David Byrne has insisted that Talking Heads won’t be touring again, saying that they cannot recapture the magic of their younger days and also don’t wish to become a legacy act.
- READ MORE: David Byrne: “I have a little bit of hope. Not every day, but some days”
Fans’ hopes of a reunion were raised when the band teased a huge announcement back in June. It ended up being the first ever music video for their iconic hit ‘Psycho Killer’, which starred Saoirse Ronan, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their first live performance.
The band haven’t performed together since 1984 and until they came together in 2023, they hadn’t had a full reunion in 20 years.
Away from that, Byrne is gearing up to release his first new solo album in seven years, ‘Who Is The Sky’, which is due for release on September 5 via Matador Records. He sat down to discuss it in an interview with Rolling Stone, as well as the prospect of Talking Heads ever playing live again.
Although a live reunion is off the cards, Byrne did say he would play some reworked Talking Heads songs in his live shows.
.“I can mix and match and have it adapt to the sound that I’m doing at the moment without completely destroying the integrity of the older songs,” he said. “But I’m also aware that there’s a real trap. If you do too much of the older material, you become a legacy act that comes out and plays the old hits. You cash in really quick, but then you’ve dug yourself a hole.”
When asked how it felt to be back with his Talking Heads bandmates years later, he answered: “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.”
Meanwhile, he also discussed how much of their friendship they were able to tap back into when in the same space again. “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.”
Byrne did say he understood why fans were clamouring for a reunion. “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.”
The band have all unanimously said at various points that a full-blown reunion was not on the cards, and reports said that the members rejected an offer of $80million from Live Nation to get back on the road.
In other news, Byrne recently teamed up with Hayley Williams for a new song written for the latest adaptation of The Twits.
