David Byrne says he could have handled the break-up of the Talking Heads differently.
He made the admission Sunday 60 Minutes.
"I became, I think, kind of obsessive about getting [our 1983-84 tour] up and running. I might not have been the most pleasant person to deal with at that point.”
While the band didn't break up until 1991, Byrne had already been taking on solo projects.
“As I became more relaxed as a person, started writing different kinds of songs, songs that maybe weren’t quite as angst-ridden and peculiar, so fans were probably disappointed. ‘We liked the really quirky guy’ or ‘We liked the guy who was really struggling with himself and really having a hard time,’ And I thought, ‘Why would you wish that on me? For your own amusement, right?’”
Byrne never told his bandmates he was through and drummer Chris Frantz told the Los Angeles Times in 1992 that "as far as we're concerned, the band never really broke up. David just decided to leave.”
To that Byrne says, “I think it is very possible that I did not handle it as best as I could.”
But, he has no plans for the band to reunite.
“I realized after awhile that I was very happy doing the kind of wide variety of things that I was doing and the different kinds of music that I was doing. And I thought, ‘Why should I trade in my happiness for some cash?’”
The Talking Heads last performed in 2002 when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.