Deviations from Select Albums 2: 60. Talking Heads

It is now 2015. I tweaked the original album cover art in order to fit it on my computer screen. In the best way it could. In the best possible way I could. I did not notice this album 35 years ago and

perhaps because I was busy bundling myself up to be what would be like a husband and father. Now I have computers to work with and play with and Remain in Light is fitting my screen perfectly.

Read on.

Of all the awesome cover art in rock music, the cover for the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light is one of the coolest and, certainly, one of the most memorable. Like the music of Talking Heads,

the cover was an encapsulation of its time, while simultaneously being leaps and bounds ahead of other art being produced. The creation of the cover was overseen by Talking Heads

Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums), along with Walter Bender, a surprising collaborator considering the fact that he was a researcher at MIT. Yes, the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology.

It was 1980. Computers were enormous, slow and relatively new technology. It took the design department of one of the most prestigious universities in the world to create the Remain in Light

cover. Specifically, MIT computers were used to transpose the red “masks” over each band member’s face. This was a major undertaking, especially considering that Remain in Light

is the first record to ever don computerized images on its cover. However, the cover you see below, the one that we associate with Remain in Light was originally planned

as the back cover. What we consider the back cover of the album was originally going to be the front. Full article

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The cover art was conceived by Weymouth and Frantz with the help of MIT researcher Walter Bender and his MIT Media Lab team. Using Melody Attack as inspiration, the couple created a

collage of red warplanes flying in formation over the Himalayas. The planes are an artistic depiction of Grumman Avenger planes in honour of Weymouth's father, Ralph Weymouth,

who was a US Navy Admiral. The idea for the back cover included simple portraits of the band members. Weymouth attended MIT during the summer of 1980 and worked

with Bender's colleague, Scott Fisher, on the computer renditions of the ideas. The process was tortuous because computer power was limited in the early 1980s

and the mainframe alone took up several rooms. Weymouth and Fisher shared a passion for masks and used the concept to experiment with the portraits.

The faces were blotted out with blocks of red colour.

The rest of the artwork was crafted by the graphic designer Tibor Kalman and his company M&Co. Kalman was a critic of formalism and professional design in art and advertisements.

He offered his services for free, and discussed using unconventional materials for the LP sleeve. Weymouth vetoed Kalman's ideas and held firm on the MIT computerised images.

The designing process made the band members realise that the title Melody Attack was "too flippant" for the music recorded, and they adopted Remain in Light instead.

Byrne has noted, "Besides not being all that melodic, the music had something to say that at the time seemed new, transcendent, and maybe even revolutionary,

at least for funk rock songs." The image of the warplanes was relegated to the back of the sleeve and the doctored portraits became the front cover.

Kalman later suggested that the planes were not removed altogether because they seemed appropriate during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–81.

Weymouth advised Kalman that she wanted simple typography in a bold sans serif font. M&Co. followed the instructions and came up with the idea of inverting the "A"s. The final

mass-produced version of Remain in Light boasted one of the first computer-designed record jackets. Psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog has called its front cover a "disarming

image, which suggests both splitting and obliteration of identity" and which introduces the listener to the album's recurring theme of "identity disturbance";

he states, "The image is in bleak contrast to the title with the obscured images of the band members unable to 'remain in light'. Full article