Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock commemorates the 50th anniversary of the iconic NYC new-wave/art-rock band. 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.

Few musical artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads, with well-known tracks such as, “Psycho Killer” “Take Me to the River” and “Road to Nowhere.” One of the foundational bands of New York’s downtown 1970s music scene, the band has 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.

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.

Available from Harper Collins

Jonathan Gould is a writer and a former professional musician. Born and raised in New York City, he began playing drums in high school and became serious about it while attending Cornell University, which led him to move to Boston in 1975 to study with the eminent jazz drummer Alan Dawson. He went on to spend many years working in bands and recording studios in Boston, Woodstock, and New York City before turning his full attention to writing about music in the early 1990s under the mentorship of the retired New Yorker editor William Shawn. In addition to his playing and writing about music, Jonathan also raised a family, served in local politics, and took an active role in the life of the upstate New York community where he lived for twenty-five years. He currently divides his time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Livingston, NY. He is 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.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.