Hall of Fame Induction Brings Talking Heads Together Again

The Talking Heads will perform together for the first time in 14 years when the band is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month.

“I’m sure a lot of fans are thinking, ‘Oh, gosh, this is going to be a reunion,’” bassist Tina Weymouth says from her home in Westport, Conn.

Rather, she says, “this is the moment we thank people behind the scenes to tell them how great they are.”

The Heads haven’t played together since a 1988 gig of the Tom Tom Club, the side project that Weymouth and her husband, drummer Chris Frantz, started when they were still Talking Heads. Weymouth says the four--she and Frantz and lead singer David Byrne and keyboardist Jerry Harrison--have discussed which songs they might play at the induction ceremonies March 18, which will be broadcast on VH1 two days later.

“We haven’t come to a decision yet,” she says. “David’s in Osaka [Japan], and mail is slow, even though it’s e-mail.”

The band has been afforded a couple of days to rehearse at New York’s S.I.R. studios before the event, but they probably won’t need it. “Jerry’s a good player, and the rest of us have kept our chops up with other bands.”

She says she doesn’t know the level of participation expected for the jams that follow the inductions, whose honorees this year also include the Ramones, Tom Petty, Isaac Hayes, Gene Pitney and Brenda Lee.

“First of all, the Ramones don’t jam,” she says. “And the Paul Shaffer band, who organize it, are great, but they’re a little loud for us. I find it terrifically difficult to jam with people when you’re getting your head knocked off.”

“We’ll figure things out as we go,” Weymouth says. “This is one of those things where you have to go with the flow.”

Two weeks ago, Frantz and Weymouth were on hand for the B-52s’ 25th-anniversary gig at New York’s Irving Plaza. The Talking Heads met that band while touring in Atlanta in 1977 and encouraged them to play for some record executives they knew in New York.

The husband-and-wife rhythm section accompanied the B-52s on a 1984 tour of New England that preceded a Rock in Rio showcase.

The New York show “was a blast,” Weymouth says. “We got up there and played ‘Planet Claire’ in the encore with them. It was like old times.”

Anyone hoping that the old times of the Talking Heads will continue with a reunion after next month’s induction will be disappointed, she says.

“There’s no way we would like to force something. Chris and I have other things going, and we don’t want to drop the ball like that.”

Roger Catlin is rock music critic for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.