PROBE

David Byrne

Interview by Rada Djurica

Serbian freelance journalist Rada Djurica caught up with former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne when he was in Europe for his Lazy Eyeball tour.

A feature article by Rada on the tour appears in Senior Citizens Magazine.

The Lazy Eyeball Tour combines delicate ballad and funky dance music with electronic beats and grooves, beautiful strings, snippets of soul, funk and dance, and the signature of clean electric guitar, characteristic of early Talking Heads. This music reflects Byrne's expansive interest in sound and rhythm more than whatever might more easily scale the charts and please Talking Heads junkies.

RADA: What's up? You had to wait for six hours on the border to get through in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe?

DB: Yes, we were stuck on the border yesterday but now I got to ride my bicycle….

RADA: And how does it feel now?

DB: I was feeling very nice, even if the weather was so so today. It's OK.

RADA: How about the atmosphere at the concert? Was it all right?

DB: The atmosphere is incredible, it was wonderful. And I thought some people might know some of the songs. We were doing some new songs, thinking that people might not know it. It was wonderful. Yes…… what are we going to talk about now?

RADA: You said: "I had been wondering if there might be a way to include the warm, lyrical, beautiful, emotional sounds and associations of strings and orchestral parts with groove music and beats for the body. I want to move people to dance and cry at the same time. By this time a title I had settled on a title: Look Into The Eyeball…which to me reflects both the record's preoccupation with human relations, and it's slightly off-kilter view of the same." Is your record "Look Through the Eyeball" the expression of laughter and crying at the same time for you?

DB: I think that strings help to really achieve that. This combination of string players and rhythm section. The rhythm section gives something for the body and strings, of course, are very emotional. Maybe not always romantic, but it mixes things to have conceptualist sound that makes a nice contract with the rhythm section.

RADA: Once you said that you have been manipulated by the greater power to become well known musician. I read that somewhere. Can you comment that? Manipulated by the greater power?

DB: I don't know what I meant. I might be referring to the fact that other people write songs, too, not only me. When other people write songs they often speak of the fact that they feel like they're just a vehicle, nearly a vehicle for the words and the music. It's personal but it's not something in some ways, impersonal. And they're just a medium for the work that needs to be put down. I had this experience a number of times. When I'm writing, that's a good experience, but it becomes a cliché to think about. But it's also kind of truth.

RADA: How important is a sense of humour in your music? If the Talking Heads are elegant and funny, David Byrne's is a mix of international taste of humour that looks different?

DB: You think that Head's and Byrne's humour come across, yeah?


RADA: Yes, I do!

DB: I suppose that I think that, something that you say sometimes is a little bit of humour attached. But sometimes you get away with saying something that is actually a little bit disturbing. If it's a little bit of humour attached, it's easier to swallow and that's humour.


RADA: You have lots of influences in your music...

DB: When I was in school I had a teacher of mathematics who used some of the work of Lewis Carroll, Charles Darlson, and he was teaching us things called symbolic logic. He could follow something very logical but end up with something completely absurd. Even though every step was logical and rational. When you end up with something absurd I think that it can be very beautiful. That you could follow a completely rational process and end up with something completely ridiculous.

RADA: Can you label your music, describe it?

DB: Describe my music, no, that could be very difficult.

RADA: Once you said that you are playing rock music?

DB: I did it just to be provocative because I've realized that I'm known as someone who is supporting lots of music in different countries. In lots of ways, I'm interested in world music. When I was asked to do a newspaper article in New York, I said that I would like to call it "I hate world music." I thought that all this would be provocative because everybody thinks that I love this kind of music. And really what I was saying is that is a shame that any group of artists get grouped in one category so they can lose their identity. They become just music for restaurants, music for the background or dinner parties. I think that this is slowly changing; I think that slowly people are getting to know individual artists. Friends of mine over the year, they know one artist from Brazil, and what they like is that they know this artist is from Brazil. And I've realized people get to know each artist and each band for what they are as they stop thinking about music categories…

RADA: Can you say something about the Luaka Bop label?

DB: I have a really small record label called Luaka Bop that is little bit unusual. This label has lots of funding. There are two excellent tours in Europe now, Susanna Barker and one Mexican group. We also doing some compilations, such as one of electronic minimalist music, for which I'm trying to convince people that this is real world music, because it has no history [laughter]…. and has a history in traditional instruments. Another compilation is of Indi-African psychedelic music. That should be interesting, and I'm curious what people will think about it.

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