Jonathan Gould > Quotes

“It is the sound of the crowd that can be heard in the second, crescendoing rush of the orchestra that follows the final verse, rising from a hum to a gasp to a shout... fusing at last to a shriek (its similarity to the sound of the crowds at Beatle concerts is surely no accident). The onrushing sound of the orchestra at the end of "A Day in the Life" has transcended more than the conventions of Sgt. Pepper's Band. It is the nightmare resolution of the Beatles' show within a show. It is the sound in the eras of the high-wire artist as the ground rushes up from below. There is a blinding flash of silence, then the stunning impact of a tremendous E major piano chord that hangs in the air for a small eternity, slowly fading away, a forty-second meditation on finality that leaves each member if the audience listening with a new kind of attention and awareness to the sound of nothing at all.”
― Jonathan Gould, Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America

“I vaguely mind people knowing anything I don’t know. --Paul McCartney”
― Jonathan Gould, Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America

“For if the British pop scene in the 1960s could be seen as the revenge of the art students, the American pop scene during that same period was surely the revenge of the English majors, thanks to the domineering influence of the greatest would-be English major of his generation, Bob Dylan.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

“With his “high, etiolated voice,” Williams added, David Byrne “resembles a CIA trainee of the early sixties infiltrating his neighborhood folk club.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

“It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential. —HANS ASPERGER”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

“Velvets’ epitaph: “Only a few thousand people bought that record, but all of them formed a band of their own.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

“As Seymour Stein later noted, “Radio stations wouldn’t touch the Ramones with a toilet brush.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock

“The mythos of the "rock group" that the Beatles bequeathed to popular music in the 1960s would retain its hold on the public imagination for decades to come, as succeeding generations of young people in their teens and twenties have continued to identify with the prospect of other young people like themselves, banding together and setting out, like John Lennon's alter ego Mr. Kite, to "challenge the world." The vast majority of these efforts at musical bonding have eventually come to naught. And even among the hundreds of groups that have achieved some measure of popularity or commercial success, the vast majority have been expressions of competent, even expert, forms of mediocrity, a testament to the boundless capacity of human beings to imitate what has come before. Yet in every generation, a handful of these bands of brothers and sisters have drawn on some distinctive combination of talent, imagination, determination, and providential good luck to create a body of musical work that has not only stood apart, but has also stood the test of time. Such a group was Talking Heads.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock – The Definitive Band Biography of the 1970s Avant-Garde

“Talking Heads would never make an equivalent break with the past. Instead, they would perform “Psycho Killer,” without fail, at every live performance they ever gave, from their audition night at CBGBs to their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—as if it never once occurred to them to not give their audiences exactly what they expected from the band.”
― Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock