Chris Frantz & Tina Weymouth Announce 2023 ‘Remain In Love’ In-Conversation Tour
Talking Heads co-founders Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth have announced a joint ‘Remain In Love’ in-conversation tour. You can check out the full details below.
The drummer and bassist, who also formed the band Tom Tom Club, will discuss their storied careers, marriage, and Frantz’s acclaimed memoir, also called Remain in Love, during three live interviews in May 2023.
“We’re very happy to be doing this,” Frantz told NME. “We haven’t gotten to experience Brexit yet! When we were invited to do it, we thought it sounded fun and we don’t have to play live. We can just talk, enjoy the British hospitality, and catch up with some old friends of ours.”
Aside from being a nod to the seminal 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light, ‘Remain in Love’ pays tribute to Frantz and Weymouth’s 45-year-strong marriage, which they feel has helped them survive the music industry. Frantz first met Weymouth at the Rhode Island School of Design, forming the band that became Talking Heads with her and frontman David Byrne in 1973.
Weymouth said: “Chris and I were very fortunate to have each other as support going through the situations we have, and I think David was incredibly lucky to have us, because he wouldn’t have made it to square one without our love and support. People were just so against him, and now he’s thriving. The real takeaway from this [book] is that we’ve really been able to help.”
Writing Remain in Love involved Frantz accepting that Talking Heads had little chance of reforming in order to be candid about the power dynamics within the group.
“I waited quite a few years to do it,” he said. “People kept telling me: ‘Chris, you should write a book’, but I didn’t want to ruin or in any way tarnish the legacy of Talking Heads, so even while writing it knowing that there’s not going to be any reunion unless David has some enormous epiphany, I still didn’t want it to be a whiny, overly critical or nasty tone.
“I tried to keep it the way I felt, which is that Talking Heads was a wonderful band. Yes, not everything went according to plan unfortunately, but some of the records we made together were great and we can look back on them and be proud.”
Talking Heads fans might be hoping for the turning-point moment where a phone is picked up, an olive branch is offered, and the possibility of a reunion is mooted, but Frantz told NME, after a brief rapprochement to perform three tracks at their Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2002, such hopes are in vain.
“I did try it a couple of times and the last time was about 20 years ago, and after that, David just said: ‘I never want you to ask me that question again. I’m not going to address that matter.’ It’s a shame and it is what it is.”
Meanwhile, Talking Heads mainstay Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew – who played with the band during the early 1980s – recently announced a North American tour for next year in celebration of Remain In Light.
Full dates for Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s ‘Remain in Love’ tour below.
May 2023
25 – Shelodian Theatre, Oxford
27 – Electric Ballroom, London
28 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds