‘America’s greatest living record man’, who also brought the Smiths to the US, recalls hard living and spotting the right song
On a New York City night in late summer, 1976, three former art students were playing at a club called Max’s Kansas City. Observing them from a ringside table were a couple who looked a little older than most of the club’s clientele, and a lot less cool. But there they sat, front and centre, staring at the stage with encouraging smiles, gazing in particular at the singer, a thin, twitchy figure who, in his polo shirt and conservative haircut, looked more like a CIA intern than your standard rock and roller. Although none of the band’s repertoire of original compositions had yet been recorded, the couple’s lips moved in unison as they sang along to the words of every song, the most striking of which started like this: “I can’t seem to face up to the facts, I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax”.
Anyone who had worked in a record company’s A&R department would have recognised the couple’s behaviour as an impressive example of the art of seduction – and, as it transpired, a highly successful one for Seymour Stein and his wife, Linda, the singalong pair. Within a year that song, “Psycho Killer”, would be the centrepiece of the group’s first album, released on Stein’s label, Sire Records. The name of the band, of course, was Talking Heads.
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