Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're really
digging into someone quite extraordinary. Jeremiah
Griffin. Yeah. Harrison. Jerry Harrison. Born
1949, Milwaukee. And if you just know him as,
you know, the keyboard guy from Talking Heads.
Yeah, that's really just scratching the surface.
You really only know a tiny piece of the story.
Absolutely. I mean, that's the challenge with
Harrison, isn't it? His fame. Yeah, it comes
from Talking Heads, the sound he brought to New
Wave. But if you follow his path. Back through
academia, high art, and then forward through
producing massive hits, even into venture capital.
You see, he wasn't just a musician. He was maybe
a master synthesizer. A synthesizer of ideas.
Exactly. Taking completely different things,
sounds, visual ideas, even financial structures,
and just making them mesh, making them work brilliantly.
Yeah, you look at the genres he was involved
in, new wave, afrobeat, funk, punk rock, art
rock. It screams boundary pusher from day one.
So our mission today is to explore how this guy
goes from studying architecture and visual art
to being a rock icon and then just pivots again
seamlessly. into tech and healthcare entrepreneurship.
It's this roadmap of constant high -level intellectual
shifts. And, you know, we should mention his
official recognition. Oh, definitely. The Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. Yeah, 2002 as part of
Talking Heads. But the real takeaway here, I
think, for you listening is finding that common
thread. What connects playing in a band obsessed
with the Velvet Underground to later founding
an online music platform and then investing in
biotech? That core skill, it was there early.
Really early, deep in his background, art academia.
Okay, let's get into that. The foundations, Milwaukee
upbringings. You mentioned this potent mix, like
half art school, half business. That's a great
way to put it. It really set the stage for his
whole career, balancing that aesthetic side with
commercial sense. His mother was key for the
art exposure. Right, she taught art. She did.
studied and taught at big places, Art Institute
of Chicago, Leighton School of Art. So he was
just surrounded by visual composition, abstract
thinking, really young. So he's already thinking
in terms of structure, space, visuals. Precisely.
Now contrast that or maybe complement it with
his father, a musician too, but also a successful
advertising executive. Oh, okay. The practical
business side. Exactly. Structure, strategy,
how to communicate effectively commercially,
art and commerce right there in his childhood
home. And you see this blend, this rigor and
application in his high school years too. Shorewood
High. Yeah, the list of activities is kind of
intense. He wasn't exactly kicking back. No kidding.
Debate club, student council, math club, and
basketball and track. Wow. It just shows this
early ability to juggle a lot, master different
fields, high functioning multitasking, and that.
Intensity definitely carried over to Harvard.
Okay, Harvard. This is where it gets really interesting,
especially thinking about where he ended up musically.
Magna Cum Laude, 1972. Degree in Visual and Environmental
Studies, VES. Why VES? I mean, that feels pretty
abstract for someone heading towards punk rock,
doesn't it? How does studying painting and sculpture
make you a better musician or, you know, way
later, a venture capitalist? That's the question,
right? The core of his whole career. VES isn't
your standard degree. It's super interdisciplinary.
His thesis wasn't just writing a paper. It was
making stuff. Yeah, painting, sculpture, drawing.
It trained him not just to look at art, but to
understand compositional structure, spatial relationship.
Structure and space. Okay. Now think about that
musically. When he joins Talking Heads, he's
not just playing a keyboard part. He's synthesizing
the whole soundscape. He's taking Burns' angular
guitar, Weymouth and France's minimal rhythm,
and adding these layers. Keyboards, sure, but
also polyrhythms, textures, atmosphere. He's
basically applying VES principles composition
structure to sound. It's knowing where to put
the color, you know, the synth patch within the
space, the beat, to get the most impact. That
completely reframes his role in Talking Heads,
especially on albums like Remain in Light. He
wasn't just the keyboard player. He was like
the sonic architect. Exactly. Bringing high art
academic theory into the, well, the pretty grimy
world of punk and new wave. Which maybe surprisingly
brings us to where his professional music career
actually started. The Modern Lovers. The Modern
Lovers, yeah. 1971 to 74, essential punk rock
roots right there. He meets Jonathan Richman
in 71, introduced by Danny Fields, the journalist.
Okay. And it wasn't just a casual hey, it was
like an immediate ideological connection. And
that ideology was specifically the Velvet Underground.
The Velvet Underground. That says so much, doesn't
it? Very specific art rock counterculture benchmark.
Definitely. They bonded over the Velvets. Harrison
joins the band early 71, plays on that legendary
debut album. And think who produced it. John
Cale. John Cale himself. Recorded in 72 in California.
So Harrison's basically getting his initial training
from like the high priests of art punk. And crafting
this cornerstone of proto -punk, proto -new wave.
Yeah. Years before anyone even heard it since
the album didn't actually come out until 70.
Right. But that phase ends pretty suddenly over.
Volume levels. Yeah, a classic case of artistic
differences, right? The band breaks up February
74 because Richman, the front man, just decides
he wants to play his songs way, way quieter.
And Harrison, who was all about that loud electric
sound they'd pioneered, was apparently just devastated.
And here's that amazing pivot moment we have
to talk about. Most musicians, their seminal
band breaks up, they're crushed, they immediately
look for another band, right? They'd think so.
Harrison does the exact opposite. He goes back
to Harvard. to get a master's degree in architecture.
It's the ultimate proof of his VES training in
action, isn't it? The musical structure. The
modern lover's collapses, so he defaults back
to academic structure. Architecture is literally
the physical application of those visual and
environmental studies. Building structures. Solving
structural problems, exactly. His creative structure
breaks, so he goes to build literal ones. It's
just a fascinating detour, even if it didn't
last long. Didn't last long because, well, New
York and New Wave were calling louder than blueprints.
Enter Talking Heads, Musician Part 2. And how
he joins this band is almost the perfect link
between that high concept world and the, you
know, gritty reality of the NYC scene. The unintentional
audition story, yeah. Talking Heads already had
their first single out, Love Building on Fire,
when he joined in 77. But the offer actually
came earlier, 76, while he was still deep in
his Harvard studies. And the anecdote is great.
Tina Weymouth calls him. invites him to a show
in Boston, not knowing he'd already seen them
and was totally blown away. He was already respected,
you know, in that underground scene, but actually
getting to the band, that was a very practical,
very broke kind of problem. He decides to move
to New York, September 76, to jam with them.
But no cash for the bus ticket? Not even for
the bus. So how does the magna cum laude Harvard
guy, the aspiring architect, get to the heart
of the New York punk scene? Manual labor. He
hitches a ride by helping his old modern lover's
pal, Ernie Brooks, move someone's furniture to
New York City. You're kidding. Moving furniture.
Moving furniture. Just picture it. A key figure
in new wave history hauling a sofa just to get
the chance to play with one of the most important
bands ever. It just nails that low budget, high
intellect vibe they had going on. That tension
is pure talking heads, isn't it? High concept,
low budget. Now, while he's helping shape that
nervous angular sound, he's also starting. to
produce on the side, right? Between tours. Yeah,
he got into producing pretty early, worked with
the Escalators, Nona Hendrix, this kind of dual
role performer and sonic architect. It flowed
naturally from his VES background, but it definitely
caused some friction inside Talking Heads, especially
around Remain in Light. Ah, the 1980 masterpiece
and the infamous credit dispute reflects how
collaborative, maybe chaotic, that album's creation
was, particularly with Brian Eno involved. Totally.
It really highlights how tricky it is to pin
down contributions in that kind of environment.
The sources say there was a big disagreement
about who did what. Harrison had to fight for
it, but he eventually got additional writing
credit on two really key tracks. Which ones?
The Overload and Houses in Motion alongside Bird
and Eno. The Overload especially. That's such
a dense, almost unsettling track, all texture
and rhythm. Yeah. So what does that dispute tell
us about his role? It wasn't just playing keys,
clearly. No way. It suggests he was deeply involved
structurally, defining the composition, the whole
atmosphere of those tracks. Remain in Light is
just the peak of synthesis in New Wave, right?
All those West African rhythms, the funk influences.
Harrison, with his understanding of arranging
sounds in space, layering textures, he was perfectly
suited to help orchestrate that complexity. He
was like the essential bridge between Burns'
vision and Eno's experiments. Yeah. organizing
the chaos, basically, giving it structure. The
band officially calls it quits in 91, after David
Byrne announces he's leaving, which then frees
Harrison up to really dive into his other interests,
starting with his solo career. And right away,
you see that intellectual political side is still
firing. Oh, yeah. His first solo album, The Red
and the Black, in 81. It's a prime example of
using pop music to explore some pretty dense
ideas. The title itself caused confusion. Everyone
assumes Stendhal's novel, right? Right. The classic
19th century novel. But the real story is way
more specific, more underground. What was it?
Harrison explained years later, 2021 actually,
that it was inspired by a situationist group.
Specifically, a pamphlet by Guy Debord. He'd
met some situationists back at Harvard during
anti -war protests. They ended up crashing in
his room, talking philosophy, anarchism. Wow.
So his first big solo statement is basically
translating situationist theory, communism, anarchism
into songs. Not exactly aiming for top 40. Not
at all. He was aiming to make people think. It's
that same principle again, translating complex
ideas into a structure, in this case, rhythmic
structure. And that commitment to political commentary
really blew up three years later, in 1984, with
Five Minutes, Bonzo Goes to Washington. That
track is legendary for its sampling. Where did
that Reagan audio actually come from? It was
pure accident, really. An off -air hot mic moment
during a soundcheck, President Reagan joking
about outlawing Russia and starting bombing.
The infamous, we begin bombing in five minutes
line. Chilling, even as a joke back then. Totally
chilling. And Harrison heard that recording and
immediately got its significance. He tracked
down the tape apparently through a college radio
station and built this amazing funk track around
it, got Daniel Lazarus to co -produce, and brought
in the one and only Bootsy Collins on bass. Incredible
lineup. But the song itself was sharp, right?
The challenge was getting it out there. Exactly.
Its entire point was tied to the 1984 presidential
election. It had to be released before the vote
to mean anything. And major labels wouldn't touch
it. Too political, too fast. No way. Too risky.
Timetable was too tight. So Harrison takes this
huge gamble. He releases it on a tiny indie label,
Sleeping Bag Records, in October 84, just weeks
before the election. A really radical, independent
move. And classic Harrison humor later, joking
about sharing royalties with his lyricist, Ronald
Reagan. That perfect blend of serious politics
and detached wit. Yeah. Which brings us to his
biggest solo hit, Casual Gods, in 1988. And the
recording story behind this one is pretty unique,
too, isn't it? The location. Oh, the location
for Casual Gods is amazing. Recorded back in
Milwaukee, his best friend's brother had set
up a studio inside a converted bomb shelter.
A bomb shelter studio. You couldn't write that.
It almost feels like a metaphor for his music,
you know, structured art in a kind of paranoid
space. It definitely adds a certain vibe. And
the personal situation was intense, too. He was
recording at night, but spending his days taking
care of his sick mother. So it wasn't some rock
star indulgence. It was really focused, personal.
work. And he pulled in collaborators from his
past too. He did. Co -wrote a lot of the songs
with Ernie Brooks, his old bandmate from the
Modern Lovers. The guy who helped him move the
furniture. The very same guy. Yeah. That continuity
is pretty cool. And the album clicked commercially
big time. Rev It Up was everywhere for a while.
Huge hit. Number seven on the U .S. mainstream
charts, April 88. And the stories around it are
just... memorable like apparently the music video
for rev it up involved filming in a room just
packed with babies babies okay that's unexpected
from situationist theory and nuclear satire to
a room full of infants and a funk rock chart
hit that's definitely range casual gods also
showed his knack for music that worked well in
films yeah man with a gun was in two moon junction
in 88 but an instrumental version was actually
used even earlier in 1986 in jonathan dem's movie
something wild Interesting. Shows the strength
of the composition, right? Works with or without
lyrics. And that single did well internationally,
too. Australia and New Zealand. And the success
meant a proper tour in 88. And the band he put
together was kind of a dream team, reflecting
that whole punk -funk new wave mix. Oh, the band
was killer. Super adaptable. Ernie Brooks on
bass again, Alex Weir and Chris Bedding on guitars,
and the phenomenal Bernie Worrell on keyboards
from Parliament Funkadelic. And, of course, he'd
toured with Talking Heads, too. Wow. And look
at the cover. It was like his entire musical
history is synthesized on stage. His last solo
album, Walk on Water, came out in 1990. But after
Talking Heads officially split in 91, he makes
this final, maybe most lasting career shift.
The producer powerhouse, and then the entrepreneur.
And this is where that VES foundation really
comes into its own commercially. Because what
is production, really? It's organizing chaos
into something cohesive, something that sells.
He'd already done some producing, you know, Elliot
Murphy, Violent Femmes, The Blind, Leading the
Naked back in 86. But the 90s. Yeah. That's when
he just explodes as a producer. He becomes almost
the go -to guy for that whole alt -rock boom.
The credits list is just staggering in its variety.
He was the ultimate sonic shapeshifter. Think
about the band live. He was absolutely central
to their huge success. Produced Mental Jewelry,
then the massive Throwing Copper, The Distance
to Here. Huge albums. Huge. But then also Crash
Test Dummies, God Shuffled His Feet, The Verve
Pipe, Villains, even No Doubt, helping them find
their sound for Return of Saturn around 2000.
That's such a diverse set of bands. Why him?
Why was Jerry Harrison, the guy known for New
Wave since, the right fit for all these 90s?
old rock bands that's a great question i think
it's because 90s alt rock unlike maybe 70s classic
rock wasn't always built on traditional song
structures it was often about texture atmosphere
weird instrumentation okay which is exactly harrison's
strength his new wave background meant he understood
synthesizers space layering maybe better than
many rock producers bands hired him to bring
clarity structure and that atmospheric depth
to their sound he could hear the core potential
in a band like live or say rusted root and then
build the perfect sonic environment around it,
maximize the impact emotionally and commercially.
And he wasn't just doing outrock. The list includes
General Public, String Cheese Incident, Big Head
Todd, Kenny Wayne Shepard. He really could handle
almost any texture. He mastered it. But what's
truly mind -blowing is that while he's building
this huge production career, he makes another
massive pivot into the digital world and then
finance, moving from curating sound to, well,
curating capital. 1999, co -found GarageBand
.com. This wasn't just some website, right? This
was early. pioneering music tech. Absolutely
pioneering. Garageband .com was radical, not
just a place to upload songs. It was set up as
this competitive online community. It used peer
reviews, a structured rating system. Basically
a digital version of the old A &R process. Crowdsourcing
talent scouting. Kind of, yeah. He was chairman
of the board. He used his industry knowledge
to build a platform that filtered and judged
new music. It was his producer brain, finding
quality, providing structure, curating applied
to the internet, a system for synthesizing musical
capital. Okay, so producer to tech chairman is
already a big leap. But then the next move into
healthcare finance. That seems like the biggest
jump yet. Right. As of 2015, his founder and
chairman of Red Crow. Totally different field,
but look closer. The core skills are identical.
Red Crow is a web platform for direct investment.
It connects money, financial capital with people
and ideas, human capital, specifically in health
care startups. OK, break that down. How does
producing, say, throwing copper, relate to picking
winning biotech startups? It's all curation and
synthesis. Think about producing. Harrison listens
to hours of raw music, identifies the best bits,
cuts the noise, structures it into a hit. Red
Crew does the same thing, but with health care
innovation. They sift through hundreds of startup
pitches, identify the best talent and the most
viable tech, the human capital. They cut through
the noise, the non -starters. Then they structure
the investment, needed the financial capital
to make it happen. He's facilitating the successful
composition of a health care company. So applying
the same structural thinking from VES and music
production to medicine and finance. Exactly.
Red Crow is described as a community sharing
knowledge and passion for health care innovation.
It's synthesis in maybe the highest stakes field
there is, human health. It really is an incredible
intellectual journey. Same skill set, refined
at Harvard, perfected in the studio, now applied
to totally different markets. We should probably
mention, though. He hasn't completely left the
old world behind. No, definitely not. There was
a partial reunion project in 96, No Talking,
Just Head. That was Harrison, Weymouth, and France
with guest singers, but no Byrne. And he popped
up in a few films, too, keeping those visual
arts connections alive. Yeah, obviously he's
all over Stop Making Sense, the 84 concert film,
which is iconic. But later, he did cameos in
David Byrne's film True Stories in 86. Right,
as the lip -cinching lookalikes. Yeah. Billy
Idol, Kid Creel, Prince, just quick, funny moments.
She has a good sense of humor about image. And
way later, 2006, he had a tiny part in the Darwin
Awards as just guy in bar number one. Ultimate
anonymity. Pretty much. And the final piece,
really bringing it full circle, is his return
to performing live recently. Yeah, after decades
focused mostly on production and business, he
got back on stage. In 2021, first time publicly
performing since that 96 tour, he joined the
band Turquoise and Adrian Ballou, another key
Talking Heads collaborator, for shows celebrating
the 40th anniversary of Remain in Light. It just
shows, you know, his focus might be elsewhere
professionally now, but that core joy of making
music, of synthesis, it's still there. So summing
it all up, we've tracked this truly unique path.
High art student obsessed with structure, punk
musician, new wave sonic architect, then hit
producer, digital music pioneer, and now... healthcare
tech investor. The common thread, it's not the
instrument or the company. It's that incredible
ability honed way back in VES to synthesize,
to take diverse, sometimes messy information
and talent and shape it into something structured,
something valuable. He applies compositional
thinking structure, rhythm, organization everywhere.
Music, politics, tech, finance. He didn't just
change with the times. He curated his own evolution.
He's like the ultimate example of transferable
skills. Which leads to a final thought maybe
for you listening. If that core skill is synthesis
and curation, taking disparate parts, organizing
them for value, how does that apply to the noise,
the information overload you deal with every
day? Where in your world could you apply that
VES idea of bringing structure and composition
to something that really needs organizing? That
I think is the real lesson from Jerry Harrison's
deep dive.