A book a day: Chris Frantz. Chronic love

Idioma original: English .
Original title: Remain in love
Translation: Iñigo Garcia Ureta.
Year of publication: 2020
Valuation: highly recommended.

A quick background: Chris Frantz formed the rhythmic base of Talking Heads, he on drums, she on bass, together with his wife Tina Weymouth. A legendary band in their time, their influence is still present both in the mix of rock and funk rhythms and in a certain intellectual attitude. They were art students playing instruments and their creative and transgressive attitude was valued more than their technical efficiency. In terms of sound, from monsters like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to restless bands like Arcade Fire or Vampire Weekend owe a certain debt to the New York quartet.

Chronic love is subtitled as Memoirs of Chris Frantz and it is, from its cover, in which it recreates the graphic design and layout (even the title, which the translation betrays) of his masterpiece Remain in lightan obvious appeal not only to the ardent fan, there must be some, although commercial projection was not an obsession of the band, but even to those who are merely interested in a period (from 77 to 85, more or less) of creative effervescence, of a certain cultural frenzy that put the London-New York axis at the center of the avant-garde artistic manifestations. Frantz surprises me somewhat in the proportion. More than half of these five hundred long pages are dedicated to talking about his childhood, his youth and all the vicissitudes of the band prior to the publication of their first album, 77, the lives of its members as – as has sometimes been criticised – children of the middle or relatively well-off classes who choose to dedicate their lives to uncertain pursuits. The book is particularly fascinating, and voraciously readable, between those early CBGB gigs and the group’s formation, as Frantz details both economic precarity and sonic advancements and rise within the local scene while touring as support for other groups.

Of course, the mentions of other bands of the time (Ramones, Blondie, Television, Clash) put the story in context and we realise the exciting moment in which everything took place, how intense and persistent it was, and Frantz knows how to put this into words effectively, although I must say that the perspective is subjective and there are two issues that constantly arise throughout the text and that can condition the reader: the first is the immeasurable love that Frantz shows throughout the book for his wife. The mentions are constant and the book could almost be defined – again the title – as a tribute to Tina Weymouth, logical in any case for someone who has been a bandmate and a bedroom mate, shocking in a world where long-term relationships do not usually occur. The second issue, a constant undercurrent, is the conflict with David Byrne, vocalist and frontman of the band, whose figure is constantly criticized, from its obsessive control to the supposed tendency to decide unilaterally and to personally appropriate what, according to Frantz, were collective achievements and products of a joint effort. At this point, and without being able to count on the counterpoint of a Byrne always cryptic and not given to headlines, the book seems too much like an opportunity for a score-settling, something that is part of the classic ego struggle present in many rock bands, but that perhaps tarnishes the whole and distances the work from the classic exercise of slightly narcotized self-adulation that these books usually are and brings it closer to the defiant throwing of the gauntlet that, for the moment, does not seem to have been accepted.