Burning Down the House - by Jonathan Gould (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

On the 50^th 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.

Review Quotes

"[An] impressive biography.... Access to Redding's surviving family members helps Gould flesh out his upbringing and offstage personality.... Music historians like Peter Guralnick, Rob Bowman and Robert Gordon have all done essential work on the history of Stax, but Gould takes a contrary and provocative position on the label's relationship to its greatest star." -- New York Times Book Review on Otis Redding

"Magisterial... With meticulous scholarship, lively prose, and a tale that uses a singular musician as a springboard into interrogating America's political and popular cultures, Gould has created a vital book that helps contextualize one of the most important figures in pop music." -- Boston Globe on Otis Redding

"An absorbing and ambitious book...[that] succeeds in making [Redding] seem a good deal more remarkable by taking the measure of the historical circumstances he emerged from.... Among the great pleasures...are [Gould's] very considered assessments of each of Otis's albums, track by track." -- New York Review of Books on Otis Redding

"Gould has written a scrupulous, witty and, at times, appropriately skeptical study... Gould, it turns out, is an astute and sensitive choreographer... At his best, he lets you hear with keener ears the way a great novelist lets you feel with keener emotions. He even made me want to listen to 'Eleanor Rigby' again. I can't think of higher praise." -- New York Times Book Review on Can't Buy Me Love