In 2023, David Byrne faced an unexpected crossroads. To mark the 40th anniversary of Stop Making Sense, broadly considered to be the greatest concert film ever made, the former Talking Heads frontman found himself in the company of his former bandmates for the first time in decades, for a series of celebratory post-screening Q&As.
They were considerably more conciliatory affairs than the last time the four had shared a stage, when they marked their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 with a palpably tense performance that laid bare the rancour between Byrne and the rest of the Heads.
A man with maverick tendencies, Byrne walked away in the late 1980s even as they continued to be one of the decade’s most critically-acclaimed bands. His creative wanderlust drove him not only to a solo career but to film-making (True Stories) and writing (How Music Works), too.
His crowning solo glory came in 2018, when his solo tour in support of his eighth album, American Utopia, was so rapturously received that it led to an extensive Broadway residency, a concert film directed by Spike Lee and a live EP titled after a pull quote from the NME’s review of his Oxford gig – The Best Live Show of All Time.
That, combined with the unlikely rapprochement with his former bandmates, resulted in an $80 million offer from Live Nation to reform Talking Heads for a series of festival appearances in 2024.
David Byrne performing in Auckland earlier this year (Photo: Dave Simpson/WireImage)He left the money on the table. If the question is why, then the answer, on the basis of his wild, euphoric show in Hammersmith last night, is that he evidently doesn’t feel his life’s work is yet finished. On the basis of last year’s Who Is the Sky?, a collaborative effort with the avant-Garde New York outfit Ghost Train Orchestra, he made the right call; a gleefully adventurous record, it has laid the groundwork for a year of extensive touring in 2026.
Byrne is 73, but was the roving star of this highly kinetic concert, which took place in the same format that he ingeniously invented for the American Utopia tour: correctly deducing that audiences are interested primarily in watching people, he turned his backing band into a dance troupe, their instruments strapped to them. Last night he led a 13-strong group and, while the show was choreographed down to the last step, it felt like a looser, more joyously chaotic version of his band than last time, as evidenced early on by a searing keyboard solo on “Strange Overtones”.
The new songs are colourful, whimsical, even – there are paeans to novelty t-shirts and Byrne’s apartment, among other things – and the sense of playfulness is accentuated by the perpetual motion of his backing ensemble, some of whom are guitarists, some of whom are percussionists, and all of whom are dancers. Nobody stays still.
To focus too closely on that, though, would be to risk casting Byrne as a kind of harmless eccentric. In reality, he has always been political. Talking Heads’ appetite for infusing new wave with funk and world influences was, in the late 1970s, a punk statement, something colourfully underlined in Mike Mills’ 2016 film 20th Century Women, when a central character’s earnest love for the band is deemed effeminate enough to be punishable by a beating by fans of hardcore outfit Black Flag.
David Byrne with Talking Heads performing in New York in 1977 (Photo: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)It is difficult to imagine anybody taking quite such violent exception to modern-day Byrne, who last night quoted his New York contemporary John Cameron Mitchell in calling love and kindness “punk, and a kind of resistance”.
For all the dancing, and for all the lavish visual accompaniment to the show on concave screens that covered both backdrop and stage floor, there was a tangible political undercurrent, one that bubbled to the surface when a frantic take on Talking Heads’ tragically evergreen “Life During Wartime” was accompanied by footage from recent ICE raids in the US. “Once in a Lifetime”, meanwhile, remained a perfectly absurdist treatise on modern life.
All the Talking Heads songs rang out timelessly: “Slippery People”, “Psycho Killer” and a closing “Burning Down the House” all pulsed with joy and nervous energy. Yet through its enthralling blend of music, performance art and politics, this show was affirmation of Byrne’s decision to turn down a reunion.
A number of songs on Who Is the Sky? suggest he was profoundly affected by the enforced isolation of the pandemic, and he explicitly told us towards the end of last night’s show that he places great value on being out in the world and seeing other people. The breathless team effort that he and his band put in is a testament to that; he is clearly energised by working with fresh collaborators and presenting new music to new audiences. A Talking Heads reunion, on the other hand, threatened to trap him in amber.
At the show’s midpoint, Byrne played the band’s best-loved song, “This Must Be the Place”, and it was with more conviction than ever that Byrne sang that immortal line: “never for money, always for love”.
Touring to 16 March (whoisthesky.davidbyrne.com/tour)
Hence then, the article about david byrne turned down an 80m talking heads reunion it was the right move was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( David Byrne turned down an $80m Talking Heads reunion. It was the right move )
Also on site :