A similar adage was “Tell the audience what you’re going to do, and then do it.” “Telling” doesn’t mean going to the mic and saying, “Adrian’s going to do an amazing guitar solo now.” It’s more subtle than that. The directors and editors of horror movies have taught us many such rules, like the sacrificial victim and the ominous music (which sometimes leads to nothing the first time, increasing the shock when something actually happens later). And then while we sit there in the theater anticipating what will happen, the director can play with those expectations, acknowledging that he or she knows that we know. There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told. The same thing can happen on stage.
The dancing that had emerged organically in the previous tour began to get increasingly codified. It still emerged out of movement that was improvised in rehearsals, but now I was more confident that if a singer, player, or performer did something spontaneously that worked perfectly for us, it could be repeated without any risk of losing its power and soul. I had confidence that this bottom-up approach to making a show would work. Every performer does this. If something new works one night, well, leave it in. It could be a lighting cue, removing one’s jacket, a vocal embellishment, or smashing a guitar. Anything can eventually grow stale, and one has to be diligent, but when a move or gesture or sound is right, it adds to the emotion and intensity, and each time it’s as real as it was the first time.
Not everyone liked this new approach. The fact that some of the performers had to hit their marks, or at least come close, didn’t seem very rock and roll to them. But, going back to William Chow’s admonishments, if you’re going to do something wild and spontaneous, at least “tell” the audience) ahead of time and do it in the light, or your inspired moment is wasted.
But where does the music fit into all this? Isn’t music the “content” that should be guiding all this stage business? Well, it seems the juxtaposition of music and image guides our minds and hearts so that, in the end, which came first doesn’t matter as much as one might think. A lighting or staging idea (using household fixtures—a floor lamp, for instance) is paired with a song (“This Must Be the Place”) and one automatically assumes there’s a connection. Paired with another lighting effect the song might have seemed equally suited, but maybe more ominous or even threatening (though that might have worked, too). We sometimes think we discern cause and effect simply because things are taking place at the same moment in time, and this extends beyond the stage. We read into things, find emotional links between what we see and hear, and to me, these connections are no less true and honest for not being conceived and developed ahead of time.
This show was the most ambitious thing I’d done. Although the idea was simple, the fact that every piece of gear had to come on stage for tech check in the afternoon and then be removed again before the show was a lot of work for the crew. But the show was a success; the transparency and conceptual nature of its structure took away nothing from the emotional impact. It was tremendously gratifying.
I didn’t perform for a while after that. It was hard to top that experience. I directed a feature film, married and had a child, and I wanted to be around for as much of my daughter’s early years as I could. I continued to make records and launch other creative endeavors, but I didn’t perform.
In 1989 I made a record, Rei Momo, with a lot of Latin musicians. The joy of following the record with a tour accompanied by a large Latin band, playing salsa, samba, merengue, cumbias, and other grooves, was too much to resist. There was a lot to handle musically on that outing, so the stage business wouldn’t be as elaborate as on the tour that was filmed for Stop Making Sense, though I did bring in movie-production designer Barbara Ling, who suggested a tiered set of risers with translucent fiberglass facing that would light up from within. (We used the same material for the stage set of my film True Stories.) The semicircular layer-cake design of the riser was based on a picture on an old Tito Rodriguez album cover, though I don’t think his risers lit up.
The band wore all white this time, and the fact that there were so many of them meant that their outfits would allow them to pop out from the background. The outfits also alluded to the African-based religions of Candomblé and Santería, whose adherents wear white during ceremonies. There was more than one Santero in the group, so the reference wasn’t for naught.M
I had referenced religious trance and ritual in earlier performances and recordings, and I never lost interest in that facet of music. I made a documentary (Ile Aiye: The House of Life) in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) partly to indulge my continued interest in these religious traditions. Santería, the Afro-Cuban branch of West African religious practice, and Voudoun, the Haitian manifestation, are both very present in New York music and culture. But it was the Brazilian branch, Candomblé, that seemed the least repressed by either secular or church authorities in recent decades, and therefore the most open, so when I was given the opportunity to do a film, that’s where I chose to go.
Photo by Clayton Call
As with gospel music, religion seems to be at the root of much Brazilian pop music and creativity, and as with the Asian ritual and theatrical forms, costumes and trance and dance are completely formalized but incredibly moving. And similar to what I felt in Bali, the practice is completely integrated into people’s lives. It’s not just something one does on Sunday mornings or Saturday nights. There are evening ceremonies, to be sure, but their influence is deeply felt in everyday life, and that affected my thinking as I prepared for the next round of performances.
I may well be idealizing some of what I saw and witnessed, taking aspects of what I perceived and adapting them to solve and deal with my own issues and creative bottlenecks. Somehow I have a feeling that might be okay.
Rather than having a discreet opening act, I brought Margareth Menezes on board: a Brazilian singer from—surprise!—Salvador, Bahia, who would sing some of her own material with my band and also sing harmonies on my tunes. Some of her songs had Yoruba lyrics and made explicit references to the gods and goddesses of Candomblé, so it was all one big happy family. Margareth was great—too good, in fact. She stole the show on some nights. Live and learn.
I bucked the tide on that tour. We did mostly new material rather than interspersing it with a lot of popular favorites, and I think I paid the price. While the shows were exciting, and even North Americans danced to our music, much of my audience soon abandoned me, assuming I’d “gone native.” Another lesson learned from performing live. At one point we got booked at a European outdoor music festival, and my Latin band was sandwiched between Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Great bands, but I couldn’t have felt more out of place.
I followed this with a tour that mixed a band made up of funk musicians like George Porter Jr. (bass player for the Meters) with some of the Latin musicians from Rei Momo. Now we could do some of the Talking Heads songs as well, even some that Talking Heads themselves couldn’t have played live. I intended to make explicit