![]() JL: Yeah, I was fifteen, and very predisposed to fall in love with this record. RS: You were a teenager when you first heard Fear of Music, right? And it kind of anchors the uneasiness of the record in a really not ironic, not mediated or well-negotiated dark feeling, but a really raw one. It's really scary."Īnd it seems to me a very important part of the record, and a very unusual song for the band, who maybe once or twice ever reach for that intensity - like I say, candid darkness, depression, rage - it's not typical. For it to matter to me as much as it did, I must've been like, "Well I don't know, under that fake armor, it's really a monster. But at the same time, I must have been scared. ![]() I look at it, a little bit, like this band I like, this singer I like, dressed up in fake armor, trying to be scary. It plays that kind of portentous doominess, in the way it sounds and in the way David Byrne sings. In a way, "Memories Can't Wait" is almost like a Doors song, by Talking Heads. I didn't think anyone could sing like that and want to be taken seriously. Like the first time I heard The Doors, and the way Jim Morrison was storming around, that sort of doomy voice, I thought it was a joke. I talk about The Exorcist, or Blue Oyster Cult's " Don't Fear the Reaper." I had a really embarrassed resistance to things that came on as scary or doomy at that point in my life. And in fact, I make a couple of jokes that I think are indicative in that chapter. Both of those things are threatening to me, and in a way you might say that the tone of "Memories Can't Wait" was a problem for me, because it wasn't exactly what I was going to Talking Heads, or Fear of Music, to get. Jonathan Lethem: Well, it's the most aggressive song on the record, in terms of real deep aggression, and it's also the most depressed song on the album, I think, the most really, really abject one. It is as if 'Memories Can't Wait' rides on spiked treads, a vehicle bogged in mud at the depths of the record's second side, and determined to climb into view over the crushed bodies of the other tracks." It sounds almost monstrous. You write, "This dreadnaught of a song wears an exoskeleton of reverb and sonic crud as it grinds grimly uphill, armored like a Doctor Doom or Robocop who has been smeared with tar and then rolled like a cheese log in gravel. Rachel Smith: In the book, your description of "Memories Can't Wait" is really over the top visceral. (You can read Lethem's chapter on "Memories Can't Wait," from his entry in the 33 1/3 series on Fear of Music, here.) According to Lethem, it's a song that lifts the band's typical veil of ironic distance to expose the raw emotions underneath - anger, alienation and fear. I spoke with Lethem about how the song surprised him, how he grew to understand it and how it shaped his youth and taste in music. "Memories Can't Wait" is a dark departure from the Talking Heads' typical sound, musically and lyrically. ![]() 21 on the Billboard 200 and gave rise to the hit single " Life During Wartime." Lethem, however, is more intrigued by "Memories Can't Wait," the track immediately following it at the close of the album's A-side. "In a lot of ways I can see in retrospect," Lethem says, Fear of Music "was a message in a bottle to me, to tell me that who I was, and how I felt, was gonna be okay, and might even be a little better than okay."įear of Music, produced by Brian Eno, marked a new stage of Talking Heads' growth from New York art-school punks into a nationally prominent, critically acclaimed pop band. Bookish and arty, the child of a painter father and a political activist mother (who died when Lethem was 13), he took refuge in passions that later played a formative role in his writing career: science fiction, comics and music. In 1979, Lethem, who describes himself as an "awkward white fifteen-year-old," was struggling to navigate the complex social terrain of his primarily black and Hispanic Brooklyn neighborhood. In his book, Lethem mixes track-by-track close readings with autobiography in an attempt to interpret one of his great teenage obsessions. Lethem's Fear of Music is part of the 33 1/3 series, a set of books each inspired by and dedicated to a single classic album. ![]() Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Fear of Music Author Jonathan Lethem ![]()
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