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Speaker 1: Let Me tell You a Story.

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Speaker 2: Now a time, Cleary releases the story behind the song

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Speaker 2: let Us Tell Your Story. Burning Down the House by

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Speaker 2: Talking Heads, released in July nineteen eighty three as the

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Speaker 2: first single from their fifth studio album, Speaking in Tongues,

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Speaker 2: It's not David says, it was never a song about us,

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Speaker 2: and when I wrote the lyrics in eighty two, the

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Speaker 2: title phrase was a metaphor for destroying something safe that

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Speaker 2: entrapped you. I envisioned the song as an expression of liberation,

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Speaker 2: to break free from whatever was holding you back. Now,

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Speaker 2: Tina Weymouth, the bassist, says, burning Down the House is

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Speaker 2: a new way funk and art rock song. It started

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Speaker 2: from a jam and it sounds like the title might

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Speaker 2: have come from their drummer, Chris Franz, via a Parliament

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Speaker 2: Funkadelic gig in New York.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely. David Burn expanding on that right here.

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Speaker 1: I thought, let me see if I can make a

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Speaker 1: song that is basically a lot of non sequiturs that

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Speaker 1: have a kind of some kind of emotional impact, that

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Speaker 1: they have some kind of emotional resonance. It doesn't make

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Speaker 1: literal sense, but it makes emotional sense. The phrase burning

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Speaker 1: down the house. I'd heard being used as a chant

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Speaker 1: at a Parliament Funkadelic concert that i'd seen. They didn't

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Speaker 1: have it in a song. It was just a kind

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Speaker 1: of chance that they started chanting and the audience joined

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Speaker 1: in and it was coming. It meant like, we're going

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Speaker 1: to blow the roof off the sucker, We're going to

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Speaker 1: set this place on fire. It's going to be you know,

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Speaker 1: we're going to have a really amazing time here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it didn't mean literally, let's set fire to our houses.

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Speaker 1: I love it they've done that from a chant from

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Speaker 1: a gig. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Parliament Funkadelic, of course, was the great American music collaborative

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Speaker 2: spearheaded by George Clinton, had members like Bootsy Collins, this

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Speaker 2: huge funk thing and i've.

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Speaker 3: Very influential, huge in.

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Speaker 2: The early eighties. And burn the House, Burn the House

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Speaker 2: was their audience chant, and it was Chris. It was

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Speaker 2: Chris Franz that was yelling it out evidently at this

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Speaker 2: particular show that he and David were at.

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Speaker 3: Isn't it funny? We'll only go back here and I'll

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Speaker 3: just point out that this was their first to top

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Speaker 3: ten hit in America on the Billboard charts. Didn't do

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Speaker 3: so well here I was in four like installed at

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Speaker 3: ninety four. I'm embarrassed he.

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Speaker 2: Stopped making sense and then people reconsidered it.

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Speaker 3: Well, then we got the extended version in me on

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Speaker 3: the movie stop making sense in the soundtrack itself. But

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Speaker 3: if you dig a bit deeper in the early days

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Speaker 3: of the song's development and the creative process. David Burn

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Speaker 3: being interviewed.

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Speaker 4: Here, and generally I get about oh an hour is

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Speaker 4: worth a tep out of each day because I only

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Speaker 4: turn it on when I thought something interesting was happening,

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Speaker 4: and then I'd take those home and pick out the

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Speaker 4: bits that I thought were interesting. Would you have an

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Speaker 4: example of an early jam could bring.

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Speaker 1: Down the house?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, this is pretty early. Should I put it on?

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Speaker 1: So? Is that what we're listening to?

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Speaker 4: Is that the very first time that that you came

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Speaker 4: up with that? Well, that's very close to it. That's

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Speaker 4: probably the result of me listening to a tape and

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Speaker 4: then bringing it in and saying, here is some little

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Speaker 4: accidental thing happening here that I think we could improve on,

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Speaker 4: and this is probably the result of that.

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Speaker 3: I love how he says it's like an accident. It's

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Speaker 3: an accident.

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Speaker 2: I imagine if you job sitting in a room with

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Speaker 2: David Bernie sticking out his old tapes playing in the

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Speaker 2: early couldn't you hear the Parliament?

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Speaker 3: Absolutely? Yeah, vibe there definitely had a real love, funky

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Speaker 3: feel to it and you go, oh okay. So they

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Speaker 3: developed it from there and that is very cool. They

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Speaker 3: hear the early incarnation absolutely the album was speaking in tongues.

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Speaker 3: But when we sat in the cinema and saw the

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Speaker 3: concert film of Stop Making Sense, that version, that extended

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Speaker 3: version of burning down the House is blew your way amazing,

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Speaker 3: so damn good.

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Speaker 2: That was our story behind the song.

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Speaker 3: Song Today