David Byrne reveals why Talking Heads stopped touring after ‘Stop Making Sense’
Although Talking Heads didn’t officially split until 1991, their final show took place in 1984 as part of their Stop Making Sense tour.
Following the conclusion of the run of dates, Talking Heads continued to record music together as a four-piece and created three more albums. However, due to the grandiosity of Stop Making Sense, the band chose not to return to the road because they believed it would have been impossible to match the brilliance of their previous tour.
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, frontman David Byrne admitted: “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.”
The band’s Jerry Harrison also offered his perspective to the publication: “The next album was Little Creatures, which was us going back to a small ensemble. We had a thought of doing residencies in different cities with the four of us and maybe some of the others, but Stop Making Sense had an ongoing life of midnight shows, and the idea of competing with it was more difficult than it would have been for a film that had a run and ended.”
The duo’s comments arrive shortly after Talking Heads reunited for the first time in 20 years for a screening of Stop Making Sense at the Toronto Film Festival. The group participated in a Q&A with film director Spike Lee.
Meanwhile, in a recent interview ahead of the premiere, Byrne recently admitted he was “not pleasant to be around” during the band’s tenure and discussed his “regrets” over the way it unravelled.
“As a younger person, I was not as pleasant to be around. When I was working on some Talking Heads shows, I was more of a little tyrant,” he said. “And then I learned to relax, and I also learned that collaborating with people, both sides get more if there’s a good relationship instead of me telling everybody what to do.”
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