Early Talking Heads: The Kitchen
Talking Heads was formed in 1974 after David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Weymouth moved to New York City. Byrne and Frantz had met earlier in the 1970s at the Rhode Island School of Design, where all three had been students. Weymouth was Frantz's girlfriend throughout school and moved to New York with him a few months after Byrne had moved there. Byrne and Frantz had been in a band at RISD called the Artistics, a play on what a mascot for the school may be called, and decided that they wanted to form a band in New York City after Frantz and Weymouth graduated (Byrne had dropped out of RISD after his first year but continued to live in Providence, aside from a cross country trip he took with a friend for about half a year, until his class graduated). After being unable to find a bassist, Frantz and Byrne decided to ask Weymouth, who already knew how to play guitar, to be the bassist. While the band is best known as a foursome, with guitarist and keyboard player Jerry Harrison, Talking Heads operated as a threesome in New York City for two years before Harrison joined.
When the band started out, they wore clothes from their own closets and did not buy things specifically to wear on stage. Their early style is perfectly seen in the footage of the band playing at the Kitchen in New York City in March of 1976. Harrison was not yet in the band, but the style remained the same throughout his early time in the band as well. Because the band was pulling their clothes from their own closets, they tended to dress preppy as their personal style had evolved during their time in Rhode Island. This was further exacerbated by the fact that Frantz's mother would buy him polos at Brooks Brothers and send them to him in New York City, where he would share with Byrne.
In the images of the band playing at the Kitchen, you can see both Byrne and Frantz in polos. Byrne is wearing a long-sleeve green polo and slacks with dress shoes, while Frantz is in a short-sleeve light orange polo and slacks. Weymouth is similarly dressed in a long-sleeve button down shirt with slacks. All three look like they could be students who are going to their next class, despite the presence of their instruments they are dressed like any other college student of the time. Weymouth, in particular, looks as though she is still attending RISD and can be found going to a portrait class after this. The band is connected through their dress, but not in a way that distinguishes them as a collective. They are still separable as individuals who just happen to be in a band together. The greatest thing that connects them here is their difference from the other bands who were playing at CBGB at the time.
As seen in these images, the other bands who were playing CBGB dressed much messier than Talking Heads. Rather than looking like students who may be going to a class immediately after playing, these bands look like they belong in the gritty environment of CBGB. Contrasted with Talking Heads, the Ramones' leather and Dead Boys' torn clothing represented what many think of as "punk" and authentically what one would see at CBGB. Some of the bands would hold their clothes together with safety pins, making it unclear if they could not afford new clothes or did not care to replace them. Talking Heads, however, would only appear in their preppy clothes and always looked neat on stage. While they did not appear as an inseparable collective through their clothing, Talking Heads were linked to each other at the exclusion of other CBGB bands because of the collegiate way that they dressed, which was unlike anything else at CBGB during the mid to late 1970s.
