Jerry Harrison
American musician and songwriter
Each generation has artforms and technologies that defines the center of the culture at that moment in time. Jerry Harrison has had the good fortune to be in the center of two: popular music in the 1960s through the 1990s and the personal computer revolution which began in the late 1970s.
Born In Milwaukee in 1949, Jerry Harrison grew up in an artistic family. His mother having studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art during the time of Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen went on to teach at the Chicago Art Institute and the Layton School of Art. His father was a musician and an executive in an advertising firm. In high school Mr. Harrison studied music and played in rock bands; he then went on to attend Harvard College where he graduated Magna Plus Cum Laude in Visual and Environmental Studies in 1972. Mr. Harrison earned a Doctor of Fine Arts (Honorary) from the Rhodes Island School of Design in May, 2015.
While at Harvard, Mr. Harrison joined The Modern Lovers, which was a seminal band in the development of Punk Rock music. The original group’s highly acclaimed album, The Modern Lovers, was recorded in 1972, but not released until 1976 - after the original band’s breakup in 1974. The album’s release led to Jerrymeeting David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth during the summer of 1976. Invited to join the band, Jerry left the Harvard Graduate School of Design to join the Talking Heads in January 1977, as preparations for the first album, Talking Heads ’77, began.
The Talking Heads’ ten albums are considered one the most important oeuvres in rock and roll history. In addition to their first album Talking Heads ’77, they include: More Songs About Buildings and Food; Fear of Music; Remain in Light; The Name of this Band is Talking Heads; Speaking in Tongues; Little Creatures; True Stories, Naked; and the album and film Stop Making Sense. The influence of the Talking Heads and their albums on music and musicians continues to this day.
As a member of the Talking Heads, Mr. Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, won "Best Group Video" at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1987 and with engineer E.T. Thorngren, won five awards at the 2005 Surround Awards for the 5.1 remixes of the Talking Heads’ albums. He also received a Grammy nomination for the album design of Fear of Music in 1980. Remain in Light was certified into the National Recording Registry Library by the Library of Congress in 2017. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award with the other members of Talking Heads in 2021.
Mr. Harrison has three solo albums to his credit: The Red and the Black; Casual Gods; and Walk on Water. He has also been a successful music producer since 1981, among the more notable artists he has produced are: The Fine Young Cannibals; Violent Femmes; Bodeans; Crash Test Dummies; Live; Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band; No Doubt; Foo Fighters; Verb Pipe; and the Von Bondies. His most recent productions have been The String Cheese Incident’s Song in My Head and Believe, Stephen Stills, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Barry Goldberg’s The Rides; Live’s album: The Turn, and Les Butcherettes album: Bimental.
Mr. Harrison has been instrumental to a number of films. Stop Making Sense, released in 1984, depicts a concert from The Talking Heads tour of 1983 and 1984 and is considered one of the best concert films of all time and was certified into the National Film Registry Library by the Library of Congress in 2021. 10 Days Out, Blues from the Backroads, released in 2007, chronicles Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Double Trouble as they wind through the southern United States performing with both famous, e.g. B.B King and largely unknown Blues Artists. Most recently, Mr. Harrison has been a producer of the album and film: Take Me to the River, which chronicles the rise, fall, and that fall’s relationship to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and finally the rebirth of the Memphis music scene. The winner of the 2013 SXSW (South By Southwest Festival) “Audience Award” and the 2013 London Raindance Film Festival’s “Feature Film of the Festival Award” Take Me to the River includes new performances pairing R&B legends: Bobby Blue Bland, William Bell, Bobbie Rush, Otis Clay, Booker T. Jones and Mavis Staples with young Memphis musicians and rappers such as Snoop Dog, Yo Gotti, Al Kapone, Fraiser Boy, Li’l Peanut and the North Mississippi Allstars. In additiuon the Take Me to the River project has partnered with the Berkeley School of Music’s outreach to urban school systems. Mr. Harrison also contributed to the follow up film: Take Me to the River: NOLA which similarly explored New Orleans rich history of music.
Since 2021, Mr. Harrison has toured the United States with Adrian Belew who both played on Remain In Light and was a member of the band that toured supporting the album. Taking the Talking Heads concert in Rome in 1980, as a blueprint, they are joined by members of Cool,Cool, Cool, Julie Slick and Yohuba Tores. The band has performed 75 shows in the United States and Canada and will be touring Europe this coming May and June.
In 2022, ET Thorngren and Mr. Harrison remixed all eight of the Talking Heads albums for ATMOS for release by Apple Music. In 2023, Mr. Harrison oversaw the remix of Stop Making Sense by ET Thorngren and Mike Minkler. Interstingly the final mix was at the same facility as the 1984 mix: in 1984: Warner Hollywood and in 2023: The Lot. The re-release of the acclaimed film by A-24 began with an IMAX screening at the Toronto Film Festival which was simulcast to IMAX theaters around the world. The program not only presented the film, but also inluced a q&a with David, Chris, Tina, and Jerry. Further premiers occurred in both New York and Los Angeles with all four band members as well as interviews on The Stephen Colbert Show and The Tonight Show.
Building on his knowledge of computers from learning PPL while at Harvard, his work at Cambridge Computer Associates, a system and software development company, in 1975 and 1976, and being actively involved with the companies that brought computerized control to both keyboards and digital recording, Jerry became involved in the burgeoning intersection between music, technology and social media when he and his family moved to San Francisco in 1994.
In 1996, he joined the Board of Advisors of Liquid Audio. Along with RealNetworks and RealAudio, Liquid Audio was one of the two emerging online audio standards in the 1990s.
In 1999, Mr. Harrison co-founded Garageband. Garageband—not to be confused by the Apple program, Apple licensed the name from the original company—was one of the inventors of crowdsourcing. It used a sophisticated rating system to generate popularity rankings for each artist, the top artists were offered a recording contract by the company. The site was also used by music fans to discover new independent artists in the site's vast collection, as well as a resource for musicians who were seeking greater exposure and critical insight provided by an audience of their peers. Renamed iLike, the company added products which enhanced itunes and became the predominant music app on Facebook when Facebook opened its platform to outside apps. The company grew to 60 million users and was sold to Myspace in 2009.
In 2003, Mr. Harrison joined the Board of Directors of IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance. IODA provided the link between independent labels and music download sites, e.g. iTunes and Amazon.com. IODA was sold to Sony Music in 2009.
Mr. Harrison served on the Board of Advisors of MicroUnity Systems Engineering since 1988 and joined its Board of Directors in 1996. MicroUnity successfully developed and extended microprocessors beyond their historical role as calculating and control devices by making them the primary media-processing engines of televisions, mobile computers, smartphones, and other digital communications devices. Today MicroUnity’s methods and technology are used in over five billion devices worldwide.
In 2011, Mr. Harrison became a founding partner in the Venearth Group LLC, a venture capital group devoted to climate mitigation with a particular focus on sustainable agriculture and solar technologies. Mr. Harrison is on the Board of Directors of Venearth supported companies Carbon Gold, Inc. and Anthroterra, Inc.
In 2014, Mr. Harrison co-founded Ophirex, Inc with Dr. Mathew Lewin. Ophirex has pioneered a new approach to the treatment of snakebites which is not based on anti-venoms. Snakebites, a long neglected world health crisis, kill more than a 100,000 lives and maim more than 500,000 people annually. More than 75% of snakebite victims never make it to the hospital. The Ophirex solution will provide an easily carried, heat stable compound and delivery system, which will be a “bridge to survival” so that the victim can get to the hospital and be treated accordingly. Ophirex is currently in human trials and continues to make progress to FDA approval and world wide distribution.
1n 2016, Mr. Harrison co-founded RedCrow, Inc. RedCrow is a company that uses the on-line tools unleashed by the JOBS act to help innovative new health care companies find funding. In addition RedCrow uses the methods pioneered by Mr. Harrison’s earlier company, Garageband.com, to use crowd-sourcing as a tool for companies to evaluate and improve their products and for investors to gain further insights into the suitablily of a particular investment. RedCrow was sold to Alira Health in 2022.
Mr. Harrison lives in Mill Valley with his wife, Carol, where they raised their three children.