Talking Heads recorded another record, Speaking in Tongues, that was made using a very similar process to Remain in Light, though this time without Eno’s involvement. In thinking of what kind of performance and tour would follow, I decided to apply my insights from Japan, Bali, and the gospel church. This show would be mapped out from beginning to end.
In retrospect, the earlier tour with a big band had been a work in progress. My movements during rehearsals gradually became more formal as I realized which improvisations worked in which sections of which songs. It was a kind of organic choreography, like what I’d done on the video, but now involving more people and for a whole show. I storyboarded the whole thing, sometimes not knowing which song would go with which staging idea. The songs got assigned to the staging and lighting ideas later, as did details of the movements.J
We decided that we’d all wear neutral gray outfits this time. I had realized that people on stage can either stick out (if they wear white or sparkly outfits) or disappear (if they wear dark colors). With music shows, there is inevitably so much gear on stage—guitars, drums, keyboards, amps—that sometimes the gear ends up being lit as much as the performers. To mitigate this a little bit I had all the metal hardware (cymbal stands and keyboard racks) painted matte black so that it wouldn’t outshine the musicians. We hid the guitar amps under the riders that the backing band played on, so those were invisible too. Wearing gray suits seemed to be the best of both worlds, and by planning it in advance, we knew there would at least be consistent lighting from night to night. Typically a musician or singer might decide to wear their white or black shirt on a given night, and they’d end up either glowing brighter than everyone else or be rendered invisible. We avoided that problem.
On all of our previous tours we’d maintained the lighting dogma left over from CBGB: white light, on at the top of the show and off at the end. But I felt it was time to break away from that a little bit. I still confined the lighting to white, though now white in all its possibilities, permutations, and combinations. There were no colored gels as such, but we did use fluorescent bulbs, movie lights, shadows, handheld lights, work lights, household lamps, and floor lights—each of which had a particular quality of its own, but were still what we might consider white. I brought in a lighting designer, Beverly Emmons, whose work I’d seen in a piece by the director Robert Wilson. I showed her the storyboards and explained the concept, and she knew exactly how to achieve the desired effects, which lighting instruments to use, and how to rig them.
I had become excited by the downtown New York theater scene. Robert Wilson, Mabou Mines, and the Wooster Group in particular were all experimenting with new ways of putting things on stage and presenting them, experiments that to my eyes were close to the Asian theater forms and rituals that had recently inspired me.K
What they were all doing was as exciting for me as when I’d first heard pop music as an adolescent, or when the anything-goes attitude of the punk and post-punk scene flourished. I invited JoAnne Akalaitis, one of the directors involved with Mabou Mines, to look at our early rehearsals and give me some notes. There was no staging or lighting yet, but I was curious whether a more theatrical eye might see something I was missing, or suggest a better way to do something.
Robert Wilson performance by Stephanie Berger
To further complicate matters, I decided to make the show completely transparent. I would show how everything was done and how it had been put together. The audience would see each piece of stage gear being put into place and then see, as soon as possible afterward, what that instrument (or type of lighting) did. It seemed like such an obvious idea that I was shocked that I didn’t know of a show (well, a music show) that had done it before.
Following this concept to its natural conclusion meant starting with a bare stage. The idea was that you’d stare at the emptiness and imagine what might be possible. A single work light would be hanging from the fly space, as it typically does during rehearsals or when a crew is moving stuff in and out. No glamour and no “show”—although, of course, this was all part of the show.
The idea was that we’d make even more visible what had evolved on the previous tour, in which we’d often start a set with a few songs performed with just the four-piece band, and then gradually other musicians would take their places on pre-set keyboard and percussion risers. In this case, though, we’d take the concept further, with each player and the instruments themselves appearing on an empty stage, one after another. So, ideally, when they walked on and began to play or sing, you’d hear what each musician or singer was bringing to the party—added groove elements, keyboard textures, vocal harmonies. This was done by having their gear on rolling platforms that were hidden in the wings. The platforms would be pushed out by stagehands, and then the musician would jump into position and remain part of the group until the end of the show.
Stage and lighting elements would also be carried out by the stagehands: footlights, lights on stands like they use in movies, slide projectors on scaffolding. Sometimes these lighting instruments would be used right after their appearance, so you’d immediately see what they did, what effect they had. When everything was finally in place you’d get to see all the elements you’d been introduced to used in conjunction with each other. The magician would show how the trick was done and then do the trick, and my belief was that this transparency wouldn’t lessen the magic.
Well, that was the idea. A lot of it came from the Asian theater and ritual I’d seen. The operators manipulating the Bunraku puppets in plain sight, assistants coming on stage to help a Kabuki actor with a costume transformation, the fact that in Bali one could see the preparation for a scene or ritual, but none of that mattered, none of the force or impact was lost, despite all the spoilers.
There is another way in which pop-music shows resemble both Western and Eastern classical theater: the audience knows the story already. In classical theater, the director’s interpretation holds a mirror up to the oft-told tale in a way that allows us so see it in a new light. Well, same with pop concerts. The audience loves to hear songs they’ve heard before, and though they are most familiar with the recorded versions, they appreciate hearing what they already know in a new context. They don’t want an immaculate reproduction of the record, they want it skewed in some way. They want to see something familiar from a new angle.
As a performing artist, this can be frustrating. We don’t want to be stuck playing our hits forever, but only playing new, unfamiliar stuff can alienate a crowd—I know, I’ve done it. This situation seems unfair. You would never go to a movie longing to spend half the evening watching familiar scenes featuring the actors replayed, with only a few new ones interspersed. And you’d grow tired of a visual artist or a writer who merely replicated work they’ve done before with little variation. But sometimes that is indeed exactly what people want. In art museums a mixture of the known, familiar, and new is expected, as it is in classical concerts. But even within these confines there’s a lot of wiggle room in a pop concert. It’s not a rote exercise, or it doesn’t have to be.
While we were performing the shows in Los Angeles that would eventually become the Stop Making Sense film, I invited the late William Chow,L a great Beijing Opera actor, to see what we were doing. I’d seen him perform not too long before, and was curious what he would make of this stuff. He’d never been to a Western pop show before, though I suspect he’d seen things on TV. The next day we met for lunch after the show.
Courtesy of Hiro
William