Talking Heads’ breakup came as a surprise to the rest of the band when they read David Byrne’s statements in a newspaper in the early ’90s. When Anderson Cooper of 60 Minutes asked the singer whether it’s true that he didn’t let his Talking Heads bandmates know about his decision to disband, Byrne said:
“I don’t know if that’s the case, but well, it might be. I think it is possible that I did not handle it as best as I could.”
Although Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth felt that David was slowly pulling back from the band, they did not expect to read the breakup on the news. Frantz told the Los Angeles Times a year later:
“You could say that Tina and I saw the handwriting on the wall a long time ago. But we were shocked to find out about [Byrne’s departure] via the Los Angeles Times. As far as we’re concerned, the band never really broke up. David just decided to leave. We were never too pleased with the way David handled the situation.”
Frantz and Weymouth watched Byrne get deeper into his solo ventures while David had to accept that some fans were not happy with this version of him that wasn’t so angsty; he added:
“As I became more relaxed as a person, I started writing different kinds of songs that maybe weren’t quite as angst written and peculiar some fans were probably disappointed, you know, ‘we liked the really quirky guy,’ or ‘we liked the guy who was kind of really struggling with himself and having a hard time’ and I thought, ‘Why would you wish that on me? For your own amusement.'”
You can read David Byrne’s 60 Minutes interview below.
