Why did they cut it for US release?

I live in the US and before its release over here, I had first seen the film by *ahem* third party means and I thought it was great. Now I saw it's on Netflix in the US and decided to watch it again only to find that it's been edited quite a bit. They even cut down most of David Byrne's performance of the title song which was one of the best parts. It was only seven minutes, why couldn't they keep it the way it was?

"Life goes on within you and without you." - George Harrison