Jerry Harrison

Jeremiah Griffin Harrison was born on 21 February 1949 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has a long history of playing in bands, beginning at High School in Milwaukee with a group called The Walkers. Jerry graduated and moved east to attend Harvard University. There he formed a band called Albatross, in September 1967. They were all students and did some original numbers, through mostly they relied on Steve Miller and Jimi Herdrix songs. The band, with Ernie Brooks playing bass, lasted two years, playing at parties and college dances in the Boston/Cambridge area. It folded in May 1969, when college broke up for the summer, but singer Jim Mahoney and Ernie Brooks went on to form Catfish Black with a number of other musicians. This band lasted from July '69 to July '70.

The next move was for Ernie Brooks and Jerry Harrison to re-unite, which they did in September 1970, to form a band called The Eagles. They lasted two months, finally splitting in November 1970. Still in the Boston area, Jerry and Ernie ran into a guy named Jonathan Richman at a party and Richman began a lengthy campaign for them to join a band with him. It was to be called The Modern Lovers.

In the spring of 1972, they found themselves out in Los Angeles recording a demo for Warner Brothers with John Cale producing it. After a number of legal complexities, this set of demos was released in 1976 on Beserkley records, long after Jerry had left the Modern Lovers. Towards the end of Jerry's stint with the band, he decided to pick up the guitar "because I got frustrated with Johnathan's playing". In the end, Jonathan was getting too crazy for the band and the original line-up of The Modern Lovers broke up in March 1974, having survived for exactly 3 years. Jerry returned to Boston from LA and got a job teaching at Harvard.

It wasn't till April 1976 that Jerry first saw Talking Heads play at a concert in Boston. He was impressed: "I saw something in them and I knew straight away. I saw what the group needed: me !". The first time Jerry played with the band was in September 1976, at the lower Manhattan Ocean Club.