Album: Talking Heads: 77
Year: 1977
. . .
One of the oldest songs in the Talking Heads oevure, “Psycho Killer” actually dates back to David Byrne & Chris Franz’s pre-Talking Heads band, The Artistics. And while Tina Weymouth hadn’t yet learned bass, she still contributed to the writing of the song, as we’ll see.
I’m not alone here, but “Psycho Killer” was the first Talking Heads song I ever heard, as I remember it playing on a local radio station shortly after it came out. Which was before KKDJ, I think, making it probably KBOS, because you never heard too much new wave on Rock 96 FM, he said, accessing highly shaky 45-year-old memories.
One thing is for sure: from the start to the end, “Psycho Killer” is a fucking masterwork, a deadly combination of darkly hilarious lyrics — in two languages — singable melodies, and oh yeah, it had a great beat and you could dance to it.
Said beat opens the song, riding solely on Tina Weymouth’s pulsing bassline, almost immediately followed by Chris Frantz’s utterly in-the-pocket drum beat, simple and profound at the same time. And as the guitars of David Byrne and Jerry Harrison clang against each other, Byrne fully inhabits the title character.
I can’t seem to face up to the facts
I’m tense and nervous, and I can’t relax
I can’t sleep cause my bed’s on fire
Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire
Unlike some of the other songs on Talking Heads: 77 where you’re not sure if Byrne is singing at the words instead of singing the words, there is no doubt he means every thing he sings when they get to chorus. Everybody sing!!
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, fa, better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away
Oh, oh
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, fa, better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away
Oh, oh, oh, oh, aye-ya-ya-ya-ya
Where even to start? How about with Chris and Tina, who both change up what they were doing: his drum part goes from slinky to nervous, as he starts hitting the snare on every single beat like Mo Tucker. Meanwhile, she makes like Duck Dunn, winding her bass around the rest of the music, dragging it forward. Meanwhile, Byrne navigates the french part and the Otis Redding part — those “fa-fa-fa-fas” are directly influenced by Redding’s “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” — with equal aplomb, and if you haven’t taken his advice of “better run, run, run, run, run, run away,” you’re braver than I am.
You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?
Meanwhile, it’s all just getting darker, to the point on where on the bridge of the song, Byrne is singing French. As you do. This part was mostly written by Tina Weymouth, whose mother was French, and I love how the mental breakdown is so complete that he can only express himself in another language, but then had to finish it off with “We are vain and we are blind / I hate people when they’re not polite.”
In the end, Weymouth & Frantz speed the beat up, as Harrison & Byrne have a new-fashioned guitar duel, both guitars wheezing and skronking around the accelerated beat until the song crashes to its end.
And while “Psycho Killer” had been around since the earliest days of the Talking Heads, the fact that it didn’t get released until 1977 — after the Summer of Sam summer — made people think that it was somehow related, of course. And while the neither the single nor the album sold all that well — both barely grazing the Top 100 of their respective charts — it goes without saying that Talking Heads: 77 was a critical favorite, landing at #7 in the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll for 1977. (They didn’t seem to have a singles poll that year, and the guess here is that “Psycho Killer” would have been really high on that one, too.)
And as far as “Psycho Killer” itself, it’s become a pop culture staple, covered many times, and parodied even more. I assume some of you remember “Psycho Chicken.” And it remained a staple of the Talking Heads live show, getting pride of place as the first song in their epochal concert film, Stop Making Sense (about which more in a couple of weeks).
“Psycho Killer”
“Psycho Killer” live on the Old Grey Whistle Test, 1980
“Psycho Killer” live in Germany, 1980
“Psycho Killer” from Stop Making Sense, 1983
“Psycho Killer” live at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction, 2002
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