“Psycho Killer” is among the songs included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. It is one of the longest surviving rock hymns, still often heard on radio, on parties, and in club gigs. I know the song all my life, but last night I was replacing the bassist in a local band and they sent me their repertoire, in which there was “Psycho Killer.” I realize that I’ve never played the song, not even at home, and I had the most pleasant job of learning the chords and the bass line. Why so pleasant? Because David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Weymouth are magicians when it comes to arranging. Their music is like a mosaic constructed out of separate, equally catchy and potent sonic tiles, beautifully harmonized in a song. Every tone, every sound of every instrument is perfectly balanced and in accord with the melody, and with the groove. Don’t be fooled by the simple basic beat - half of West Africa hides underneath. If anyone in the band improvises his part than the listener would immediately feel odd. I’m not sure if we managed to play it decent enough last night, but there were no flying bottles so I guess we did it all right.
"Psycho Killer" is a song written by Byrne, Frantz and Weymouth in 1975 for their first band together, called The Artistic in 1974. They continued to perform the song as Talking Heads, with a later version recorded for their 1977 album “Talking Heads: 77.” Initially, they recorded an acoustic version of the song that featured Arthur Russell on cello, of which the guitarist Jerry Harrison said "I'm glad we persuaded Tony [Bongiovi] and Lance [Quinn] that the version with the cellos shouldn't be the only one." "Psycho Killer" was the only song from the album to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 92, but the song’s success goes way beyond the chart position. AllMusic calls the song a "deceptively funky new wave/no wave song" with "an insistent rhythm, and one of the most memorable, driving bass lines in rock & roll."
Released as a single in December 1977, "Psycho Killer" became instantly associated in popular culture with the contemporaneous Son of Sam serial killings. Although the band always insisted that the song had no inspiration from the notorious events, the single's release date was "eerily timely" and marked by a "macabre synchronicity". In the liner notes of “Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads,” Byrne says: “When I started writing this (I got help later), I imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-type ballad. Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.”
