Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Im disappointed that we didnt get to do the tour, Harrison says now.
We knew that it was something that didnt rely on lighting or staging.
It was all about the joy of performing those songs again.
It would work at night and it would work in the middle of the afternoon.
But on a deeper level, it really captures the ambiguity of the recording process.
Theres an unusualness to the beat.
We had laid down all of these parts individually.
It sounds like it can be a million different things before you realize what the mix is doing.
Tinas bass, Chriss drums, and my keyboard wash adds to it.
The song is just sort ofthere.Its a state of being as opposed to a march through life.
I do think Seen and Not Seen would be the one that I would be forced to take off.
The second side of the album is more atmospheric.
But the other songs are just as essential.
We wanted to see if we could capture something like that.
We used the mixing board as the composition to move from part A to part B.
We were really on a roll.
We worked three weeks in the Bahamas.
We were really on a groove.
Eno wasnt going to be involved in our record initially.
But he got wind of what we were doing and was so intrigued that he showed up.
We went through a period of not having an engineer because of that.
We ended up taking a three-week break and going back to New York, and we lost our momentum.
It took quite a while to get back into the swing of things.
David had really bad writers block.
That was quite challenging.
It wasnt upsetting to me, but it was to them.
In the studio, I had a great revelation: I played it on a real piano.
A real piano isnt as sharp with its notes.
I wonder if thats why I was playing it really delicately.
Theres a lot of keyboard parts that sound like sequence parts when you play things live.
Your hand gets pretty tired playing four minutes of the exact same sequences.
But its one of those things that gives it an organic nature.
Theres nothing artificial, everything was done live in one take in the studio.
There were no pro tools, you just did it.
It was influenced, but still played with our lens of our four personalities.
Crosseyed and Painless was a pretty long and complicated piece of music, so that took some time.
But I keep thinking of The Great Curve.
I got Adrian Belew to come up and play those guitar solos.
Theyre so magnificent and help define where that song went.
I had produced tracks for Nona Hendryx in the past and brought her in to help with vocals.
That changed the course of the song.
Suddenly the call-and-response was really a call-and-response.
Most unexpected song influences
We were all being influenced by African music.
I told everyone that we just had to finish the song because it was so wonderful.
We knew we wanted to have a polyrhythmic and joyful feeling of African bands.
If you look back at photos of the Beatless engineers, theyre wearing white lab coats.
They were totally behind the glass.
You didnt go in there.
The musicians were in the other room and being captured by technicians.
Maybe if you were lucky they would play the music back through speakers.
Eno broke that barrier down.
Everything was an instrument.
It was all taking place.
This cut-and-dry role between the musicians, technicians, and producers started to become more fluid.
He responded, Nope.
That was a very delicate way to get out of that.
Its all about alienation triggered by colonialism.
Its an entirely new point of view.
It was far enough in the tour where the band was cooking on all cylinders.
It took a while to have that confidence.
Sometimes it was like two jams were going on in two different directions that were only vaguely connected.
I wish there was a good recording of it.
Those two songs really captured what the whole record was about.
Theyre great to dance to, theyre experimental, and the polyrhythms are gorgeous and present.
What was Tina playing here?
What did Chris play there?
What was David trying to vocalize?
Im trying to be more scientific and precise about it.
I still have the multitracks for every song on the album.
The legacy of being No.
39 onRolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list
Thats really great, of course.
It was called the 100 Best Albums Ever Made.
I hadfouralbums on there.
I had as many as the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen.
Thats the list that I still find to be the most exciting.
Some things are just obvious, likeSgt.
Peppersreally changed how people thought about things.
I thinkRemain in Lightfits into that category.
Ideal Talking Heads reunion
I have a grandiose view.
We would venture to do our interpretation of what a show at that scale could be.
