Music, Big Suits, And The Heads’ Legacy On The Concert Film Genre
Words: Liliana Cunha
March 16th 2025
In 1984, the Talking Heads released Stop Making Sense. These 88 minutes of live music from six different studio albums quickly gained a reputation as one of the most impressive concert films of all time, transcending anything previously done in the genre. The band abandons the facades of the flashy rock bands of their decade, ditching the attitude and ego for a more refined image, establishing new wave and art rock as serious genres in the scene. While shooting the film, director Jonathon Demme acknowledges the importance of balancing the visual and the auditory. His choices often reflect the artistic minimalism that lies at the core of the Heads. His detailed attention to lighting and production design, and David Byrne’s legendary stage personality set Stop Making Sense apart from any other concert film.
With the entire production focused solely on the band’s performance, Demme strays from the standard for presenting rock concerts on film. Films like Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night and Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, are notorious for their expositional elements: backstory of the band, the logistics of planning the tour, and interviews with musicians, promoters, and fans. Demme even omits one of the most conventional shots in concert films, the crowd reaction. Instead, he opts to give the band the camera’s full attention, as if there's simply nowhere else to be looking.
The show starts with Byrne performing a solo version of “Psycho Killer” with his acoustic guitar and the rhythm of a tape recorder. As the set goes on, Byrne is joined on stage by bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, and keyboardist Jerry Harrison, as well as multiple other musicians.
The expanded band featured in the film came to fruition following the release of the Heads’ fourth album, Remain in Light. They realized their heavily layered arrangements, many of which reflect the influence of Afro-pop artists, would demand a larger group to be reproduced live. Five additional players are featured in the film: Steve Scales (percussion), Lynn Mabry (backing vocals), Ednah Holt (backing vocals), Alex Weir (guitar), and Bernie Worrell (keyboard)– all of whom are African American. This new lineup was highly unusual during this period when new popular music in the US was substantially separated into white punk/rock followers and black funk/disco fans.
Demme does strikingly well capturing the magic of these nine musicians with his humble lighting arrangements, designed for the camera rather than the audience. Indicative of his intentions to make Stop Making Sense more than just a recording of a live show, the production doesn’t treat the space as a stage, but as a set. Each song on the setlist features a different lighting arrangement, with Byrne even credited as a lighting designer. For “What a Day That Was,” lights are placed on stage beneath the performers, creating sharply defined shadows across the stage and projecting dancing silhouettes of the band members behind them. The song “This Must Be the Place” is visually distinct from the others, reflecting the simplicity and intimacy of the song’s content by centering the band members at the front of the stage lit by a single lamp. The lamp is stationary until Byrne grabs it, toying with its balance and incorporating the prop into his goofy dances– one of my personal favorite moments of the film that the camera frames perfectly. Demme’s camera work mimics the pride of the Heads: eccentricity in simplicity, subtly capturing the intricacies of each interaction between the musicians, each note they play, and each one of Byrne’s unique dance moves.
Byrne’s dancing is an integral part of the film and the Talking Heads’ image at large. He begins the first song with tight, jerking motions that carry a nervousness about them. With each subsequent song, he trades more of his discomfort for a loose, carefree demeanor. Every move is an exaggeration of the absurd and a testament to the Talking Heads as a project.
While on this note, it would be hard not to mention what is likely the most referenced staple of the film: the big suit. Just before the song “Girlfriend Is Better,” perhaps the climax of the show, Byrne returns to the stage wearing a suit of exaggerated proportions. He explained while promoting the film, "I wanted my head to appear smaller, and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger." But really, Byrne’s suit was inspired by a friend’s statement that “Everything in theater needs to be bigger.” Taking this literally, and having recently spent time in Japan, Byrne drew inspiration from various forms of Japanese theatre, including Noh and Kabuki, whose styles traditionally involve large, geometric costumes. Here, Byrne takes a business suit, typically representing sophistication and rigidity, and transforms it into something absurd– once again harmonizing the visual with the music in the simplest of ways. Continuing his cartoon-like dance moves while drowning in his business suit, Byrne embraces his eccentricity and leaves the audience with one of the most enduring symbols of the 80s music scene.
As you watch the band close the show with their hit “Crosseyed and Painless” (a rendition that far surpasses the studio recording), you realize this is the first time the camera is breaking contact with the stage, finally showing you the crowd. The longstanding absence of shots of the audience grabbing at the band and waving to the camera proves that you were truly the intended audience from the start. Stop Making Sense was not meant to simply be a recording of a concert. It was meant to be a film, and you were meant to be the audience.