Tim James

David Byrne took Talking Heads' songs to Broadway without the band, and the show grossed more than $40 million. When Live Nation offered the band $80 million for 6 to 8 shows, the answer was no. Chris Frantz, who started the band with Byrne and Tina Weymouth in 1975, says it changed after a lawyer explained how songwriting royalties work. In the video below, Frantz thanks the Hall of Fame "for giving this band a happy ending" with Byrne beside him. They hadn't played together in 18 years, and he kept wondering, "Was it something I said?" Half a song is the melody and half the words, the lawyer said. Frantz says Byrne then told him, "I'm only going to sing the songs that I write the lyrics for from here on out." Frantz says all 5 writers of Remain in Light were meant to be named. The advance copies read "All Songs By David Byrne, Brian Eno, Talking Heads," and in 1991 he learned Byrne had left from the Los Angeles Times. The case for Byrne: he wrote almost all the words, and Frantz admits, "I'm never going to have the unique train of thought that he has." In the clip Byrne says a reunion "becomes an exercise in nostalgia." Frantz's advice is to agree on songwriting credits and record royalties in the early days, before anyone finds out what half a song pays. So did Byrne just get paid for the words he wrote, or use one royalty rule to take the songs from the 3 people who built them with him? I post one famous deal like this every day, with who got paid, who got played, and the numbers that never made the poster.