Two years ago, all four members of Talking Heads reunited onstage at the Toronto Film Festival to promote A24's reissue of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert film of all time. The band's breakup was messy, and bad feelings lingered, so this was the first time that they'd all shared a stage since they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame more than two decades earlier. Talking Heads made a bunch more appearances together, doing all sorts of media hits to promote Stop Making Sense, and David Byrne even expressed regret for how he treated the breakup. But Talking Heads didn't perform any music together, and they reportedly turned down an $80 million offer for a short reunion tour.
Right now, David Byrne is getting ready to release his solo album Who Is The Sky?, and he's the subject of a new Rolling Stone feature. The interview covers a lot of ground, including the process of sharing stages with his former Talking Heads bandmates again. In process, he says that he didn't feel the call to tour or make music together again, figuring that he couldn't recapture the original moment and that there are enough reunions already. Here's what he says:
It was OK. We were all very proud of that show and the film that Jonathan Demme did. We’re thrilled that audiences still wanted to see it. So we put aside whatever differences we have. I said, "OK, we’re not going to go there, but we’re going to help promote this thing."...
Did we feel more comfortable with one another? Yeah. We felt more comfortable with one another, but I’m just going to anticipate your next questions. I didn’t feel like, "Oh, yeah, let’s go out on tour again." Or, "Let’s make another record." Musically, I’ve gone to a very different place. And I also felt like there’s been a fair number of reunion records and tours. And some of them were probably pretty good. Not very many. It’s pretty much impossible to recapture where you were at that time in your life. For an audience… that was formative music for them at a particular time. They might persuade themselves that they can relive that, but you can’t.
Writer Simon Vozik-Levinson then asks if Byrne can understand why so many people want a Talking Heads reunion. Here's what he says:
I totally understand it. I’m a music fan like other people. And there’s artists that stopped working, or bands that broke up, that I heard at a period in my life where music was very important. Maybe I never heard it when it was happening, I missed it. I would love to see it live now. But you realize you can’t turn the clock back. When you hear music at a certain point in your life, it means a lot. But it doesn’t mean you can go back there and make it happen again.
Read the full Rolling Stone feature here. Talking Heads might not exist as a band anymore, but they're still an active business entity. Last year, there was an A24-sponsored Stop Making Sense tribute album and a deluxe 77 reissue. A few months ago, "Psycho Killer" got a new video, directed by Mike Mills and starring Saoirse Ronan. Now, Welcome Skateboards is unveiling a new collection of Talking Heads skateboards and merch. Talking Heads aren't exactly the kind of band that I tend to associate with skate culture, but they do look cool on a board. As Skateboarding points out, Slappy's Garage posted some early images of the collection, which will be on sale this afternoon at 1PM eastern.
