It All Started at RISD Chris Frantz 74 PT + Tina Weymouth 74 PT “If we hadn’t gone to RISD our lives would be completely different,” Chris Frantz 74 PT and Tina Weymouth 74 PT readily admit. They met at RISD 44 years ago and went on to make a life, two kids and a full career together—starting with Talking Heads and then Tom Tom Club and other musical ventures. On May 30 they returned to RISD with former Heads bandmate and ex-Modern Lover Jerry Harrison to accept honorary degrees at RISD’s 2015 Commencement (see also page 48). “My time at RISD was one of the happiest of my life,” says Weymouth. “It was an epiphany—as if another part of my brain kicked in. Painting and music are connected, but I can’t think of anything that moves me more than music.” Weymouth, who had been studying art history and French literature at Barnard when she transferred, immediately felt at home at RISD, discovering that she was with “oddballs—just like me. It was an immersion in a whole other world of people studying only art.” Frantz agrees, noting that as Painting majors, they were both strongly influenced by late professor Richard Merkin MFA 64 PT, whose “approach was not to reprogram you by breaking you down, but to inspire the exploration of everything around you.”
“RISD alumni are very accomplished. Whether they’re making it big right now or not, they bring a meaningful relationship with creativity to the world.” Part of that exploration involved pursuing a love of music with other artists on campus. Frantz, a drummer who had played in bands in high school, had put performing on the back burner when he came to RISD. But he soon felt that something was missing and wanted to get back to playing. For a while he hooked up with a soul band called The Brotherhood, but
Once Tina (on guitar) and Chris (on drums) started playing with David Byrne (right) at RISD, they went on to found the breakthrough band Talking Heads.
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after working on a friend’s film soundtrack with David Byrne, who had dropped out after Foundation year, Frantz invited him to join the new band he formed in the spring of 1973 with his friend from Kentucky, David Anderson (who also dropped out after a year at RISD). In the painting studio they shared on the second floor of Carr House, Frantz, Weymouth and Byrne wrote the now-famous words to Psycho Killer—initially for that new band, The Artistics (aka The Autistics). Weymouth was a big supporter, but it took her then-boyfriend nearly two years to convince her to join them on stage. Though she had learned folk guitar out of books while in high school in Iceland, she had never thought about playing in a band. The Artistics were, for the most part, “a prototypical, all-guy punk band—very geeky and horribly loud,” says Weymouth. “You couldn’t stand closer than 50 feet because it was so abusive. But I loved them because they promoted artistic license to be weird. And I liked playing guitar, so that’s what seduced me ultimately.” Sharing music—through concerts in Providence and dancing late into the night at local discos—became a ritual of Chris and Tina’s courtship, which led to marriage in 1977—the same year Talking Heads released its first album, which was immediately hailed as a breakthrough. Between then and 1991, the band went on to tour the world, record 10 albums and work with Jonathan Demme in making Stop Making Sense, among the best concert films of all time. In 1991 Frantz and Weymouth formed the band Tom Tom Club, which led to their first gold record through the hits Wordy Rappinghood and Genius of Love. In 2002 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. More than 40 years after it all began, Frantz and Weymouth continue to tour and record music, recently embarking on a new electronic music project. In between, they’ve kept connected with RISD. “RISD alumni are very accomplished,” Weymouth says. “They know they’re good. Whether they’re making it big right now or not, they bring a meaningful relationship with creativity to the world.”