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Forty years since its emergence, Talking Heads\u2019 Remain In Light stands on a pinnacle of art-pop perfection. Sadly, the fault lines between its creators are just as lasting. As drummer Chris Frantz unleashes his memoir, he pulls no punches on his differences with David Byrne, while bandmates tell the tale of 21st Century music\u2019s biggest influence through its rifts and its gifts. \u201cIt was such a great, groovy, funky, joyful band,\u201d discovers Tom Doyle.<\/p>\n
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Once In A Lifetime: Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Tina Weymouth at Hammersmith Palais, London December 1 1980.<\/p>\n
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Rome, December 17, 1980. Like a cinema screen slowly stretching out ahead of the main feature, Talking Heads are expanding in real time. In front of 11,500 fans at the PalaEUR arena, the core four-piece band are adding members as their set progresses, until their number swells to nine. By the climax of the show, they have morphed into a multi-legged groove machine pummelling the fervent Italian crowd with manic, polyrhythmic art-funk.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Two months earlier, the group had released their groundbreaking fourth studio album, Remain<\/I> In Light, with its dense, headspinning layers of looping Afrobeat, and so the subsequent tour had required a grand gesture. \u201cWe started listening to the songs,\u201d says Talking Heads multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison today, \u201cand we realised, \u2018Well, this song needs an extra guitar player\u2026 this song needs an extra keyboard player\u2026 this song needs an extra bass player. We need percussion, we need background vocals\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a group-inflating trick that Talking Heads will be seen to repeat four years later in their landmark concert movie, Stop Making Sense. But on this night of the Remain In Light tour, captured on celluloid by Italian state broadcaster RAI and uploaded to YouTube in 2011, it is presented in thrilling prototype. <\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cIt was such a great, groovy, funky, joyful band,\u201d remembers guitarist Adrian Belew, then fresh into Talking Heads from David Bowie\u2019s Low\/\u201cHeroes\u201d world tour. \u201cYou can tell that I enjoyed every second onstage playing. I\u2019m so happy being there, I\u2019m just bouncing around.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz, watching the film moved him to open his forthcoming memoir, Remain In Love, with his recollections of the Rome gig. \u201cI mean, there were so many peaks to choose from,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I began the book with that particular gig because I had watched the video on YouTube and I thought, \u2018Damn, man, ain\u2019t that some shit?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1980, Talking Heads\u2019 position as the world\u2019s pre-eminent art rock band was already well-established. The foursome \u2013 geeky, arresting singer David Byrne, elastically inventive bassist Tina Weymouth, relentlessly driving beatsmaster Chris Frantz and the fluidly guitar-to-keys-hopping Jerry Harrison \u2013 had already travelled far from their jerky, melodic debut, Talking Heads<\/I> \u201977, whilst maintaining a utilitarian look and attitude that suggested a blithe ignorance of trad rock clich\u00e9. Dabbling in African influences on I Zimbra<\/I>, the hypnotically funky opener of their third album, 1979\u2019s Fear Of Music<\/I>, had led the band to Remain In Light<\/I>, with its harmonically minimalist songs built up, layer by layer, like abstract expressionist paintings. Rightly lauded as truly original upon its release, it sounds as thrillingly unique today, 40 years on.<\/p>\n
At the dawn of the \u201980s, however, Talking Heads\u2019 seemingly united front was misleading. Ahead of Remain In Light<\/I>, singer David Byrne \u2013 compellingly edgy onstage; similarly awkward, allege his bandmates, in day-to-day life \u2013 had threatened to quit the group. Friction was particularly marked between himself and Tina Weymouth.
\nBelew claims that on the Italian leg of the Remain In Light<\/I> tour, \u201cTina was so upset that she actually approached me and said, \u2018Would you take David\u2019s place in the band?\u2019 I said, \u2018No.\u2019 Because I knew that was the wrong thing to do. And I knew that she was just angry. It wasn\u2019t a thing that she really meant.\u201d
\n\u00a0[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-74297982.jpg” title_text=”%22Talking Heads%22 Performing” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Burning Down The House: (l-r) Jerry Harrison, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth<\/p>\n
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Today, Weymouth refutes that story, insisting that she\u2019d been sounding Belew out with a view to joining Weymouth and Frantz\u2019s gestating spin-off band, Tom Tom Club. \u201cY\u2019know, it\u2019s very easy for people to misunderstand things,\u201d she reasons to MOJO. \u201cHe could see that David was mistreating me a lot. But who gave me the power to replace David Byrne? I had zero<\/I> power to do that. And why would I?\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, she says, the expanded onstage group had actually been designed to sustain Byrne\u2019s interest in Talking Heads: \u201cA lot of it had to do with, \u2018Let\u2019s see how we can tempt David back into the band.\u2019 David was always leaving the band.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed like if we kept the band together, we were gonna really make our mark in music history,\u201d agrees Frantz. \u201cThat was a good reason to keep going, despite some of David\u2019s, shall we say, lack of humanity (laughs<\/I>). We carried on nevertheless because we knew we had a fucking good band.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
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[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Seven years before, in 1973, at the Rhode Island School of Design, the original seeding and growth of the band that would become Talking Heads had happened slowly. As related in Frantz\u2019s book, he and Weymouth had become a couple a full two years after he\u2019d first spotted her riding past him on a bicycle (\u201cAs in a scene from a Truffaut movie,\u201d he writes). An early date involved the two, as Weymouth remembers, indulging together in \u201ca matchhead of crystal cocaine, uncut\u201d. <\/p>\n
The subsequently super-chatty Frantz, a drummer since his Pittsburgh youth, asked Weymouth if she would consider starting a band with him. Her response: \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cI think she felt that rock\u2019n\u2019roll was sort of a guy\u2019s thing,\u201d says Frantz, \u201cthat it was a boys\u2019 club.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRock\u2019n\u2019roll was all about decadence and men,\u201d Weymouth agrees. \u201cMen getting really sloppy and dirty and drinking and drugging too much. It was impossible that I could fit into that. I was a tomboy, but I wasn\u2019t a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frantz and Weymouth were both from military families (Frantz\u2019s was a two-star army general, Weymouth\u2019s a Vice Admiral) and found themselves in an unusual position on the anti-war student scene of the early \u201870s.<\/p>\n
\u201cTina and I went to anti-Vietnam War protest marches, which my parents were not too crazy about,\u201d says the drummer. \u201cY\u2019know, my parents were very conservative. Tina\u2019s on the other hand were very progressive, despite being in the military. We were opposed to the war in Vietnam. We just weren\u2019t opposed to every single soldier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bucking his family\u2019s hopes for a lawyer or doctor, Frantz was instead drawn to art, music and the counterculture. Showing true (if slightly demented) dedication to drug experimentation, he\u2019d sometimes set his alarm clock in the mornings so that he could drop acid, go back to sleep and then wake up tripping for class. \u201cThe challenge in a situation like that,\u201d he recalls with a chuckle, \u201cwas maintaining your composure and not acting like you were tripping.\u201d[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/4_Remain.jpg” title_text=”4_Remain” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
1980’s Remain In Light<\/p>\n
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\u201cChris was really an anomaly,\u201d says Weymouth. \u201cI mean, he was completely at ease with homosexuals at a time when this was still very new in society. But at the same time, he was completely a prototypical rock\u2019n\u2019roller.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some tolerance and understanding would apparently be required when, in \u201873, Frantz hooked up through a mutual friend with David Byrne, a RISD dropout still hanging around campus. Nicknamed \u201cMad Dave\u201d, Byrne had, Frantz remembers, worn a \u201cfull Rasputin beard\u201d and \u201cwhat appeared to be hand-me-down clothes\u201d in his freshman year, before disappearing from school to travel around the States. On his return, he looked completely different: bleached-white James Dean quiff, black shirts, leather trousers. He cut an odd but charismatic figure: hugely talented, determined and stage-ready.
\nThe two initially joined forces in a group called The Artistics. \u201cDavid was always, let\u2019s just say, eccentric,\u201d says Frantz. \u201cAll around RISD,\u201d says Weymouth, \u201cthey were known as The Autistics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not until 2012, in the pages of his How Music Works book, would Byrne diagnose himself with mild Asperger\u2019s syndrome. \u201cWe all knew,\u201d says Weymouth. \u201cI mean, all of David\u2019s friends knew. He didn\u2019t always have the full shilling, you might say, in terms of emotional intelligence or that sort of thing. But we loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Artistics\u2019 standout song, Psycho Killer, had been written by Byrne, Frantz and Weymouth during a brainstorming session. \u201cDavid had begun the song,\u201d the drummer remembers. \u201cHe had the first verse and the chorus, but he wanted Tina to write the bridge in French. You need more than one verse, so he asked me would I write some and I happily did. All of that happened within the course of about an hour-and-a-half.\u201d
\nIn what was a portent of things to come, Frantz says that Byrne claimed more credit than the others. \u201cI came up with Psycho Killer,\u201d Byrne maintained to MOJO\u2019s David Fricke in 2018. \u201cChris and Tina helped me with some of the French stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another early composition, Warning Sign, was, Byrne told Fricke, a creative leap forward; moreover, \u201cIt felt more completely me.\u201d Initial copies of Talking Heads\u2019 1978 album, More Songs About Buildings And Food<\/I> credited the song to Byrne alone, yet in Remain In Love, Frantz claims to have penned the entirety of its lyric, and insisted the song be identified, on the album\u2019s second pressing, as a Byrne\/Frantz co-write. <\/p>\n
\u201cParticularly later on I realised, \u2018Oh, David was just making a move to get a bigger piece of the pie,\u2019\u201d says Frantz. \u201cWhich he was always doing. It was always like that with David. It was if he couldn\u2019t help himself.\u201d
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Camaraderie and shared ambition nonetheless held the trio together in their early days after moving to New York in 1974, where Tina Weymouth finally relented and slipped into her bass-playing role. The three were sharing a ninth-floor loft space at 195 Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at a time when the area remained grim and impoverished. <\/p>\n
One morning, they found themselves having to push hard at the street level exit door to leave the building. \u201cThere was a poor dead guy frozen lying there,\u201d Frantz recalls. \u201cHe was not that old, either. It made you think, \u2018Please, don\u2019t let this happen to me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Regularly performing at CBGB on the Bowery, Talking Heads were, as Frantz remembers, insulated by innocence from the smacky excesses of the nascent punk scene. \u201cI had no experience with heroin,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew that Johnny Thunders was a heroin addict, I knew that Richard Hell was supposedly dabbling in heroin. But, those guys, I didn\u2019t have anything to do with them socially. The people I hung out with were trying to do something interesting, new and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
After signing to Seymour Stein\u2019s Sire Records, Talking Heads<\/I> \u201977 was quickly committed to tape. For its successor, More Songs About Buildings And Food<\/I>, they were keen to employ the co-production skills of Brian Eno, who\u2019d become a fan after seeing the group play in London at the Rock Garden. Eno encouraged Talking Heads to become bolder in the studio. \u201cHe taught us that you can just go up to the console and push that fader up or twist that EQ knob until it sounds really weird,\u201d Frantz laughs.
\nIt was a collaborative arrangement that continued successfully through 1979\u2019s Fear Of Music<\/I>. But in the wake of that record, Eno and Byrne peeled off to begin their extraordinary found-sound oeuvre, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts<\/I> (subsequently released in 1981). The pair\u2019s growing creative alignment was to have a detrimental effect on band relations when they regrouped for the recording of Remain In Light<\/I>. \u201cWhen we tried to establish boundaries, which began to happen because of Brian Eno,\u201d says Weymouth, \u201cthat\u2019s when the problems began.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet album sessions began in a spirit of healthy competition. In the sunshine setting of Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, Eno and Talking Heads\u2019 self-imposed remit was a simple but effective one: repetitive beats and musical motifs multi-tracked while paying no mind to conventional verse\/chorus song structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause so much was recorded as one track at a time and written in the studio, anybody could do anything,\u201d says Jerry Harrison. \u201cOur role also sort of expanded into knowing enough about the studio that we could be making suggestions that had traditionally been ones that Brian made alone.\u201d[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]\u201cIt worked well up and to the point where Brian just started overreaching all the time,\u201d says Frantz. \u201cSometimes it was just\u2026 his own kind of feeling of importance. And other times it was sort of in collaboration with David. They kinda backed each other up.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Frantz\u2019s memoir, by the time the project moved to Sigma Sound\u2019s New York studio, Eno and Byrne had commandeered the project, the former at one point complaining that there were \u201ctoo many people in the control room\u201d. Harrison reckons that the situation was more nuanced: Weymouth and Frantz were unhappy with some of the embellishments the tracks were undergoing under Eno\u2019s direction, while Byrne himself struggled to write melodies over one-chord songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard work at times,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cIt presented a real challenge for David. There was a certain joie de vivre<\/I> in the Bahamas. That became a little changed in New York.\u201d Harrison cites unfinished outtakes such as Fela\u2019s Riff and Right Start (an early version of Once In A Lifetime), released as extras on the 2006 reissue of Remain in Light<\/I>, as evidence of where they stood as they left Compass Point. \u201cIf you listen to those rough mixes,\u201d he says, \u201cyou can see how if you really had bought into them\u2026 [the embellishments] could be frustrating to you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Into this tense creative scene stepped Adrian Belew, who happened to be in New York performing showcases for record labels as he tried to get a deal for his band, GaGa. Belew had worked with Eno the year before on Bowie\u2019s Lodger<\/I>. After a GaGa show at Irving Plaza, Eno, along with Byrne and Harrison, approached him with an offer.
\n\u201cThey kinda cornered me and said, \u2018Hey we\u2019re making a record. Could you possibly play on it?\u2019\u201d recalls the guitarist. \u201cJerry later told me that at the time I came into the record-making process, they were kinda stumped as to how to go further. They were almost ready to give up on it. Then I walked in and I guess what I did excited them enough to continue. So, the world can thank me for that (laughs<\/I>).\u201d<\/p>\n
At Sigma Sound, Belew overdubbed fractured or feedbacking solos onto Crosseyed And Painless and The Great Curve, greatly enlivening both the tracks and the vibe. \u201cIt seemed to me like every time I tried to get a note to do a certain thing, it just worked,\u201d Belew enthuses. \u201cIt was almost a magical kind of thing. I looked in the studio control room through the glass and I saw Jerry, David and Brian all kind of jumping up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carving up the songwriting credits for Remain In Light<\/I>, however, brought aggro. Eno suggested a controversial and provocative method: each member was to write down on a piece of paper what they considered to be their percentage contribution to each track. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen we could average those out,\u201d Frantz remembers, \u201cand arrive at a fair conclusion. Before we began recording, knowing that all five of us would be involved in the composition of the music, we agreed that the music writing share would be split equally among us. But Brian and David reneged on that agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would write down things like, \u2018Oh my share was three per cent,\u2019\u201d Weymouth laughs, darkly. \u201cAnd Eno was still mad about that and threw it in our faces. I think he wanted 50 per cent of everything. I don\u2019t know. I have no idea. I mean, how can you be that greedy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, Harrison remembers the co-producer pushing for the banner credit of the album to be Remain In Light<\/I> by Talking Heads and Brian Eno: \u201cThat was, I think, put to rest when our manager said, \u2018Well, Brian, you are ready to do the tour, aren\u2019t you?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t do that.\u2019 I think he has really terrible stage fright. And our manager goes, \u2018Well, there\u2019s no way that we can do it. It\u2019d be a rip-off to the audience.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis demands just became unreasonable,\u201d says Frantz. \u201cTo the point where we had to say, \u2018Sorry Brian, you carry on. We\u2019re gonna do our thing.\u2019\u201d[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/8_Creatures.jpg” title_text=”8_Creatures” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
1985’s Little Creatures<\/p>\n
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Summer, 1985, the Montcalm Hotel near Marble Arch. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz were in London, promoting the release of Talking Heads\u2019 sixth album, Little Creatures<\/I>. Arriving to interview them as a wide-eyed 18-year-old fan-turned-writer, I was both amazed and slightly dispirited to hear the couple talk about the difficulties of being in a band with David Byrne.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe keeps us on our toes, because he thrives on rejection,\u201d a very friendly but quietly intense Weymouth told me, as she maintained eye contact and \u2013 as we all did \u2013\u00a0chain-smoked. \u201cIf you\u2019re a person who\u2019s constantly praising him, he doesn\u2019t respect you at all. The only form of love that he can really accept is fame for his work.\u201d
\n\u201cHe\u2019s a really driven person\u2026 like a workaholic,\u201d added Frantz, breezily. \u201cHis work is the most important thing in his life. Sometimes that makes personal relationships a little bit difficult. However, we\u2019ve worked with him for so long now that we can kinda predict the way he\u2019s gonna act. One thing we\u2019ve had to learn is how to surprise him by being unpredictable. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words,\u201d the drummer added with a laugh, \u201cit\u2019s a constant battle working with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stop Making Sense<\/I>, the album and film, had been released the previous autumn and was already a phenomenon. Captured over four nights at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles by director Jonathan Demme, and subsequently immortalised, the group had seemed almost freakishly energised. As Weymouth concedes, they may have had a little help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe band were doing too much [coke] in the December of 1983,\u201d she tells MOJO. \u201cThe second night they were all racing<\/I> to get to the end. I was ridiculously trying to keep the tempo down and that was against two drummers (laughs<\/I>). Part of the ethos at that point was faster, faster, faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it would transpire, by the time Stop Making Sense reached cinemas, Talking Heads were already over as a live touring band. \u201cDavid said, \u2018Oh, this will tour for us,\u2019\u201d Weymouth remembers. \u201cAnd we said, \u2018Are you serious?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The breaking point had been the Sweetwaters South Festival in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 6, 1984, where Talking Heads were headlining a bill featuring Simple Minds and The Pretenders. Ahead of their set, says Weymouth, Byrne had agreed to allow a couple of campaigners onstage to talk about Maori Rights. By the time Talking Heads walked on, the air was filled with boos and projectiles were being lobbed stagewards. Byrne stomped off after five songs. \u201cThat\u2019s when the shit really hit the fan,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
After Talking Heads\u2019 demise as a live band, cocaine got a grip on Chris Frantz. \u201cTina was concerned that I might die,\u201d he writes in Remain In Love \u2013 a view she maintains. \u201cYeah,\u201d Weymouth tells MOJO, quietly. \u201cIt was a constant fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst, of all I should say there\u2019s good cocaine and then there\u2019s bad cocaine,\u201d says Frantz. \u201cAll cocaine is not equal (<\/I>laughs<\/I>). I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could get some good cocaine. The good cocaine you can survive on and deal with for a much longer period of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we stopped touring, that\u2019s when it really snowballed. Y\u2019know, I could go into a nightclub in New York like The Mudd Club and people would turn me onto cocaine for free. And it just got to the point where I was doing it, like, all the time, every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was also in a sense grieving the loss of what Talking Heads had been,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI was depressed, I think, about that. But thanks to Tina and our manager and a few friends of mine, I got into a treatment programme and I got over it. And I came out the other side in better shape than I had been.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Talking Heads: 77 \u00a0released in, er, 1977<\/p>\n
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2003, a tapas restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Chris Frantz and David Byrne had met up in their old, rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood to talk about a temptingly lucrative offer the drummer had received for Talking Heads to reform and headline the 2004 Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee.<\/p>\n
It had been 12 years since the band officially split. In 1991, Byrne told an LA Times journalist he\u2019d quit Talking Heads. This prompted an urgent group meeting in New York where, according to the drummer, the singer was in an uncharacteristically combative mood.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe screamed at us, \u2018You should be calling me an asshole!\u2019\u201d Frantz remembers. \u201cAnd we said nothing because we were like, \u2018Woah, David. Is that how you really feel?\u2019 He knew<\/I> he was being an asshole and he was upset with us for not getting mad about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, y\u2019know, Picasso was an asshole too,\u201d Weymouth offers, brightly. \u201cBut he also painted some great paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2002, surprising everyone, Talking Heads had briefly reformed to play a short, three-song set at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. Hence the Bonnaroo offer and Frantz and Byrne\u2019s d\u00e9tente over patatas bravas.<\/p>\n
Frantz says he told Byrne, \u201cThey\u2019ve offered us a lot of money. Basically, we would own the rights to any sound recording and we would own the rights to any video recording. And it would really be smashing if we did this show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byrne, says the drummer, responded by asking to think about it over the weekend. \u201cDavid said, \u2018I\u2019ll call you.\u2019 Well, he never did call, but he sent me an email and he said, \u2018I told you once and I\u2019ll tell you again. I am never<\/I> going to reunite with Talking Heads under any circumstances. Please don\u2019t ever ask me to do this again.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat was the extent of it, OK?\u201d Frantz adds. \u201cThat was, like, on a Tuesday. On a Wednesday, I got a call from our management offices. \u2018Guess what? David Byrne is headlining the Bonnaroo Festival, solo.\u2019 Solo<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jerry Harrison reveals that a subsequent attempt by U2 manager Paul McGuinness and Live Nation\u2019s Arthur Fogel to revive Talking Heads as a touring act was similarly rebuffed by the singer. Harrison would still like to see their music on stage again \u2013 it\u2019s the motive, he says, behind a group he\u2019s formed with Adrian Belew and Brooklyn funk band Turkuaz to tour the songs on Remain In Light<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s not just about greed,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is a whole audience that you\u2019re gonna make really happy. New fans that never got to see the band perform, but also people that saw it back then and want to have another memory of it. I think it would\u2019ve been an exciting challenge for David.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2018, Byrne explained his reticence to MOJO. \u201cI could see where things were going, towards being more of an arena act. It didn\u2019t seem like a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very unfortunate,\u201d Harrison resumes, admitting that he\u2019s often found himself acting as peacemaker between the Byrne and Frantz\/Weymouth factions of the band. \u201cI sort of understand everybody\u2019s position. I do think that, for a few years, me being in the middle of it helped hold it together longer than it might have if I had not been there. It couldn\u2019t go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, ultimately, Talking Heads contracted, retreating back into the wings and disappearing, while leaving behind an indelible mark on music. In the 21st Century, their tangential approach to groove-based songwriting echoes on through Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, Black MIDI and, most acutely of all, LCD Soundsystem, whose leader James Murphy told NPR in 2011 that he regarded Talking Heads as \u201ca perfect band\u201d.
Nonetheless, Tina Weymouth acknowledges that the divisions between its members have in some ways tainted memories of Talking Heads.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cY\u2019know, with a band there\u2019s a lot of damage control that goes on,\u201d she points out. \u201cYou don\u2019t want people to look bad. It was a wonderful band.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I balance it out,\u201d Chris Frantz ponders in summation, \u201cI think, \u2018God, I would do it all again. It was so<\/i> good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n