David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrneis a Scottish-born American musician who was the founding member, principal songwriter, and lead singer and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads, active between 1975 and 1991...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth14 May 1952
CityDumbarton, Scotland
material
You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.
footage realise sit sold time
Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.
mind physical structure
The city is a body and a mind - a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information.
deny gave needs though
I can't deny that label-support gave me a leg up - though not every successful artist needs it.
domination web
Domination and monopoly is the name of the game in the web marketplace.
music recording separate social technology
Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.
artists behavior crazy creative dealt diva genius love money music pressured records ripped seen wonderful
I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.
allowed people technology
Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.
certain fits literal melody sound sung tongue
In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
anyway arcade gave kinds major offers survived talking
I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.
agree box certainly fits genres putting stuff
I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
amazed bands british good half high jam note players song
When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.
censor concerned filtered
I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.
connection consumers encourage feeling happens mean music passive people products reins whatever
I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn't mean you don't have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.