Origins
In January 1980, the members of Talking Heads returned to New York City after the tours in support of their 1979 critically acclaimed third album, Fear of Music, and decided to take time off to pursue personal interests. Byrne worked with Eno, the record's producer, on an experimental collaboration named My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Jerry Harrison produced an album for soul singer Nona Hendryx at the Sigma Sound Studios branch in New York City; the singer and the location were later used during the recording of Remain in Light on Harrison's advice. Husband and wife Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth discussed the possibility of leaving the band after the latter suggested that Byrne's level of control was excessive. Frantz was not open to the idea of ending Talking Heads, and the two decided to take a long vacation in the Caribbean to ponder the state of the band and their marriage. During the trip, the couple became involved in Haitian Vodou religious ceremonies and practised with several types of native percussion instruments. In Jamaica, they socialised with the famous reggae rhythm section of Sly and Robbie.
Frantz and Weymouth ended their holiday by purchasing an apartment above Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the Bahamas, where the band had recorded their second album More Songs About Buildings and Food. Byrne joined the duo and Harrison there in the spring of 1980. The band members realised that it had been solely up to Byrne to bear the creative burden of crafting songs even though the tracks were performed as a quartet. The conception of Remain in Light occurred partly because they tired of the notion of a singer leading a back-up band; the ideal they aimed for, according to Byrne, was "sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation". The frontman additionally wanted to escape "the psychological paranoia and personal torment" of what he had been writing and feeling in 1970s New York City. Instead of the band writing music to Byrne's lyrics, Talking Heads performed instrumental jam sessions without words using the Fear of Music song "I Zimbra" as a starting point.
Eno arrived in the Bahamas three weeks after Byrne and was at first reluctant to work with the band again after collaborating on the previous two full-length releases. He changed his mind after hearing the instrumental demo tapes and noted, "I absolutely love the direction you're going in." Both parties decided to experiment with the communal African way of making music, in which individual parts mesh as polyrhythms to create a cohesive whole. Afrodisiac, the 1973 Afrobeat record from Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, became the template for the album. Weymouth has commented that the advent of the 1980s marked the beginnings of hip-hop music, which made Talking Heads realise that the musical landscape was changing. Before the studio sessions, long-time friend David Gans instructed the band members that "the things one doesn’t intend are the seeds for a more interesting future". He encouraged them to experiment and improvise when recording and to utilise "mistakes".
Read more about this topic: Remain In Light
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