Remain in Love

Chris Frantz is certainly a talented musician/artist who has created some amazing music, particularly with Talking Heads. Unfortunately, this book is not even remotely as engaging as the music he helped produce.

His writing style is not very refined. The book is bogged down with endless name dropping, and countless lists of places he and his wife Tina visited and reports of the meals and accommodations they enjoyed. Some of the superficial descriptions of people’s looks and his comparison of drumming to love making are cringe-worthy.

High points are his accounts of childhood, RISD years, meeting Tina, the beginnings of Talking Heads, the Bowery and the excitement of CBGB. He and Tina lived in a small loft with David Byrne for a few years, yet the reader leaves with no more than brief descriptions of David’s appearance, eccentric/selfish behavior, and one interesting account of visiting David’s family in Virginia. Surprisingly, his accounts of meeting Andy Warhol and hanging with Lou Reed are about as substantial as anything he shares about Byrne.

Jerry Harrison, the fourth Talking Heads member, gets a cursory, encyclopedic introduction, and we are told nothing consequential about his personality, contributions to Talking Heads, or his personal relationship with Chris and Tina.

Aside from recounting the creation of “Psycho Killer” and the changes Talking Heads’ made in their song writing process for “Remain In Light”, the book barely mentions how such interesting music was created. That’s unfortunate considering how they recorded with such talents as Brian Eno and played with a wide variety of talented collaborating musicians. He describes meeting Eno and tells a bit about their work and dynamic, but most other collaborators are simply listed or described as talented players.

The later sections on Tom Tom Club, recording work with other bands, touring with The Ramones, and The B52s, and family/social experiences bog down with lack of engaging stories or details.

This book is not without merit, but it could have been so much more.

I love Chris and Tina, but I can’t “remain in love” with this book. I preordered this book probably a year ago, and, when it was delayed due to the pandemic, I would tell myself that the upcoming Chris Frantz book about his life and love for Tina would be here soon and lift me during this troubled time. This book does not lift you at all.

This book is so filled with name-dropping that it is completely frustrating. And, when I mean name-dropping, I mean things like Chris listing the names of all the cooks and wait staff that worked with him at a restaurant when he was in art school or listing every family member at his wedding with Tina in Kentucky (see example in photo). It is too much. There is even a chapter on James Brown that has nothing to do with anything other than it spotlighted the Godfather of Soul being in the Bahamas at the same time as them.

When I first started the book, the details were so specific that I kept asking myself how could he remember every name, meal, and street address from 50 years ago. It was utterly amazing but unneeded. As the book goes on, however, the details become so sparse and the most important stories are glossed over. This book represents a perfect example of atrophy in motion. It takes more than half of the book to get to the first Talking Heads album which makes you wonder how will you get through all the other big albums and tours. I read the book on a Kindle so didn’t know how much was really left in the book, and, by the end (it ends at 90%), with the last chapter being so swift and full of brevity, I didn’t realize it actually was the end.

This book is more of an observational piece than a story of Chris’s life which is very unfortunate. He talks about the the people around him, but we want to hear about his experiences through the times of creating music and touring; he doesn’t open that door for you. One of the most disappointing things in the entire book is how he never mentions one of the greatest musical projects he ever did: The Heads! He goes from being so detailed to completely skipping years and projects.

Chris at times takes swipes at people like Johnny Ramone, Brian Eno, Happy Mondays, and, of course, David Byrne, which are all probably well-deserved, but they come off as whiny when you don’t have the actual story of Chris’s life to counterbalance them. The book is like reading a grocery store list of facts rather than a personal memoir. Chris, at times, gives a small glance that he must have suffered from a very destructive drug habit, but it is never approached beyond brief mentions. The book suggests that Tina is also writing her own book, and, hopefully, she will take another route that allows the readers and fans the opportunity to live in her shoes rather than just listing events.

For an obsessive Talking Heads fan this is a must-read, but that doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good one. Frantz comes off as this amiable, happy-go-lucky goofball who loves to play drums, loves cocaine, loves Tina and loves his band and cant understand why David Byrne doesnt want to play with him and have fun forever. Byrne is portrayed as a baffling alien who hogged all the credit for everything the group did. Maybe, but at the same time Chris cant seem to reckon with how freakishly talented Byrne was/is. The book is crazily off-balance – more than half is spent on microscopic, show-by-show lists of early Heads tours, while rushing through the years of their greatest work, Fear of Music thru Stop Making Sense. There’s a very detailed portrait of Johnny Ramone, but Jerry Harrison is a cipher. There’s nothing about The Heads, Franz’s ill-fated attempt to revive the band without Byrne, but he finds time to mention his favorite salad dressing at a particular Bahamas restaurant. Theres a lot of cocaine.

Highly interesting to read about New York housing in the 70s where $100 would secure a SoHo loft. An incredibly fertile music scene rising from the squalid city that couldnt happen today. Frantz and Tina have serious issues with David Byrne and whether these are justified or not it makes Frantz ( and her) sound a little desperate. For all his gripes and gloating about how they had all the good ideas not Byrne, theyd reform at the drop of a (Kings Lead) hat. I would imagine Frantz says neat a lot. For a member of one of the coolest bands ever, this book paints him in a less than cool light.

One thing comes very clearly out of this book: Chris Frantz is a man desperate to impress. If you want a series of lists about which stars he met at which party, where he stayed, what he had to eat, what he bought, you’ll find it here. All of which would be fine it there was an interesting (or any) anecdote attached to these encounters, but most of the time there isn’t. He’s also desperate to counter his image as the rather staid member of the band: my favourite moment being when he recounts meeting Tina while he’s smoking an unfiltered Camel. An unfiltered cigarette? Rock and roll! It’s a strange self-aggrendising, insecure, bitter and mawkish mixture that could and should have been so much more. Yes, there are some interesting, enjoyable recollections along the way, but it’s an unbalanced book in more ways than one, and comes across as a missed opportunity to chronicle one of the most unique bands of the last century, during one of its most innovative musical eras.

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