Fresh Air - David Byrne on 40 Years of 'Stop Making Sense'

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

For the 40th anniversary of Talking Heads' masterpiece concert film, Stop Making Sense, A24 remastered and rereleased the movie, bringing it to new audiences and longtime fans. Talking Heads frontman David Byrne returns to Fresh Air to speak with Terry Gross about songwriting, dancing, and constructing the big suit.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we're featuring the interview I recorded with David Byrne last fall. He's a founding member of the band Talking Heads, one of the seminal bands of the punk new wave period of the 70s. They weren't exactly punk, but they weren't like any band that came before them. They recorded eight albums between 1977 and 1988 when they stopped playing together. When we spoke last fall, the 40th anniversary restored edition of their concert film Stop Making Sense

had just been released with a remastered soundtrack. Many music critics and fans consider it among the best concert films ever made. Byrne went on to record solo albums, collaborate on experimental theater pieces with Robert Wilson and Spalding Gray, and a ballet with choreographer Twyla Tharp. He still has the record label he founded in 1988, Luwakabop.

His first releases were compilations of Brazilian music, but then he expanded into African pop and later jazz and gospel, as well as his own solo albums. Spike Lee directed the film adaptation of his 2019 concert Broadway show American Utopia. He won an Oscar as one of the composers of the score for the Bertolucci film The Last Emperor

and was nominated for one for the song he co-wrote with Mitski and Sun Lux for the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once. That's a long way to go from CBGB It is a long way to go Who would have thought? Who would have thought?

David Byrne, welcome to Fresh Air Welcome back Thank you, good to be back It's been a really long time Yes, so let's start with Psycho Killer The first song Talking Heads wrote Which is on their first album Talking Heads 77

And it also starts off Stop Making Sense. So you walk on stage with a boombox. You put down the boombox. It plays a rhythm track. You play along on your guitar and start singing. Can't see the face up to the box Tense and nervous, can't relax Can't sleep, bed's on fire Don't touch me, I'm a real liar

Psycho-pillar, cascassue Fire, fire, fire, fire Better run, run, run, run, run away Oh, oh, oh, oh So, David Byrne, Psycho Killer was the first song that you wrote with drummer Chris Franz and bass player Tina Weymouth. What was the germ of the idea? Was it your idea to write a song about a serial killer?

Do you think of him as a serial killer or just a kind of really bad date? Yes. Well, I don't know if he's a serial killer, but yes, somebody who's kind of deranged and is a killer. And it was an experiment to see if I could write a song. Chris and I had a band and we played other people's songs at school dances and things like that. And I thought, oh, let me see if I can write a song. I tried years ago when I was in high school and failed miserably. I said, let me try again. So I thought I would try and write something that was maybe a cross between Alice Cooper and Randy Newman. Were you fans of each of them? Oh, yeah. Because they're kind of on opposite extremes. Kind of on opposite extremes. So I thought I'd have the kind of dramatic subject that Alice Cooper might use, but then look at kind of an interior monologue the way Randy Newell might do it. And so I thought, let's see if we can get inside this guy's head. So we're not going to talk about the violence or anything like that, but we'll just get inside this guy's kind of muddled up, slightly twisted thoughts.

I imagine that he would imagine himself as very erudite and sophisticated. And so he would speak sometimes in French. And so I went to... Oh, so that's why. So I went to Tina, who had grown up some of the time in Brittany and her mother's why. So I went to Tina, who had grown up some of the time in Brittany, and her mother's French. And I said, oh, can you help me?

We want him to say something pretty grand here. But say it in French as if he's going to tell us what kind of ambitions and how he sees himself. So what does he say in French? I've never— Oh, it's like, I realize my destiny. It's very kind of old-fashioned. I think Tina said this is very Napoleonic kind of French. It's very kind of, I realize my destiny.

I must do what I must do, something like that. I love that song so much. Now, you also sing the fa-fa-fas in there? Oh, yeah, that was a little reference to an Otis Redding song. Otis Redding, okay. I was wondering about that. Yes, absolutely. Because he had a sad song.

It's also called the fa-fa-fa song. Yes. It's a parentheses song. Yeah, a little parentheses. A little thing where a reference, an Otis Redding song in there. I'm not sure exactly why. You do the deranged version of it. Yes. But, you know, well, that's the subject.

That's the voice of the guy who's singing. Yes. No, exactly. Exactly. A character song like Randy Newman. Yes. So, but that was, to me, that song was unique in everything that we did. In that once we did it and we started playing it around the schools in Providence, people liked it.

They said, we want to hear you play that song. And I realized, oh, okay. Now I realize I can write a song. So now let me write some that are a little more what I want to say and how I want to say it and experiment with the song format and the way their songs are constructed. And so, yeah, that song to me seemed like a unique early experiment. So Talking Heads started by stripping everything away and then later adding things in. So I'm going to quote you from your book, How Music Works, in terms of what you stripped away.

You wrote you wanted no rock moves or poses, no pomp or drama, no rock hair, no rock lights, no rehearsed stage pattern, definitely no noodling guitar solos. So why did you want to remove all of that? And is there anything you left out in that sentence that you wanted to remove? I think that covered a lot of it right there. The idea was, I was aware that other contemporary acts, people around us, some of them were adopting poses or clothes or guitar styles or whatever that seemed to be from a previous era, from a previous generation. And I thought to myself, well, those were invented or created by other people, and they belong to them. And they express something about their generation. But how do I do something that belongs to us, that speaks to our generation, that speaks to our concerns? And I thought, well, then I have to jettison everything that went before and be very careful not to adopt any of that stuff.

But then you started adding things in, and it wasn't the things that you wanted to take out, but it was things like, you know, more an expanded rhythm section, a more theatrical presentation, as we see in Stop Making Sense. And what you're doing on stage during that concert in it's not making sense, is for a lot of the film, you're basically jogging in place very rhythmically and very energetically. And I don't know, your body, even when you're not doing the jogging thing, your body just seems to be pulsing with the rhythm. Like your chest is pulsing. Your head is pulsing. So that's the choreography for you. Yeah.

I mean, there's other things that are a little more elaborate. But yes, a lot of it is really kind of just moving with the rhythm of the songs. When we expanded the lineup, the performing lineup, and added more musicians, our recent records became more kind of rhythmically oriented, although we were always very kind of a rhythmic band. It was maybe more of a twitchy rhythm, but it was rhythm. Yeah, it was more twitchy. And then now it became more funky and kind of more sensuous in a way. And I thought, oh, this makes me want to move in a different way. And I can't stop. I can't resist moving. So I just want to ask you about the big suit that you wear for a little bit of the performance in Stop Making Sense.

And in the credits, it says the suit was built by. It doesn't say costume designer or designed by. It says built by as if it were like architecture. That's true. It is. And it's also true that I didn't go to someone and say, I just want a big suit. I had a little drawing of what I wanted the end product to look like. Very sketchy. Just a little line drawing.

But it was basically a rectangle with feet sticking out the bottom and a little tiny head on top. And so I went to a kind of small clothing manufacturer, designer in downtown New York, Gail Blacker, and I said, how can we do this? I'm kind of influenced by kind of Japanese theater, the no costume, where it's wide, it's rectangular, but when you turn sideways, it's not fat. So, it's not really a fat suit. It's more. But when you turn sideways, it's not fat. So it's not really a fat suit. It's more like a box. A flat box that's facing the audience. And it's meant to face forwards. So we had to realize I had to wear a kind of girdle underneath

and put the pants on, the pants attached to this padded girdle thing. And so the pants kind of just hung down. They barely touched my legs. And same with the jacket. The jacket had a big shoulder armature and the jacket just kind of hung down from that and barely touched my chest. The suit has become iconic, but what was it like to inhabit it? How did it change you as a performer on stage? When I started wearing the big suit, I realized that it had a life of its own. Because it kind of just draped down like curtains from my hips and shoulders,

I could wiggle a little bit and it would ripple, like curtains or sheets or whatever. So you could do all these things with it. If I wiggled side to side, it would kind of shimmy around. I could do all these things with it that I couldn't do just by myself. It had its own properties that you could kind of activate that way. I thought it was kind of odd, kind of slightly surreal.

It meant something. I wasn't sure what it meant. I guess it didn't matter. It sure made an impression. Yes. People have interpreted it as meaning like, oh, this is the archetypical businessman kind of imprisoned in his suit, imprisoned in his whole situation. That's not what it was. Well, that might be unintentional, but it might be there. I don't deny it, but it wasn't my intention to kind of, oh, I want to kind of make fun of businessmen.

Right. So let's hear another song from the film Stop Making Sense. And I want to play Burning Down the House, which is one of your best non-songs. And it holds up so, so many years later. So now it's sometimes interpreted about being about global warming, climate change, you know, burning down the house, fight fire with fire. What were you really thinking of when you wrote it? The phrase burning down the house, I'd heard being used as a chant at a Parliament Funkadelic concert that I'd seen. They didn't have it in a song.

It was just a kind of chant that they started chanting and the audience joined in. And it meant like, we're going to blow the roof off the sucker. We're going to set this place on fire. It's going to be, you know, we're going to have a really amazing time here.

Yeah, it didn't mean literally let's set fire to our houses or anything else. Or the world is burning. Yes. And the rest of it, I thought, let me see if I can make a song that is basically a lot of non sequiturs that have some kind of emotional impact, that they have some kind of emotional resonance, but literally they don't make any sense. I'm so glad you said that because, you know, I've never understood exactly what is this song about. I love it and I love the individual lines.

But, yeah, I can never find like, what is the narrative here? Yes. So like the film title, it doesn't make literal sense, but it makes emotional sense. Sure. Yes. And rhythmic sense. Yes. Yeah. All right. Let's hear it. This is the version from the concert film, Stop Making sense. Hold tight Wait till the party's over Hold tight We're in for nasty red eyes There has

got to be a way Right in front of the house Here's your ticket Pack your bags Time for jumping over Transportation is here Close enough but not too far Maybe you know where you are

Fighting fire with fire Always Yeah, you might need a paper Take it down Dreams walking in broad daylight 365 degrees Take it down! Dreams walking in broad daylight Three hundred Sixty-five Decrees

Burling down the hall It was once a finding place, sometimes I listen to myself Gonna come in first place People wonder where the work's at Baby, what did you expect? Gonna burst into flames

Go ahead That's Talking Heads from the 40th anniversary restored edition of Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film. So I'm going to quote you again. This is from your book, How Music Works. And you're talking about dancing and you say, A nerdy white guy trying to be smooth and black is a terrible thing to behold. I let my body discover little by little its own grammar of movement, often jerky, spastic, and strangely formal. How did you come up with who you were on stage moving in space and not doing, you know, either like Temptations moves or hip-hop moves. Wow. Yes. I had to resist kind of adopting moves that I loved that I'd seen other people do. And so I think, yeah, by that time, I'd worked with Twyla Tharp.

She did an evening dance piece called The Catherine Wheel. Yeah, and I'm going to interrupt you right there for a second because one of the things you do in addition to jogging and plays is you kind of stagger or stumble around stage, around the stage, very intentionally. And it looks like you're almost going to fall, but you don't. And I thought, like, that is so Twyla Tharp, because her choreography is like normal movements elevated to dance. And like stumbling, staggering, that's one of those normal movements that I've seen her use. Yes. So I was around when they were rehearsing things and doing a lot of that kind of movement. Not that I lifted any directly, but I thought, oh, the vocabulary of what's available, what you can do, is really wide. So you were inspired by her approach to movement.

I was inspired by her and the stuff that she was doing. I was inspired by a lot of folk dance or dance that I'd seen on kind of ethnographic films of rituals, stumbling and the stuff on Once in a Lifetime by kind of the Baptist church, people going into trance, whether it was in Baptist church or in Santeria or whatever. I thought, oh, this is, they might not think of it this way, but it's a kind of dance. It may not be choreographed in the same kind of way, but it is a kind of dance. It's definitely movement, and it's definitely connected with music. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to copy that, but that direction is someplace I can go as well.

My guest is David Byrne. The new restored version of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense is streaming. Let's listen to the concert film version of the Talking Heads song Life During Wartime. We'll hear more of my interview with David Byrne after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh air. now lived in a brownstone house lived in a ghetto I've lived all over this town this ain't no party

this ain't no disco this ain't no fooling around no time for dancing I love it, love it I ain't got time for that now let's get the message to the receiver Hope open hands to someday

I got three passports, couple of visas Don't even know my real name On the hillside, books are loading Everything's ready to roll Sleep in the daytime, work in the nighttime This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. Let's talk about the early music in your life. Was guitar the first instrument that you got? No, it was a violin. First, I had to hand me down violin. How'd you like it? It's a very difficult instrument to get it to sound nice. It's not like you can, once you can play some notes, that they sound good. You can play notes, but they sound bad for a long time. So it's not a very satisfying instrument in that way for a young person to learn, to me. But I persisted. I kept playing it.

I ended up with a friend playing it on the street sometime, busking for money, that sort of thing. The guitar became more comfortable for you. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was just, it was the iconic instrument for kind of the pop music. Yes, good and bad musicians all played guitar. Was rhythm the first thing that really captured you in music? No, I think it was texture. I think that one of the first things

I heard was on a little transistor radio was the Byrd's version of Mr. Tambourine Man. And I'd never heard any sound like that. The kind of, this jangly guitar

and these really kind of lush harmonies mixed with that. And I thought, that's a sound that I've never heard before. I've never heard it on any of my parents' Sound of Music record. It doesn't sound like that. No, it doesn't.

I thought, there's another world out there. Is that what your parents had as mostly Broadway? No, they had some. They also had Scottish folk music and Mozart. Okay, yeah. So the birds would definitely be different. Mm-hmm. And so that said there's a whole other world out there.

This is just, you're getting a peek at it. What were the first songs you learned to play? I decided to teach myself. So I think I went and got a Bob Dylan songbook and probably a folk song book that had the chords written in. Maybe a Beatles songbook. Maybe some other kinds of things. Maybe Smokey Robinson songs. You could buy these songbooks of the songs that were in the radio.

And I thought, let me just learn the easy ones. So start with the easy ones and see if I can do that. And to me, that was immensely satisfying. Of course, I'm just doing this in my bedroom. And I realized that for learning something like this, I thought, what's really important is that you get this positive, satisfying feedback as fast as possible. That was the problem with the violin. It took a long time before you got the positive. No, this way you get to, you're singing a song within hours or a day or something like that,

a song that you love. And I thought like that, a song that you love. And I thought, that's a great way to learn. So what did you think of your singing voice then? Oh, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was, of course, it sounded better to me in my head than what I heard on recordings. But I thought, I'm doing this because I'm writing the material, so it looks like I'm going to be singing it too. And later on, I realized how very peculiar my singing at that time was. Well, apparently the choir teacher in your junior high or high school felt the same way.

What I read is, tell me if this is true, that you were rejected from choir because you were off-key and, what, too self-conscious or uncomfortable? Yeah, definitely off-key. Yes, yes. And I was asked to leave the school choir. So did that make you think, okay, give up, like this, you're bad. No one wants to hear you.

You should stop singing for anyone. Give up. Why is it that people don't give up? That's a real puzzle to me. I didn't... Yeah, when somebody tells you you're not even fit for high school choir. Yes, or they tell you

your paintings are ugly or this idea you have of doing this project or company or whatever. It's a stupid idea. And sometimes people persist and sometimes they're right. It's kind of, it's really puzzling. What makes them persist?

I mean, I don't remember thinking to myself, I'm right, they're wrong. I just thought, no, I love this. I'm going to keep doing it myself. I'll just do it in my bedroom or to a smaller group and do that. I didn't think, I didn't think, oh, that stupid choir leader, you know, what does he know? I just thought, no, I'll do it myself and I keep pursuing because I enjoy it. Yeah. So I kept going and started singing again and eventually started singing in local, they called them coffee shops around town. They were like the local university had one

and there were some others. And they usually had folk singers in. And at that time, folk singers only sang kind of songs within a prescribed repertoire. So I went in kind of as a folk singer, but I sang what I felt were very literate rock and pop songs. And they'd never heard them before. They would say, who wrote that song? Songs by The Who or The Kinks or different people like that. Let's take a short break here,

and then we'll be back with more of my interview with David Byrne. This is Fresh Air. I want to go back to the early days of Talking Heads. I want you to describe your first night at CBGB on a double bill with the Ramones. You opened for them. CBGB was like the most famous of the New York punk new wave clubs in the 70s. Did you already know the Ramones when you opened for them? We opened for the Ramones, I think, probably the first time. We didn't know them that well personally. We'd maybe said hello.

But musically? Musically, yes. We'd seen them play a couple of times there, and we knew what we were dealing with. What were you dealing with? We knew that they did kind of hilarious pop songs, but musically it was like this roar. It was like standing next to a jet engine or something. And we often got called, you know, an art rock band.

But I think we also thought that the Ramones were very much an art rock band. It was very conceptual, what they did and how they did it and how they looked. It was all very considered. So we really liked it. We didn't want to sound like them. That wasn't what we were doing, but we liked it. But we realized, wow, I don't think we can play after them. The audience will be kind of stunned and maybe slightly deaf.

So we'll go before. And it was a wonderful time when the audiences were just curious about what was this new kind of pop music that was emerging downtown and in different places in London and elsewhere. They didn't know much about any of it. So they were just curious and they would go, oh, this band sounds like a jet engine playing pop music. And this one is kind of this twitchy, kind of angsty songs as well. And they accepted all of it. So you were considered part of the punk new wave scene in New York. When I interviewed Seymour Stein, the co-founder of Sire Records, the label that signed Tucking Heads, he told me that he came up with the expression new wave because the promotion people for Sire were describing

Tucking Heads as punk. but Stein thought you were, quote, the furthest thing from punk. Did you feel like the furthest thing from punk? We felt that, yes, musically we sounded very, very different. And visually, we felt very, very different than what was then considered punk rock. But this kind of DIY, the do-it-yourself idea that was prevalent amongst the punk rockers and us, we thought we have that in common. We have in common the fact that, okay, we can do it and we can do it with the means that we have available and we can speak to the concerns of our generation and our contemporaries. And they felt the same way.

You've often been described as not the most social person. I read one description that at a party, you'd be the person sitting alone in the corner. So as somebody who I assume is something of a loner socially, I don't know. I'm just— Less so now. But yes, there was definitely a time when that was the case. And I have to make clear that that didn't mean I was unhappy. No, right, right, right.

But being somebody who was more of a loner than a group person, what was it like for you to be or at least be perceived as part of a scene? At first, I found it really annoying because I thought of myself and what we were doing as being very unique and being part of a whole kind of scene or style or name or whatever it might be, I thought, no, just listen to us for what we are. But then later on I realized, oh, having a kind of handle like this has been very handy for the press to say, okay, we're going to write an article about punk rock, and we'd get included in that, which was, for us, not a bad thing. And I realized, oh, we benefited by riding on the coattails of that.

And then eventually people got to know us for what we were. You've described yourself as being on the autism spectrum, although you've never been officially diagnosed. Can I ask what makes you think you're on the spectrum? A friend told me. This was, what year was it? Early 2000s, late 90s maybe. A friend of mine picked up a book about the autism spectrum,

which was kind of a, it's an old idea, but it's an old idea that had come back into vogue at that point. And she read aloud to me the various aspects of people who are on the spectrum. And then she said, David, this sounds like you. I couldn't disagree, at least on the mild end of the spectrum. So what sounded like you? What characteristics? Kind of the ability to kind of intensely focus on something that interested you, to kind of exclude other things and really kind of be intensely focused.

Maybe being somewhat socially awkward, socially uncomfortable a little bit. Taking things sometimes very literally, which I still do that a bit. When sometimes having a conversation with someone, they'll say something, and by the tone of their voice or their look or whatever, they'll understand that they're telling me no. But I'll hear them say yes, the word, you know, yes or whatever. And so I'll go, but you said yes. What? I don't understand. So, yeah, there's a little confusion there sometimes.

But those were the main symptoms that I can remember. What about like repeating things over and over? Whether it's like listening to something over and over again or seeing something over and over again or doing a gesture or movement over and over again? Wow. I hadn't even thought of that. I think you might be right. I mean, some of that is what dancing is. Especially when you're doing the same movement over and over. Yes.

That sometimes there's a kind, yeah, there's an attachment to that kind of repetition. That it actually has a, when something is repeated, it has a different meaning than when it's done just once. Do you find it soothing? Yes. Yes. So when your friends suggested that maybe you're on the autism spectrum, and you thought, yeah, yeah, maybe, why didn't you bother to get an official diagnosis? Probably because I thought, this is just me. I'm not unhappy. I might be a little bit different than some other people,

but I'm not unhappy. This is the way I experience the world. But I'm doing fine I really enjoy writing the songs and performing the other things that we do so

why act like I have something wrong that needs to be treated My guest is David Byrne We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. I don't think Talking Heads was ever famous for

love ballads and those kinds of songs. But you've recorded them. And I wanted to play one. I don't think this is one of your best-known songs. But it's from your 1997 album, Feelings, which was your fifth studio album, and it's a song called A Soft Seduction. I think it's a really

good song, and it's just really interesting to hear you singing a ballad like that. Can you say a little bit about it? That, I was, thank you. I really like that song,. I realized as life went on that I could write really beautiful moving melodies occasionally. When did you realize that? process. I also was listening to other people, other musicians, whether it was, you know, like Paul McCartney or Caetano Veloso or others who could write these beautiful melodies and had, you know, amazing voices. And I realized, oh, how do they do that? How do they do that? And little by little learn, oh, oh, I can do a little bit of that. Well, let's hear it. This is David Byrne singing his song, A Soft Seduction. The words of love are not enough

Though sweet as wine and thick as blood Passionless moments and we are homeless Out on the street But life is cool and things aren't bad. Got what he wants, lost what he had. He soon adjusted and got accustomed to these new ways. Blame God, how can you lose Singing such sweet rhythm and blues

Strange days, she said to me Being in love don't mean you're free But night reveals what daytime has So that was David Byrne from his 1997 album, Feelings, and the song is called A Soft Seduction. It's a song he wrote. You know, when I think of feelings, I think of that song, Feelings. Were you concerned that people would think that that was one of the songs that

you did on it? I thought that would be very funny if they thought that I was doing that song. And I thought it was also funny that myself, it was intentional. Really? I was often portrayed as being a little bit cold and analytical in my songwriting and performing. So I thought it might be funny to call a record feelings, especially coming from me. And I also put a picture of me as a kind of Ken doll. How timely now. That would be back in fashion. One of the things you do in some of your songs is a kind of speak singing.

That reminds me of like a cross between some Kurt Weill songs and Lou Reed. And I'm wondering if either of them have been inspirations to you in that style that you have. Both of them have been inspirations to me. I was a big fan of Velvet Underground when I was younger, and I had never heard anything like that. Not the kind of music they did, but also the kind of subjects they were singing about.

I thought, wow, this is not peace and love here. But it was also, but that's part of the world as well. They're acknowledging a different part of the world. And yes, Kurt Weill and Brecht, those songs where they had sometimes beautiful melodies interspersed with kind of talking, talk singing parts. I'd also heard things like preachers, whether it was on the radio or in a church, where the sermon would start and the energy would get higher and higher and higher, and then it would kind of cross over a line, and it became like singing. It became like an incantation, a rhythmic incantation that then, kind of the band or organist or whoever is playing along,

and it was like crossing over a line and becoming music. It started and kind of gradually transformed from one thing into another. I want to get back to something that you said earlier. You know, you said that you've changed in terms of being social, that you think you're more social than you used to be, more comfortable around people. What changed? Like, how did that change evolve?

That's a really good question. I think music helped me socially. That, as you can see in Stop Making Sense, and Stop Making Sense, this concert and film, is kind of a model of what happened to me. You see this person in the beginning who's kind of angsty and twitchy and stumbling around and singing about Psycho Killer. And then by the end, he's surrendered to the music and is fairly joyful, as much as he could be at that point. And he's found a kind of community. This happens in the American Utopia show as well.

He finds a community, a community that's diverse, that's made of all sorts of different people that are very different from him, but they're all making music together. The music together is something that none of them could make

just by themselves. It's a very collective enterprise. It seems like that's a great way of having a community without necessarily having to have heart-to-heart emotional discussions. Seriously, you're relating through music music and you're with each other like on stage. You have this like totally engaged, like loving audience, but you don't have to interact with them. You know, like you're separated from them. You're on stage, they're in the audience. So it's kind of both at the same time, the sense of connection with people, but also being a part.

I think you're right. There was a real kind of safety net there. So there wasn't this feeling of danger of falling into total social engagement. But there was enough that kind of it opened a door. I just want to say it has been so much fun to talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

It's been too long. Yes, you were on our show in 1992, a long time ago. Yeah, it's great to talk again. You too. Thank you very much. David Byrne co-founded Talking Heads. His record label is called Luwakabop. The 40th anniversary restored and remastered edition of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense is streaming.

We'll close with a song from the film, the band's cover of Al Green's Take Me to the River. Take me to the river Drop me in the water Take me to the river Drop me in the water, the water Don't know what, nothing I can do All the trouble you put me through Take my money, my cigarettes I haven't seen the worst of it yet

I want to know Can you tell me how I love this day? Oh, take me to the river I love this town. This message comes from NPR sponsor Grammarly. What if everyone at work were an expert communicator? Inbox numbers would drop, customer satisfaction scores would rise, and everyone would be more productive. That's what happens when you give Grammarly to your entire team. Grammarly is a secure AI writing partner that understands

your business and can transform it through better communication. Join 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly with their words and their data. Learn more at Grammarly.com. Grammarly. Easier said, done.