Friday, Aug. 3, 2001 | 9:19 a.m.
Fast Facts
Who: David Byrne.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
Tickets: $23, $33, $43.
Information: 632-7600.
If Talking Heads weren't at the top of their game in late 1988, they were close to it.
The band had just released "Naked," a further exploration of creative leader David Byrne's fascination with world music, mainly Brazilian and African.
Despite receiving little of the critical or commercial success of the band's previous albums, "Naked" showcased a group not willing to be complacent; not wanting to churn out the same old songs for the sake of scoring hits.
But for Byrne, "Naked" meant something else: the end.
Despite attempts from the other three Talking Heads members to continue, Byrne quietly exited from the group to continue a solo career he began seven years earlier. He performs Saturday at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.
A formal announcement of the band's dissolution came three years later, in 1991, just after Talking Heads released a two-disc "popular hits" package, "Sand in the Vaseline." While the other band members privately and publicly resisted the breakup, Byrne was glad it was over.
"It was getting painful making some of those records," Byrne, 49, said in a recent phone interview from a hotel room in San Francisco. "I'm very happy that I don't have to go through that. I felt that we'd grown pretty far apart."
Talking Heads came together in the early '70s after meeting at the Rhode Island School of Design.
The then-trio Byrne on vocals and rhythm guitar, Tina Weymouth on bass and Chris Frantz on drums later moved to New York, where Talking Heads made its professional debut opening for the Ramones at the club CBGB's.
In 1976 Jerry Harrison joined the band as a keyboardist/guitarist, and later Weymouth and Franzt, who had been dating since the before the band began, tied the knot.
In those days the band was tight; not so much musically that would come later but as friends. The quartet were musicians/artists who shared a common goal: to be "bigger than the Carpenters."
In those days the band was tight; not so much musically -- that would come later -- but as friends. The quartet were musicians/artists who shared a common goal: to be "bigger than the Carpenters," as Byrne said.
As Talking Heads became bigger, however, so did the band's problems, including a slow erosion of friendships.
"Some bands can kind of manage that transition from being a bunch of friends who happen to make music to being a bunch of musicians who get together occasionally to make music, but aren't really that tight of friends anymore," Byrne said. "For some of them it becomes more of a job, or a business or a creative activity, but it's not a social activity anymore. Some bands can manage that, but I guess we couldn't.
"We really started off as being a bunch of friends and not a bunch of slick musicians. We didn't choose to work with each other because somebody had great chops. We chose each other because we shared musical tastes. We were hanging out together."
Sounding similar to an ex-prisoner fresh on parole, in that he loves his freedom, Byrne said he is very content with his post-Heads life.
He has own small record label, Luaka Bop, which specializes in eclectic and world music (two upcoming discs include a compilation of minimal electronic music and also a collection of recent French music. "We're kind of all over the map," Byrne joked).
And he has a new album, "Look Into the Eyeball," of which he's very proud.
"When I first started thinking about the record, it wasn't completely specific," Byrne said. "I had various roads I could have gone done, but the one I chose, I think, came out pretty much as I imagined it."
Overall, what he "imagined" is about as close to a Talking Heads album as he's gotten. In fact, new songs such as "U.B. Jesus" and "Like Humans Do" would be right at home on almost any Heads album from the '80s, when the band finally abandoned its minimalist tone and really began playing da funk.
Byrne described the record as "rhythmically and groove oriented with driving beats."
"(There's) a lushness and harmonic richness -- sensuousness, I guess you call it -- of the melodies I was writing with string arrangements and that sort of thing," he said. "I've heard other people do that as well, (but) I wanted to do it."
After pausing for a moment, he allowed, "I think I pulled it off."
Byrne is so pleased with the new sound the strings provide, he opted to hire a six-piece string section to help duplicate it on the road, as well as augment some of his older work, including Talking Heads songs.
The string section plays two-thirds of the set list, joining Byrne and his four-piece band, which he described as "basically a rhythm section; heavy on drums, bass and percussion."
Now that he's out on the road to support the album during a national tour, he said the reception has been "shockingly good," with fans often surprised by the inclusion of string instruments.
"I never know how I'm going to be received," Byrne said. "I haven't sold that many records lately, so I can't assume it's going to go well, but it has. I've been pleasantly surprised."
But Talking Heads fans shouldn't expect any surprises when it comes to a reunion.
Just five years ago, after the three other members formed their own band, Head, and released the album "No Talking, Just Head," Byrne sued the trio, claiming people would confuse the name with Talking Heads.
It didn't help matters that Weymouth previously sent letters to Byrne calling him a "jerk," as the new book, "This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century," states.
Eventually a settlement was reached out of court. All four Talking Heads owned the band name jointly, and the three could continue with the name as long as certain conditions were met, which were never made public.
Even the legal entanglement, however, failed to stop questions of when Talking Heads would reunite.
When the four last appeared together during a press conference for the reissue of the concert movie "Stop Making Sense" on DVD in 1999, the band was verbally assaulted with questions of "Why don't you get along?" and "When will you perform together again?"
Ultimately, it may come down to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to bring them together. It seems a foregone conclusion Talking Heads will be inducted -- perhaps as early as next year when the band is first eligible -- and it is customary for the inductees to perform together.
But Byrne, obviously tired of the "reunion" questions over the years, no matter how it's phrased, wouldn't bite.
"I haven't thought about it, so I can't answer that," was all he would say about playing together during the induction ceremony.
For a band with the history of Talking Heads, it says enough.
Kirk Baird
is an Accent feature writer. Reach him at [email protected] or at 259-8801.
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