![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/David-Byrne-Talking-Heads-Stop-Making-Sense-1984-Far-Out-Magazinie-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ A24)<\/p>\n
Thu 3 July 2025 22:00, UK <\/p>\n
Of the late 1970s CBGB cohort who all coalesced around Manhattan\u2019s famous punk club, Blondie would see the sharpest immediate Billboard success, but Talking Heads<\/a> would endure as the scene\u2019s most critically and commercially successful act. <\/p>\n Jumping from wiry post-punk, psychedelic polyrhythms, skewed funk and leftfield pop across a run of landmark albums, the New York art-punks would dominate the 1980s charts despite internal fractures arising from their difficult and idiosyncratic frontman David Byrne, leading to them dissolving in late 1991.<\/p>\n Yet, Talking Heads\u2019 live shows had petered out long before their break-up. Before the True Stories soundtrack and even the Little Creatures LP, the band played their last gigs in 1984, promoting the Speaking in Tongues album, rounding off their dates in Australia and New Zealand across January and February that year.<\/p>\n Signing up for the latter\u2019s double Sweetwaters Music Festival in both Pukekawa and Christchurch, Talking Heads joined an impressive billing for the day, including Simple Minds, Pretenders, and an upcoming INXS. While their set at Pukekawa\u2019s Festival Farm went smoothly enough, the follow-up show at Christchurch\u2019s Queen Elizabeth II Park was so disastrous it spelt the slow demise of the band.<\/p>\n The setlist itself was a career high point. Yet to be immortalised in Jonathan Demme\u2019s acclaimed Stop Making Sense concert film, the Sweetwaters Christchurch crowd were treated to the tour\u2019s inventive theatrics and memorable props before they\u2019d been popularised, from the austere boombox version of \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019, Byrne\u2019s famed oversized suit, plus drummer and bassist couple Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth joining forces as Tom Tom Club<\/a> for their sunny \u2018Genius of Love\u2019 hit.<\/p>\n Whether simply due to ill-timing or some of the crowd\u2019s pig ignorance, an interlude at Byrne\u2019s behest involving two M\u0101ori women taking the stage to explain the controversies behind the Waitangi Day celebrations taking place prompted a barrage of abuse and projectiles from the fatigued audience.<\/p>\n Byrne left the stage at some point in the middle of the set, telling Frantz who\u2019d run after him that he was \u201csick of playing for people who had their feet in the mud\u201d. Whatever the truth, Talking Heads\u2019 future as a unit was cast in doubt from then on.<\/p>\n \u201cDavid had a lot of temper tantrums when he got to be a big star,\u201d Weymouth told The Guardian in 2011, \u201cHe couldn\u2019t stop it; fame and the whole diva thing was just overwhelming for him\u201d. <\/p>\n Duly obliging to the planned after-party, no amount of booze could hide the bad atmosphere. \u201cIt was just this really sad, dismal affair where people got quietly drunk in the corner,\u201d she recollected. \u201cThe tour ended not\u00a0with a bang but a whimper. It was awful that everything we\u2019d been working toward ended like that\u201d.<\/p>\n