How Music Works (45 page)

York was one such place. Over the years people have asked me if I sensed

that something special was going on there in the mid- to late-seventies. I did not. It seems to me that there is at least as much musical creativity going on around town now as there was then—it just isn’t focused on one particular

bar or neighborhood. I remember hanging out at the bar at CBGB watching

other bands play, and sure, sometimes I’d think, “Wow, that band is
really
good,” but just as often I’d think, “That band really sucks, too bad they’re such nice guys.” The exact same thing happens now when I go out and hear

music—sometimes I’m blown away, and other times it’s a wasted evening.

Back then, my bandmates and I would rehearse in our nearby loft and then

play at CBGB as often as was practical. But that was just what we did; it didn’t seem in any way special. We felt like a typical group of artists struggling to survive, as they always have. Our days (and even nights) were often routine, DAV I D BY R N E | 251

boring. It wasn’t like a movie, where everyone’s constantly hopping from one inspirational moment or exciting place to the next and consciously making a

revolution. Besides, CBGB was a dump in a part of town that was pretty much

ignored—a factor I might have undervalued.

I was not aware of any revolution in the making —if one could even call

it that. But I was conscious that I and many others were rejecting much of

the music that had come before us, and that this sentiment was pervasive at

that time. But so what? Everyone was doing that in their own way, rejecting

things and moving on. It’s just a part of discovering who you are; it’s nothing special.

As I remember it, things kicked in at CBGB in 1974, when Tom Verlaine and

a few others persuaded owner Hilly Kristal to allow them to play for the door at what was then a biker bar on the Bowery. “Playing for the door” meant that the bar charged a small admission fee, which went to the band, and Hilly in turn reaped the money from all the new patrons who had wandered in and were now

buying beers. It was an equitable deal. Both sides benefited—the bar hadn’t

been drawing many customers at the time, so Hilly didn’t really have a lot to lose. I will argue in the rest of this chapter that the venue and its policies make a music scene happen as much as the creativity of the musicians. So Tom and

Hilly deserve a lot of credit, because with their simple agreement, they opened the door just a crack, and that allowed the emergence of a scene.

When my friends and I gravitated to New York City around 1974, I initially

slept on the floor of a loft belonging to a painter who happened to live a block from CBGB. Patti Smith and Tom’s band, Television, had just started playing

there, and my friends and I realized that maybe, possibly, our project, which was about to become Talking Heads, might be able to play there too. That

prospect spurred us all on. We began to rehearse in earnest. I was already

writing songs in dribs and drabs on my own anyway, and I suspect (despite

my wondering in the previous chapter if artists would even create without

an outlet) that I would have been doing so with or without CBGB across the

street. But knowing there was a possible venue for our songs focused my

energies, and I began to churn out more of them, and the band that became

Talking Heads eventually began to rehearse them.

CBGB was, from a structural point of view, a perfect, self-actuating, self-

organizing system. A biological system, in a way: a coral reef, a root system, a termite colony, a rhizome, a neural network. An emergent entity governed by

252 | HOW MUSIC WORKS

a few simple rules that Hilly established at the start, rules that made it possible for the whole scene to emerge, and, subsequently, to flow and flourish with a life all its own. Of course I didn’t know that at the time—it’s not like there was a policy statement or flyer with rules on it posted anywhere.

Later on I came to realize that you can sometimes tell in advance whether

or not a given situation will develop into a vibrant scene. As I’ve said, it doesn’t depend entirely on the inspiration and creativity of the individuals hanging out there. A confluence of external factors helps encourage the latent talent in a community to flower. In the rest of this chapter, I will elucidate some of those factors. This might not be definitive, but it’s a start.

1. THERE MUST BE A VENUE THAT IS OF

APPROPRIATE SIZE AND LOCATION IN WHICH

TO PRESENT NEW MATERIAL

This sounds kind of obvious, but it’s worth saying because not every

space works for every kind of music. As I explained in chapter one,

where music is heard can determine the sort of music created by the artists

who perform there. It might seem dispiriting to acknowledge that humble

brick and mortar can shape what pours out of a creative soul, but this reality doesn’t take anything away from the talent or skill of composers or performers. Their songs and performances will be, one hopes, absolutely heartfelt,

passionate, and true—it’s just that we channel our ineffable creative urges, sometimes unconsciously, into figuring out what is appropriate for a given

situation. The mere existence of CBGB facilitated the creation of the bands

and songs that touched our hearts and souls. It was the right size, the right shape, and in the right place.

It was fairly intimate, but not quiet. There was always bar chatter and

jukebox music, so it didn’t have the aura of a concert hall or a vibe like the Bottom Line’s, a few blocks away, where people felt compelled to sit quietly and listen. The room, its physical and social setting, proposed that if there were to be any theatricality employed by the performers, it would be

of a type that used limited technical means. There was no space for elabo-

rate facilities or high-tech creations, and everybody who was in the “wings,”

about to go on stage, was in plain view. That meant that no one would even

DAV I D BY R N E | 253

consider staging theatrical spectacles that required elaborate lighting and

sets—that sort of stuff just wasn’t physically possible there. I’ve always

liked creative restrictions, and here, happily, many were already in place.

A show using extremely modest means still left plenty of room for ges-

ture, costume, and sound. “Poor theater,” as Polish theater innovator Jerzy

Grotowski called it. He wrote that theater is about “the discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a totality of physical and mental reaction.”

He went on to write, “Here we can see the theater’s therapeutic function for people in our present-day civilization. It is true that the actor accomplishes this act, but he can only do so through an encounter with the spectator.”1

Taking Grotowski at his word, I would argue that some of the most inno-

vative and viscerally moving theater in America at that time was not being

made in proper theaters, but taking place on the stage of this grotty club on the Bowery and in the clubs that imitated it in the years that followed. There were some innovative theater groups that emerged downtown around that

same period—the Wooster Group and Mabou Mines come to mind—and

they were similarly direct, immediate, and real, despite being in no way naturalistic. But in CBGB a new theater was emerging that was both naked and

confrontational. And you could dance to it—in a manner of speaking.

2. THE ARTISTS SHOULD BE ALLOWED

TO PLAY THEIR OWN MATERIAL

This might seem obvious, too, but it’s important. Hilly was open to

original music, and much of what happened there flowed from that

stance. There were very few outlets then for bands and musicians who

didn’t already have record deals (and the promotional and financial support

that used to go with them) or who weren’t willing to cover other people’s

songs. There were some folk clubs over on Bleecker Street, but they didn’t

seem to be interested in rock music as a serious musical form (by “serious” I don’t mean difficult or virtuosic). Jazz clubs could be found in some nearby lofts and lounges, but they wouldn’t work as venues for a rock band either.

To most club owners, it must have been inconceivable that any sane per-

son would be interested in hearing a band they’d never heard on the radio

before—or heard of at all, for that matter.

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When Hilly and a few others took the tentative step of letting bands play

their own material for small groups of friends and beer drinkers, it was therefore a big deal. When Talking Heads eventually made our first record and

began playing outside of New York City, no such network of open-minded

club owners existed. As a result we played in whatever ridiculous venue

would let us play our own material—like a student center at a university

where some kid thought we could amplify our music through his home stereo,

a pizza parlor in Pittsburgh, and a kid’s birthday party in New Jersey. However, over the course of a few years, a network of small clubs established itself, and bands like ours could connect the dots and play all across North America and Europe. But that came later.

The fact that there came into existence a forum within which anyone with

a band and some songs could broadcast their insights, fury, and lunacy did not just get the water flowing, it actually helped bring the water into existence.

3. PERFORMING MUSICIANS MUST

GET IN FOR FREE ON THEIR OFF NIGHTS (AND

MAYBE GET FREE BEER TOO)

There wasn’t much camaraderie among the bands at CBGB. Not that

there was antagonism, but everyone wanted to stake out their own cre-

ative territory, and aligning oneself with others might have run the risk

of dilution. Nevertheless, Hilly let many musicians in for free once they’d

played there, so it soon became a de facto hangout. None of us complained

that our fellow musicians weren’t paying to see us—we weren’t paying to

see them, either. There were always a few local band members leaning on

the bar with a beer in hand, a precursor to the way, years later, club and

restaurant owners would ply models with free drinks to get them to lin-

ger at downtown lounges, and thus draw more (mostly male) customers. At

CBGB, this was a more organic process, less calculated and cynical. It also

meant that there was always an audience for whatever band was playing.

They might not be paying all that much attention, but at least there were

bodies there. So even a band that had no following had some folks listen-

ing—sort of.

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4. THERE MUST BE A SENSE OF ALIENATION

FROM THE PREVAILING MUSIC SCENE

A successful scene presents an alternative. Some of us eventually came to

realize that we wouldn’t feel as comfortable anywhere else, and that the

music in other places would probably be terrible. The hangout, then, is the

place for the alienated to share their misanthropic feelings about the prevailing musical culture.

That didn’t mean we all reacted to this alienation in the same way. If you

were to believe the press, the CB’s scene was only made up of a handful of

bands—but that just wasn’t true. Despite being lumped under the punk-rock

moniker, all sorts of bands played there. There were progressive-rock bands, jazz-fusion acts, jam bands, and folk singers who seemed as if they’d strayed to the wrong end of Bleecker Street. The Mumps were power pop, and one

might even say that the Shirts were the precursors to the musical
Rent
. We were all disaffected and dissatisfied with the rock dinosaurs who roamed the earth back then. We expressed that disaffection in different ways, but here

was a place where we could commiserate and plot a new course.

The glam acts that already existed—New York Dolls, Bowie, Lou Reed, and

a few others—were considered cool and provocative, but almost everything

associated in any way with the mainstream seemed hopelessly irrelevant. The

radio was dominated by the Eagles and the “California sound,” hair bands and disco—all of which seemed to exist in another universe. We liked a lot of

disco, but the prevailing rocker attitude was that dance music was “manufac-

tured” and therefore not authentic or heartfelt.

The highest ideals of live performance at the time seemed irrelevant to

us as well. Arena rock and the mega-R&B ensembles were legendary for

their elaborate shows—enormous spectacles with pyrotechnics and space-

ships. These shows were light years away from any connection to our real-

ity. They were an escape, a fantasy, and hugely entertaining, but they had

no relationship to any sense of what it felt like to be young, energetic, and frustrated. Those artists sure didn’t speak to or for any of us, even if they did have some good songs. If we wanted to hear music that spoke directly

to us, it was clear that we’d have to make it ourselves. If no one else liked it, well, so be it—but at least we would have some songs that meant something

to us.

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Meanwhile, the art world in SoHo, just a few blocks west of the Bowery,

was dominated by the twin poles of conceptualism and minimalism. Pretty

dry stuff, for the most part, but the drones and trance-inducing repetition

emanating from the avant-garde composers associated with that scene (such

as Philip Glass and Steve Reich) somehow took that minimalist aesthetic and

made it engaging, and aspects of it found their way into punk rock. You can

trace connections from Tony Conrad’s one-note compositions to the Vel-