WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 603 - David Byrne

Episode Date: May 17, 2015

For many people, including Marc, David Byrne has served as a tour guide through a new frontier of creativity. The frontman for Talking Heads sits down with Marc to talk about forming the preeminent new wave band of the 20th century and then branching out on his own to create work in theater, film, ballet, opera and, most recently, the world of competitive color guard performances. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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is mark maron this is wtf thank you for joining. It's a very exciting show today. It was a very exciting show for me to do. I interviewed David Byrne, known from being himself, David Byrne, and also from the Talking Heads, one of the greatest bands of the 20th century. So I was very excited to sit down with David at his office and have a conversation. Did not know how it would go. I think it went pretty well. I'll give you a little background on that in just a second. But this week is a pretty special week because you'll be able to hear the talk that I had with Terry Gross. You'll be able to hear it in two different places, friends. On Wednesday, Fresh Air on NPR will present a good chunk of the interview. Then on Thursday, the full interview will be that day's WTF episode. This was a big deal, people. This is a big deal for me.

I'm sure I'll talk to you more about it before the show on Thursday, but Terry Gross is the standard. She is the industry standard, the best, the best of the best interviewers. And I was nervous to interview her, especially in front of people, but it went great. It was an amazing experience. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that on the day, that being Thursday. Anyways, let's talk about David Byrne. Let's talk about a genius. You know, I love interviewing people and God knows I've interviewed a lot of people, but some people I get kind of nervous about, about interviewing because I have this respect for their output,

this respect for their creativity, for the amazing things that they've done. And David Byrne is one of those people. And I had no idea what he would be like. I didn't know if he'd be sociable. I didn't know what it would be like because my experience of David Byrne is almost exclusively through the Talking Heads music and some of the solo stuff. I was introduced by David Byrne by my first girlfriend in college, Sarah, who had half of her head shaved in a little patch. You know, wore Doc Martens and was basically pretty punk, more than me.

And I remember that she had, I think she had Remain in Light if that's possible is that when that came out and she would play that and I'd be like yeah I don't know if I get it and then she turned me on to you know the other stuff I believe Fear of Music and the first record which I had when I was a kid because I got it from the record store that gave it to me they gave me a box of records because they only played R&B gave me all these rock records but I think the only one the only song i listened to when i was in high school of the talking heads was take me to the river the the cover and maybe uh maybe big country i always liked big country but i don't think i really wrapped my head around the talking heads

till later in college when i went to see stop making sense wow oh stop making sense oh yeah man do you remember that when that came out i don't know if you're old enough i don't know if you are When I went to see Stop Making Sense. Wow. Oh, Stop Making Sense. Oh, yeah, man. Do you remember when that came out? I don't know if you're old enough. I don't know if you are. But I had an experience there because I was dating Sarah. It couldn't have been for that long. It must have been one of our first few dates because it was at the Coolidge Corner Movie House.

And I believe she was working at another movie theater that was also owned by the same people or they had an understanding. I don't know, but it was a date. Now I had spent that day tripping on mushrooms with my friends. I remember that we spent the day tripping on mushrooms, but I had to meet her at the movie place at the theater to see the premiere of Stop Making Sense. And I know she really loved the talking heads. I didn't know what what to expect I was a little trippy still but the one thing that I remember outside of the movie blowing my mind we got there we got to the show I was sitting with her and this is you know early in the relationship maybe one of the first few dates I don't even know if we'd had sex yet or what I'm not sure what had happened at that point but we were towards the back of the theater and I was sitting next to her and the movie had started and I was into it, but like, you know, I was coming down, you know, and I woke myself up with the sound of my own fart sitting beside a woman who I had been on maybe three dates with. This was not a good situation.

You don't know what to do in that situation. It's unclear. Do you bring it up? Do you? I mean, I don't remember the depth of the experience. You know, I'm trying not to be too crass. I don't remember if it was smelly or whether it was a big problem for everybody. But I do remember the intense embarrassment of that moment and just kind of looking over at her and wondering if she heard it.

I don't know how she could not have heard it. And all this is going on as David Byrne is jumping around in a giant suit on screen. I can only say that he must have buffered that situation because we did end up staying together after that. We made it through that horrendous experience so early in a relationship where that's really unacceptable. It shouldn't be. I mean, you should be able to do that,

but it's just not the way life works. It just isn't. There shouldn't be that much shame carried around something that has to happen. It's got to happen somewhere, not in your sleep at a movie theater, crowded movie theater next to a girl you just started dating. That's not where it has to happen. I should have controlled that. But I was sleeping and I was coming down from mushrooms. So it was probably amplified the experience for me. But as I said, we made it through. And that's through, and that's my memory of the Stop Making Sense movie.

Aren't you happy I shared that? Folks, my experience leading up to the David Byrne interview, I was in New York. It was set up. I went back and I listened. I still listen to Fear of Music a great deal, like pretty compulsively. But I went and listened to more songs

about buildings and food. I listened to Talk Hand 7 to 7. I listened to Remain in Light. Then I listened to the Knee Plays and I listened to David Byrne, the Catherine Wheel, the music for the Twyla Tharp dance production. Knee Plays was for the,

what's his name, Robert Wilson. But I used to like that stuff and the stuff he did, oh, what is it, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with Brian Eno. I mean, he did some great shit. The later Talking Heads stuff and then the salsa music. Anyways, David Byrne.

I dumped my head full of David Byrne. And then I was waiting to go to his office. And I was walking around New York City. And I went and got a coffee down the corner, down on Canal Street somewhere. And the Bee Gees were were playing it was a soundtrack to saturday night fever and then i thought that like wow this was this was coinciding with the beginning of the of the uh of the talking heads i mean the talking heads helped destroy disco it was part of the movement against that but then evolved into sort of this its own sort of dance

music and all this was going through my head like and I thought the experience of listening to to that music as I was waiting to go talk to David Byrne would he would somehow appreciate that that there was connections being made and I opened my mind up to musical textures and what that was um provoking in my mind and maybe I just opened my conversation talking about the Bee Gees but uh I did not do that I did not do that what i did was i took the elevator up and i met david burn and i tried to i he was just a guy and i know he's just a guy but david burn has his own groove in life you know he has there's something so familiar about the way he moves and the way he talks and the way he looks if you're're a fan of the Talking Heads or if you're a fan of anybody, you kind of lock in. This guy was an important part of my life for many years and I still play his music. So I didn't talk about

the Bee Gees. I didn't. I didn't. I'll tell you what I talked about. At the beginning, we start talking about his new project, Contemporary Color. These are color guard competitions that David Byrne conceived where the color guard teams perform with live music from St. Vincent, Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, Tune Yards, Nelly Furtado, and a few other people. This is going to be a live performance. Leave it up to David Byrne to bring certain things together that you would never assume would work together.

And I know very little about color guards, so I was happy to talk to him about it. It will be at Toronto's Air Canada Center on June 22nd and 23rd and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on June 27th and 28th. So with no further ado, let's enter the offices of David Byrne, which are filled with books and music and people working on things. I think it's the Totomundo is the name of his company. Nice people at his office and very, very inviting, warm, the kind of people you'd think would be working for David Byrne. But it was very warm and it was a lovely conversation. And I really didn't know what to expect.

I didn't know how forthcoming it would be or how it would go, but I never do. So enjoy my conversation with David Byrne that does not include the beat. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's shogun only on disney plus we live

and we die we control nothing beyond that an epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by james clavelle to show your true heart just to risk your life will i die here you'll never leave japan alive fx's shogun a new A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Jeez. It's a privilege and an honor to meet you, David Byrne. You too. You too.

Do you hear that a lot? An honor? Once in a while, and it's always very, very flattering. It never wears thin. I have strange memories of you on record and on screen but there's two very specific memories I have of you in person that you would not share with me you would not know that they happened

I was on an airplane with you once I was not it was much younger I remember it must be like 25, 30 years ago big fan and I saw you sitting there and then after everyone got off the plane, we were all standing around a baggage claim that was,

there was nothing coming out and it was going on a long time. And then you had somehow gone to another baggage claim. And this is just very specific to what I know of you. And you just went over here with a very unique David Byrne movement. To tell everybody. Right. But the movement was... Our bags are over here now. But it was so specifically you that there was just a way

that you move through the world. I'm like, that was so David Byrne, that movement. Oh, it was a very choreographed kind of movement. Exactly. Oh, geez. Okay. And then there was another time I saw you drive by in a bicycle in Chelsea, and you had lights maybe on your ankle.

Is that possible? That is possible. That's possible. Yes, I tried that for a while. You did? Yeah, like a little trouser clip that actually had flashing lights on it. Exactly. Very geeky.

Right, but there was something to me like I saw you drive by, and I didn't say anything. I'm like, that's David Byrne. But then it became more significant to me that it was David Byrne when like I saw you drive by and I didn't say anything. I'm like, that's David Byrne. But then it became more significant to me that it was David Byrne when all I saw was a bouncing light. I was like, that's very creative. He's effortlessly artistic. He's just a fading light.

Just a fading light on a leg going up and down. Exactly. It's so minimal. This is perfect. This guy's amazing. So we should start talking, I guess, about what's going on now, what I just watched, and then move backward. Now, I don't know anything about Color Guard.

Did it seem to, at one time, be a military thing? Probably way, way back, way back. Okay. Really, long story short in a in mid-june we're doing these events these spectacles at barclay center arena in brooklyn and the air canada arena in toronto and they bring together 10 color guard teams and 10 musical acts. So it's color guard doing their thing, but 10, six minute programs with live music that's been written,

especially for them. Okay. Now, but then you go, well, yeah, but what is that? Right.

And I didn't know until recently. It's obviously a culture. Like many things have this culture that we don't know about until someone goes, have you seen this? And you're like, Oh my God, that's been around all the time?

Yes. It's one of those kind of things where it's like, that's been going on all... People do that? Yeah. Yeah. So this one, I know that it's during the fall season. It's associated with football, marching bands, drum lines, all that kind of stuff. And they are outside and they kind of get in formation and toss their flags up and toss their rifles up in the air and all that kind of stuff and they they they are outside and they kind of get in formation and toss their flags up and toss their rifles up in the air and all that kind of stuff off season is when they get

more creative and that's kind of what i saw first um i saw a dvd of their championship because they licensed some music and it uh so they move into gymnasiums and they get very creative where it's kind of thematic aspects of dance and toss of dance and still tossing the flags and rifles. And they sometimes have a message or a story or some subject that they're dealing with. So it's no longer connected with football or marching band or any of that kind of stuff. And they usually use pre-recorded music song or instrumental or whatever like that and that's what i saw and i thought this is kind of an incredible art form out there in in america kind of vernacular art form nobody where i live knows about it sure i thought but what yeah what if it had live music instead of

the pre-recorded stuff that they use wouldn't that kind of kick it all up a notch and make it more exciting? So that's what this thing is. And it's, yeah, so when I and, you know, our little office here started approaching them, it was like, what? What? Who? Who are you? What is this?

What could this be about? This is not our world. To them, this was like, you know like a foreign world intruding into their world. No, these worlds you're talking about, you're talking about basically the art and music world of New York and the greater America. To some extent, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no color guard teams in New York City. In Soho. There's no Soho color guard represented.

Although that could be coming. Yeah. there's no Soho color guard although that could be coming yeah but that's an interesting sort of straddling of worlds that I think you've done a lot you know throughout your career

you're trying your understanding of what America is has sort of shifted and something you've engaged in I mean even like even a song like like let's go back now, even a song like, let's go back now. So even a song like Big Country, where there's this idea of flying over America.

What do you think your evolving relationship with the difference between New York and America is at this point? Is that too broad? No, no, no. At that time, I intentionally wrote, that that big country, that Talking Heads song. I wrote that in a way to kind of have this kind of cliched idea of the New Yorker, you know, Bohemian New Yorker kind of looking down their nose at the rest of the country. So there's a satire.

It's a bit of a satire, but it's also a satire of kind of the image of what i'm supposed to be right i'm supposed to be that kind of jaded new yorker who looks down on the country but you're not but i'm not right um i'm not or at least i try not to be right um and over years i've kind of chipped away at that i find things going on out in the country that uh i go that's incredible and it's kind of completelyipped away at that. I find things going on out in the country that I go, that's incredible. And it's kind of completely under the radar somewhere else. And look what they're doing out there. We should learn from that in some cases.

Or we should appreciate that. Elevate it. We should elevate it. It's just as good as any of the kind of fancy schmancy stuff that's going on here. And they're doing it by themselves. And nobody in the kind of one of the worlds of new york times or whatever else knows about this stuff uh wouldn't it be nice to give it some support or or put it in a new context where people kind of look at it in a different way and they don't just they don't just see it as oh yeah that's

that's crazy stuff that high school kids do right well it's interesting that dialogue though is that because like even through like you know true stories and all like because i to me in my mind when i was younger that that what what you were doing with the talking heads and then even after the talking heads was so specific and so uniquely yours but also very specific it was an integration of of a popular culture popular music and and and the art world yeah to some extent yeah yeah you seem to be the guy that it ran through somehow or another okay and i never felt that any of it needed to be um distant or hard to understand or i felt like there's there's always got to be a way to make it accessible. Right. No matter how arty it is, you can make it accessible. If it's a cool idea or makes you feel good or whatever,

there's a way to do that without it being like, oh, that's not for us. Yeah, that's not for us. Who do they think they are? No, you can make it so it's kind of accessible to everybody. When did you start thinking that way, though? I mean, was it before the music? I mean, was it something that you entered your creativity knowing? That you're like, I can make this understandable,

or I can make what I do mainstream in a way? Yes, yeah. I think I heard that in the music growing up, when I was growing up. Stuff in the late 60s when I was in high school, early 70s, and whether it was R&B or rock or whatever it was called at that point. What were you listening to, do you think? It was just really normal stuff, like rock stuff, whether it would be The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix or whatever. When was your first memories of music?

How young were you when you started playing things? I must have been about 13 or something like that. When you started playing instruments? Trying. Yeah. Not very well. What was the first one? Oh, I remember trying to play guitar,

and I had violin lessons as a child. It didn't take very well. Thank goodness. You wouldn't be doing this color guard thing if you were violinist but those some of those you know some of the rock groups some of the rmb groups whether it was curtis mayfield temptations whatever at all they all started getting a little more experimental and right adventurous in kind of late 60s early 70s and people doing all kinds of different things isaac hayes whatever sure uh Not to kind of make any kind of nostalgia.

I don't have a nostalgic bone in my body, but that's when I grew up. That's when I heard that stuff, and I thought, this is possible. It's possible to do really kind of, not difficult, but sophisticated stuff that's experimental, that pushes the edge, and it's still popular.

It's still in the top 40. And it still appeals to ordinary people like me. And I listen to it and I go, wow, that's really innovative, and yet it's still in the top 40. And that still happens. That still happens, but that was really formative. Well, it's different then because, I mean, you're at least old enough to remember that a pop song was a pop song.

There was no experimenting. I mean, when you were a young child, you had your first verse, the second verse, the refrain, then maybe a little instrument, and then the closing verse, and you were out. Exactly. You had to do that. And that was it. And then you'd hear people kind of breaking the mold and changing the way the music sounds and the kind of words that they use and all this kind of stuff yeah the 60s broke it all open yeah and so i thought okay that's that is a possibility when you say you don't have a nostalgic bone in your body what

does that mean really i don't look back as like oh that was a golden age or things were better when new york was was right here or um not at all you don't do that no i don't do that um i mean there were certain you can look at certain things and go there was that was a good aspect uh at a certain time but i don't look at it oh things were better then or i don't think like that well because i was thinking about this coming over and because like i know like it's interesting because you know i looked at your book i was at mcsweeney's i think in san francisco when i first saw the hardback cover of the of the new book what's the new how music works and i looked through that and i'm like oh my god he's he's he keeps working he keeps doing things he's and like there's things i've missed but it but what's interesting to me is i go back and i you know

there's you know i listen to fear of music fairly regularly Wow when you hear someone say that do you think like but I've got this other stuff that I do or do you do you are you able to say like I that's great that you listen to that yes I'm able to say it's great to just I'm totally flattered was it was it Jonathan left Latham yeah John wrote a book basically oh I know that record on the 33 and a third series the little a book, basically, on that record. On the 33 and the 3rd series, the little... I think he did, based on that record. Oh, really?

Did you read it? No. I mean, I'm sure it's well written, and it's good, and it's interesting, and it's more, I think, about how it affected... His experience, how it affected him, what he was going through at that moment. It's not a song-by- song analysis of the record right in that way when you when you think of the talking heads because do you does it just feel far away uh no no it feels yeah a little bit i mean it feels like oh that was something i did at that point point in my life um i'm aware

that certainly a certain generation knows more of that stuff than they know what i've done in the last 10 years sure but it depends there's other people who know what i did recently more than they know the old stuff it was kind of like oh you did you were in a band before this and um oh really there's a little bit not that much but there's a little bit and what do you say to that you're like yeah that thing yeah yeah it was a thing and uh it was and i go it was it was pretty popular for a while but to talk about if we frame it in a non-nostalgic way and just talk about it as a creative evolution for you i mean where did you grow up where were you born i grew up in here comes baltimore uh-huh and my family came from

scotland uh before that with me when i was really little so you were born in scotland born in scotland they came to first to canada and then i don't know five or six years later to baltimore do you remember canada i remember just a little bit right so baltimore was cold yeah yeah and what was your dad what was he doing he worked at westinghouse as a as an engineer electronics engineer designing things or yeah designing things uh not stoves in uh microwaves but like probably missile guidance systems oh he was in baltimore right they had like something like that in canada but the main one that was doing that kind of stuff was in Baltimore. So your dad would go away to a non-disclosed location

and come back and, no questions, kid. Yeah, it wasn't quite like that, but yes, yes, there was kind of that, and I would go, so what are you working on? And he was just going, it's not interesting. It's not interesting. I don't think he wasn't, you know, my parents were kind of peaceniks

And they weren't He wasn't particularly proud Of the That he was Maybe designing Missile guidance systems Or something like that He must have been

One of the guys that could He was one of the guys That could He loved the problem solving Aspect of it I remember there was One time they sent him somewhere Because they were having

A problem With a submarine Like in Newport News Or wherever that Port is He came back And it was one of the I think one of the First times I saw him

Really proud of his Abilities in that way He said I fixed it with a Coat hanger Fixed the submarine With a coat hanger I thought

Oh geez Okay That's That's you know i felt proud for him too that he had the ingenuity it sounds very russian or whatever right to to do that and but i'm also kind of looking around the house and going that's the way he fixes stuff around the house and that doesn't always stick right yes and it holds for a while right right i don't know if i'd want to be in that submarine six months from now right so how uh so they weren't musical necessarily no no and what was it that like locked you into the music thing oh like any kid i think in my teens yeah you start to hear some stuff on, in those cases, transistor radio,

but it's the same of hearing something on your phone or whatever. And you realize it's coming from another world, different than the little suburban place you're at. And it's a world that sounds really exciting, that's kind of directed towards where you're going to be in a few years, where your head's going to be at in a few years and go, that's it. It's like they're sending a signal and it's directed to me and everybody like me around the country. This is a direct thing. Of course, it's coming through like AM radio or something like that, but we think it's

being... We think they found us and Right. And we've found it. And we've got a common link. So then you just go, here it is. I need to be part of this. Whatever it is. This weird grown-up world elsewhere. Yes. I'm going to learn how to play guitar or I'm going to buy some records and figure out what this is.

So guitar was the first love, the first instrument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so now when you decide to get out, in high school you did all right? Okay, I did okay. And then you went to where to go to college? I went to an art school, Rhode Island School of Design.

Oh, that's right. That's the fancy, that's like RISD. It's got its own mythos. Yes, it does. And I have to say that although I enjoyed the art stuff, it was more of a social, I think, revelation to me than an artistic one. What was the art, the medium that you were there for extensively?

Well, what would it have been? Did you have to have one? Is that how it worked? You had to have one, but I realized that a degree in fine arts or whatever it was going to be was basically useless for getting a job. You realized that? Yes. And you wanted to get a job?

Well, I thought, at that time, you thought, I'll get a day job. Right. You're playing guitar already. Yeah, and the creative stuff is what I really wanted to do I didn't have a career plan but I thought that's what I really want to do uh and a degree is going to be useless um so I'll just get as much out of the school as I possibly can so I kind of switched my major all the time yeah from like photography to painting to whatever. Whatever else it might be. Graphics, design, whatever.

I just kept switching. And that way I got to use, I got to learn as many different techniques. Right. As I possibly could. I got to work in a dark room or use the printmaking stuff or whatever. And also be exposed to what I imagine would be very contemporary artists at the time. That most of the things that were happening at that time

RISD was on top of. It wasn't some dry kind of historical school. But RISD was very, might still be, I don't know, at that time it was there was a lot of cool stuff happening, but on another level it was very traditional.

From the kind of first couple of years or whatever you had to learn how to draw you had to learn you had to sit and draw right still lives and naked people and all that kind of stuff and other kind of schools they didn't they threw that out the window right really kind of they kind of felt like no you have to learn get a craft in place yeah you have to get a craft in place um so yeah i i went but the thing that hit me the most was not the artistic stuff yeah what which was great and everything and was the whole social thing that i met people you know i grew up in a little suburb of baltimore and uh so all of a sudden i was meeting more black people, Jewish people, rich people, fancy people, people from California.

From California. From California, yeah. No, all of that. And people like that, that sounds kind of. No, no, I get it. It sounds really dumb. It's mind blowing. Yeah, and it was mind blowing.

Yeah. I might have had heard or read or something that these people existed, that their lives were completely different than mine. Their upbringings were completely different. But you might have heard about it or read about it, but you can't really imagine it until you're having a beer with somebody, and you're just talking about how things were when they grew up, and you realize, that is not my world at all yeah that

person is from another world yeah their references are completely different than mine i still feel that but that's fascinating to you all the way through the life right yeah yeah but that was when it was really hit me and it was simple that we're all not we're we're all the same in some ways but we're all not the same in so many other ways but but that that that you remember that having that much impact and these are just people maybe in california or from an inner city these are all people in art school right exactly yeah this is hardly a wide range right right of society yeah these are not people that escaped russia necessarily no but that's funny because that weird kind of like, you're almost like shocked into this compulsive empathy about somebody else's life and world.

That curiosity has driven the music all the way through. I guess so, yeah. You think I'm overstating it? No, no, no. That has never changed, that kind of curiosity. Did you have a band in high school? Yes. I had a band for a a band in high school? Yes. I had a band for a little while in high school.

Junior high did not go well. How many songs? Like a four-song band? Yeah, something like that. Four-song band. You'd play like a battle of the band in the school cafeteria, and the other band would come over, sneak behind, and pull out the plugs. No.

Yes. I thought, oh. Do you remember the set list? It was a level of ruthlessness. In music. Yeah, in music that I didn't know about. A lesson you needed to learn early. Yes.

Do you remember the set list? It was probably whatever was, everybody was probably like, I can't get no satisfaction and stuff like that. Sure, sure. That seemed fairly easy to play. Three chord rock kind of stuff that you could play. And then I kind of, without that band, kind of decided to go it alone and started learning acoustic guitar, started playing in kind of local coffee houses.

Oh really? Kind of folk venues. You were doing... And then, but not playing folk music. I started playing kind of rock music in acoustic guitar, uk ukulele and violin i still had the violin um really do you like i would play fairly aggressive rock songs on the ukulele these original compositions no okay nothing original so there was discovers there was something ironic and funny about it then as well yeah or i was taking it and giving it a twist yeah

yeah um i wasn't it wasn't it was meant to kind of not skew the material, but kind of throw it out of context so you heard it in a different way. And what happened was, you know, because I loved the material that I was, the bands and stuff I was learning. Do you remember what you were playing on the ukulele? Heavy, heavy guitar stuff, but I would do it on a ukulele. And it was to kind of throw it in a new context

so people could hear the actual song right instead of just hearing what you know the cliche that they knew how were you received people really liked it

they said they said who wrote I mean this is like a folky crowd right right sure they'd never heard oddly enough

they'd never heard any of these songs because they're isolated in their little folky ghetto yeah and they'd hear this stuff and go, who wrote that stuff? And I go, I'm thinking to myself, this is just a big hit on the radio, on the pop, FM, AM radio. And I thought, they don't know this stuff.

So I said, this is working in my favor. I got something going. I got to build out my catalog. I got to get a bigger set list. Yes, I do. Yeah, come back with some Hendrix stuff. I'm just not going to know what's going on. So then at RISD,

you put together the original heads? There was a band that kind of led into it. There was the drummer and the drummer, Chris and I, and some other people were in a band there, and we played school dances. What was it called? The Artistics. Yeah. And we played school dances outdoors on the patios and things like that. And we were incredibly noisy.

But then I started to write stuff for the band. Right. So then there was some original stuff, and I realized, oh, I can do this. What was the first song you wrote that you thought, wow, this is it? Psycho Killer. Really? Was that early?

Yeah, that was proof of concept. Let me see if I can write a song, and I had a concept. And I just followed the concept. It wasn't me expressing something about myself. It was kind of like, let me see if I can write a song. And here's what the subject's going to be. And here's the way I'm going to approach it. And I realized, oh, it works.

And then further on, you go, oh, it works. And people like it. Right. I guess I know how to do this and after that after that one song i thought okay i used that to see as you know writing about something that basically i didn't care about at all i didn't give a shit about the subject but then i thought everything else is going to be actually come from me and a little bit more from now on right after song number one point of view yeah everything else

is not directly me but it's it's more I can defend it right in some way in Psycho Killer so that was just

sort of an experiment it was almost a a joke in a way well not really a joke but kind of yeah an experiment definitely an experiment

to see like can I write a song yeah and it was just you and Chris? It was me and Chris and his girlfriend at the time, Tina. Oh, so she was there, too? Yep, yep. She was helping with the French part there.

Oh, really? Oh, definitely. You didn't know any French? But you asked Tina. I knew it a little bit, but not well enough. How did you meet Jerry Harrison? We were a trio. So we went to New york formed um what became

talking heads but where'd the name come from do you remember a kind of a b movie that was on television we were looking at tv guide it was called whatever the talking head oh really okay something like that and we thought oh that's it was some kind of sci-fi horror movie right and we thought oh that's a good that's good, let's try that one. Because we changed band names. This is before we played, auditioned and played anywhere. I would make kind of drum heads for the bass drum, for the kick drum, and put a different band name on like every week.

Just kind of like, let's see how it feels to be called The Dots. You did that every week just kind of like let's see how it feels to be called the dots you did that every week yes i'd make a you know a circular piece of cardboard yeah and then there's your fan base group people are going like why don't they get their own drums why they got to use other bands drums all the time yes who are the dots what is this? So, yeah. Eventually we realized, okay, we got this. We can kind of do this. I think we need to have a fourth person to kind of actually flesh out the sound. And we were all big fans of this group that Jerry was in, the Modern Lovers. Jonathan Richman.

Yeah. Great record, that first record. Just amazing. It's a great record, that first record. Yeah, just amazing. And so we knew that Jerry was sort of, I guess what you would say, out of a job in some way. That band kind of parted ways. They did quickly, right?

They did it fairly quickly. Right after they recorded these incredible demos that got released as a record, Jonathan decided that he wanted to go kind of more acoustic. Right. More child acoustic and more childlike and that that stuff was a little more too aggressive and sad or angry or whatever for him but so the band was kind of left at loose ends and

or some of them anyway so we went to Jerry and said you want to try playing with us for a little bit? Come down and rehearse. See if you like it. And we tried a few gigs. We did a gig in Worcester, Mass. Ooh.

So little places. Worcester. Yeah, to see if Jerry liked the idea, because he was really scared of dipping his toe in the water. Really? He'd just been through the band that he was in. So he was toe in the water really after he'd just been through the his you know the band's heart broke his heart was broken he didn't want to like I'm not gonna go back into that right eventually he did and yeah it really kind of took us to another level because

then with four people you the songs everybody wasn't trying to carry everything in the songs right right you right. You could change the texture. He could play a keyboard on one song and a guitar on a different song. You could trust people a little more, like you do there. Yeah, you do that. You play this part, I'll play this part,

and together it kind of will flesh things out. Well, that became sort of, because it seems to me that the more musicians you play with and even the talking head stuff, that there was a real consciousness of keeping it sparse but letting things stand on their own.

Absolutely. That was kind of an art school thing in a way. Yeah. That the sounds had to have integrity. Every sound had to be what it was and not pretend to be something else. And everything, this is the way I interpreted it,

and that everything um you should be able to hear it in its kind of pristine form right so there was very little like distortion or any of that kind of stuff that all came later but um it was kind of like we're going to have strip everything down to its basics it's going to be very clean and just like a clean sketch. The barest bones of what you need. And you all agreed on that. There was a discussion you had. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember the discussion, but it was all kind of tacitly agreed.

Understood. Yeah, that's what we were going to do. And you did that for at least the first two albums. Yes, I would say so. And then we went crazy. We can add more people. And if we're not willing to compromise the integrity of the sound we can bring that guy in yes he's the master of that noise yes and then we can do that all right so i guess the other question that i have and we'll move through

it we're not being nostalgic we're just discussing okay the scene in new york because like i've been curious personally after reading like you know i read m McNeil's book, the Police Kill Me book, and just the thought of how many different types of bands were here in the early to mid-70s and running around this neighborhood, pounding away at Seabees and everything else, and how they all define themselves. Do you remember that period well? Was there a competitive nature to the scene? Oh no, it was, uh, I remember it pretty well.

Um, I was maybe a little socially withdrawn, so I wasn't like hanging out with everybody, but we were all in the same bars and hanging out and playing music. I've remembered as being fairly, uh, supportive that each band was kind of very supportive of each other.

They would check out each other's sets and applaud and hang out at the bar when the other one is playing. Do you remember bands that you liked watching? Oh, yeah. Like who? In that period,

kind of playing sometimes on the same bill with us. It would be television or Ramones or Patty Smith smith there were other groups like the mumps uh later on like dead boys and oh yeah but oddly okay those are the ones some of the those are ones that people remember and they get documented in some of the those books that have been written but there was all these other ones there was like folks there was like a kid um steve forbert a folk singer from mississippi who came in and he became part of the thing not punky at all yeah

there was another like progressive jazz group i forget what they were called they were like a progressive jazz group where they'd gone to berkeley or whatever really and these kids could really really play right and sing and you know all that kind of stuff. Our jaws dropped and it was kind of like, what is that doing here? And what are we doing? But all that was kind of accepted, which was kind of great. It wasn't until later where things maybe got a little more competitive,

but at that point it was... Everyone's just doing it. Everybody's doing it. Everybody's supportive. Everybody's just trying to survive and what did you find it that people influence their sound do you remember listening to people and going like that's you know that's interesting how they're handling that and that like there was mutual influence going on i'm sure there was but it's hard yeah yeah but i'm i'm not so aware of it yeah do you have friends from that time still? Wow.

I don't think I do. I mean, yeah, yeah. Kind of some of the more artier people. Oh, yeah, right, right. I sort of... Still hanging around? I'm still hanging around. Still in touch with it. Musicians.

The musicians, not as much. They get pretty beat up, some of them. Some of them do. Some of them, yeah. I listen to the song Heaven a lot because I think it's hilarious. Was it supposed to be hilarious? Well, it was supposed to have a little twist.

It has a little twist in the lyrics there. Do you write for comedy sometimes? I do kind of. If I can make myself laugh, or chuckle, or go, oh, that's the craziest idea. or chuckle or go, oh, that's the craziest idea. Or sometimes it's a very small laugh. It's kind of an amused laugh. Well, heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

Yes, and I thought I can defend that idea as a concept, but it is backwards from what you expect. Right, what the assumption is. Backwards from, yeah, the assumption. Right. But I can defend it as an idea. Yeah, I think it is defensible. Yeah, and so I thought, it's not crazy. I'm not just doing this as a kind of crazy joke,

but at the same time, it is kind of, you get a little bit of amusement out of it. Right, right. But I like the idea that it's not offensive, and if you really think about it, you're like, wow, that is kind of true. It might be a little boring up there. It's all good.

It's all perfect, and it just never changes. It's all the same thing over and over again. And there's another song, I think, from that same album called Animals, where I had the idea of like, oh, you know, everybody thinks we think of animals as being like more pure, more ideal, less corrupted, whatever, than we are. And I thought, I'm going to write from the opposite point of view, ideal, less corrupted, whatever, than we are. And I thought, I'm going to write from the opposite point of view, that animals are fucked up and annoying, whatever, they don't know how to behave, whatever, all the kind of things

like that. And somehow you put it into a song, what sounds like an intellectual idea or a joke or whatever when you start, you put it into a song and you sing it and you've suddenly invested this, what might be kind of a goofy idea with all this emotion. Right. Because it's being sung.

Yes. With a groove and everything else. And which gives it a whole different meaning. It's not just like me telling you I'm going to write a song about this. Right. It has a more visceral feeling. Right. You're not just like me telling you i'm going to write a song about this right it has a more visceral feeling right you're not just sharing an idea you're making it has it has a there's an emotion attached uh-huh uh to this thing that is kind of nutty yeah and and also open for interpretation and and able to affect everyone differently yes that's the magic of it

so no it's i i think that we can think that we can, without getting hung up on, and now I'm self-conscious about the past, but the relationship with Brian Eno lasted up until it still goes on. Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw him a couple of weeks ago. Now, how did that start? How did that creative relationship start? Because it happened in the second record,

and it lasted throughout your career. We were fans of his from roxy music and some of his other stuff that he'd done the solo stuff right yeah a little bit some of the solo stuff that we knew about and this would be late 70s right it was quite a while ago another musician that we knew from cbgb's in downtown new york this guy john kale who was in sure velvet underground right we were doing i think our, our first ever London gig. Okay. And K.L. happened to be there, but he'd seen us a lot in New York.

And he brought Brian and said, Oh, this is... Brian, I think you're going to like this group. And we got along really well with him. We just chatted and... And we weren't talking about music. We were talking about who knows what. Right, yeah.

Which was exciting for us. To have a kind of, in this case, a producer or somebody like that. Who could talk about other stuff besides music. Like what? Art? Yeah, art or science. The one thing that amazed me about him was he said that his favorite band was the Velvet Underground. Specifically because of, I think, the way that they produced,

the sound sound it produced. And I never really put it together why that would make sense, but when you listen to Live in 69 or something where there's long periods of, and you can hear the rhythms kind of layered up like that, I could see how that would influence him. But at that moment, I realized that his his musical sensibility was was vast and and very unique you must have influenced each other through this partnership some oh yeah yeah i think it was it was kind of mutual he was

kind of uh shortly after that he was writing stuff that was his attempt to sound like us right right and of course we we're already fans of his stuff. So, yeah, we started working together with him producing our records. And how does that, like, I never quite understand how, what is that? Because when I listen to, like, My Life in the Bush It Goes, like the stuff you just did with him,

and then you listen to the Talking Heads album, you know, they all are fairly different sounding. But, I mean, what is that dynamic? How does the creativity work between the band and a guy like Brian you know what does he what does he say just basically what does he go like no could you turn that up I mean what what is it there's a little bit of that can you turn that up can you make that sound a little more whatever yeah there's a little bit of that but actually not very much of that

it's more like the first record we worked with him on, he basically just said, you guys sound great. My job on this record anyway is just basically to capture what you sound like live, but do it in the studio. And that was Fear of Music? That was the one before that. It was called More Songs About Buildings and Food.

Okay. And then Fear of Music was a record, our third record, so we'd come to the point where we were about to exhaust the early kind of material that we'd written and accumulated so you get to the point of oh now we got to write new stuff yeah which is always the big kind of like issue with bands and musicians and whatever like can you write new stuff or was it just like I had one idea, I've drained it and there's nothing more. Yeah.

And it's not spelling big enough for us to repeat it over and over again necessarily. Yes, not quite. Right. So we still had this incredible fear of recording studios.

It seemed like a foreign environment. The third record. Yes, around that time but just in general. And he sensed that. So he said, okay, we'll record all the tracks at home in your loft where the drummer and bass player lived.

We'll just bring up a remote truck, one of those recording trucks. Now you can do it on a laptop. Right. But at that point, you had to bring in a tall truck. So it was a big deal We're parking the truck outside Park the truck outside Snake the cables in the window

So you guys are comfortable Yeah so we could be comfortable Which is a huge deal Yeah Because otherwise We would The playing suffered And it sounded terrible

The sounds were terrible We played terrible This sound We could actually kind of Play and groove the way we liked, but it was the first time where on some of the songs I had to then take those tracks and go home and make a song out of it. It wasn't a finished song. So you'd write in, the improvisation would be the writing of the song sometimes?

Yes, sometimes it would be an improvisation. Sometimes it'd be something that I would say to the band, do this, do this, and then do this, or repeat some kind of jam that we did. And I realized we can do that. I can write lyrics and a melody over it, and voila, it's a song. And I think Brian saw that too, and maybe he'd written in that way in the past as well so kind of you know step by step it kind of takes you to a not just that's interesting not just turn that louder and make that softer but your way of writing and evolving

the sound yeah the whole thing evolves it's layering yeah yeah layering in a way and creating things in the studio that right right as opposed to coming up with a pop song yeah and then going now there you go and yes which is not to say that that's invalid but just just oh here's another way of working and you end up by working this other way you end up with stuff that you would never come up with if you just sat down tried to write a pop song right you end up with kind of more kind of weirder sounds and sure other arrangements because it's you're not thinking about oh here's the chorus or whatever you're taking chances and you're jamming yeah and so

that was that was great yeah and then like and then you started to add by uh by uh uh remain in light then you're broadening out the musicians. Yes, we're adding other musicians. We're taking that concept even further where we go into the studio with almost nothing. Nothing. Yeah, almost nothing, which nowadays I would consider an extravagance. I mean, yeah, we were doing all right commercially.

So we could afford to spend two weeks jamming in the studio and just saving the good parts. But at that point in the studio, were you involving, how many musicians, did you bring in musicians to do certain things? No, it was basically just the four of us. Okay. Some other musicians would come in and do overdubs. And it gave the mistaken impression that we were a larger band in the studio

because when we then had to reproduce that live, we had to double the size of the band. Right. Because we'd kind of done all these crazy overdubs. With Burrell. Bernie Burrell. And Fripp. Yeah, all those people.

And Adrian Ballou was a part of that, too. How's that guy doing? He's doing great. He's like a record producer and does his own stuff in Nashville. Yeah. It doesn't mean country. It means, you know. Right.

Oh, so he's down there? Yeah. Like, you know, I learned a lot about a lot of different people through you, through people that you, like, that was the other thing that the Talking Heads and David Byrne, you know, solo and with the Heads brought to me as just a kid or as a guy who was trying to learn about things. I'm like, who's Twyla Tharp? This record's fucking amazing.

What goes with it? You know, like the Catherine Wheel? I listened to the hell out of that record. I never saw it. I never saw it. Like, when I was in college, I should have been seeing things. But, like, the knee plays, too. When that came out, I'm like, I love this record.

I have no idea. You know, like, I know Robert Wilson. i know there's ladders involved and it's long you know and i and i got it i read about stuff but i wasn't getting out into the and doing it much so that stuff blew my mind but the whole you know burn you know matrix of of people like you know john hassell and and and frip and baloo these were all you know a type of music that was very rare to me it was rare and yes yeah yeah and that was in a way me reproducing or us reproducing kind of the experiences i had with the transmission yeah the adolescence and whatever you were sending out it was your version of the signal now it's my turn to do that

to bring to make people go like where is this coming from yes to do what the same thing that happened to me but now well you did it yes

to some extent yeah like I mean because I've talked to other bands like you know and I know other bands have had problems with it I have to assume

at some point you looked out at an audience and said how is that guy like me yes yes that's true. Yes. Have I been misinterpreted in some way?

Yeah, exactly. I remember that we had a song called Life During Wartime that had a chorus that goes, this ain't no party, this ain't no disco. What it was meant to imply was, I don't have time for nightlife because I'm involved in urban revolution at the moment. Right.

Excuse me. Yeah. But because of the wording, it came out at the exact time where there seemed to be this conflict between kind of disco music, discotheques, DJs, and kind of live hard rock music. And it was like, there was a lot of racism involved in that kind of schism.

And so the song was picked up as being like- An anthem. An anthem of, this ain't no disco. Yeah. And we don't, basically to say, we don't like disco music. Right. That's for whatever, fags and black people. Right.

But it was never intended that way. I realized, oh, things can really get misinterpreted. And how worried do I have to be about being clear? Is this something that's really going to obsess me? Well, it's a repercussion of mainstream success in a way. Yes, of course. And the ambiguity that's in Music and songs That's part of the greatness of

The form Is that it can be misinterpreted by morons And used as an anthem for negativity Exactly The liability Ronald Reagan wanting to use Born in the USA It's tricky, huh?

Did that make you recoil? I mean, did that, like once the top of the talking heads popularity, was there an element of you that was like, I got to pull back and insulate in a different type of creativity? To some extent, yeah. To some extent, I felt like I don't want to be a big pop star. I have all these interests and I want to maintain that. Right.

And keep a kind of, be a balanced, interested, curious human being and not be sucked into the whole world of celebrity and- And repetition. Yeah, and repetition. And then you're expected to do something like the thing you did before. Right. Or you always have to top it or it always has to be bigger and better or whatever. And I just thought,

Oh, that's like a treadmill. I don't, I'm not sure I want to get on. Yeah. And also just the fight, the, the,

the fight, you know, to, to, to maintain and, and, and, uh,

grow your creativity in the face of the record business. Uh-huh. There are people who can do it. Yeah. I mean, not forever. business. Uh-huh. There are people who can do it. Yeah. I mean, not forever. Yeah, usually not forever. And yeah, I just thought, oh, I'm pretty happy. I'm not sure I want to deal with that.

Right. And I imagine that when you guys were making music, Chris and Tina and Jerry and you, that was highly collaborative, right? Yeah, for the most part. For the most part. Yeah, yeah. It depended on the record.

Sure, sure. Do you get along with them, all of them? I get along with Jerry, yeah. The others, we don't get along. Oh, really? Yeah. Just from old stuff? Yeah, kind of old stuff, yeah.

Yeah, that's sad, right? It is sad, yeah. You seem to manage to maintain an artistic integrity and keep growing creatively in all these different areas i mean you know working with twilight with art working with uh with robert wilson you know outside of music that that seemed to be at some point as compelling as just doing records oh yeah yeah it had the feeling of the same feeling some of it anyway had the same feeling of the kind of excitement and genre breaking and curiosity and let's see what happens and experimentation that i felt music was

supposed to have also right here it was happening in on in theater or dance or some various other mediums and whatever it might be. And I thought, oh, it's the same feeling, the same vibe, the same excitement that I first started getting from music, but it also exists in some of these other areas as well. And you can be part of it. And I can be part of that,

and I thought, that's thrilling. Well, it's interesting because in music, you can integrate, as you grew creatively musically and you integrated a lot of different sounds and rhythms and textures from other countries and other types of music, that with film, music is an integral part of the process,

but it has to be collaborative. So you are actually part of filmmaking if you are asked to be. Exactly. And yeah, if you're doing that, you're expected to collaborate, give and take and honor the vision of of of the director i imagine and not everybody not every musician enjoys doing that right that kind of puzzle solving or or creatively supporting the vision of but you like somebody else I thought it was a great challenge, really, to solve that puzzle,

but do something kind of exciting at the same time. You probably have a little more freedom with dance, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And with some film stuff, the director will kind of give you kind of a little bit of carte blanche,

and then you'll go, yeah, but that one didn't work. Right, right, right. And you've worked with... Bertolucci. Oh,ernardo bernardo lucci right and then with jonathan demi a couple of times and well he's great yeah though you did some of the stuff on something wild right yes and then you did your own movie which i loved well thank you i mean i went and saw it immediately i mean like i forget sometimes just how into you know what you do i am like oh boy yeah i know but you know no but it Oh boy. Yeah, I know.

No, but it's true. Because I was very excited to talk to you. What was that movie based on for you? It was based on... True Stories we're talking about. Yeah, a movie called True Stories and it was set in Texas and it fought a bunch of kind of quirky characters

all in a little town in Texas. Right. And their stories and their characters were based on a lot of odd human interest stories that I'd read in the Weekly World News, which is kind of one step down from The Enquirer. And you kind of played this sort of like this guide. Yes, I was a guy from out of town

who was kind of the guide and was kind of interested in what was going on in this town, that they were going to have this little, they were going to put on a show, the people in the town. Yeah. kind of interested in what was going on in this town, that they were going to have this little, this, they were going to put on a show, the people in the town. Yeah. Uh,

I was interested in talking to him. I was fascinated by them. And, but, and to try and fit in, uh, because it was Texas, I,

I wore a Western outfit. Right. Nobody, yes, nobody else, big hat. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, the jackets and everything else. Nobody else wore a Western outfit, but for some reason being the out of town, or I thought that's what I should do to blend in. That makes sense. It was kind of interesting in that, well, I had a great time doing it. I really loved it. But I realized that in some places, it was perceived as being hilarious, and Texans in particular loved it.

They did? Yes. They did not think it was, they thought the way it made fun of kind of the quirks of Texans and all that kind of stuff, they loved that because they were actually kind of secretly proud of how kind of odd and quirky and whatever they can be. of how kind of odd and quirky and whatever they can be. Other people thought that it was being deeply ironic and... Condescending. Condescending to them, which was never intended.

The intention was more like what I described with the color guard stuff, to kind of really celebrate the kind of uniqueness and originality and quirkiness and kind of vernacular creativity that goes on out in the middle of nowhere. And I realized that, I realized this again just the other day too, that sometimes if you present things almost verbatim as what they are, because you're a New Yorker or whatever.

Well, you're David Byrne. Yeah. And some of the people who are looking at it are sort of whatever arty types as well. They bring the irony to it. They look at it and because they look down their noses or they assume that I look down my noses at people in a small town in Texas, then they view it through those goggles. Right, and they're not willing to take responsibility for their own condescension.

They're going to hang it on you. Yes, yes. And they just assume that I'm like them, and so I'm going to feel in the same way, and that I couldn't possibly be embracing it. Well, that's interesting. I wanted to also say the knee plays. Yeah.

Where are you going with this? Well, I thought that was a celebration of American music. Yes. Yeah, that was originally I wanted to... Like Gershwin almost. In some ways. It was kind of problem solving. It was done for a theater piece,

this Robert Wilson theater piece. I can't imagine. What's he like? Is he still around? He's still around. He's still around. He works mainly in Europe. He gets more,

there's more funding. You guys were buddies? I mean, did you... I worked with him twice. That's pretty... That's pretty good. That's pretty good because it's...

Big projects. It's a big project and it can be pretty bizarre, the whole working... Right, and it's so weird, because I came to it just as a record. And I listened to it. I just got it. I had to go find it again. I got it again, and I listened to it, and I love it.

So it's problem solving. What were you going to say? It was problem solving. You knew that in this particular case, the theater stuff was going to be done in these short little segments. There was going to be, let's see, scenery being changed backstage. So there might be a little bit of noise. The music had to be loud enough that it would cover up that stuff.

So I thought, okay, brass instruments. We'll use brass instruments. So you wouldn't hear the noise. Yeah, so it would cover up the noise of the big sets being moved across the stage. Horns. Need horns. Yeah, we need some horns to do this. That'll do the job.

Horns and drums will do the job. And a lot of Bob's stuff is very kind of trance-like. Yeah. As a visual director. This is part of the Civil Wars, right? Yeah. And so I thought, well, there's a lot of kind of the, the groove and the, in, in a lot of brass band music,

especially out of New Orleans, that kind of thing that has a little bit of that, but it's a lot funkier. I mean, it kind of moves your whole body and it's not just, um, kind of a rep repetition. And I thought,

maybe I can do that. Maybe I can bring a little bit of swing and funk into, into that kind of repetition and trancy kind of repetition. And I thought, maybe I can do that. Maybe I can bring a little bit of swing and funk into it. Right. Into that kind of repetition and trancy kind of thing. And so I first tried to work on the material with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band out of New Orleans. And I went down there and hung out with them and tried to do that. And it didn't work because I had kind of everything written out.

And they kind of do head arrangements. They kind of work things out in their heads through rehearsal and playing in clubs. And they kind of work it out that way. And I realized, okay, this is a mismatch. Right. You're not going to be able to get them to follow what you need.

No. Right. And so I worked with other musicians, great musicians, and it worked out fine. And you can write the music? No, but I could kind of do it track by track. Like I could play the trumpet line on something else. And that's how you built it out?

Built it up that way, and then occasionally would write these odd little kind of stories to go over some of the songs, these odd little scenarios that, who knows what that was about, but I really enjoyed it. But that's the kind of things he does, where it's just, it's about layers. There's visual stuff. There's a layer of voice and maybe speaking or singing or whatever,

and there's music. He and kind of other, kind of the artier fringe of that theater world, they tend to think of that stuff as all running parallel. Like what you're looking at is one thing, the way people dress might be another thing, the sound, the words, whatever.

They're all running parallel, but they're not always telling the same narrative story. Right, right. It's more of an impressionistic, surrealistic thing going on where it all exists simultaneously. And when it works, it very very ambiguous and you can kind of but the trick is the balance the trick is the balance and the audience kind of in some ways makes the meaning in their heads well you worked with the i mean your first wife was an artist right yeah and you work with her on true stories and she

worked on true stories right Right, and I remember there was costumes and stuff, right? Am I remembering that properly? Yes. Excuse me. There was a shopping, there was a fashion,

a fashion show in the shopping mall. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the local people who made these kind of fantastic outfits. And what about

like the collaboration? Like you were just so tapped in. Like you know what I saw just the other day? My buddy Dan, who used to own a record store here, Gimme Gimme Records down on 8th Street, and now he's out in LA by me. He's got the...

Was it Speaking in Tongues that Rauschenberg did the best? Yes, yeah. I love Bob Rauschenberg's work, especially the kind of photo-based work that he was doing quite a bit of at that time. And so when we were kind of working based work that he was doing quite a bit of at that time and so when we were kind of working on this record I said to the band what if I track him down and see if because there was Andy Warhol was doing record covers

right right other people were doing record covers and I thought oh let me track down Rauschenberg and see if he'll do a record cover for us and he agreed loved the idea but of course he didn't want to just do you know an image that we could then slap onto a cardboard sleeve he wanted to rethink the whole idea of what the package so you were in and i thought i love that right that's so great of course it meant the whole the record release had to be held up well i figured out the packaging and how to manufacture this turning yeah was that one of like me and my big ideas yes me and my big ideas and now look how complicated it is um i mean it was beautiful but yeah yes it was a little more

than we bargained for that's hilarious all right so i like what you're saying about funk and groove and movement because like you you have a very specific way of grooving and you know and that became apparent like in live performance and and also in the different types of rhythms that you that you sort of talk about it's interesting because like in talking to you and then just making assumptions about who you are i wouldn't think that you grew up as a as a dancing man no i did not grow up as a dancing man I was just Socially fairly shy When did that confidence Start to build

I hear it in your voice As you progress But there was some point Where you just Were wide open And dancing And you start moving Around on stage

I'm going to say Somewhere early Mid 80s Where the band Expanded from being Kind of this core Kind of rock band To this big

Kind of funk ensemble. Right. And so the, the vibe on stage was more ecstatic in some ways, trance like that. It was repetitive and you would just kind of, it would command you to kind of surrender to the groove. And did you need that personally?

I needed it personally. It was kind of personally liberating. This was like, I didn't go to a shrink, but this was that, that music was my shrink. And it kind of liberated me personally, both physically and mentally and psychologically and all that kind of stuff. And I thought, wow, here we go.

It's a total cliche, but here I am. I'm getting healed. The music is healing me. It's turning me in. It's kind of helped me out in my personal life. I don't mean like introducing me to girls or whatever but it's really kind of helping me open up you open up and have joy yeah I'm starting to have a good time whereas before I would kind of have a good time

but it was also kind of this desperation well you were like to be a sort of you can hear it in the early stuff it's's desperate. Desperate, but also awkward. Yes, yeah. And there's something nice about that awkwardness that people hear and they identify with because everybody has a little bit of it. Sure. I can never get that back. I'm glad it's gone.

It's gone. I'm glad it was there and came out. But yes, and then you move on to something else. You grew up. You grew up and you ask yourself, well, did I lose the thing that everybody really liked? But no, I don't think so. You find something else.

Well, also I think that what you answered, and I think it's a good way to sort of move towards the end of this, is that once you found that groove, once you found that joy, once you found that healing, it seemed to me that what you were doing through pursuing and embracing all these different types of music and these different types of rhythm was making an attempt to be a channel

to share all that stuff. Yes, yeah, yeah. Which is kind of what I do now more than kind of pointing to myself. I find myself doing things like this color guard thing and i'm doing this in the book too the book is fascinating yeah the there's a festival in august in england we call it meltdown which is basically you kind of invite a lot of bands people to perform and it's not a big money maker that way of life but it's really nice to be able to kind of

moneymaker that way of life but it's really nice to be able to kind of occasionally exercise that thing and go and do what other people did for me and for you and say check this out right check this out you might like curator yeah it's yeah it gets overused but it's yeah but it's really nice yeah yeah yeah but i mean you got to be okay money-wise. I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Well enough that I can do this kind of stuff. Well, what is going on here? I mean, we're at, what is it, Totomundo? Totomundo is the name of this office. It's on Lower Broadway.

Is it a label? No, it's just an overall thing. It's not a record label. Is it a publishing label? Yeah, sometimes we do books. This is your office, though, right? Yeah, there's books occasionally and other kind of projects. And so if we're doing the Color Guard thing, that's the kind of... Comes through here?

Yeah, that's the entity. How is this different than Luwakapop? Luwakapop was a record label. Okay. Still exists, but my partner in the record label kind of does it somewhere else. Oh, you're still involved with it? I still,

I'm on good terms with them. I get it. But it was eating up a lot of hours. Right. And money. Right. And it's also interesting

that towards the end of the heads and then into your solo career, that was sort of, because I was talking about it with somebody else the other day. It seemed like

after a certain point, the music just got sort of like happy that we moved through something. How was the dissolution of the heads into the first record, which was more, what was your first record? Ray Momo. Ray Momo was Brazilian.

Yeah, I did a full on Latin kind of thing after that. Was that just to sort of like, we're off on a different thing. We're off on a different thing, yes. And to say like, well, we didn't break up just because I wanted to do my own kind of talking heads record. We broke up because I wanted to do something very different. Was it bad, the breakup? It was not good. But I mean, there's been worse.

But it was not good. I don't think any of them are really good. But okay we got through it and doing kind of the Latin music was kind of taking that that whole kind of surrender to the groove whatever thing one step further. I really enjoyed it the touring part especially with a big latin band was ecstatic wow um although i think one of one of the guys at warner brothers records said to me david you're your own yoko ono oh my god that's that's probably the worst thing anyone could ever say to you. Poor Yoko. Do you know her?

I've met her, yes. Now let's close with this St. Vincent business. Because I interviewed her, and she's amazing. And you work with her specifically. I have that record. What is it, out of all the people, she's an American artist. And out of you being an out of sort of like, you know,

you being an international frequency and groove man, you sort of somehow land with St. Vincent on a record and supporting her career. What was it about her? I was a big fan of her stuff. I'd seen her live in her first probably couple of records and thought, this girl's really talented. I'm not just talking about as a guitar player, but she's really doing something really interesting.

And so it was a little charity over on Crosby Street, this kind of AIDS place. They would do these, in a used bookstore, they would do these little concerts as AIDS benefits, and they would invite different artists to collaborate. And I'd met her before, and then we kind of crossed paths again at one of those events where they invited Bjork

and this group called Dirty Projectors to work together. And Dave from Dirty Projectors, he just, when they did that, he just went with it. He wrote six new songs for this little tiny place the size of this. And I thought, geez, he's raised the bar awfully high for just doing a benefit in a little store. But they approached Annie, that's her name, and I,

and I said, well, if she wants to do it, I'll do it. It's almost like a challenge. It was kind of a challenge. And I said, okay, if she wants to do it, I'll do it. It's almost like a challenge. It was kind of a challenge. And I said, okay. She came and said, let's do it with a lot of brass instruments. And I said, that's great because then you don't have to have a big sound system in a little bookstore. And I said, let's just try a few things. And if it works, great.

And if it doesn't work, we quietly put it away and nobody knows it ever happened but it worked great and we never did do the show at the bookstore but they got they got benefit money from other shows we did and you made a record made a whole record and did tour and all that and was it was really exciting and we kind of did this tour where we choreographed the brass players where they were kind of moving around the stage and making formations and all this kind of stuff, interacting with us. It was really a lot of fun. Well, great, man.

This was a great talk. I'm glad you made time for it. Thank you. And I'm beside myself. All right, that's our show. Wasn't that amazing? that amazing it was david burn david burn i talked to david burn and he was amazing god i just love talking to that guy it was uh it was a real it was a real exciting thing for me and it's funny because after the conversation like a few days later he he sent me an email that said, do you remember my comment that some, in parentheses, younger folks don't know me from talking heads but from other things? Well, this email story came in today, sort of a crazy extreme example, but here it is.

And he forwarded me an email he received from somebody, and it said, I was at a bookstore in Chelsea Market on Sunday and overheard two high school girls talking. One of them picked up a copy of How Music Works and said, Oh yeah, he's the color guard guy. I see him at like every competition these days. Isn't that wild? How do you get them into the talking heads? I think that everyone should know the talking heads. Anyways, that's our show.

Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF needs. Please watch my show, Marin, on IFC Thursdays at 10. And please enjoy yourself or something. You know, I hope. Oh, God. I got to get ready. I got to go do a show. Boomer lives!

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