Talking Heads have opened up about the potential of a reunion, with bassist Tina Weymouth saying the band are “just savouring the moment”.
The iconic band – comprised of frontman David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz and guitarist Jerry Harrison and Weymouth – made their first public appearance together in over 20 years earlier this month. They reunited for a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11.
As announced last month, the long-awaited reunion was staged in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Talking Heads’ legendary concert film, Stop Making Sense (1984).
“We’re just savoring the moment. We’re so happy that it’s resulted in this wonderful thing that’s lasted 40 years. And we’re not really looking too far into the future,” Weymouth said. “We might be standing on the corner and a bus will knock us down. We’re super glad we’re alive. We’re all four here to enjoy this moment.”
Harrison added: “There’s no question, though, that it revives the joy we had together. I think for each one of us, watching the film, we feel the joy—not just the four of us, but everybody that was onstage, and the crew. It’s certainly tugging on the heartstrings of how much I loved everybody.”
Byrne recently explained that he regrets the way Talking Heads split up, and confessed that he was a “little tyrant” at the time.
He also compared his current relationship to his Talking Heads bandmates to a divorce.
“Divorces are never easy,” he told The New York Times. “We get along OK. It’s all very cordial and whatever. It’s not like we’re all best friends. But everybody’s very happy to see this film coming back out.
“We’re all united in the fact that we really love what we did here. So that kind of helps us talk to one another and get along,” he added.
Speaking to NME last year about a potential reunion, Frantz said: “I did try it a couple of times and the last time was about 20 years ago, and after that, David just said: ‘I never want you to ask me that question again. I’m not going to address that matter.’ It’s a shame and it is what it is.”
Byrne discussed the idea of a band reunion with WIRED last year, saying: “I think, in a nutshell, I could say that we came together more as friends than as, you know, incredible musicians. It was really a kind of shared musical taste. And then gradually, as you age and you grow and you explore, your musical tastes start to change. It became more work that we did, we didn’t hang out all the time anymore, so eventually you just kind of drift apart that way.”
Harrison also recently said that the re-release of Stop Making Sense has acted as somewhat of a “healing experience” for the band.
“It’s like, ‘Yeah, we actually can work together and do this.’ And this is something we’re all proud of,” he said.
He continued: “The conflicts that people have spent a lot of time talking about, they still can be looked up. It’s not like the feelings that made people say various things are totally gone or anything like that, but it’s sort of like they’ve been voiced, do you need to voice things like that over and over again? I mean, I made my point.”
The bandmates have had a complicated relationship since their breakup in 1991. They had previously reunited in 1999 to promote the 15th-anniversary reissue of the film and, in 2002, came together to perform four songs at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony – their only live performance since 1984.
In other news, the band recently opened up about why ‘Stop Making Sense’ marked their final tour as a band.
“It was hard to think about how we could top this. That was the looming question. We didn’t have an immediate answer. Maybe in time we might have figured out a way to not get compared to this incredible thing we did, but immediately afterwards, it was like, oh man. Couldn’t think of anything,” Byrne told the Los Angeles Times.