After recently reuniting for the first time in 21 years at the Toronto International Film Festival for the premiere of the newly remastered version of Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads once again regrouped for a CBS Sunday Morning feature covering the band’s illustrious career, sordid history, and enduring legacy.
The interview traces Talking Heads from their early days at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where art students Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and David Byrne first formed a group (not so cleverly) called The Artistics. “I could see David had a gift as a front person,” Frantz says in the profile.
From RISD, the trio moved to New York, where they picked up Jerry Harrison, who says he “bought [totally into] what they were doing” as soon as he saw the group.
Their art school background and striking visual presentation prepared Talking Heads for the MTV music video era, which helped popularize the group, and “by the time we got to Stop Making Sense with the expanded lineup,” says Frantz, “we were really tearing the roof off.”
“The music that we were doing had great groove and it just made me wanna dance,” says Byrne. He goes on to show he developed his iconic dance moves by improvising in front of a video camera in his loft, matching specific movements to specific songs, before trying them out on stage.
The interviewer does not shy away from addressing the elephant in the room with the obvious question, “Why was it the last tour?” to which Frantz responds, “Well, that is a mystery.”
Asked if he would have done anything differently, Byrne answers, “I think I could have been probably a more easygoing collaborator, but at the same time, that was kinda the way we were—the way I was—and so it’s not like, ‘Oh I wish I could change that.’ That’s just the way we were and it kinda had to happen that way.”
In a final moment of honesty, Tina Weymouth, who says she doesn’t recall referring to David Byrne as a vampire, answers whether the band members hurt each other over the years. “Families do that,” she explains. “They don’t just bite each other. They take chunks out. But the beauty of it is, well maybe you don’t forget, but you forgive.”
Watch the full Talking Heads CBS Sunday Morning profile and interview below, and scroll down to listen to their recent NPR interview.
Talking Heads on the return of “Stop Making Sense”
Video: CBS Sunday Morning
Talking Heads NPR Interview