Talking Heads guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison is preparing to play a special concert and Q&A event with ex-King Crimson singer/guitarist Adrian Belew on September 29 at the famed Los Angeles theater The Wiltern.
The show is the latest of several performances that Harrison and Belew, along with members of the Brooklyn, New York-based group Turkuaz, have played since 2020 celebrating Talking Heads‘ 1980 album, Remain in Light.
Harrison tells ABC Audio that the inspiration for the concerts was a 1980 show in Rome that Talking Heads played during their Remain in Light trek while Belew was a touring member of group.
“There was something unique and different about this [Rome] show, which was a little more free form, a little bit more open to, let’s say, improvisation,” Harrison explains. “And [Adrian and I] said, ‘Let’s try and duplicate that show.’ So, rather than doing the whole album … we did the Remain in Light songs that we did in that show, plus a bunch of [other Talking Heads tunes] from earlier albums.”
Harrison notes that the new “Remain in Light” concerts also have featured renditions of Jerry’s solo song “Rev It Up” and King Crimson’s “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” a tune co-written by Belew.
To present the show live, Harrison and Belew initially teamed up with Turkuaz, an eclectic funk group that Jerry had previously produced. After internal tensions led Turkuaz to break up in late 2021, Harrison and Belew’s concerts have featured most of the Brooklyn band’s former members, plus some additional musicians.
Harrison says the Q&A portion of the event at The Wiltern likely will take place before the performance, noting that it will “set the tone of people having sort of a conversation with Adrian and me.”
Tickets for the concert are available at LiveNation.com.
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