PROBE

David Byrne (continued)

Interview by Rada Djurica

RADA: What about your work with Brian Eno? Eno and you share and interest in African music and rhythms.

DB: I worked with Brian Eno on three Talking Heads records, and we did a collaboration on "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." We did kind of sampling things. We didn't have samples at the time. We were using radio and cassette recorders to sample things. He was a little bit on the dance score for that record, "The Catherine Wheel." But we have worked together since then. I'm seeing him in London; we worked together many, many years.

We wanted to develop an understanding of the African musical concept of interlocking, interdependent parts and rhythms that combine to make a coherent whole. It's completely different from playing rock songs; it's not just a band executing a tune.

RADA: Tell me about your choice of songs for the concert.

DB: I've been trying to mix. Some of them are known and people are familiar with them, with some others are not. Sometimes I'm throwing in some new ones that no one's never heard, it's really obscure. So I am trying to make some sort of balance between some popular songs with some that I think are good but not so well known. So it is kind of goes like that.

RADA: Once you said that people should look at their own culture and appreciate where they are coming from?

DB: In a very strange way, in the past, not recently, but in the past, I know it happened with some of the Latin musicians that I worked with. I've worked with lots of Latin musicians, and when we went on tour in South America I've realized that lots of bands and the audience and musicians came to see me. They were kind of ashamed of their own music, kind of music from their past or they didn't appreciate it very much. Maybe there is a way to incorporate this kind of music into what we do, without taking it just as our parents' music. And I think that lots of them begin to do that. Not just because of being influenced by me, but because they've just started to think this way. In America, it is much better what I was doing, so I thought, if maybe some of them see me doing it, it would help and encourage them to appreciate the music from their own backyard.

RADA: There were some Talking Heads songs that you haven't sung this time, songs like "Psycho Killer"?

DB: For this tour I was enjoying the fact that I could come with some older songs and re-arrange them for the strings. And some of the songs I thought worked very well that way. I didn't think that "Psycho Killer" would work that well with strings. So I thought, "Oh, okay, I'm not going to do that one." But there were others that I could do.

RADA:We didn't hear the song "Road to Nowhere." Is doing the tour for you a "road to nowhere"? The last time we heard it was on the Talking Heads Tour 10 years ago.

DB: I wandered if I should perform that song, but ...[laughter]...

RADA: How about the soundtrack for "The Last Emperor" by Bernardo Bertolucci? How did you get to collaborate with the director to make such a different kind of music?

DB: The screening of "Stop Making Sense" in Rome, in Italy. Bertolucci saw it. I don't think that he likes that kind of music, but he liked that the audience stood up, dancing. He was very impressed that people were dancing out the film. And he said "I wish that people could dance to my films." But it is a different kind of film that he makes. So we met at that time, and later he asked if I would do some music. The tricky part was that music would have to sound a little bit Chinese; that was little bit difficult. Also very strange were the composers who he hired to do this music. It's something as different as the places they are from. And Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto did music to sound, in a way, very Western. And Chinese composer Cong Su did music that sounds like avant garde Western European experimental music. And I did music that sounded mostly Chinese. So everybody was going in different places.

RADA: How about your future plans with film music?

DB: I just did music, a song for the film director Steven Fears (ph) for a film that he just finished, for which I have written two songs, but I think that he wanted only one. One was redone, an aria from the opera. And I thought that he might like that, but he didn't. And I'll take that back and I'll give him another one.

RADA: Since you are interested in European cinematography, how much have people that you worked with influenced you?

DB: When I was in collage, when I was in university, I for the first time saw films by European directors that I hadn't seen before. I'd grown up in small town and I'd never seen any of those films before and it was great revelation for me. It was like joining rock and roll for the first time. And the only films that I'd seen were movies on television. It was something really different and it makes you think that images and films can be made in a way that you couldn't imagine before. That's very exciting, and yes, I did few things before and not too many lately, partly because I haven't got the patience to go through the money waving stage. It takes about two years to find money to make a song. And in two years I can write a song for a record, I can do my own artwork; I don't have to go and beg for money. I just do it. If I have an idea I wouldn't go around and say, "Please I have an idea for something." I'm not going to do this, I'm going to write some songs and do my own kind of work. It's a shame, and I love doing it, it's one of the best experiences that I ever had, doing films. But I haven't had the patience, too. Which is a big part of the process.

RADA: Did you like seeing yourself in "Stop Making Sense"?

DB: Absolutely not!

RADA: Before that was "Road to Nowhere" and now the eyeballs are lazy, does that mean that you are losing your energy over time?

DB: Wow... [Laughter] this is a hard question.... I think that some of the songs that I've written in the past I could not write now. People change, get older, whatever, and you can't write the same things as you did in the past. Thank goodness, I'm glad that I can make something different.

RADA: How do you see the world today, that it's speeding up or slowing down?

DB: Well, the world is not slowing down for me yet. I wish that it was, but it's not. It's incredibly busy.

RADA: Are you happy with what you have achieved by now?

DB: I'm enjoying this tour lots; it really feels wonderful. The stand and the kind of music that we do now at the moment, it all feels wonderful to me, but of course I am never completely satisfied. If I would be satisfied I would just stop. I'm not completely satisfied and I have the feeling that it's always something that I haven't done right or I can do it better. And there is something that I haven't quite achieved so I can try next time.

RADA: Do you like hearing yourself while you sing?

DB: I'm listening to myself while I'm singing, but if I hear myself on the tape recorder, like this one, I always think how awful I sound.

RADA: Do you think the same while you perform the songs?

DB: Absolutely not. Every time when I'm performing I'm always thinking I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes not only that I'm singing but I'm also listening. You know....

RADA: Any problems on this tour?

DB: Well, we had a little problem on the border, other than that; it's great doing this tour.

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