David Byrne says Talking Heads won’t “go out on tour again”

David Byrne has confirmed that his legendary band Talking Heads will not tour again.

“Musically, I’ve gone to a very different place,” he said in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “And I also felt like there’s been a fair number of reunion records and tours. And some of them were probably pretty good. Not very many.

“It’s pretty much impossible to recapture where you were at that time in your life. For an audience … that was formative music for them at a particular time. They might persuade themselves that they can relive that, but you can’t,” he continued. 

The iconic frontman is about to release his first solo album in seven years, ‘Who Is The Sky’, which lands on 5th September. In 2023 Talking Heads did reunite on stage for the first time since 1984 as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, celebrating the IMAX 4K version of their landmark 1984 concert film, ‘Stop Making Sense’. Byrne has been highly active in the years since, and regularly includes the troupe’s tracks in his own performances, from ‘Life During Wartime’ and ‘Once In A Lifetime’ to ‘Psycho Killer’.

The latter track was at the centre of reunion rumours earlier this year — later confirmed to be untrue — when the single was given its first ever music video, starring Saoirse Ronan, marking 50 years since the initial release. 

“I can mix and match and have it adapt to the sound that I’m doing at the moment without completely destroying the integrity of the older songs,” Byrne added. “But I’m also aware that there’s a real trap. If you do too much of the older material, you become a legacy act that comes out and plays the old hits. You cash in really quick, but then you’ve dug yourself a hole.”

This is far from the first time a member of Talking Heads has been asked about a potential return to touring for the band. Last January, reports hit that the outfit had turned down an offer of $80 million to play for US festival Coachella and Live Nation, the largest music concert and event promoter in the world. 

Revisit DJ Mag’s feature on the fifth Talking Heads album, ‘Speaking In Tongues‘, produced several New York club anthems.