“David Byrne”

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Simple. simple.

Hi, my name is Jason.

My name is Sean.

Hi, I'm Will.

Hi, Jason is over there.

Hi, Will. And that's Sean.

And that's Sean.

And that's Sean.

And that's Sean.

And that's Sean.

And then you're going to show up to today.

Yes, I'm the show.

We have a very special guest.

Let's harmonize the word. Ready? Smartless.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart.

Smart.

What do you guys think about my new top today?

I was just going to say, I was just going to comment on it. First of all, I'm gay and I don't call it a top.
I call it a shirt. Wow.
Cute top. Yeah, very cute top.
You guys ever go through your closet or open up a drawer and go, Oh, hello. You know, I've been avoiding you for a long time.
Yeah. And today is your day.
And you put it on. I don't talk to any of my clothes.
I do that. I do that, actually.
Do you not? You don't really, you don't talk to your clothes? No. Well.
Sean, so the stuff that you're wearing, this is the stuff you're not avoiding. Imagine what the stuff you are avoiding.
I mean, I just. I know.
Look at this. It's like a deck of cards on a shirt.
is happening when did you officially hit fuck it because it's it's been a minute right oh hey hey hey mystery guest mystery guest yeah he's very engaged wait i want to ask you something jason about that when you pick out the thing because i know exactly what you're talking about i have so many clothes well because of the pandemic you kind of wear casual, comfortable clothes all the time. Yeah, but I've got a big afternoon in front of me.
Oh. Yeah, he does.
Will looks like you're going to be late. No, no, no.
I'm going to be right out of time. You guys playing golf again today? What? No.
No. You guys are really branching out.
No, we have a meeting. We're going to do some charity.
Sean, when was the last time you wore a tie, like a jacket and tie or a suit? Well, there's no reason, so many years. How about underwear? Just underwear.
Well, again, no reason. It's been many years.
Jason, tie? Last time you wore a tie? In a fitting yesterday. Oh, how fitting.
Remember we were there. We saw those clothes yesterday at your office.
Sean and I were there. Now, what's going on with the top hat? Did you end up, are you wearing the top hat in any of the scenes? It never went on.
It never went on. Wait, Tracy, we went, all three of us met at Jason's office and he had racks and racks of clothing and hats like top hats and cowboy hats.
Just to go out for dinner. He was trying.
This is for a project or as the Canadians say, project. Project.
When do you shoot that project? Tomorrow morning. Oh, you start tomorrow.
Just one day? Three days. Three days.
Most people would be one day, but they know just for him. I have a process.
He has a whole process. Believe me, he has a process.
You better shut up. Anybody who's out there right now who knows Jason knows he has a process and is nodding their head.
That's enough. By the way, our buddy Eli moved some brushes because we mentioned his Vouchade brushes.
What do you mean moved some brushes? What does that mean? That's cool for sell. The people were able to check out his brushes because I talked about his brushes.
I sold some brushes. Yeah.
Hey, listen. Yeah.
Oh, boy. Here we go.
Nice transition. Yeah.
Let's get to the guest. I want to get to the guest because I've been nervous for a minute about this guest.
I'm truly starstruck and I'm a little, you can see I'm a little shaky. This person's music has played a huge role, certainly in my life and lots of people's lives.
And you guys are very familiar with who this person is. This person is a, quite honestly, it's rare that you get to say living legend.
This person was born in Scotland. That's something I did not know before I started investigating, yeah.
But is really known as kind of an American icon. This person was part of a band that garnered a lot of success and a lot of awards and was very influential.
Very good. Starting in the 70s, moving into the 80s.
There were very few bands that I listened to that I loved more than that band. Went on to have a very successful solo career.
This person has won an Academy Award for scoring a film, the film The Last Emperor. This person has won Grammys.
This person has won every imaginable award. The last emperor.
This person's latest record that they put out a few years ago, he turned into a Broadway play, which is now playing at the St. James Theater in New York.
The name is American Utopia. This person is none other than Mr.
David Byrne. Wait a second.
Oh, my gosh. David Byrne.
There we go. David Byrne.
Whoa. There he is.
Oh, my gosh. That was a little bit embarrassing, but okay.
I'm so sorry to do that to you. I don't want to put you on the spot, but it's all true, David.
And we're so absolutely thrilled to have you here. This is wild to meet you.
Will, how did you do this? I don't know. Will, how did you do this? What do you have on him? David, does Will have photos on you or something that he leveraged to book this? Did he say, I will expose these photos.
You will be there at 9 a.m. David, let me start by saying, truly a great moment in my life where I really felt like I was successful as a father was about two years ago when my then 11-year-old son, Archie, I heard he, I'd given him an old record player.

And he was in his room playing records. And I heard him playing Stop Making Sense, Talking Head, your live record, from his bedroom, unprompted, on his own, over and over.

And I was like, I've done it. I've created a smart, you know, a kid with good taste.
Well, happy to serve that function. Yeah.
You know what's so cool, David? I've never met you. I'm a huge fan.
I can't believe you're on this podcast. It's so cool.
I'm nuts. I was first introduced to you as a kid, as most people were through MTV and music videos, especially Burning Down the House, which they played, I feel like, every five minutes.
That and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was like the first big, like, that's all you saw on MTV.
Yeah, it was so cool. It was really, really cool.
And so you were part of, I think, the boom of colliding music and videos with the birth of MTV. You benefited, just like so many artists did, from seeing you first and then listening to your records.
I mean, it was a huge part of the movement. Absolutely.
We were doing all right, but we really kind of broke through with videos. And MTV those who don't remember at that time used to play music videos videos back to back non-stop 24-7 and it was a cable show and not a lot of people had cable but you could see it in bars bars.
Instead of having football or ESPN over the bar, they'd have these music videos playing all the time. So they were desperate for content.
So if we could do something, you'd do it and hand it to them, and within like a week, it was on the air, which is kind of incredible. You incredible you couldn't get a record out that fast right and it was a fun way to help publicize the music too because you could put some fun images to that music as well and that would sort of augment the whole experience and that's kind of gone away now I mean I know videos are still being made but they don't quite have the same splashy distribution and exhibition that they used to with MTV.

Now it's kind of you got to find it on YouTube or Vimeo or things like that.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Or some of the streaming services have like you scroll down and there's the artist's videos and you see things down there.

But it's, yeah, it doesn't have the same impact.

There's just so many of them now. Were you one of those guys who hated making them because you're like, I'm a musician, I don't want to be on camera, but maybe felt forced to do it because that was the thing? Or did you enjoy making them? I loved it.
Oh, wow. My ambition when I was younger was not to be a musician.
I mean, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed making music, but to be an artist of some sort.
So I thought, whew, oh, here we go. Now I get to do that.
Yeah. And I get to have an outlet for it and people will see it because MTV will play it.
Yeah, yeah. I got that.
Yeah, I got that impression. So visual art is sort of a big component and always has been a kind of a running theme, you know, as an artist throughout your career.
Certainly, I mean, talking about music videos, we talked about Stop Making Sense. You guys made that film in the early 80s with Jonathan Demme directed it, correct? Is that right? Yes.
I mean, that was kind of a... Not a lot of people had released, you know, sort of video albums in that way or made a a film about, I guess there's like The Last Waltz maybe, but that's kind of different.
This was like a purpose-driven thing that you guys, it wasn't your swan song. This was part of the music was this bigger sort of art.
There was a whole other aspect to the art of what you guys were doing. Yeah, that film, Jonathan's film, made it obvious that, yes, there was a whole visual aspect to the show and to our performance and lighting and dancing and all kinds of stuff going on.
So, yeah. And your passion lives more in sort of the bigger show of it all, right? Not just music, but also visuals.

Not just visuals, but also movement and costume and thematics. And yes? Yeah, yeah.
And is that sort of what has driven you towards American Utopia? And if so, can you describe for folks who aren't familiar with American Utopia what that creative endeavor is for you? Oh, okay. Well, we're doing a show on Broadway now,

which was derived from a concert tour that we did.

And for the concert tour, I had an idea that we could all be wireless.

Everybody in the band could be mobile,

which meant that instead of having one drummer on a kit,

we had to have six drummers wearing harnesses, like a marching band or a second line or something like that. And then the other musicians, keyboards, singers, guitar, everything else is also in motion.
That meant that we could do this whole kind of choreography thing and make shapes with our bodies and kind of formations and all that kind of stuff. So that evolved for this concert tour that we did.
And then people saw it and thought, this is really visual. And it's got the beginning of a kind of story arc to it.
And they said, why don't you try it? You want to bring it to Broadway? Do it on a Broadway theater. And I i thought i'd love to try that uh it's a very different crowd people come with completely different expectations people don't go to broadway shows for a concert they go for something with some kind of story and narrative line and being they want to be taken on a journey from a to b or whatever it is so So I started making adjustments to the show,

adding more talking things,

adding things where it kind of begins slowly

and introducing the whole idea of us moving around

and doing different stuff.

So that's what it became.

And it addresses a lot of the issues,

the subjects and stuff that we're living with now.

That was part of the concert thing, but it became even more so when it went to a theater. Like social issues? Yeah.
I mean, we talk about immigration. They're all just, just touch on them.
I'm not like preaching. Right.
Talk about diversity, immigration, race, voting. They all just get touched on kind of sometimes lightly, sometimes with a little more emphasis.
It does seem that your approach to music, and certainly as you described this, this theater experience, you know, it's not simple stuff. It is, in a great way, it's complicated and it's layered and it's, um, and big themes.
Yeah. Yet, yet the execution, uh, is sometimes, uh, very, um, micro, um, in a great way too.
So there's always, there's this complicated balance super, certainly from a very intelligent man. Clearly it is, it is sophisticated.
It is highbrow yet somehow it's also very entertaining at its base level. You need not see the stuff that's, that's lurking underneath that.
You can also just enjoy it for the toe tapping. Like you've always managed this incredible cocktail and combination of things in, in the process of communicating that to the necessary team it takes to do all this stuff, whether you're doing an album or a theater or a play or something, do you enjoy the process of communicating that level of complexity to your, to your collaborators? Or is that, do you wish they could just read your mind or do you, do you enjoy sort of bringing people through that, that complicated target? You know, cause it's, we enjoy it as, as, as the consumers of it, but the process of executing it, it does take a team, and do you enjoy being that leader? I enjoy the creative aspect of it.
The communication part, I would say that, like back when I did Stop Making Sense, I seem to recall that I was more of a little tyrant. Hey, listen, that takes a big person to admit that.
Yeah, it was like, well, I got my vision, and this is what we have to do. And you have to do this, and you do this.
And I realized over the years that there's ways to get kind of an equally good result without just kind of bossing people around and yelling at people. Jason.
Yeah, a lot of commands. Yes.
Jason, are you listening to what David's saying? I feel like he's looking at my quadrant, isn't he? Yeah, he's really looking at you. Everybody's looking at you.
Everybody. David, well, David, let me just ask you kind of to that.
So then you have, I mean, your lyrics. Could you ever have imagined as a young songwriter and artist that you would, you know, like once in a lifetime, for instance, the song, the lyrics have been used and taken hostage and thrown around and used in all sorts of different contexts.
Could you ever have imagined that one of your songs would sort of permeate our sort of, the cultural consciousness so much.

And how do you, does that make you feel strange?

Is it weird?

No, I never imagined that that could happen.

But that I knew that from my own experience,

there were songs and artists and movies

and everything that just kind of becomes

part of the cultural language.

You know, I know in my day it was like,

you said, you're talking to me? You're talking to me? You're talking to that kind of thing? And you go,

you know,

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you know, you know, you know, you know, You know, I know in my day it was like, you're talking to me? You're talking to me? You're talking to that kind of thing? And you go, well, it's just part of the cultural thing now. And he probably didn't know it when he was doing that scene.
But yeah, in retrospect. No, and I think from what I heard, that was improvised.
Yeah. But those, like, that's such a, I mean, that, I'm going to read now, which is like, I can't imagine how or where you were when you wrote, and you may ask yourself, how do I work this? And you may ask yourself, where is that large automobile? You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house.
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife. Iconic lyrics.
Yeah. Where were you at when you wrote those lyrics? It was a young man living in a loft apartment in the Lower East Side.
It was a walk-up. I forget how many flights it was.
Oh, man. It was like seven flights up, walk-up.
And I thought, that's not legal. Yes.
With no air conditioning. If there's a fire, I'm done.
Yes, I'm done.

But how old a man were you?

Were you 21?

Were you 25?

I was at least 25.

I might have been 25.

Yeah.

I think I was inspired by gospel preachers on the radio preachers.

There was, I don't know if it's still there,

but there were radio channels

that were just all preaching all the time.

And you could tune in and just just somebody was ranting about something.

And you just go, hey, that attitude, if I can kind of pretend that I'm one of those guys and just let's see what comes out. So I just started, you know.
Those particular lyrics, were you talking about a place that you found yourself in, a place of privilege and accomplishment that you felt less worthy of than perhaps you wanted to? And that's where those lyrics came from? I don't know. It wasn't that thought out.
Sure. They just started pouring out.
I had a little – well, there's little hand tape recorders. Yeah, yeah.
And I'd just like jump around and pretend I was a preacher and turn on the little tape recorder and do that and then eventually kind of play it back and write some of the stuff down and do it again until I had like, That's wild. I thought, oh, look, look, look, I got some lyrics here.
So it was a little bit arbitrary at that point, I think you that point, I think you're saying, has it, has it always, has lyric, have lyrics always sort of come from kind of an arbitrary place? I bet not. I'm, I'm sure that they, well, I don't, I don't know.
My question is when you write lyrics, is it usually a, a, a somewhat of a cathartic experience for you? It often is. Yeah.
Yeah. It's often like slightly cathartic.
It's often a surprise to me, and I look at what I've written and go,

where did that come from?

What are you, what dark thing are you referring to here?

But it kind of goes back to what I was originally saying or asking,

which is, so then somebody takes that lyric that you've written in this moment,

whatever the inspiration is in your gospel music, whatever,

and you're singing into the taper corner, and then throughout the course of 30, 40, 50 years, people take that as an artist. How do you, you know, how do you feel about, or do you enjoy the process of people taking your art and, and, and looking into it and reading into it in different ways and appreciating it on different levels? Does that? Mostly it's very flattering.
And sometimes, I have to admit,

sometimes they reveal the meaning of the lyrics I've written

in ways that I didn't know.

Sometimes it takes somebody else to point out to me,

oh, this is what you were writing about here.

And I'll go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Okay, okay. Yeah.
As opposed to it just sounded good. Oh, it just rhymed.
No, no, there was a lot of fun behind it. No, you were actually saying something.
I mean, there's other times when I've done a couple of musicals, and those you really have to write from a character's point of view. You have to write from the moment, kind of the emotion that they're feeling at that part of the story and all that kind of thing.
So that's a very different, very different, that's very intentional, you're kind of thinking. Yeah.
And we will be right back. This episode is supported by FX's Dying for Sex, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate.
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And now, back to the show.

When you're working on those musicals, because I know... Here he comes, here he comes.

David, have you seen Promises, Promises?

I have not, I have not.

That's okay.

That's the Burt Bacharach musical, is that what it is?

Probably.

Probably.

You know, what do you get when you fall in love?

Oh.

Yeah, I love his songwriting.

How does it go?

All right, so when you're writing for musicals,

I know it can be a grind because you're in development for years.

You're writing and rewriting, right?

Isn't that?

Yeah, yeah.

One of them I did took about eight years from conception to finally getting it on stage. That's a long time.
Yeah. And what do you do with the songs that you throw out that the producers or the directors are like, ah, it's not working.
We need another one. And can Sean have them? Yeah.
Just a workshop. Some of them might be able to be reused, but some of them are so specific to a character

in a particular story that you go,

there's nowhere else this can go.

So it's just like, okay, that's in the trash heap.

I know I read about the classical musical composers

who did Broadway musicals before I was born.

They would do that all the time.

They would reuse stuff. They would go, oh, this got cut from that show.
I'll use it in this other show. But their songs were kind of modular.
You know, there'd be like a love song and a let's dance song or whatever. Right.
How did you enjoy the process of scoring a film? Yeah, and how did you get into that? I think I'm going to guess I got into it because I scored a dance performance. A choreographer, Twyla Tharp, asked me to write music for a kind of evening length, a long dance piece that she was doing.
Just took a chance on me. And I think maybe some film people heard that and said, oh, he can do this.
And let's take a chance with this. This would be an interesting thing to get people who aren't normally doing film scores to kind of do a film score.
So they got me on that particular film and Ryuichi Sakamoto. And they gave us a lot of help.
Ryuichi maybe didn't need as much help as I did. I needed kind of help in the kind of arranging and sort of some of the technical stuff that had to be done.
I remember one of the guys who was helping us was Hans Zimmer, who is now like top of the heap as far as movie scores.

Did you feel like it was too constraining, the fact that there was already picture and

that it had to be a certain length of time and that there had to be a certain rise here

and a certain sting here to coordinate with the actual picture cut and all that stuff?

Was that a comfortable thing for you?

Did you enjoy the new challenge of that or did you kind of of like that's good we did one and we're out well you won an academy award like what are you going to do like at that point you just you might as well walk i really enjoyed the challenge yes i did it's i mean it really it's part of songwriting too it's this kind of puzzle solving yeah you know like how do i get a chorus to come out of this what does the chorus say how do i kind of then do i how do i follow that at the end how do i build you know there's all sorts of puzzle solving going on so there's that aspect that's really good and i have to say i was really glad that they didn't ask me to do very many stings and kind of oh we want you to have a big moment a big like explosion in the music when the door opens and this guy enters the room. And I thought, you know, I think I'm more about the mood and setting the kind of scene and the mood rather than kind of telling you what to think when the door opens.
Sure. Yeah.
Right, right. I want to go back just because I always find it interesting when someone as successful and famous as you and I get to meet them at this time, at this age in their life, where it all comes from, right? So I look at you and I'm like, God, what was Dave Byrne like as a kid? And what made you guys want to go from Scotland or come from Scotland to America? What was the influence there? What was the story there? You know, I didn't find out some of that stuff until I was much older.
There was very little work in Scotland. The steel yards and the shipbuilding factories, which kind of was the big industry in Glasgow and around there, basically were all closing down.
And my dad had gone to school and trained as an engineer but couldn't get work locally. So there was all these American companies that were hiring people who were already trained and bringing them over.
In this case, it was Westinghouse. And Westinghouse did things like radar and defense systems and this and that and the other.

They didn't just make toasters and washing machines. And so he got into that, and then he brought the rest of the family over.
And then years later, I found out, oh, there might have been another reason. my parents were what was called a mixed marriage

which is different over there Oh, there might have been another reason. My parents were what was called a mixed marriage,

which is different over there than it is over here.

Over there, it means that one party is Protestant

and one party is Catholic, which was the case with my parents.

And their respective families wouldn't talk to one another.

There were people who said, I refuse to come to your wedding. Yes.
Wow. Our friendship is done, basically.
That's crazy. All that kind of stuff.
And I just thought, it's craziness. It's too super craziness, but it still goes on over there.
So to stay together, they had to leave. Yeah.
They loved one another very much. And I think they realized that if they were going to withstand this and stay together, they had to leave.
They never said that to me. I had to like dig and dig and dig and say things like, do you think there's any possibility, Mom? Oh, maybe.
Yeah. Yeah.
Brothers and sisters for you? I have a sister, younger sister. Gotcha.
Musically inclined as well or no? No. No.
Not as much, no. She's listening to this.
She's like, I am so. I have a great treat table.
I just haven't heard my songs yet. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. When you were growing up in, so how old were you when you were here in the United States? I got to the States when I was about eight.
And had you already begun music lessons and interested in music and all of that? No, there was school music. I think I inherited a violin from a Scottish relative.
And so at some point, like in elementary school, I started having violin lessons, which, you know, it's a tough instrument. It's one of those instruments where,

unless you're really playing it well,

it really does not sound good.

It's not a pleasant sound.

It's not like, on the piano, you hit,

there's the key, you hit the key,

and that's the note.

You've got the note.

On the violin, you kind of have to find it,

and it's like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

David, we keep trying to encourage Sean

to do the podcast from his piano, because he's quite a good pianist. He has to do that today.
Classically trained. And he won't do it.
We love to hear music from Sean. So next time.
Next time. Next time, yeah, give me a head up.
But did you find this, David? I found growing up, this is why I think music is so important to keep in schools and for kids to learn or just be around it. Because I think for me, my thing is, you know, my mom came home from work one day and said, this girl, this woman moved in across the street.
She gives piano lessons. Do you want to take piano lessons? I was five years old.
I was like, I'm not doing anything else. Sure.
So I started taking piano lessons across the street. And I found as I stayed with it that it's just another language.
but I had something of my own that a lot of other kids didn't have. And it gave me this confidence that I could do something that other kids couldn't.
And I'm sure I lacked a lot of other things in a lot of other areas, but at least I could hang on. First of all, you sounded like a pretty cocky kid when your mom said you want piano lesson.
You go, yeah, I got nothing else. Sure.
Like what kind of a kid? What an answer is this? No, I was like, I'm not doing anything else. So yes, I'll try it.
But I don't know if you felt this way or if your kid feels this way or other people in your family that how important music is to have in your life because not only does it do lots of other things to your brain and your life, but it also gives you confidence that when you can play an instrument or learn something that you can take with you from it. Yeah, when I was a little bit older, when I was about 12 or somewhere around there, there were rock bands were starting to come out, so it became a thing.
And I don't know how, but I got a guitar and taught myself, bought songbooks of different artists and would do my best to learn some of the songs myself. And gradually I could do it.
And yes, it becomes a real kind of brain exercise. Besides being this emotional outlet that you have, even if you're just doing it in your bedroom it's this real emotional outlet but it's also kind of a real kind of brain exercise you learn how to how to organize things and how things get put together yeah well to to that you know when i listen i was just thinking about like you have so many um you know i mentioned your lyrics from once in a lifetime but you you know, musically there are so many pieces of your music that are, again, also so iconic.
And I was thinking about, like, the opening for Burning Down the House, which starts with a... Like, what is that process like for you when you're arranging a piece like that or coming up with...
I can't ever... For me, it just seems like something that exists on another planet.
I wouldn't know how to get inspired to begin to write a piece. Like, did you remember the moment where you're like, oh, this, I think this would be a good intro to the song.
Like, were you on the subway and you're like, hey, you know. I don't remember that one, but I remember there's a song, Road to Nowhere, that has this kind of little a cappella choir in the beginning as the kind of introduction.
And you know where you're going. Exactly.
And so we had kind of this, more or less the shape of the song, and I thought, we need an introduction, and also, the song is not quite long enough. I love that.
It needs just a little bit, 30 more seconds or whatever. You know, David, there are so many, like what Will was mentioning, there's so many great examples of really bold, exciting, inspiring elements to your music and you know when sean was talking about well how did it all start when is that and he's talking about you do there was a there was a guitar and there was a violin you basically learn so there's a process of actually learning how to execute a an instrument right and then there's also the other required element of creativity and taste that you have to marry with your ability to execute.
Um, so where did the, where does that taste come from? Where, where, where do, where do those thoughts of those bold beginnings to songs and whatnot? Uh, what, what's the, well, let me say it another way. I apologize for the length of this, but today, as you, as you sit here at this age, what do you find is your, is the most influential part in how your taste adjusts today? Is it listening to other artists? Is it, uh, is it, is it, is it reading, uh, about certain things? Um, uh, listening to, to do sounds around the world.
Uh, I remember Paul Simon went through that really exciting African music inspiration. How does your taste continue to evolve and stay so inspiring for all of us? Wow, thank you.
Like I think a lot of songwriters, I will jot down if a phrase comes to mind or if I say something, I go, a good lyric i'll write i'll write that down or i might record it onto my phone right but musically how do you know what sounds that is a little harder yeah it's true i i listen to a lot of music i was doing that this morning it was just sitting here for like half an hour browsing through kind of tracks. I was checking out there's some Japanese artist who does really, really insane stuff, but is like they make, she makes pop hits out of them.
But you'll deliberately expose yourself to stuff that is left or right of what you're currently accustomed to. Oh yeah.
Cause I mean, you're not going to bring anything new to the conversation if you just go, oh, yeah, I want to sound like so-and-so because they just had a huge hit. Well, they already had that huge hit.
Doing that all over again is like, you know, a movie sequel or something like that. Yeah, I guess the question is, like, it must be exciting or part of your process to take huge artistic sort of swings, if you will, like do stuff that you're not necessarily totally comfortable with.
You don't know where it's going to end up. Exactly.
But you have to hold on to a certain element of, of familiarity and comfort, not only for you and your abilities, but also for your audience as well. You do want to somewhat incorporate a bit of where you got you got to play the hits, but you also want to take another step forward in what your next album would sound like.
But there still needs to be some thread of continuity to whatever your sound or brand or what you assume you're... Exactly.
It's a real dilemma for musical artists. I mean, it's fine.
I enjoy playing a lot of the older stuff. I don't play all of it, but I enjoy playing some of it.
But it is, yes, a balance, playing stuff that the audience, some of the audience anyway, has come to hear. They go, well, give us some stuff that we know, and then we'll listen to the newer stuff too.
And now with the Broadway show, I see that there are people in the audience who don't know almost anything. It's like there's sometimes some kids in there and I can look at them and they're watching and paying close attention, but I'll start playing some really well-known song and there'll just be a blank look like i don't know this song i don't

know why that person behind me is getting so excited i don't know it all right right but that's that's pretty good that's pretty good yeah where did that where do they there's there's a there's a theatricality to if that's the right word i apologize if that's not even a word but um your presence on stage.

There seems to be a part of you that... if that's the right word.
I apologize if that's not even a word. But your presence on stage,

there seems to be a part of you

that really enjoys some of the character

or theatrics of your performance.

Where does that come from?

Are you a fan of certain actors

or comedians or dancers?

Where does that part of it come from?

Because it's such a, for me, I enjoy that part of your whole artistic contribution.

I noticed a little while back, I noticed sometimes people laugh at things that I say.

There we go.

So you did it again.

Sometimes they do.

And sometimes I go, I didn't even know that was funny. And then I'm trying to figure out, why is it funny? Can I say something else that's funny? And how do I know? There's this sort of this unassuming presence that you have.
It's almost like, I don't know, there's, you know, sometimes you see somebody up front stage in the spotlight, they got the lead microphone and what there's almost this sense of entitlement or I'm a big rock star, everybody. Yeah, you're lucky to be here listening to me do them.
You've never had that in a great way. You are one of us.
There's almost an unassuming, you're almost surprised to be up there, it seems like. I know you're not, but you never feel like as an audience member that you're asking us to kind of appreciate being in your presence.
There's a shared experience there, which I'm sure you're not aware of. It's just, I guess there's no question here.
there's a shared experience there which i'm sure you're not you're not aware of

it um it's just an i guess there's no there's no question here there's there's more of a compliment that um you make you make it very easy to enjoy your music because uh i i don't i don't have to pretend to buy what you're selling you know oh thank you um yeah i feel like it's my duty to be kind of honest and real to the audience.

Yeah.

A lot of things I say are written or scripted, but there's other things that are improvised. But even the things that are scripted, I feel like it's my duty to kind of say those things in a really honest and kind of direct way.
But yet you do it in this way. Like Jason's right.

There is a sort of a theatrical element to, again,

stop making sense.

Even I remember the record, the cover to me

has always stayed with me of you in this big suit.

And it's just such that image.

And then you're on there doing it.

And if you watch the film, it's so great.

Like even when you're just on by yourself doing Psycho Killer and singing French lyrics. What's the lyric? I mean, there's a big part of it.
Qu'est-ce que c'est? Fa-fa-fa-fa. All that.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then you go, ce que je fais, ce soit là. Uh-huh.
Right? And I'm like, this guy's singing in French and people don't, you know, ce qu'elle a dit, ce soit là. Réalise mon espoir.
right? That whole thing. And I'm like, and as a Canadian kid, I'm like, this is rad.
He's singing in French. But it's so theatric.
Nobody else, who else is doing, you know, at that time, Joe's drummer wasn't, I mean, you know, he wasn't singing in French. Yeah, but I just thought, oh, this is what this character would do.
This character would have like kind of fancy pretensions about himself. Yeah, and yet, and that's right, and yet, so you're playing this character who has these pretensions, but we're all with you on this journey.
We get that you're not, it's not like you've created yourself up here. You're investigating this character

and you're letting us be a part of it.

It's such a, there's like a relationship

that you have with your audience.

Do you feel that?

Like even when you're in your songwriting,

do you feel a relationship with not just the music,

but the people who listen to it?

To a large extent, yes.

Although there's always surprises.

I think there's one part in the show

where I talk about my failure to know how to write a song

and I'm going to... Although there's always surprises.
I think there's one part in the show where I talk about my failure to know how to write a song in a certain way. And I say something like, unfortunately, I am what I am.
And the audience finds that really funny. And I feel like they're laughing at my failure.
Why is that? And I can't figure it out um i bet you that's more of a laugh of relief that oh oh he's as insecure as we are maybe that maybe that's it maybe we all are that and it's just to see a hero of yours say something as as vulnerable and as transparent as that it i i would laugh with relief and, okay. If audiences laughed at my failure, they'd never stop laughing.
That's true. I know.
There's a nice lyric for you to write down, David. We'll be right back.
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Back to what Jason was saying before. Nerves when you play, excited when you need to go out there still? Are there times when you don't want to go out there? And how do you solve that? And are there any rituals before you go out? So it's a four-part question.
I hope you're writing that down, David. But how amazing, Sean asks a four-part question in about a tenth of the time of Jason asking barely a question.
Yeah, well, my brain's broken. That's true.
I'll go backwards, part four. Thank you.
The rituals. I often make ginger turmeric tea.
Oh, nice. So there's this little ritual of like peeling the ginger and slicing it up, boiling the water, all that kind of stuff, which is just kind of like really just a little ritual that you do in a dressing room.
It stops you from thinking about, oh, how's it going to be? How am I going to do tonight? How's my throat? Yeah, you don't think about that. Lately, I've taken to like, oh, why should I shave this morning? I'll shave when I get to the dressing room.
And so I do that. And that's another little thing, you know, heat up

some water and that's the way I shave. And yeah.
What about nerves? Is there, are nerves something

that fuels you or is it a negative? Or do they exist? I've never had stage fright, but I do kind of stay within myself for like half an hour or so before going on stage. Just to sort of center yourself? Yeah, just to kind of center myself and not be thinking about other stuff, not be thinking about, oh, you know, what am I supposed to be doing tomorrow? Or why is that, why did that person write that email to me? What do they mean by that? You know, not, forget about all that stuff.
You ever forget the words? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And what do you do? What do you do? Make up new ones.
Yeah, I make up new ones real quick. And sometimes they don't rhyme or sometimes it's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. Then I go, oh, geez, that's a complete brain fart there.
No way. You could probably point the microphone at the audience.
I'll sing it for you. Well, I was just going to say, so I was a Christmas elf on the Kenny Rogers tour.
That's exactly right. Wait, tell us.
Hold for applause or hold for laughter? Which one? Or both? Both. You could do both.
And he would sometimes forget the lyrics. And Jason just nailed it.
He would, one of his classic songs, you know, you got to know when to fold. And if you just forgot, he would just point the mic to the audience.
And they got it. Yeah.
Always, always. Almost every other show.
Remember, Sean, didn't you say kenny's one of the most profound things he ever said to you was um get the fuck off the stage that and and how and who are you how'd you get on this tour bus david how do you like how do you like the part of your job of uh of family, the sort of administration of being a leader, being the band leader, being the leader in your business life as well? And you strike me as somebody who doesn't shy away from being the leader but doesn't revel in it and is not dictatorial and is not the tyrant you call yourself when you were younger. So how do you manage to do that in the way that it seems like you would prefer to do it today, which is a bit softer and counts a bit more on other people kind of self-policing? Yeah, I've learned that you've got these talented collaborators, whether it's the lighting people, the choreographer, the band.
If you give them the right kind of guidance and kind of communicate to them what it is you're trying to do, they'll often come up with an incredible way of achieving that. And you don't have to hold their hand all the way.
And then they feel empowered. They feel like they did this.
It wasn't just like, oh, he told me to me to do it they did it you just kind of point them in the right direction but don't tell them how to get there yeah yeah it works I find that works really well I have I don't like to do it too many hours but I feel like musical artists like myself need to know the business end of it to some extent. Otherwise, as has been said, if you don't take care of your business, you won't have any business.
And a lot of artists feel like, oh, no, I'm an artist. I don't have to think about such things.
Well, yeah, pretty soon you'll find out why you have to think about such things. Right.
And is that part of the business, not to get into boring weeds about the business side of music, but there was a huge transition that it went through, what, 10, 20 years ago into digital distribution that the film industry is starting to go through now. And I'm wondering, has that settled now in the music industry has it sort of found its its its footing and and if so is that something that is a good uh place that it has found itself in oh man that's a it's a big topic there's still a lot of artists who are not entirely happy with the kind of income they get from streaming services.
It certainly works for some real artists, and for others it doesn't work so well. There's other kind of models that are being proposed.
I don't know if they're going to be better or not, but people are still talking about rethinking that kind of model. I may propose to a model soon.
Okay. Oh, no.
That's a different word. That's a different word.
Yes, propose to a model. Sorry.
That's a different... David, what's your work-life balance? What's kind of the perfect, for you, the perfect work-life balance? Like, how much do you...
Are you a... You wake up in the morning and you've got a...
You want to write music or make music or engage, or do you like to have like, Hey, I need 10 days where my, I don't even think about my music. Like what, what is for you the ideal balance? I know that if I'm going to work on music, I need a good few hours clear of like no phone calls, no Zooms, no, no emails that I need to deal with and that kind of thing.
And then I can get something done. I can't do eight hours of writing music at a stretch.
Eventually it's like you run out of ideas and you go, okay, I can't push it any further. But you do need that real clear time.
And then probably like a lot of us, there's an awful lot of time responding to emails and things like that. Yeah.
But do you like to have big stretches of time where you're not doing that? Or do you need to do that kind of every day, like engage sort of creatively? Oh, no, there's time, you know, I'd love to say on the weekends

or whenever I can, like,

just go hang out with friends

and go to museums

or go see somebody else's show

or all that kind of stuff.

What's the most lowbrow thing you do

regularly?

Is it a bad TV show?

Is it, do you go,

do you like to go bowling?

Do you like to, you know, walk along a bridge and throw rocks at cars? I mean, what do you do that is about the dumbest thing? Is that Steve Byrne up there? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
He is. What? He's throwing rocks at us.
Yeah. What? Again.
Wait, he's going to throw a shopping cart down. Yeah.
Those of us who are amazed by your creativity and your sophistication, what would we be surprised to learn that you do that's pretty knuckle-draggy? There's probably some kind of escapist TV or streaming services or movies or things like that. Let's hear it.
Let's have it. We need a title.
You need a title. I haven't watched them all but I've probably watched quite a few of the superhero movies.
Really? Sure. And, you know, Marvel movies or the DC ones or whatever they are.
I've watched a lot of those. Is that true? I love that.
Yeah, and I just feel like, you know, especially during the pandemic, there'll be times when you finish whatever work you're trying to do, doing the worst of it, and you just go, I can't be watching anything serious now. Yeah.
I don't want, I mean, what we're going through at the moment, you know, we're kind of through the worst of it, we hope. You go, I don't want something to emotionally get me worked up.
Right, yeah. So no bachelorette.
Yeah, no bachelorette. That's too emotional.
Yo, that's too emotionally involving. Yeah.
Yeah, I get it. What about writing music for one of those Marvel movies? Yeah? Oh, I think that's a skill.
No, I don't think that's my skill. That's the kind of thing where the music has to, like, hit all these action.
That's true. Wait a second.
This is not the David Byrne I barely know, which is a guy who takes a lot of chances. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, man.
I'd love to see you score something like that. You should try it.
That would be pretty cool. I know.
Hey, I read a while ago that you did some TED Talk about how architecture and music are combined. What is that about? Oh, okay, that's pretty straightforward.
Although the conclusion is kind of sometimes surprising. The straightforward part is that certain kinds of music sound good in certain places, like Gregorian chants and kind of church music.
You know, medieval church music sounds really good in the cathedrals that were built during that time. All that echo and reverb, it sounds like, whoa, yeah.
But then if you brought, like, say, a funk band into a cathedral, it just sounds like a mess.

Acoustically, it just sounds like a mess.

And you realize, oh, no, this stuff belongs in a different kind of box,

a kind of small club.

That's where it sounds good.

And this stuff belongs in here.

You realize that a lot of orchestral music is somewhere in between.

It fits into a kind of medium-sized concert hall, and it sounds really good there.

It has a little bit of echo, but not too much. And so you realize that the kind of conclusion was that once these halls and venues are built, people start creating the music that they know is going to sound good in those places.
I mean if you know if you're like if I know I'm performing in little

clubs I'm not going to write some kind of Gregorian chant music to play at CBGBs. It's just like nobody's going to hear it.
It's just going to get drowned out with all the yelling and the beer and everything else. So you go, no, no, that kind of shapes what people create, but they unconsciously create what is going to sound good in that place.
For that, for that. It's like Ozark.
You guys built it for me to watch on my phone, right? Like, that's the perfect way. It was, they shot that to look good on your phone.
On my phone while I'm on the bus. While you're on the bus.
So you don't have to hold it too steady. David, is there an instrument that you wish you were better at that you admire when you have one of these musicians come in and they're like, let's say drums, for instance, you just get like some just beast on the drum set and you just wish that you were better at that because you admire somebody who knows how to play that instrument really, really well?

Is there one that's super tricky

that you never really got your hands around

aside from violin?

I never really learned to play keyboard.

Really?

I can trigger sounds and hit a chord

and do that kind of thing,

but I can't really write on a keyboard,

and I wish I could.

I wish I had those piano lessons like you had.

Yeah, Sean's available.

If we could shoot, Sean,

would you mind if we shot you giving David a keyboard lesson real quick at some point in the future? Oh my God, it would be so cool. I would love, I think America would love to see that.
I think that's what they've been waiting for. Yeah.
Yeah. And what about, where do you stand on producing other artists? Is that something that's interesting to you to sort of help somebody shape whatever their wild horse creativity might be at a young age like you had to sort of give them an idea about what the future might hold if they point at this direction and help them sort of get a career under their feet? Is that something that's interesting to you or are you still really enjoying pushing yourself? i tried it a couple times and with varying levels of success yeah and eventually i thought no there's people who are really good at that uh and part of the being good at it is being a couple of things like being a real psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever so you know how to guide people in a nice way

to kind of getting the best out of them.

And the other side is kind of being a salesman

where you're kind of going,

oh, no, you should do this, do this.

This is going to be great.

That's amazing.

It's amazing.

Uh-huh, yeah.

You've collaborated so much

and your whole career feels like a collaboration. And you've got a collaborative spirit about you.
You can kind of sense it and feel it. Even your records with Talking Heads, but certainly as a solo artist, you've worked with a lot of different people, and musicians, producers, and Brian Eno.
I know that you and St. Vincent, Annie Clark, made a record.
What was that? Almost 10 years ago, right? I love St. Vincent.
Yeah, a few years ago there, yeah. Yeah, I mean, what is, is that something you kind of look to do all the time? You get inspired by other musicians and you're like, oh, I want to, I got to get with them.
Like, I like what they do. And are there people out there that you're still like, all right, I'm thinking about this person.

I really need to work with them.

There's people whose work I really love

and I kind of wonder how do they do that?

What's their process?

And sometimes it just happens by accident.

Somebody says, hey, I got a song.

What do you think?

You want to write something for this song? Yeah. Is that how it happened with you and Annie on your record? Yeah, we'd seen this kind of little tiny performance in a bookstore that was a collaboration between Bjork and this group Dirty Projectors.
Oh, yeah. And it was kind of amazing.
Great band.

Yeah, the guy from Dirty Projectors, Dave Longstreth,

he wrote all new songs for this little show in a bookstore.

And I thought, holy shit, he has raised the bar.

Oh, hi.

And so the bookstore approached Danny and I and said, hey, will you do this too?

And I thought, you mean we got to write all new songs for this now? Which we did. And we never managed to get it into the bookstore, but they kicked it off.
Yeah. Wow.
Wow. That's so amazing.
Now, what's the rest of your day look like today? Is today a day when you're going to go see a Marvel movie or are you going to think of the next great album or Broadway show? Neither. I think I have a couple of Zoom meetings today and I have a trainer person that I see once a week.
What are we doing to What are we doing to stay so, still so beautifully fit?

You've always been fit.

You look great.

You ride your bike a lot.

I know that.

I ride my bicycle.

It's how I get around town

when it's not,

when we're not having tornadoes.

Yeah.

Same, same.

I'm a big New York,

I use my bike in New York

to get around everywhere too.

And so that keeps you in shape?

Or what are you doing with the trainer? Are you like a cross-training thing? Yeah, she's got me stretching and doing things for balance and balancing on one leg and doing all, you know, different kinds of things, all of which is really useful for the show. Yeah, I'll bet.
And I can say things to her like, hey, there's a thing in the show where I try to bend over backwards. Can you help me get further backwards? I feel like we're all approaching the age where we need to work on our flexibility and do yoga or Pilates or whatever the hell that is.
I like the idea of walking by a storefront gym, like a small gym, and just being like, is that David Byrne with a trainer trying to, is he bending over backwards? What's he doing? Is David Byrne teaching a step class? And how do I get in on that? David, you've given us, you've been so generous with your time. I was such immense fan.
Thank you, David. I have such incredible respect for you as an artist and what you do.
And I just can't thank you enough for joining us today. Yeah.
Thank you so much. Yeah, this has been a real treat.
Thank you for joining us. What a thrill.
Thank you. I hope it all worked out.
Yeah. Oh, it certainly did.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Thank you so, so much. And great continued success with American Utopia, your show on Broadway, and we're all such fans, so thanks again.
Can't wait to see it. Thank you.
See you in person sometime soon. I hope so.
That would be great. Thank you so much.
Thanks, David. Bye, buddy.
Bye, pal. Bye.
Oh, my God. Can you believe David Byrne was just on the show? Yeah, Will, how do you do it? How do you do it? How did you? Did you know him? Well, I guess, you know, he's a huge fan.
No, he has no idea. They probably had to explain to him ten times.
Will what? His name's Will Arnett. I still don't get it.
And then they showed him footage. He's like, I still don't get it.
And then they showed him my reel, and he was like, now I really don't get it. Yeah, how can we get out of this? I thought it was somebody else.
I've just always been such a huge fan of his, and when I heard that he was going to do it, I was been i was just absolutely blown away yeah he's he's prolific uh covered so many areas and i'm always so fascinated when when rock stars or whatever you want to call them they venture over into like this stage area and the film area they branch out to all like trent reznor is like that too right yeah there's there's there's very few of them that actually uh do it and they're it. And he's one of them.
Well, it's one of those things, you know, sometimes you hate using the term, sometimes using the term artist makes you want to roll your eyes out of your head. And you're like, oh God, oh, are you an artist? Oh, thank you.
And you'll hear like people like Sean going, I'm an artist. And you're like, oh, shut the fuck up.
It was a storyt too, though. Yeah, I'm a storyteller.
I'm a real storyteller. Because my dad told me, what are you doing? You're a storyteller.
You need to get back out there. You know what? And if you don't leave, my dad said, if you don't leave and go tell stories, I will.
And he didn't even let you answer. He just put it in drive.
No. Yeah.
But David Byrne is one of those people you can legitimately say, like, oh, this is an artist. Like, this guy is.
Yeah. I watched him.
Have you ever seen that choir, choir, choir? Those guys are actually Canadian. They go around.
They get people. Oh, Sean, you would love these dudes.
I would love this. Send them.
It's so good. And he did one, I think at the public, David did with a couple years ago ago with those guys.
And he sang Hero, David Bowie's Heroes. And everybody in the audience is sort of, they've given them the music and they just, in the moment, they all sing with him.
Oh, that's cool. And they harmonize and stuff.
Unbelievable. So, you know, the notes of the piano, you know, this A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and that's it.
Sure, sure. But if you said it, Will, in an Australian accent, what would it be? A, B, C, D, A, F, G.
No, no, but if, you know, it depends on, sorry, I hear what Sean you're saying, but like it would be one thing if you said it in Sydney and another if you said it in Byron Bay. Byron Bay.
Byron Bay. Byron Bay.
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