“We were human samplers. We’d listen to the tapes, isolate the best bits, then learn how to play them over and over again”: How Talking Heads created their classic hit Once In A Lifetime

Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime video.

On the evening of 19 May, 1977, four musicians dressed in neutral Ivy League preppy wear shuffled onto the cramped stage at Eric’s, a recently-opened music club on Liverpool’s Matthew Street across the street from a makeshift car park, beneath which was buried the forgotten remains of the Cavern Club.

The musicians were members of Talking Heads, a band formed by three students from Rhode Island School of Design. They were in the UK as the most unlikely support act for one of the most anticipated New York bands of the moment, the Ramones.