byrne is not really fleshed out (we know Weymoth has problems with Byrne, but why? How did these problems get started?)and the breakup of the band is treated almost as an afterthought. I do think Bownman does a good job going over the Big Suit tour and also pointing out what made TH sound so special. His writing style could be irritating to some, but, except in some spots, didn't really bother me. This is not a bad effort, it's just inconsistent.

... when you could read this brilliant, sometimes scathing chronicle of life during wartime. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, it's a fun, funny and outrageous look at the behind-the-scenes machinations of the single best band from the eighties. Bowman examines not only the Heads' heads, but the rarified and oft-polluted air they breathe in a NYC unnerved yet terrorized by psycho killer, Son of Sam, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa. Even Tina Weymouth, known for her moodiness and irresistable cuteness onstage, comes off smelling like a ... well, you'll have to read it to find out. This ain't no fooling around. This is brash and witty "Salon" interviewer David Bowman at his best.