The deluxe edition of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense will be released on August 18th.
It’s arguably the greatest concert film of all time, and now Jonathan Demme’s legendary Talking Heads live album Stop Making Sense is set to return to cinemas later this year in a newly restored 4k presentation.
The deluxe 2LP version, meanwhile, is to come with a 28-page booklet and two previously unreleased live tracks – Cities and Big Business / I Zimbra.
“We had done a live album before this, but coupled with the film, and with the improved mixes and sound quality, this record reached a whole new audience,” David Byrne has remembered.
As often happens, the songs got an added energy when we performed them live and were inspired by having an audience. In many ways, these versions are more exciting than the studio recordings, so maybe that’s why a lot of folks discovered us via this record.
“Jonathan was a very enthusiastic, highly adaptive, and imaginative guy who was just as good a listener as he was a talker and collaborator,” Tina Weymouth added.
“From the get-go you just got the impression he was as flexible as he was disciplined. Being team players, that boded well for a great relationship and a great film!”
For Jerry Harrison, Stop Making Sense has, ‘remained relevant because the staging and lighting techniques could have been created in a much earlier time period’, while Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz has been recalling the, ‘real, conscious, transcendent joy’, of its recording:
“I’m talking about what the Southern gospel people call ‘getting happy,’ which means ‘to be filled with the Spirit.’ That is what happened to us onstage every night, and from my seat behind the drums, I recognized that this was happening to the audience too. Joy was visible in front of me and all around me every night.”