Jonathan Gould

Burning Down the House (eBook, ePUB)

Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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 artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational bands of downtown New York's 1970s music scene, Talking Heads have endured as a musical and cultural force for decades, their unique brand of transcendent, experimental rock a lingering influence on popular musicdespite having disbanded over thirty years ago.

Now on the 50^th anniversary of the band's formation, acclaimed music biographer and contributor to The New Yorker Jonathan Gould offers the definitive story of Talking Headsa band whose sound, fame, and legacy forever connected the avant-garde to rock music. From their art school origins, to the enigma of David Byrne, to the internal tensions that ultimately brought them down, Gould tells the story of a band that emerged back when rock music was still young and unwittingly redefined the era's expectations of what a rock band could sound, look, and act like. At a time when guitar solos, lead singer swagger, and sweaty stadium tours reigned supreme, Talking Heads were pretentious, awkward, infectious, distinctivemost comfortable on the ragged stages of the East Village where they could make art for themselves, above all else.

More than just a biography of a band, Gould masterfully captures the singular time and place that incubated and nurtured this original musicdowntown in the 1970sthat much romanticized, little understood moment in New York City history when art, music, and commerce uneasily collided to cement the post-Woodstock generation of rock stars, often with messy results. What emerges is an expansive portrait of a band and a scene that permanently shifted the horizons of popular music, iconoclasts that pushed the cultural fringe into the mainstream and then burned down the house.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins
• Seitenzahl: 512
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. Juni 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780063023000
• Artikelnr.: 72298233

Autorenporträt

Jonathan Gould is a writer and a former professional musician. A contributing writer for The New Yorker, he is the author of Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America and Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life. He currently divides his time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Livingston, NY.

Rezensionen

"[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