(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover / Sire Records)
Tue 27 May 2025 19:00, UK
David Byrne is not known for his incredible collaboration skills, but who really cares? As the frontman of Talking Heads, his artistry was pioneering, taking punk by the horns and making it into something new. However, with the group always being so tunnel-visioned within his tunnel of vision, the other members needed to find a way to blow off steam: enter the Tom Tom Club.
It’s odd to suggest that maybe the thing that split up Talking Heads wasn’t the Talking Heads at all. The break-up of the band also isn’t easily explained or categorised and remains a confounding truth even today. The group has been regularly making appearances and feels very active again with screenings of Stop Making Sense, alighting a fresh wave of interest in their music from a new audience, but they still refuse to perform live.
Ever since splitting in 1991, this has been the case. Occasionally, it’ll feel like they’re getting close to a reconciliation and reunion, but then, someone will say something, and it will all fall apart. Like in 2002, Byrne said a comeback could never be possible due to “bad blood” and the members being musically “miles apart”, while Tina Weymouth simply savagely retorted that it was because Byrne was “a man incapable of returning friendship“. Now that’s harsh.
The end got messy as Byrne became more and more isolated from his group, and the hostilities between him and the band grew into an irreparable division, a gorge that had been widening for a long time, even as early as a decade prior.
Back then, things on the surface were going incredibly well. Remain in Light had made them big stars, and Speaking in Tongues was about to level that up. They were warming up for the Stop Making Sense shows that would not only be a sensation then, but would endure as one of the most beloved concert films ever made, keeping the fascination with the group rolling on. But while the film captures the band at their best, it also captures the song that seemed to be the start of the end.
And here we return to the Tom Tom Club. Halfway through the film, while Byrne changes into the infamous big suit, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz take over the stage with their new side project, a new wave band that had recently found big success with their second single, ‘Genius of Love’, which was a huge hit.
In a classic Byrne move, he dismissed the track. Seemingly always approaching the creativity of his bandmates with a degree of mistrust or superiority, he brushed off Tom Tom Club like he brushed off their suggestions and ideas in the studio and rehearsal space. In this case, he called ‘Genius of Love’ nothing more than “merely commercial music”, refusing to see in it any more worth than that.
But while that was another nail being beaten into the band’s coffin, standing as a stark and sad depiction of the kind of attitude that would later destroy them, ‘Genius of Love’ had a more positive impact than Byrne would ever care to admit. While being openly disregarding of it to them in person, Franz always had a suspicion that the success of the track convinced Byrne to “soldier on with Talking Heads”, reigniting a fire in him to do better and push for broader success, even if that was only out of jealousy or a desire to not let anyone one-up him.
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