Back Page For One Night Only!: Adam Buxton curates his dream gig

I think it would be Talking Heads, and it would be Talking Heads in 1983. It would be around the time that they filmed Stop Making Sense, which I think they did in late 1983. So it’s that big, expanded lineup, with maybe nine players; all these brilliant percussionists and vocalists that they added to the band and Adrian Belew, the amazing guitarist who used to play for Frank Zappa, and then, famously, David Bowie poached him. Frank Zappa was very pissed off and once met David Bowie, or they were at dinner or something like that and Frank Zappa kept on calling David Bowie Captain Tom, instead of Major Tom, and it was because he was so angry that Bowie had poached Adrian Belew! But anyway, good that he did because he’s amazing, and I think that was part of the reason that he ended up playing on ‘Remain in Light’, which is my favourite Talking Heads album.

So, he’s part of that band with people like Alex Weir and Steve Scales and Lynn Mabry; I sort of love all the people in that film. I’ve seen it so many times and it brings back so many happy memories and they just seem to be having such a good time, they’re smiling and they’re in the zone. That’s the thing I envy most of all, is to be that good at music and to be able to inhabit that space. 

This is counterintuitive and maybe some people would consider it disrespectful to the genius of the artists, but I would have Booker T & The MG’s, and Otis Redding. Obviously those [acts] are headline status, but for me, I love Talking Heads; I loved every single thing they did. I also really love Otis Redding and Booker T and the MGs, but I just think I could handle less of them. Maybe Otis could come on and sing something with Talking Heads - that would be amazing. We can have Booker T and the MGs added to that expanded Talking Heads lineup, and then at the end, Otis Redding turns up and they do ‘Take Me to the River’, even though that was Wilson Pickett. That would be pretty fucking great.

I would have it at Nîmes Amphitheatre in southern France. It’s a beautiful Roman amphitheatre. It would be outdoors on a balmy summer evening with the sun going down, and the sky above. It’s so beautiful and the acoustics are great. You sit on the stone benches; it’s the most beautiful place. I’ve seen a couple of shows there; I saw Radiohead there in 2012 which was really good, and I also saw Arctic Monkeys in 2007, supporting Arcade Fire, and Arctic Monkeys were amazing, just amazing.

I’m gonna take my beautiful wife, she’s got to come along. We’d go with our friends Garth and Louise, they’re our kind of best music buddies. My friend Garth and I worked on some stuff with Radiohead in 2007, and he’s a director; he directed the Sing films and I was an angry monkey dance teacher in Sing 2. He’s my music pal and we have a lot of the same music taste, and we’re all just very old friends and we all get on and love each other, and we always have a good time when we go out. 

I think we are gonna go out beforehand. We’re gonna eat early, because we’re all of a certain age now and the later you eat, the more you pay for it in the night time. So I think we want to eat at 6pm at the latest. I think it’d be nice to eat somewhere nice and light, maybe Ottolenghi or somewhere like that.

I think at the show we’re just going to have a gin and tonic, but - I dunno if I can say this or not - but my dream would be… I’m no longer a drug taker, but my dream would be to take some drugs but they would be drugs that I could switch off. I’d be able to click my fingers or press a button on my Apple watch or whatever - not that I have an Apple watch, but if I did, it would be a special Apple drug watch. It’s only a matter of time for this; wearable biotech where you download the drug experience you want. As I’m describing it, I’m thinking that this is good stuff! You download the drug you want, specify the duration and you pay, but it’s a little bit like WiFi. If you pay a certain amount, it will suddenly stop, or you can pay a little extra for it to wear off gradually. The main thing is that you can stop it, because that’s the big problem with drugs as far as I can tell. I was never a big drug taker, but on the occasions I tried, it instantly made me feel ill and I didn’t like it. But there was always a little glimpse of, ‘Oh, I get why people like this’. I had a handful of amazing moments but overall, you’d have to get through so much not feeling very well. That’s what I would have. That’s me in a nutshell basically. I’m such a coward that the whole point of an experience like that is to give yourself over to it, but I’m such a massive control freak that I want to maintain control and switch it off whenever I want! 

I think we’re all staying in a nice boutique hotel somewhere, so we go back, have a mint tea and a post-show debrief and then turn in. 

Maybe my drug watch is the additional extra. That’s the dream! 

Adam Buxton’s new album, ‘Buckle Up’, is out now via Decca.

Tags: Features, Adam Buxton, From The Magazine, September 2025