Talking Heads - how did these people ever get along?

I got into them years after they split, so I was aware of the bitter break-up in vague terms. Just found this article in Salon, reviewing their first box set. Nothing ridiculously scandalous, but the details are still incredibly bitter. A few excerpts:

http://www.salon.com/2003/12/03/heads_2/

 

Fact is, they patched things up enough to perform one last time at the R'nR HOF show.

 

As if Tina and Belew really could have pulled off something like this? Kind of makes me doubt a lot of the assertions that writer makes, though obviously there is some ill feeling between DB and Tina.

 

I love the music of the Talking Heads. That is all.

 

and why would tina know david's dick size anyway? what is the purpose of this?

 

No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now

 

Me too -- gossip will never change the greatness of the first 4 TH albums; too bad for people like that writer who are bothered by it.

 

I don't know Tina nor Chris although they used to pop in at a record shop I briefly worked at (and subsequently went to all the time) but I've read a lot of articles about the Heads and have never read a single interview with Weymouth where she didn't sound like a resentful, bitter, miserable wench. Conversely, I've never read an article where Byrne comes off that way. Coincidence?

And like a lot of bitter post break up feuds, let's look at the post band careers of the members. Byrne has fared rather well and, while not wildly prolific nor commercially successful a la the Heads, he has steadily and very consistently released solid music. Weymouth and Frantz? Not so much.

 

It might be easier to find a band that does get along famously. I'd not read this piece before, but I have interviewed David and all he would say was "Do you want to go back to a bad marriage?"

PS: The cube box set is better!

 

Yeah, unfortunately, it's a lot like a CCR situation. I can understand being upset in a way, because a reunion tour would bring in big dollars.

 

he looks so cute/in his litte red suit

 

I think it could have worked, at least to keep touring.

 

It's like Fleetwood Mac for nerds.

 

I think they could of pulled it off but Belew realized how bad the situation was and wisely declined.

 

Well, people do get bitter after these things break up, and rarely to these things end well -- witness Levon Helm's later years. Of course sometimes the couple that should have gotten divorced stay together for the money -- witness Mick and Keith.

Personally when I saw Talking Heads in '80 I guess on the Remain in Light tour with the first expanded band, I thought it was one of the most amazing, musically adventurous and exciting rock shows I've ever seen. Almost 35 years later I still think it was. When I saw the band a couple of years later on the Speaking in Tongues tour, it seemed like all the light had gone out of the band's eyes so to speak -- the was no joy, fun, or sense of adventure in the music. It seemed like a band just doing a job. If anyone told me at the time that there was tons of dissention -- personal and creative -- and that no one was happy, I wouldn't have been surprised. (FWIW, I also thought the best part of that show was Tina & Chris' Tom Tom Club set.)

 

I assume you mean pulled it off on a musical level, but as far as that being "Talking Heads", especially in 1980, it sounds a little like, say, Andy Summers conspiring to keep the Police going with a Sting replacement.

 

It's a shame about the bitterness but I can't say I'm shocked. Try to find a successful band that doesn't have some dissension or nasty politics. I don't let it interfere with my enjoyment and appreciation of the music. The exception would be if one or more people in the band did something truly horrific, but that's pretty rare.

 

It happens a lot when the main song writer wants to move on. It leaves the other guys hanging. But it is not Byrnes (or other similar) job to keep the others employed for life. Ask the guys from The Jam, etc. etc.

 

Yes. I think in concert and in the studio they could have pulled it off but it wouldn't have been Talking Heads.

I read the book on the Heads that came out a couple of years back. Always struck me as a dis functional family. Weymouth has some sort of chip on her shoulder.

 

Jerry Harrison is the only one from that band that seems on the level. He got pretty emotional at the RRHOF induction ceremony when he mentioned how happy he was that his children could for once actually see the band perform together.

 

On occasion, I have worked with TH's live sound engineer, Frank Gallagher. He says the rest of the band all hate Byrne so much, there's no chance of a reunion.

The seeds of animosity were sown early when Byrne made Tina Weymouth audition again as bassist when the band were signed to Sire.

Later, Chris

 

if this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower

 

Back when I was in college in 1979, I got to travel with the band as a temporary roadie for a couple of gigs supporting Fear Of Music, and they all seemed to be getting along fine then. After the Seattle gig, they all hung out together in a local watering hole, and I sure didn't sense any rancor between them.

I don't think what happened with them later is any different from what happens with most bands after being together that long. That they stayed together as long as they did - making brilliant music more often than not - is something we can all be thankful for.

 

They may say that, but if David Byrne was agreeable I think they'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

All of the band hate that book. Apparently the author promised them cultural analysis a la Greil Marcus but turned in this considerably more tabloid-like tome.

There's no doubt that Weymouth has been far too comfortable airing the band's dirty laundry to the press. But I recently came across a quote in a history of MTV book that corroborates some of megalomaniacal paranoia that Weymouth attributes to Byrne:

From Stephen R. Johnson, the co-director of Talking Heads Road to Nowhere video:

"the bizarre thing was that when the band was about to arrive, David took all my storyboard pages and redrew them in his own hand so the band would think he had done it all himself. I said, 'You're not one of those people are you?'"

My understanding is that Harrison, Weymouth and Frantz are all for a reunion. Byrne is the holdout.