Speaking Heads reunited for a Q&A on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant final night time (September 11) – try the footage beneath.
The band – comprising frontman David Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz and guitarist Jerry Harrison – made their first public look collectively in over 20 years on the occasion.
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As introduced final month, the long-awaited reunion was staged in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of Speaking Heads’ legendary live performance movie, Cease Making Sense (1984).
The band members had been joined by moderator Spike Lee (who produced and directed Byrne’s American Uptopia) for a short Q&A following the debut screening of A24’s 4K restoration of the film.
“It’s so good to be here with my bandmates tonight,” mentioned Frantz, based on the Los Angeles Instances. “It’s been a long time.” The publication stories that every one 4 members sat in separate rows to look at the screening, however claimed no “tensions were on display”.
Regardless of prior hypothesis, Speaking Heads didn’t carry out acoustically or point out their tumultuous break-up. They as an alternative spoke primarily about Cease Making Sense, which Lee described as “the greatest concert film ever”.
Byrne defined: “When I was watching this just now, I was thinking, ‘This is why we come to the movie theatres’. This is different than watching it on my laptop – this is really different.”
Later, Harrison touched on “the lasting power of the film” and the way Speaking Heads had been “having so much fun onstage” whereas recording the present. “[There is] love and fun, and the audience is brought right into it,” he mentioned. “Every time anybody watches it, it brings back that wonderful emotion.”
Byrne at one level defined his determination to don his now-iconic outsized swimsuit for Cease Making Sense. “The origin of that was… we were in between tours, and I was thinking, ‘What are we gonna do next? Maybe I should rethink what we wear onstage’,” he recalled.
“I was having dinner in Japan after we finished the tour, and this designer there said, ‘Well, David. In the theatre, everything is bigger than [in] real life’. He’s referring to like gestures… you sing louder and all that.”
He added: “I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my suit should be bigger too.”
Harrison then remembered how the chosen outfit was one in every of two fits that had been designed for the efficiency.
“Actually, the one that [Byrne] used… [it] was a friend of mine who made it,” he mentioned. “Because the second one had sort of plastic. [It] was lighter, but it didn’t move with your body the same. This one reacted with you.”
In direction of the top of the dialog, Harrison – who had beforehand been a member of The Trendy Lovers – talked about how Speaking Heads’ music “felt new”. “When I joined the band, I went, ‘There’s nothing – nothing – going on like this’,” he mentioned.
“‘I don’t know how big an audience we’re going to get, but I know that we are going to be treading new ground’. And I think we did, and that’s why [the group’s music] is timeless.”
You may watch Speaking Heads’ full Q&A on the 2023 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant within the video above. Discover upcoming cinema screenings of Cease Making Sense right here.
The TIFF session marked the previous bandmates’ first public look collectively since their 2002 Rock ’N’ Roll Corridor Of Fame induction ceremony.
Final month, Harrison mentioned engaged on the re-release of Cease Making Sense acted as considerably of a “healing experience” for Speaking Heads.
Byrne additionally not too long ago defined that he regrets the best way the band cut up, and confessed that he was a “little tyrant” on the time. The singer has since elaborated on the members’ present relationship, likening their break-up to a “divorce”.
“We get along OK. It’s all very cordial and whatever,” he mentioned. “It’s not like we’re all finest pals. However all people’s very comfortable to see this movie coming again out.
“We’re all united in the fact that we really love what we did here. So that kind of helps us talk to one another and get along.”
