“We were human samplers. We’d listen to the tapes, isolate the best bits, then learn how to play them over and over again”: How Talking Heads created their classic hit Once In A Lifetime

On the evening of 19 May, 1977, four musicians dressed in neutral Ivy League preppy wear shuffled onto the cramped stage at Eric’s, a recently-opened music club on Liverpool’s Matthew Street across the street from a makeshift car park, beneath which was buried the forgotten remains of the Cavern Club.

The musicians were members of Talking Heads, a band formed by three students from Rhode Island School of Design. They were in the UK as the most unlikely support act for one of the most anticipated New York bands of the moment, the Ramones.

Both bands shared the same record label, Seymour Stein’s Sire Records, and both were immersed in the East Village’s vibrant CBGB scene. But that’s pretty much where the similarities ended.

While the Ramones unleashed short, ferocious bursts of breakneck buzzsaw punk, Talking Heads unveiled crisp, edgy and considered songs that melded funk, disco and punk into a sound that was utterly unique.

Over the next three years, their albums Talking Heads 77 (1977), More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) and Fear Of Music (1979) would cement their reputation as a supremely gifted band.

But it was the fourth album Remain In Light and in particular the track Once In A Lifetime, that would be one of their greatest creative statements.

Once In A Lifetime was the lead single and the focal point of Remain In Light. It’s an exhilarating, beautiful song, fuelled by rhythms of Afrobeat, funk and rap.

45 years after it was released, Once In A Lifetime still sounds quite unlike anything else in the history of pop.

By the end of 1979, all four members of Talking Heads were taking time out after touring the Fear In Music album. Singer David Byrne was working with Brian Eno on their collaborative album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, and keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison was producing an album for soul singer Nona Hendryx.

Meanwhile, the group’s married couple, Chris Frantz (drums) and Tina Weymouth (bass), were on the cusp of forming their own side project Tom Tom Club, and had taken a holiday in the Caribbean, which ended up with them buying an apartment above Compass Point Studios, in Nassau, Bahamas, where the band had recorded their second album in 1978.

Compass Point would be the location for the recording of Remain In Light, and work began in early 1980.

But by then, there was deep conflict within the band.

Frantz and Weymouth were allegedly concerned by what they viewed as David Byrne’s controlling behaviour towards the rest of the band.

Weymouth in particular felt slighted, as Byrne had allegedly made her audition three times for the band she was already in.

Up until that point, Byrne had taken on most of the responsibility for songwriting, but Frantz, Weymouth and Harrison had reportedly all tired of the notion that they were a backing band for Byrne.

In January 1980, Harrison and Byrne joined Frantz and Weymouth at Compass Point as they prepared to start work on the album. In a bid to resolve their conflicts, the whole band decided that instead of creating music for Byrne’s lyrics, they would begin by creating extended jamming sessions, using the Fear Of Music track I Zimbra as a foundation.

I Zimbra (2005 Remaster) - YouTube

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The plan paid off, helped in no small part by the contribution of Brian Eno, who arrived at Compass Point three weeks later.

This would be the third and final album that Eno would produce for Talking Heads. He was reluctant to produce Remain In Light, but reportedly changed his mind when he heard the tapes of the instrumental demos the band had created in his absence.

By this stage of his career, Eno had turned his musical focus to Africa, and it was a direction that would fuel Remain In Light.

"The first time I ever met Talking Heads, I played them a record by Fela Kuti, the African-Nigerian musician who'd invented that thing called Afrobeat," Eno told Rick Karr of Washington DC-based public broadcasting organisation NPR in March 2000. "I thought that was just the most exciting music going on at the time.”

Recording took place in July and August 1980 at Compass Point.

From the outset, Eno encouraged spontaneous improvisation to try and create the kind of grooves found in Fela Kuti’s music.

Weymouth has fond memories of the sessions that led to the creation of Once In A Lifetime.

“It was a really good atmosphere,” she told Uncut magazine. “We were aware that Brian and David had had some falling out during My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, so we really needed it light and playful and inclusive.

Weymouth continued: “For that jam session, I remember that Brian and Jerry both played Prophet keyboards. Brian also played little percussion instruments, and Jerry moved between keyboards and guitar. David played a little R&B guitar part which was stripped out afterwards. Even the lovely Robert Palmer, who was in the studio with us that day, jammed with us on guitar and percussion.”

Like all of the songs on Remain In Light, Once In A Lifetime was developed by recording these jams and selecting the parts that shone out.

“We'd listen to the tapes, isolate the best bits, then learn how to play them over and over again,” said Byrne in Uncut magazine. “We were human samplers.”

No one recalls precisely when the jam that became Once In A Lifetime first surfaced, although the one element that certainly kicked it into life was Tina Weymouth’s two-bar bass riff. This riff immediately anchored the groove and formed the rhythmic heart of the song.

According to Weymouth, Chris Frantz heard the part in his head and yelled it out to her during the jam. In 2007, Weymouth told Uncut that she wanted to "leave lots of space for the cacophony that surrounded me. I felt like I was pounding away like a carpenter, just nailing away to get it in the groove”.

Eno was initially reluctant to pursue the song as he felt it had no discernible verse or chorus. It was a view shared by Jerry Harrison who then developed a burbling synth arpeggio that floated above the groove and transformed the mood of the song.

Harrison also added a Hammond organ part inspired by The Velvet Underground’s What Goes On.

At this point, Eno developed the song’s chorus by wordlessly singing a top line melody over this part.

In an interview with Uncut, Chris Frantz said the band’s initial aim was to create a “rhythm bed”, which could be expanded upon.

“We tried to do something that had a transcendent feeling,” he said, “something that people could dance to, that would transport people. It was quite spiritual. David disappeared for about two months to write the lyrics. They were recorded later, in New York.”

Once Eno had the verse and the chorus, the whole song fell into place. But it was Byrne’s lyrics that really pulled the whole thing together and gave it direction.

Consumerism and the advancement of age are prevailing lyrical themes, with Byrne assuming the role of an evangelical Southern preacher to drum the point home.

Byrne uses a half-spoken, half-sung, hyperventilating style, inspired by the broadcasts of radio evangelists as they deliver their sermons.

“We very nearly abandoned the song [but] I insisted that I could write words to it and pull it together,” Byrne told Uncut. “It worked as a call-and-response pattern, like a preacher's conversation with his congregation. I improvised lines as if I was giving a sermon.

“Some people interpreted the lyrics as a parody of yuppie greed – ‘where is my beautiful house?’ – but I don't think it's like that at all. It's about the unconscious. It's about how we operate half awake, on autopilot.

Byrne added: “At that time I loved how bands – ourselves included – were trying to play funk, but got it brilliantly wrong, inadvertently creating something really interesting. Then people started to get a bit too good at playing funk and it was all downhill from there.”

Byrne hurled himself into the evangelical preacher role, and it’s one evoked brilliantly by him in Toni Basil’s memorable video for the song.

The first verse in Once In A Lifetime is driving, polyrhythmic and relentless, then at 0:43 the song opens up with the chorus over a D-G-D-G chord sequence, with a thick wash of backing vocals.

Guitars are pristine, jagged and choppy and there’s a real crispness to Frantz’s kit, with deep resonance on the toms.

Weymouth’s bass, meanwhile, is big, wide and squelchy.

Adrian Belew played guitar on the session, and Eno himself adds synth, percussion and backing vocals.

At 3:26, twisted squalls of overdriven guitar/synth enter the mix and by four minutes in, the slow fade-out is under way.

Once In A Lifetime is a breathtaking achievement – dynamic, exhilarating and utterly timeless.

45 years after it was released it sounds as fresh and innovative as it ever did.