The new DVD Talking Heads: Chronology contains film and video of Talking Heads in performance going all the way back to 1975 — before the advent of camcorders, and two years before the release of the band’s first LP.
Kurt Andersen talks with David Byrne, the band’s principal singer and songwriter, about the group’s early years. In an era of punk decadence, Talking Heads created a pop revolution by combining tight, funk-based rhythms, a clean-cut image, and themes of anxiety and social isolation. Kurt brings up the early song “I’m Not in Love,” in which Byrne wonders, “Do people really fall in love?” “I was just asking all the most super-obvious questions,” explains Byrne, who has said recently that he may have had Asperberger’s syndrome as a young person. “Why do humans, people, we do these things? And how does it work?”
Byrne admits that he was not altogether surprised by the success of this very odd downtown art band. "I have to be sort of immodest and say that, like a lot of other bands, artists, everything else,” Byrne says, “you tend to think that the pervasive stuff around you is crap, and you and your friends are doing the real stuff. So immodestly you think, Of course! Things are just going to fall into your lap because you're doing something that has some truth to it. That certainly doesn't always happen."
Byrne talked about his book How Music Works, to be published later this year. It contains nuts-and-bolts about making a living from music in the 21st century as well as more philosophical speculation about the premodern idea of the music of the spheres. “In a beautiful and kind of poetic way, for much of human history, it was thought that the universe was guided by music,” Byrne explains. “Maybe we should rethink that idea.”
Video: Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer" Live at CBGB, 1975
Walk It Down
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Featured Comments
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Fantastic interview. Love you, Alan! You were one of the main influences for me to get back into acting later ...
on Alan Cumming -
Really difficult to convey this as a "sound story" and it was done beautifully. Really compelling.
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen is a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC Radio, and is funded in part by Ken and Lucy Lehman and the National Endowment for the Arts. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Science and Creativity series is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Comments [8]
too short!
I remember I played the music till there were no more groves on the vinal
Kurt's conversation with David Byrne was wonderful. It sounded like two good friends, comfortable with one another.
David Byrne, in my mind, has had so much staying-power. He keeps making art and music that's as alive as the Talkin' Heads were way back then! And he seemed to be relieved, maybe, to be talking with someone who understands not to try and make him fit neatly into one a currently popular widget. I enjoyed that talk so much, and I'll remember it.
These guys were a little older than i was back then but I do remember how hostile the mainstream music scene was to this vital and fresh scene. It amazes me how influential and resilient it is to this day and that back then, it was strictly limited to the east village in NYC. In the suburbs where I lived, they literally wanted to beat you to a pulp for even being receptive to these guys. They were way too weird for the masses and there was no MTV yet. I dug them from the beginning!!!!
I remember dancing in the aisles of the Anderson Theater, trying to sit still at the Kitchen, and swaying to the beat at CBGB's. They were the children of Satie and Stein, and I was on fire. I don't dance anymore, but their music lives inside my head. Thank you David.
Listening to this interview, I remembered riding in 1978 with my mother in her Oldsmobile and pointing to the radio saying, “I’d like to get the record they’re playing – More Songs About Buildings and Food.”
She replied, “That guy can’t sing.”
I said, “Huh, that doesn’t rate in my evaluation at all.”
She said, "That title is weird."
david byrne is awesome.
Kurt asked for comments on songs that changed lives. For me, it was KISS Alive! Not necessarily because of the actual songs themselves but for the cover shot, the theatrics, the sound, the individuals photographed on the sleeve and for the character notes from the band. The approach gave rise to the possibilities of things and it lifted my creative parameters. Later in life, today, I am a community artist developing creativity in youth.
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