"Definitive...Not just for Talking Heads fans—it’s a masterful dive into downtown New York in
the 70s and the changing face of rock music.”— Town & Country " Riveting" — New York Post "A
masterful achievement." — Booklist (starred review) On the 50th anniversary of Talking Heads
acclaimed music biographer Jonathan Gould presents the long-overdue definitive story of this
singular band capturing the gritty energy of 1970s New York City and showing how a group of
art students brought fringe culture to rock’s mainstream forever changing the look and sound
of popular music. “Psycho Killer.” “Take Me to the River.” “Road to Nowhere.” Few musical
artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational
bands of New York’s downtown 1970s music scene Talking Heads have endured as a musical and
cultural force for decades. Their unique brand of transcendent experimental rock remains a
lingering influence on popular music—despite their having disbanded over thirty years ago. Now
New Yorker contributor Jonathan Gould offers an authoritative deeply researched account of a
band whose sound fame and legacy forever connected rock music to the cultural avant-garde.
From their art school origins to the enigmatic charisma of David Byrne and the internal
tensions that ultimately broke them apart Gould tells the story of a group that emerged when
rock music was still young and went on to redefine the prevailing expectations of how a band
could sound look and act. At a time when guitar solos lead-singer swagger and sweaty
stadium tours reigned supreme Talking Heads were precocious awkward quirky and utterly
distinctive when they first appeared on the ragged stages of the East Village. Yet they would
soon mature into one of the most accomplished and uncompromising recording and performing acts
of their era. More than just a biography of a band Gould masterfully captures the singular
time and place that incubated and nurtured this original music: downtown New York in the 1970s
that much romanticized little understood milieu where art music and commerce collided in the
urban dystopia of Lower Manhattan. What emerges is an expansive portrait of a unique cultural
moment and an iconoclastic band that shifted the paradigm of popular music by burning down the
house of mainstream rock.
