Burning Down the House

Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

De: Jonathan Gould

Narrado por: Jason Culp

""Definitive...Not just for Talking Heads fans—it’s a masterful dive into downtown New York in the 70s, and the changing face of rock music.”—Town & Country

""Riveting""—New York Post

""A masterful achievement."" —Booklist (starred review)

On the 50th 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.

Genius on Genius.

Brilliant descriptions of musical performances and analysis of lyrics. Thoroughly researched. Great presentation of historical context.

A peek under the covers of Talking Heads

For those of us who came of age in the seventies and early eighties, and especially those who lived, worked and studied in the NY metropolitan area, "Burning Down The House" is a worthy exploration of the band and the influences that created some of the most absorbing music of the day. It is a meatier analysis of the band than Chris Frantz's "Remain In Love", which is more of a story of Chris and Tina. One gets a fuller understanding of David Byrne here. But beware... you'd better be very familiar with the songs if you intend to get through this audiobook. There is a bit too much lyric analysis and esoteric jargon for those of us who are not students of polyrhythms and music theory. Jason Culp's narration is OK but not especially engaging. His choice to add accents to quoted text is somewhat annoying and unnecessary. If you're a fan of the band, and their body of work was seminal to your understanding of the world when you were at the age when it was in the palm of your hand, you'll enjoy this book.

Encyclopedic overview of the Heads

I enjoyed this book when it brought insight to the inner workings of the band. I was not happy about the endless regurgitation of each songs and the authors had interpretations of them. More reporting and less speculation next time.

The Book I Listened To

If you are a new or very casual fan of Talking Heads, this book is a decent, albeit somewhat tedious and surface-level chronicling of the band's public life and discography.

However, if you are a Talking Heads superfan like me, it's not required reading. There were a few new bits of trivia and information I haven't heard before, some select quotes that were really interesting, but otherwise there is a lot of clinical filler and common knowledge to sift through. In that sense, I would preferably recommend reading the physical copy instead if you want to skip through a lot of other band's histories and backgrounds, scene-by-scene analysis of movies, historical context, etc... While the book's subtitle and description do let you know there will be talk of the 70's New York scenes, it's a very superficial and shallow study that could be gleaned elsewhere.

There were parts that kept my interest, and I did appreciate Gould's attempt to paint all members of the band in equal terms, and providing fair rebuttals and context to certain actions and quotes that have been infamous in the band's history. It's all been clearly thoroughly researched, but do not expect a huge amount of insight into the dramas behind the band, their careers after the breakup, or sordid personal details. It does succeed in justifying Talking Heads' cultural significance in the end and I guess that's what counts.

But then you get to the sections of the book that are just giving summations of every single song from their ten albums, and they feel like a student trying to hit a word count. They're mostly pretty unbiased, clinical interpretations (except for Gould's apparent opinion of the Stop Making Sense version of "Take Me to the River" that is egregiously wrong), but when they're read back to you like that it just gets dull fast. The book covers all 10 Heads albums, The Catherine Wheel, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Tom Tom Club and Jerry Harrison's first albums in excessive but basic detail. The rest of their outside work, including David's solo work post-Heads between Uh-Oh and American Utopia are entirely glossed over, unexamined or even mentioned at all.

Starting with such a detailed and information-packed beginning, the book's momentum feels like it ends around Naked's release and the quiet dissolution of the band, and everything after that feels rushed and tacked on as mild epilogues. It does not feel like Gould made much effort to fill in the gaps between then and now.

I do take an issue with the author's frequent referencing to Asperger's Syndrome when referring to David Byrne's autism. I have to step back and understand that Asperger's was one of the main and common reference points for high-functional neurodiversity in the 20th century, especially in the decades this book covers. But now in 2025, Asperger's is an antiquated and arguably derogatory diagnosis that isn't officially recognized anymore, especially given Asperger's ties to the Nazis and the mass murdering of neurodivergent people in WWII. The author makes some great points and insights into the context of Byrne's neurodiversity when it comes to his interactions with the band, I only wish he did a bit more work and research to present it in a way that lines up with modern psychology.

Ultimately, you will not find much from this book if you already know the band. If you are someone who still doesn't understand why the band refuses to reunite, then I'd still recommend this book to understand a more contextual picture. A nice book to have on the shelf as a fan but I would not call this the definitive study of Talking Heads.