David Byrne Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, this is David Byrne.

This is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

Why, when, where, and how

those are the questions we'll be answering today.

[upbeat music]

Did David Byrne start the Talking Heads?

I don't know if I could take full credit for that.

I think it might have been the drummer, Chris Frantz

who might have said,

hey, you've got some songs

why don't we,

rehearse and learn them practice 'em up?

[Interviewer] Do you remember how the name came?

Was there other names in contention?

Yeah, there was lots of other names.

A friend of ours was staying crashing at our loft

and we had lists of band names.

So, and he added to the submission

and I think it came from

like a B movie that was on late night TV.

Did David Byrne make music with David Bowie?

Not to my knowledge.

Did David Byrne sing

on You Can Call Me Al?

Not on the recording but I did do a performance of it.

And Paul Simon watched me from the wings.

Which was a little bit tough.

How am I doing Paul?

How am I doing?

Did David Byrne design bike racks?

Yes he did.

He's done different kinds.

Some for specific neighborhoods in New York

and some for the,

I guess what's called the Brooklyn Arts District

you can reconfigure them to make different words.

Why did David Byrne start acting?

I had no ambition to be an actor.

I honestly don't think I'm that good at it.

And there are people who are really, really good at it.

Occasionally when a movie director friend or

someone like that would say,

David, well, you just do this it's really easy.

Or as happened in one case

yes, I want you to be in this movie but just play yourself.

So I said, okay, I'll give it a try,

but you know I have no ambitions here.

So if it doesn't work out, you can fire me.

Why is David Byrne in a tutu?

Years ago we played a show at Radio City

and we couldn't get the Rockettes.

It was like just incredibly expensive.

And so we all decided, okay,

let's all put on tutus for the last number

and we'll try and figure out how to

do some kind of chorus line thing.

Why is his play called American utopia?

It's also the name of the album, the last album I did.

And it was not meant facetious or ironically.

It was meant to,

I sense that some of what I was doing on stage

and what the band was doing,

and what the songs were saying.

Were talking about this kind of yearning

that we all have

to try and discover how to make a better life

how to make a better lives for all of us.

And so I thought I wanna kind of follow that.

I wanna kind of be sincere about that

and see if we can represent

some of that hope and possibility on stage.

Why isn't David Byrne reuniting the Talking Heads.

In a nutshell, I think I could say that

we came together more as friends than as

incredible musicians.

It was really kind of a shared musical taste.

And then gradually as you age and you grow

and you explore your musical tastes start to change.

But it became more of a,

kind of a work that we did.

We didn't all hang out all the time anymore.

So eventually kind of

you just kind of drift apart that way.

Here we go.

What was David Byrne's first hit?

It kind of depends.

The first really big one was Burning Down The House.

But then we did pretty good with

Take Me To The River before that.

Once in a lifetime which is pretty popular

surprisingly was not hardly played on the radio

when it came out at all.

It was considered too funky for rock radio.

What is David Byrne's most played song.

I have absolutely no idea.

I know that This Must Be The Place

gets played at a lot of weddings.

People get married to that song.

One time when we played Vegas,

a band member and I

biked by a drive through church,

and we said, can we hire the minister

to do a wedding during our show?

And so I offered to marry people during the show

and I would sing this song to them.

Next one, what did David Byrne won an Oscar,

win an Oscar for?

not for grammar.

I won an Oscar for

co-writing the soundtrack

to a movie called The Last Emperor.

What songs make David Byrne cry?

I have a monthly playlist that I post

and one of 'em was just songs that make me cry.

And there's a lot,

there's a couple hours worth at least.

One that I remember off the top of my head

is a Neko Case song called Honolulu.

And then I think it's the [indistinct].

And it's a song of her witnessing

a mother yelling at her child.

And telling her child get the [beep] away from me.

Why can't you ever do anything right.

That kind of stuff where it's just like you

it just rips you apart.

'Cause you're in her shoes witnessing this?

What does David Byrne dance like?

That's a matter of opinion.

So at some point I realized

I was not able to do all the steps

that I was seeing other people doing.

And I also decided that why should I bother learning that?

Because, they've got that down that perfectly.

And that's their thing.

I need to come up with my own thing.

And so gradually little by little

I adopted some moves that felt comfortable to me.

It's like that, with that adage,

dance like nobody's watching,

which is kind of what I do.

And sometimes people do watch 'cause then it's like,

what's he doing?

We're gonna go to the next one.

Where did David Byrne get his start?

I was in a band with some friends

at art school in Providence, Rhode Island.

Really just for fun, we didn't take it seriously.

It wasn't like a career move.

And then we came to New York

and auditioned to play at a club called CBGBs,

which was initially meant to be a Bluegrass Club.

And we passed the audition.

We got a gig.

There was no big plan.

It was just kind of,

oh, let's write some songs and play 'em

and see if anybody likes it.

And a few people did.

And then the next time we played a few more people came

and it seemed to take off eventually.

It was slow, which was kind of good.

Learn to be a little tighter and less sloppy and all that.

Where is David Byrne's big suit?

I don't know exactly.

Might have been at the rock and Roll

Hall of Fame in Cleveland,

or it might be in storage somewhere,

or it might be out going on a tour by itself.

I'm not sure.

[Interviewer] Do you know what size that would constitute?

How many Xs in front of that XL?

No idea.

It was important to me that

the big suit not look like a fat suit.

But that it looked like more like a playing card,

kind of flat but wide and rectangular.

Where does David Byrne record his music?

These days I often record the beginnings of songs

or music or whatever at home.

And then eventually when it gets to a certain point

I move to a proper recording studio

and bring in other musicians and all that.

But that's kind of a luxury that we have now

that we can take our time.

If we don't like something

there's no embarrassment of saying,

oh, that didn't work.

You just come in the next morning and go,

I'm gonna wipe that.

Its a little less pressure, but it's still,

you do have to have a work ethic to keep at it.

Where is David Byrne right now?

Where am I right now?

I'm in the Condé Nast Building 20 something floor.

Thank you.

Who introduced David Byrne to music?

It would be my parents, Scottish folk music, Mozart.

I didn't really adopt any of those,

but Peter Seeger they played Peter Seeger.

Who is David Byrne Collaborating with?

I recently did a song with

an Australian artist named Montaigne.

She approached me doing a song together

and we ended up doing two songs together

and I think they came out really good.

And I did a song for a movie with

the artist named Mitski.

I did a collaboration with Yo La Tengo in

that was something that Ben Gibbard suggested was

he was putting together

a collection of songs by Yoko Ono.

I picked a really old one that's really pretty.

Who samples, David Byrne's Psycho Killer?

There's a Selena Gomez song that has

uses kind of the baseline from psycho killer.

And it's a good song too,

Bad Liar I think that might be the name of it

something like that.

Who inspires David Byrne?

Well, quite a few people.

There's a group out of

I think the West Coast called Gabriels

that I listened to the other day.

I thought that was really good.

I'm friends with a Brazilian musician, Caetano Veloso.

He's always an inspiration

'cause I never know what he's gonna do next.

The best inspiration is when

you don't try and imitate them,

but it inspires you to be more of yourself,

to express yourself

and find your own way of expressing things.

Who does David Byrne look like?

One time at New Orleans Jazz Fest when I was younger,

I was in line getting some gumbo or something like that.

And a young man came up to me and said,

I know who you are.

I know who you are.

You're Norman Bates.

And I thought not only

does he think I'm a fictional character

but it's a psycho killer.

Well, I couldn't

there was not much more I could say about that.

Thank you, how does music work David Byrne?

I wrote a book by that name and I attempt to

explore how all these extra musical contexts

and factors shape the music that we hear.

It might be financial stuff that makes how,

what kind of music you can produce and record.

It might be the acoustics of the various rooms

that music is performed in,

that kind of shapes what kind of music is

heard best in those rooms.

And so yeah,

I explored all those kinds of things.

How does he write songs?

I write songs in lots of different ways.

I sometimes start with words.

If there's a story I've written for musicals,

then you definitely have to start with the words first.

And other times I've got a great musical idea,

a nice melody

and I will try and find words that fit that

which is sometimes a little bit of a longer process

but that can work as well.

[Interviewer] When you look back on your early writing,

do you see yourself as a different writer now?

Yes, I think I write different things now

that I did then in the past.

Occasionally I find some scraps of paper

with old lyrics on.

And some of 'em are still useful.

But are real useful because

I look at them and I go,

I'd never write that today.

How does he know St. Vincent?

We both did a concert at Radio City as a benefit.

it was called How Dark Was The Night I think.

I'd seen her live at Bowery Ballroom

and went up to her and said,

I saw your show and I thought it was really good.

I really loved your record.

That's when we met,

we cross paths again and

someone asked us if we would do a collaboration together,

which we did.

How many songs does David Byrne have?

I haven't kept track.

I don't write songs every day.

I sort of go through intense periods of writing songs,

and other periods when I'm

doing something completely different.

And now, all right, that's it.

Next time let's have something a little more metaphysical

maybe a little more philosophical.

Something with a little more weighty.

This is the kinda of [beep] you can find out on Google.