BYRNE AT BOTH ENDS

THE MAN I expected to meet was thin, guarded, besuited, and prone to long awkward silences. The man I met was thin, handsome, dungaree d, and prone to occasional fits of the giggles. Backstage at the Olympia, David Byrne is offering coffee and apologising for the mess in his dressing room. He ll be meeting director John Boorman for dinner in half-an-hour, and although I m welcome to walk to the restaurant with him (he eventually opts to cycle, and I draw the line at trotting through the streets of Dublin behind a former Talking Head s bike), time is tight. There s nothing for it but to prop the Dictaphone against a stray sock and start probing.
But first, let s recap. David Byrne was born in Dumbarton in Scotland on May 14, 1952. When he was two years old, his family moved to Canada courtesy of a company that was recruiting engineers and semi-scientists from Europe. Six years later they moved again, this time to the burbs of Baltimore, Maryland. At the age of 18, Byrne attended the Rhode Island School Of Design, where he met his future Talking Heads comrades Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. He studied a functional design programme known as the Bauhaus Theory course, and a conceptual art course, but the staff were somewhat unimpressed by some of David s performances (in one, he had his hair and beard shaved off to the sound of piano accordion as a showgirl displayed cue cards in Russian), and he left after a year.
Having travelled around the United States, Byrne returned to Baltimore to form a duo called Bizadi with a friend, Mark Kehoe. Specialising in Sinatra standards and the odd pop tune such as ? And The Mysterians 96 Tears , the two moved to San Francisco to busk and play gigs in restaurants before Byrne decided to return to Rhode Island and hook up with Frantz and Weymouth again.
By 1975 the three had named themselves Talking Heads and were rehearsing in Manhattan. After an appearance at CBGB s, the fledgling band (David on guitar and vocals, Chris and Tina on drums and bass) were approached by Seymour Stein, who eventually signed them to Sire Records. The next year, former Modern Lovers keyboardist Jerry Harrison joined and the quartet released their first excellent single, Love Goes To A Building On Fire , before touring extensively and recording the classic debut Talking Heads 77 (which contained Psycho Killer , the tune which was to establish Byrne s enduring image as a kind of preppy, new-wave Norman Bates).
A second album, the Brian Eno-produced More Songs About Buildings And Food, put the band at the vanguard of late 70s music, combining angular rhythms and oddball, unsentimental lyrics with the Byrne s eccentric vocal delivery. The third record, Fear Of Music, and the hit single Life During Wartime demonstrated that the band were now becoming as popular with the public as they d always been with the pundits.
Next, Byrne collaborated with Eno for the disjointedly funky My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts before re-uniting the band for their European breakthrough album, 1980 s Remain In Light, featuring Once In A Lifetime , one of the finest singles of the era. On this, and the next studio album, Speaking In Tongues, the band would venture even further into experimental territories, combining the African polyrhythms and ecstatic wailings suggested by the title, with post-punk s more orthodox unorthodoxies.
Talking Heads were that rare thing in the 80s, a band whose growth curve did not adversely affect the music, at least not until the very end. The Jonathan Demme-directed concert film Stop Making Sense and its soundtrack propelled the band from cult status to stadium-act-in-waiting. Little Creatures, released in 1985, was a huge hit, and the group capitalised on the video revolution with groundbreaking promo clips for the singles And She Was and Road To Nowhere .
However, Byrne steered the band down an untrodden path for the next project, the album and film True Stories, an idiosyncratic look at the more bizarre aspects of Smalltown, USA (a subject also close to the heart of that other great American weird-egghead, David Lynch). Increasingly, the frontman was becoming interested in the arts, and by the turn of the decade had released a number of solo projects, including music from Twyla Tharp s modern ballet The Catherine Wheel and Robert Wilson s The Knee Plays, an orchestral work entitled The Forest, and then 1989 s Rei Momo (which he toured with a 14-piece Latin-American ensemble). As Byrne became increasingly reluctant to play live with Talking Heads, relationships became frayed. The band s last album was 1988 s Naked, although they would not officially give notice of a split until three years after that.
Since the band s demise, Byrne has been living up to Time magazine s description of him as The Renaissance Man Of Rock , overseeing many soundtrack projects (including Married To The Mob and Something Wild), setting up the world music label Luaka-Bop and releasing a number of more conventional solo albums, including Uh-Oh ( 92) and the more back-to-basics, autobiographical David Byrne ( 94).
However, last year s Feelings marked a return to eclecticism, with the artist trying out everything from techno-cajun, baroque, country-funk, and even the odd jungle-ism.
Recorded in various locations around the world, Feelings features collaborations with the likes of Morcheeba, Devo and The Black Cat Orchestra, but many of the tracks were recorded in home studio set-ups, an approach that may prove to have a major effect on the recording industry in the coming years.
Oh, it already is, the singer confirms, handing me a copy of a remix CD. Somewhat to the good and somewhat to the bad. To the good it means that to some extent you can make the record in your house, you re not beholden to some mega-studio budget. The downside I guess, is that the big record companies know this! They re saying, Well, you won t be needing fifty or a hundred thousand to make that record anymore, will you? You can make it for half that! So they re not giving out as big advances on records cos they know that they can be made cheaper.
In a press release issued at the time of that last record, David wrote: There s a subconscious cut-and-paste going on in our heads that doesn t seem strange at all. It s the way we live now. Certainly, on tracks like Daddy Go Down and The Gates Of Paradise , there are enough odd musical juxtapositions to suggest that Byrne has been channel-hopping his way through some 21st century music network. At the risk of coming on all Marshall McLuhan here, does he really believe that the human mind can be seriously affected by blink-and-you ll-miss-it cut-up culture?
It s something I wonder about, but I don t have an answer, he replies in that curiously clipped American accent. I definitely have met some people whose whole perspective seems to be moulded by television shows and adverts they ve seen, and records they ve listened to. Basically, their character, or life, seems to be made up like one of those late-night TV adverts where they say, Greatest Hits Of the 80s , and there s a snippet of all these songs, and you wonder, Is there anything else below that? If you scratch that surface, is there anything deeper, or is there nothing underneath? And sometimes it seems like, yeah, there is nothing underneath. That s it. There is only surface. Which could be an interesting stage in evolution, I guess. (laughs) It could mean that we wouldn t have any kind of intellectual rigour whatsoever, it would be just based purely on animal instinct and spouting a bunch of catchphrases . . . which could be kind of interesting!
Does he watch much TV?
No, not that much. But I m aware of its being in an awful lot of homes.
One of the last tracks Talking Heads recorded was their contribution to the soundtrack of Wim Wenders Until The End Of The World, Sax And Violins . One of Wenders preoccupations over the last decade has been the disease of images does Byrne agree with the idea that a pornographic or violent image can corrupt the mind?
I can t answer that, he shrugs. I mean, I ve heard that there are studies that (conclude): No, pornography does not lead to sex-crimes. Lots of people would like to believe it makes people s sense of sexuality perverted, but it seems that it doesn t. Which makes me wonder, well, what if the same thing s true about all these violent things we see, whether it s on MTV, the news, or films or whatever? What if it basically is a kind of outlet that doesn t affect our relationships with other people. It could be that you re playing Doom or something on your video game, just blasting the shit out of people, and it s just blood oozing out everywhere, and it s an outlet. You re not gonna go smashing the face of the guy you have an argument with, because you ve gotten it out on a video game. I don t know if I believe it, but . . . who knows?
By Byrne s standards, his eponymous 1994 album was a quite a personal work. Until then, the adoption of personae had dominated both the singer s live and recorded performances, and he was as likely to absorb influences from evangelistic preachers and Kabuki theatre as more conventional western sources. So, how come it took so long for him to write from his own experiences?
Before I did that record, I was making the acquaintance of a lot of songwriters whose work seemed to be really from the heart, he explains. It seemed to be something I could do occasionally, but they seemed to be doing it consistently, and I was just kind of in awe. People like Terry Allen (a Texan sculptor/photographer who covered Byrne s Buck Naked on his Human Remains album), Lucinda Williams, Roseanne Cash and what s her name, from Chicago, Liz Phair. That record (Exile In Guyville) seemed really honest, straight from the heart, talkin about her life; whether it was all made up or not, it sounded real! And I just thought, Why can t I do that? It had never even occurred to me. And then I guess I d gone through some emotional experiences in my life, family members dying, and that starts to bring it out, allowing it to happen.

Did becoming a father instil in him the kind of moral and existential fear common to many new parents?
Yeah, I was aware of it, he affirms, but I also have this deathly fear of writing family-oriented songs, or songs about happy family life or domestic bliss. It s never easy to do songs about happiness. I mean, yes, you are (happy), but you have to have a little edge to it.
Explaining that I wasn t necessarily talking about domestic bliss, I indicate that the novelist Martin Amis became obsessed with the idea of nuclear holocaust for a period after his children were born.
I m aware of that kinda stuff, but no, I haven t gone on the rampage about stuff because of the kid, he confides. Because I feel like, y know, I survived all that bullshit, I m not taken in by every advert I see on television. Although it s hard to believe, cos at present kids tend to believe everything the world tells them, I guess they have to . . . get more cynical! (laughs)
Burnt By The Sun from Feelings appears to comment on the coke-fuelled decadence of the 70s . . .
It was the 80s for me and people I knew, but yeah.
It s a subject that films such as Boogie Nights and The Ice Storm also address.
And I think there s some other one coming that is based on Studio 54.
Did the singer observe that movement as it happened in New York?
I wasn t really part of that scene, he chuckles. I think I went to Studio 54 once. I wasn t doing cocaine and didn t know anyone, so I didn t really get the full experience. I was kinda bored after a while. It was like, This is it, this is the most exciting thing in town? I think I ll stick with the downtown clubs!
Did he develop any interest in 90s club culture and the use of Ecstasy and ketamine?
Not really, he avers. I was just listening to the music. At that time I wasn t going to raves, but I completely identified with the feeling they were getting, since, for years I had been playing music that s been very ecstatic and groove-oriented, and I had that feeling of catharsis or whatever on stage, that feeling of losing yourself in the music. So all that seemed like Oh yeah, I know what that s about.
I ve gone out and worked these various nights that are billed as illbient music , sort of ambient mixed with hip-hop, beats, sometimes Latin instruments, whatever. Two of the people from the band are out of that scene.
1981 s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts album with Brian Eno was one of the first records to utilise a primitive form of loops and samples, appropriating snippets of radio evangelists, Egyptian popular singers and Islamic chants, and weaving them into something quite startling. Byrne acknowledges that it and Remain In Light are still extremely influential today.
Oh yeah, we were very pleased with ourselves, he smiles. We thought we d done something really revolutionary. At the time we were roundly criticised for it by a lot of the rock press, and I thought that might be because we made a kind of faceless record which is fairly common these days in that we removed our personalities from the music. Our emotions were in it and we were certainly making it with feeling, but it wasn t like either of us were singing, and no-one could make out the words and say, That s what the song s about .
It was obvious that the words were taken off radio or records or whatever. And I think that completely messed with people s notions of the authorship of a record, of what a pop record is and can be. I think it really confused people in a way that they didn t like at the time. Now it seems very common, there are tons of records out in the dance world especially, where you don t know the people look like or who the singer is.
Once In A Lifetime broke a lot of new ground by contrasting lyrically tight-arsed white neuroses with fluent black rhythms.
Yeah, I could sort of poke fun at myself over this funky groove, which I like, he admits. I could just say, Okay, I m this twitchy, angst-ridden white guy , but just let that all hang out over this funky beat. I might try my hardest, but I know my dancing has that kind of twitchy thing to it, and I just thought, that s what I am, that s what I do.
David Byrne is an Oscar winner. Not a lot of people know that. Or if they do, it s not the first thing that comes to mind when his name is mentioned. Bernardo Bertolucci s The Last Emperor won nine Academy Awards in 1987, one of which went to Byrne s collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su for Best Original Score. Did the award mean anything to him?
It was fun, he concedes. It was one of those things where it was really more like I was proud of the work I did and, Oh, here s an experience I ve never had before. Let s see what this is like, going to the Academy Awards. I didn t know we were gonna win, that was all a surprise, but just going to the thing, I thought, This is kind of interesting. This is not the kind of thing I would normally go to. It probably won t happen again, so lets check it out.
So, yeah, I wasn t taking it real seriously. Obviously there are people who work for years as an actor and that s their craft, and to get that . . . certification is just the pinnacle of their career, that s what they were striving for.
Byrne admits that there was a point around where Talking Heads could ve become a major act, but he pulled them back from the brink.
There was a period after True Stories when I remember doing lots of publicity for the film and I could see it was a bit out of hand, he recalls. It was time to play around and mess with it. I ve always liked to be able to walk down the street and go into clubs, bars whatever, and feel the pulse of things. I guess I kind of retreated from becoming an arena or stadium band, which could either be taken as being a noble move, or that I chickened out.
Is money important to him?
Yeah, in that it takes money to pay everybody to go on the road and that sort of thing, he acknowledges. I always believe that thing that if a musician doesn t pay attention to their business, they won t have any business. It s not like you immerse yourself in it, but you have to be aware of what things cost and where your money s going, what s getting charged back to you, what s a gift and what s not really a gift.
In 1996 Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth released an album (No Talking, Just Head) as The Heads, with guest vocalists such as Gavin Friday, Debbie Harry and Shaun Ryder assuming lead vocal duties.
Yeah, it was publicised that I was upset about them using the name, because there might be some confusion somewhere down the line, he explains. But we worked out some kind of settlement. I didn t hear the record they did.
They did have to get a good half-dozen people to replace you.
Yeah. (laughs)
To some people David Byrne will always be the jerky dude in the big suit. Is this an image he still feels restricted by?
Yeah, he concludes. I ll be glad when I can add some of the other costumes to that, like the one that s on that remix CD, which I think is pretty striking (a blood-red suit of human flesh turned inside-out PM), at least on a level with the big suit. I ll be glad when that s just one of the stage personae, or outfits or whatever, that I ve done, not the only one. But I understand how things work. I can t change that. n