Pod Insights The Louis Theroux Podcast S6 EP5: David Byrne on clashes in Talking Heads, neurodivergence, and culture wars About this episode Louis sits down with David Byrne, the musician, author and iconic frontman of Talking Heads. David tells Louis about personality clashes within the band, how his neurodivergence plays a role in his music, and being at the centre of a culture-war storm. Plus, they discuss whether Donald Trump stole his ‘big suit’.
Warnings: Strong language and adult themes.
Links/Attachments:
Book: Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne (2009)
https://www.waterstones.com/book/bicycle-diaries/david-byrne/9780571371266
Album: Who Is The Sky, David Byrne (2025)
https://open.spotify.com/album/5xDqZQlSx2gRrAyAgHQ8AB
Song: ‘The Book I Read’, Talking Heads (1977)
https://open.spotify.com/track/4OT7Ndu29Z7JfhwRS2iCJX
Song: ‘That’s the Way (I Like It), KC & The Sunshine Band (1994)
https://open.spotify.com/track/0RQTbMBgSq7xgdZSHFZg4R
Book: ‘An Anthropologist on Mars’, Oliver Sacks (1995)
https://www.oliversacks.com/oliver-sacks-books/an-anthropologist-on-mars/
Song: ‘She Explains Things To Me’, David Byrne (2025) https://open.spotify.com/album/5f6f5JMGxgNa0LAJqtaUXY
Song: ‘Psycho Killer’, Talking Heads (1977)
https://open.spotify.com/track/7dSCxR4LqkmxoBrq9MzVSD
Artist: Randy Newman
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3HQyFCFFfJO3KKBlUfZsyW
Artist: Alice Cooper
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3EhbVgyfGd7HkpsagwL9GS
Album: Talking Heads 77, Talking Heads (1977) https://open.spotify.com/album/0r7o2FeARRr23EZ0TJ0a8S
Artist: Ramones
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1co4F2pPNH8JjTutZkmgSm
Artist: The Clash
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3RGLhK1IP9jnYFH4BRFJBS
Artist: Sex Pistols
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1u7kkVrr14iBvrpYnZILJR
2002 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Talking Heads performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBr0FJsDk1g
Stop Making Sense (1984)
https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/stop-making-sense/umc.cmc.4qcn1p5rridjzo742xirf9j8m
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/the-silence-of-the-lambs/umc.cmc.vo1hrvp25kr64fq8irp5jx75?action=play
True Stories (2016)
https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/true-stories/umc.cmc.7ffwwfhraf765c0l9l1v7a4tw?action=play
Weekly World News:
https://weeklyworldnews.com/
David’s online magazine:
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/
Credits:
Producer: Millie Chu
Assistant Producer: Artemis Irvine
Production Manager: Francesca Bassett
Music: Miguel D’Oliveira
Audio Mixer: Tom Guest
Video Mixer: Scott Edwards
Shownotes compiled by Elly Young
Executive Producer: Arron Fellows
A Mindhouse Production for Spotify
www.mindhouse.co.uk
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 10,803 words · 2 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 1212, are we rolling?
0:07 Speaker 00 Hello there, welcome to the Louis Theroux Podcast.
0:20 Speaker 00 Today I'm sitting down with new wave pioneer and cultural polymath, he's basically a singer, okay, let's not overcomplicate it, David Byrne. David is perhaps best known as the founding member and lead singer, I said that, of the brilliant Talking Heads. Originally formed in the mid 70s in New York, Talking Heads became known for their distinctive blend of punk, art rock and world music influences.
0:47 Speaker 00 They were part of that whole downtown New York scene, Blondie, Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, I'm getting quite far off piste, but a seminal moment in the culture that also had an influence, I think, on the UK punk scene. Their big hits, you'll know, Psycho Killer, we talk about that, This Must Be The Place, brackets, naive melody, that's not going to help, Once In A Lifetime, I think I'm getting the bassline a bit wrong, Burning Down The House.
1:27 Speaker 00 These will all be featured on the forthcoming covers album that I've mentioned before,
1:32 Speaker 00 and many others. Since the band broke up in the early 90s, David's continued a prolific solo career, releasing numerous albums, composing soundtracks and collaborating with a wide range of artists, from iconic producer Brian Eno to American songwriter St Vincent.
1:49 Speaker 00 I listened to some of his solo stuff in preparation for the chat and it's, it's great, no surprise there, Strange Overtones is a very strong standout track, I put that on my Spotify LT 2025 playlist.
2:05 Speaker 00 That is probably not something you needed to know, but will go down very well in Stockholm, where Spotify is headquartered. In 20, please keep me employed. No, that's a joke. If you're lucky, I'll stay working for you. In 2019, he debuted American Utopia, a critically acclaimed Broadway show that was later adapted into a concert film directed by Spike Lee that is also well worth a watch. There's loads where I could tell you, he's a keen cyclist, like me, we talk about that. He's a cultural vulture, is that the term? He's just curious about all forms of production, cultural production. And he has a new album out, which is the peg for the conversation. It's called Who Is The Sky? The Sky? I think it's a deliberate... Could I call it a pun?
2:50 Speaker 00 It reminded me of the lyric, the Jimi Hendrix lyric, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky", which people sometimes miss hear as this guy. So there's that. This one was recorded in person in June this year. He arrived without fanfare on a Lime bike outside the studio. He was dressed in a black polo neck. It was the middle of summer, so we joined it in Medias Res with some bike chat. A warning, there is a bit of strong language in this episode, as well as adult themes. All of that coming up.
3:42 Speaker 00 You came on your bike, I think. Yeah, not well, not my bike, one of the Lime bikes. Did you Lime bike? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm only here for a couple of days, so I didn't bring a bike. Because I came on my bike too, and one of the things we have in common is a devotion to not just the bike, but the idea that more people... Like, it's such a great and practical way of getting around and of seeing cities and being independent and also getting a little bit of exercise into the bargain. But I am resisting the e-bike. You feel like it's cheating. Hmm, it is slightly cheating.
4:22 Speaker 00 But cheating's okay.
4:26 Speaker 01 I'll do an e-bike if I know that there's hills involved.
4:31 Speaker 01 Or if it's, if there's a distance, like if I'm in New York and I'm going to hear music in Brooklyn. I live in Manhattan. If it's going to hear music in Brooklyn or Queens or something like that, where it's be a bit of a ride back at 10pm or whatever, I'll go. I'll take the, I'll get an electric one. And it'll just make that easier and make the big hump over the bridge a lot easier. But on the flat bits, I'll just do a normal.
5:02 Speaker 00 Normal bike. I mentioned bikes because I read the, your book Bicycle Diaries.
5:07 Speaker 01 You did, really? Wow.
5:09 Speaker 00 And obviously, I'm a fan, going back years. I was born in 1970, so in a way, I was kind of just the right age to catch Talking Heads in their full flowering. And then probably one of the first albums I bought was Little Creatures. And for my peer group growing up at school,
5:34 Speaker 00 the band represented something special, like pop, but also art. So, "Thank You For Being Here" is where I'm arriving.
5:41 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me on your show, your podcast.
5:45 Speaker 00 Let's talk about the album for a second. It feels, it's the first one in a little while, is it?
5:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's the first one in a little while. I, last one might have been 2017, 2018. That's quite a while ago. I don't, wouldn't normally wait that long, but there was this pandemic that happened. I kept working on, I did a lot of drawings during the pandemic. I made notes for things. I was working on a book, this and things, but I didn't write songs. It was like... Pause button on songs. I didn't, I thought, this is larger than any of the songs I might write, and I don't know how to write about it, and I don't know if I should write about it. So, yes, it took a while.
6:29 Speaker 00 It's a pop album, I would say.
6:31 Speaker 01 I would say so too. Yeah, it's not maybe a typical pop album, but it's, but yeah, it's, I realized when I was writing the songs, some of these are pretty catchy, if that's how you define pop music.
6:47 Speaker 00 Do you, you know, it's a cliche almost, when people describe you and your work, that you straddle the worlds of art and mainstream pop, right? And, and I think that's as valid as well. Well, there was a quote that I read, or maybe I heard it recently, where you said something like, "I like art that doesn't announce itself as art." Might have been on Desert Island Discs.
7:15 Speaker 01 I'll stick with that.
7:16 Speaker 00 Does that, does that kind of make sense to you? And to what extent do you?
7:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, if it doesn't announce itself as art, it's not saying, "Oh, I'm important." If you can do it in a way that's catchy and accessible, maybe a little funny or something, then you can sometimes do things that are kind of unusual, and nobody, no one minds. It doesn't seem like, "Oh, he's being very arty," or he's doing things that are very clever.
7:43 Speaker 00 Are you conscious of commercial pressure in any way?
7:49 Speaker 01 I want people to hear my music. I want people to hear what I, hear about what I do, in most cases. Sometimes I do things that are a little more fringe or whatever, and I realize, no, that's going to have a limited appeal. I, don't fool yourself. But sometimes when I do something like this, that I, I think is pretty accessible, yes, I want it to have. Reach as many people as it can. And, yes, for me, it's more about reach. It's about people hearing it and seeing if they like it or not, rather than cashing in and making lots of money from it. I mean, if that happens, that's nice, too.
8:32 Speaker 01 The commercial side, I've been doing this for a while. I'm kind of aware of what things cost and what I'm likely to make. So if I'm going on a tour, I'll plan what can I do so that I don't lose money at the end? How many band members can I have? There has been this romantic notion that artists shouldn't concern themselves with the business, that their world and their concerns are higher and greater than that. But I feel like, you know, you can do both. In order to get my wonderful art across,
9:15 Speaker 01 I have to be aware of the costs.
9:19 Speaker 00 And I think that speaks to a wider thing that I noticed in prepping for this interview, which is that you have a charmingly practical approach to making art or music, that you don't mystify the process. That, in fact, there's a quote in one of the, I think it's in How Music Works. This might be the, kind of like, the heart of the concept of the book in some ways, where you say, "It's assumed that I write songs because I have something I need to express. On the contrary, it's the music and the lyrics that trigger the emotions within us, rather than the other way around.
9:59 Speaker 00 We don't make our music, it makes us."
10:05 Speaker 01 Does that make any sense?
10:06 Speaker 00 Total. You then say, "Making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener alike."
10:18 Speaker 00 Did that make sense to you?
10:19 Speaker 01 Yes, yes.
10:21 Speaker 00 Because there's a tendency to see like, oh, inspiration's gonna strike. But actually, well, no, maybe you just need to put the bits together.
10:28 Speaker 01 That's what I think. I think you just start doing it, play some chords, start singing a melody. And I find, and I think it happens with other people too, that a certain kind of melody will kind of make you feel a certain way. It triggers, kind of pushes emotional buttons. Add some words to that that maybe do the same thing and you're kind of really getting something. And I find that as far as expressing something that's on your mind, that you want to say or whatever, that happens. But I find that at least for me, I don't sit down at a desk and go,
11:10 Speaker 01 "Okay, here's the plan. I'm gonna write a set of songs that feels like this, that does this." No, I just start doing it and then it sort of reveals itself.
11:24 Speaker 00 As someone who thinks a lot about the technology behind music, or as in, you've done a TED Talk where you talk about the spaces that music is played in and the different ways in which either churches, or concert halls, or pubs, or maybe shabbins have shaped the music that takes place in them. We're in this era now of social media platforms and streaming and TikTok. How aware of you are you of all of that? And to what extent do you think it's been healthy for music?
12:01 Speaker 01 I don't know yet how what seems to me a very intimate listening experience. A lot of people who listen to streaming or these things are listening. It's one-on-one often. They're listening either on their phone with their earbuds in, or headphones, or it's just them listening. It's not a group experience. And I thought, oh, that's really different. How does that affect the music?
12:33 Speaker 01 I think sometimes I've heard music in the last decade or so, where it's allowed the music to be really stripped down. You hear like a few sounds, a few beats. It's not totally fleshed out. It's really stripped down and then there's the voice. I forget the first time I heard that. It might have been one of Lorde's songs or something else. And I just thought, whoa, that's, that's something new. That, the fact that it's so stripped down.
13:07 Speaker 00 And it's odd because actually more so than streaming, with TikTok and now increasingly Instagram and YouTube, there's this default where you get, you just, you scroll through short video clips that often have music that go with them. So the, the side effect is that you get exposed to very, very short sections of songs. It's just this very decontextualized snippet. It's quite odd.
13:33 Speaker 01 I can't confirm this, but I think that with streaming, the fact that, as you said, things are decontextualized. You might have, when you listen to a song, you have the artist's name and maybe the song name and maybe the album it came from, but you don't know anything else.
13:52 Speaker 00 That's right.
13:53 Speaker 01 You can barely see what they look like because the image is the size of your thumb, a thumbnail. And then you don't have any background information. You don't know, there's no social context or dates or anything like that. Which I think the effect is that people mix these older things that they find and they like, that resonate with them, with new stuff. And everything gets mixed, all mixed together. Whereas before, it was kind of like, oh, that's from five years ago. We're not, we're not about that anymore. But now it's all tossed into the same bucket, which I think is pretty nice, actually.
14:37 Speaker 00 It's like a continuous present. Everything is in the present. You know, Sichant is when-
14:43 Speaker 01 You said that as if, yes, it's coming and then- Yes, very ominous tone.
14:52 Speaker 01 Could be.
14:53 Speaker 00 Could be. Technology is vaguely frightening, as well as being exciting and liberating. It seems to tick all those boxes. Would it be very basic? Would you mind indulging me? And I know, because I've done a little bit of research. You're often called upon to recount the same origin story, and it must get a little tedious. But I think it might be helpful. Would you be OK to do that a little bit? Specifically, how Talking Heads came together? The fact that, you know, in this mid seventies. And the extraordinary thing, listening to the older stuff, is how contemporary. I mean, sort of relevant to the point we were just making, how contemporary it sounds. And you're thinking, like, this is the era of kind of the Eagles.
15:36 Speaker 00 Like, this was mid seventies, flares and long hair rock era. Do you know what I mean?
15:42 Speaker 01 I know, I know what you mean.
15:43 Speaker 00 Rod Stewart was kind of bestriding the pop charts, singing I Am Sailing. You know, unapologetic, swaggering, crotch rock. I don't know if that's a phrase. And here you were, you guys were like in tight-fitting, square little shirts and trousers, like, larping as commuters or geeks or something. You know what I mean?
16:07 Speaker 01 I know exactly what you mean.
16:08 Speaker 00 In a way that felt just really strange and kind of brave and avant-garde somewhat, or whatever it was. But how did it all take place?
16:25 Speaker 01 Kind of on a whim. I had moved to New York with ambitions to be an artist that exhibited in galleries and things like that. But I was always playing music, playing other people's songs, occasionally writing some songs, that kind of thing. Didn't know what, exactly what to do. And then my friends from art school arrived in New York as well, Chris and Tina, the drummer and bass player. And they said, let's make a band. If it doesn't work, well, we've given it a try and no big loss. If it doesn't work, if no one likes it. And kind of at the same time, I don't know which came first, we noticed that there was
17:09 Speaker 01 this club around the corner from where we were staying that had recently...
17:18 Speaker 01 Made its stage available to these bands that were coming up on television and the Ramones and Patti Smith and others. And we started going there and realized, oh, this is where we should try and play.
17:34 Speaker 00 CBGB.
17:35 Speaker 01 CBGB.
17:36 Speaker 00 Which I learned that stands for country, bluegrass and blues.
17:40 Speaker 01 Yes. The owner was, had hopes of it being like a country and bluegrass bar, which it could have been, but to his credit, Hilly Crystal, he was the owner, he saw that there was this, there was these other bands that were kind of there, ready to be heard. So he just said, sure, why not? Anything that brings in customers. I don't know if he was about the music, it might have been about selling beers, but fine, fine, fine, fine.
18:18 Speaker 01 In retrospect, it seems to me that all of those acts started as live acts. Now with the technology and laptops and everything else, you can make a record at home on your, on your computer. You can make a record that sounds really good that way. We didn't have that option. But the fact that we had to play live meant that we had, we kind of got immediate feedback from the audience. And sometimes the audience was very small, 10 or 20 people or whatever. But if, if they liked what you were doing, then you thought, okay, we'll keep that song.
19:01 Speaker 01 They didn't like this other song, so maybe we'll put that on the shelf. That was a way of learning what works and feedback and adapting to.
19:16 Speaker 01 What the audience likes to some extent, but still stay, keep with what your vision might be. But yeah, you're also playing to people, which I think is, in some ways, difficult for musicians now, who will sometimes have the order reversed, where they've made a record, and then they have to figure out, how do we present this? Not always, but there are many cases where they haven't gone through that period of testing the songs in front of an audience to see what works. I've gone to a few shows where the artist has made a really wonderful record, but clearly
20:00 Speaker 01 they haven't had any live experience and haven't thought through, what do I do? How do I be? What's my stage person, persona? How am I going to move? Am I going to move at all? Yeah.
20:15 Speaker 00 But you were talking about your vision, and so in this era of like, flares and big, you know, however you want to characterize that mid 70s rock scene, what were you drawing on? How would you characterize what you were doing on stage and how you were thinking about your craft in that way?
20:37 Speaker 01 Well, I think, not to take away from any of the writing or recording of any of those kind of big rock stars of that era, some of those songs are actually quite good. But I think we felt that they weren't addressing our generation, they weren't addressing our concerns. Maybe our concerns were too obscure or odd to be met by anything like that. But I think... We and some of these other musicians and performers decided, okay,
21:17 Speaker 01 we have to make our own music that addresses the concerns of ourselves and people around us, whatever that might be. I know for us, we were drawing on, well, let's see, our record collection in the loft that we ended up living in was a mix of things like, whatever, Roxy Music or Iggy Pop and James Brown and Hamilton Bohannon and OJs. And if you can imagine somehow, conceptually, those things being put together, there you kind of have it. It kind of represented our record collection.
22:00 Speaker 01 And at the same time, I think we had a few rules that we wouldn't do really long indulgent guitar solos. That seemed to be something that we associated with the kind of big rock bands and...
22:17 Speaker 00 Did it feel dishonest or corrupt or...
22:20 Speaker 01 Something like that, which is just, it's not true. None of that's true. I mean, let's... I grew up listening to, say, Kurt Clapton solos and things like that as well. So I thought, no, but we're not, but we're not going to do that. They, he does that, they do that, and they do it really well. But, no, I'm not going to do that. Also felt that, there was an idea that every part that you play, every instrumental part has to be, have integrity of its own, whatever that means. That it's not just supporting something else.
23:01 Speaker 01 It exists on its own so that you could have, for instance, a bass part that was as melodic as the melody maybe, or as melodic as the guitar part. Each part has to kind of have its own identity, its own thing, and then they all fit together.
23:23 Speaker 00 And...
23:25 Speaker 00 The strange lyrics.
23:27 Speaker 01 Oh.
23:29 Speaker 00 And again, I want to bring the audience with us. So picture me aged fourteen, fifteen. And then, I don't know, I was listening, I guess, to Depeche Mode and Human League. And it's sort of alienated synth rock about, but mainly about love and or being lonely. And then here were songs that you'd written just much more cryptic, in a way. They weren't about love, that was for sure. I remember there's one, the book I read, seems to just be about a book that you've read and enjoyed. It's not clear what the book is about.
24:06 Speaker 01 That one that you picked, oddly enough, was intended to be a love song.
24:11 Speaker 00 Really?
24:13 Speaker 01 I thought, oh, the person that I'm addressing is the book.
24:17 Speaker 00 Okay.
24:18 Speaker 01 And obviously, that was not successful because it didn't communicate that to me.
24:24 Speaker 00 I'm very literal sometimes.
24:26 Speaker 01 I'm willing to admit that sometimes things weren't successful. That song also was very much a failed attempt to imitate club music that was around at the time. And in this case, I think it was a group called Casey and the Sunshine Band.
24:43 Speaker 00 Of course.
24:44 Speaker 01 And I thought, oh, I want to write a song like that.
24:47 Speaker 00 That's the way I like it.
24:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, I want to write a song that has that kind of vibe and feel and whatever, but do it in my own way. Didn't quite hit the target in that department. But that, I mean, sometimes by missing the target, you hit something else.
25:05 Speaker 00 Create a new target.
25:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:06 Speaker 00 Well, and you can hear Parliament Funkadelic in some of it, too. And it's, I don't want to play the race card, but it feels like white people expressing a love for funk and very enjoyably so.
25:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, we liked a lot of funk music, a lot of dance music, but then we're kind of mixing it in with art rock and like that. We felt that any kind of funky stuff we do did in that way, we had to do in our own kind of nerdy white person way. We couldn't just like, be like, okay, here's some great funky riffs that we're going to do, which I thought, no, we have to.
25:50 Speaker 01 It can have that kind of feel and make you want to dance, but it has to come from our own kind of nerdy white person place.
26:03 Speaker 01 I felt the same way about my movements on stage. At first, I didn't move at all. And then eventually, I thought, OK, I feel like moving. It makes, the music makes me want to dance, but I can't just adopt the moves that I've seen others do. I have to come up with something for my own, which little by little, I could do that. Not all at once, but little by little.
26:33 Speaker 00 Would you say you, I felt like, it feels like you were quite an awkward person? I don't mean that as a judgment.
26:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
26:42 Speaker 00 But also playing up to that a little bit, steering into the skid somewhat, like if I'm a little awkward, then let's be awkward, kind of.
26:50 Speaker 01 Yes, be what you are.
26:54 Speaker 01 And if you try and be someone you're not, you're doomed to fail there. So just, yeah, that certainly worked for me. It was a kind of healing experience for me in some ways.
27:10 Speaker 00 Talk about that.
27:11 Speaker 01 And I think for some listeners and audience members too, they felt like, oh, they felt like, he's like me.
27:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
27:19 Speaker 01 He's like me, but look, he's doing it.
27:23 Speaker 00 Had you felt somewhat at loggerheads with the world? Because obviously, there's dislocation. There's a sense of like, as I say, awkwardness. So when you say healing, how much healing did you need?
27:39 Speaker 01 At that time, I felt very uncomfortable in, say, social situations, just having more conversations like what we're doing right now. But Oddly enough, I could get on stage and express myself, blurt things out and yelp and do whatever it was. I had no fear of doing whatever on stage. But then I could go back into my shell in the dressing room or whatever. But, look, I'd managed to get myself and my identity and my thoughts and what was going through my head or how I was feeling. I managed to get it out there through music.
28:24 Speaker 01 And I couldn't do that in just in a one to one thing. But here I can do it for whatever long our set was, half an hour, forty five minutes. That's pretty good. I wasn't, it wasn't all trapped inside all the time.
28:43 Speaker 00 Was there, I don't want a trauma farm. Is that the term? Like, how?
28:49 Speaker 01 Trauma farm.
28:50 Speaker 00 You know what I mean?
28:50 Speaker 01 No, I mean, it's a new, that's a new, yeah, I know. That's a new term.
28:54 Speaker 00 I think it probably exists. But you've spoken a little bit about possibly being on the spectrum, which kind of when I read that, I was like, I didn't know that. But they kind of, that sort of adds up, right? There's a part of that.
29:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I didn't know about it either. When was this? Probably that might have been in the nineties or something where a friend, there were articles in magazines and things like that about this idea of spectrum. I mean, there's fairly severe autism where people don't talk at all. It's very, very difficult for them to communicate. And then there's milder and milder until it's on the very mild side. It tends to be people who can be very focused on an idea, maybe have difficulty in social situations and things like that. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
29:50 Speaker 01 I've recognized that. I've never thought of it as a disability, but.
29:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, I can see that's part of me is like that.
30:02 Speaker 00 Maybe, and again, this is a little bit of a cliche, but that sense of a disability having certain advantages or that it's your superpower, as they say, I think applies here, doesn't it? Like, the sense of you being a remove from the world somewhat.
30:18 Speaker 01 I've heard other people say that. I think Greta, the activist. Yeah, activist says, "This is my superpower." And it is a kind of ability, to be able to intensely focus on something, like your writing or the music you're making or whatever it might be.
30:39 Speaker 00 But also that you're curious about the how of things almost as much as the why, that people get caught up on. What was the psychology behind it?
30:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been referred to as an anthropologist from Mars.
30:53 Speaker 00 Right, which is the Oliver Sacks phrase.
30:55 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:56 Speaker 00 You could get a collection of case studies on Mars, in fact, although from Mars. Shame, you're on the wrong planet, either way.
31:05 Speaker 01 Yes, I realize it's an ongoing thing with me, writing songs that ask questions. And why do we do that? Why do I do that? Why do people act like that? What's going on there? How can I understand that? It's kind of trying to make sense of the world, the world of people and everything else. And you can kind of express that curiosity and questioning in songs.
31:39 Speaker 00 On the new album, there's a song which jumped out called, "She Explains Things To Me." I'm going to be super literal. You've noticed I have a habit of taking lyrics literally already.
31:48 Speaker 01 That one's easy to take literally.
31:49 Speaker 00 She explains, it's the lyric, "She explains what is happening to me in the movies we watch." I say, "Why did they do that? Why did they stop? Why did they do that on that TV show?" And I ask myself, "Wow, how does she know?" I went into the melody.
32:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:04 Speaker 00 It's like you have an interpreter, and actually I could relate to that. Like, I've noticed in my relationships, I come out of a movie and, and my other half has always noticed more, but she understands the motivations. I know because he was in love with her, that was why he left. I'm like, but that doesn't make any sense.
32:21 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Yes.
32:23 Speaker 00 Is that what we're talking about?
32:24 Speaker 01 Yes, it's, it does seem to be fairly common. I mean, I played it for people and they go, and, uh, one woman go, oh, yes, my husband or my partner does exactly the same, it's exactly the same thing.
32:39 Speaker 00 Do you think, um, if, if you are neurodivergent, or if there is any little bit of that, having spoken about the, um, the ways in which that can be advantageous, or that, you know, that forces you to maybe navigate things in a different way, that, um, you break things down and figure out processes, or you become curious about different things that then feels fresh and gives you an insight that people can connect with, but I could imagine at times it might be, make things difficult as well, especially if you struggle at times to read emotions, or if there's parts of life that feel, um, less intelligible. I mean, do you think in any ways it's been a challenge for you?
33:21 Speaker 01 Oh, occasionally, yes, which is also addressed in that song, um, where I've had the experience where someone will say, "Well, I, I clearly said no." And then I'll kind of replay the conversation and, and the word "no" was not there, but they expected their expressions, or their facial expression, or the, the nuances of what they were saying to be read and clearly interpreted as a no. This is not me trying to do something inappropriate.
33:59 Speaker 00 Thank you for that clarification.
34:01 Speaker 01 I wasn't able to read that. That said, I'm a lot better at that now than I was in the past. And I'm a lot more comfortable with people now than I was in the past. So it changes. I'll give music credit for that, too. Making music, working with other people on music, you know, playing together with musicians on stage, it becomes this very ecstatic, transcendent kind of social thing. And I thought, OK, that's, over the years, that time passes and, yeah, you kind of change after a bit.
35:10 Speaker 00 Dialing back for a second. So, correct me if I'm wrong, the second song you ever wrote was Psycho Killer. Could that be right?
35:18 Speaker 01 That could be right, yes.
35:20 Speaker 00 It was a very early one, in other words.
35:22 Speaker 01 It was very early. It was a sort of a test to see, can I write a song?
35:29 Speaker 00 At all?
35:30 Speaker 01 At all. And so I just had an idea, oh, let me write a song that's as if Alice Cooper and Randy Newman wrote a song together.
35:41 Speaker 00 Right, that's an interesting mashup.
35:43 Speaker 01 Yes. Let's see what that would sound like.
35:48 Speaker 00 Randy Newman's kind of wry and faintly satirical, would you say?
35:53 Speaker 01 Yes, and he writes from inside the character.
35:57 Speaker 00 And Alice Cooper is, what, kind of goth horror rock?
36:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I thought, oh, let's pick that kind of nasty subject matter, but then write it from inside, something like that, anyway. And...
36:13 Speaker 01 I was in a band with some of the drummer from Talking Heads in art school. And we started doing that song and people seemed to like it. So I started writing more songs. But after that, everything I wrote was in some ways more personal. It wasn't so much an exercise of can I write a song? Now I thought, oh, I can write a song. But now I'm free to write in my own way instead of this trying to do this mashup of other people's things.
36:49 Speaker 00 Extraordinary how it connected with people and.
36:52 Speaker 01 Why is that?
36:53 Speaker 00 You tell me.
36:54 Speaker 01 I don't know. Maybe it's the tune, maybe.
36:59 Speaker 00 It's your most listened, of all, it's 610 million on Spotify. Whatever that means, like it's the most streamed by someplace. The second one is This Must Be The Place, Naive Melody, 339 million.
37:14 Speaker 01 Yes, one is this kind of.
37:16 Speaker 00 Frightening amount of data, I think.
37:18 Speaker 01 A song about a murderer. And then there's this really sweet love song.
37:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, which got half as many listens.
37:27 Speaker 00 I think people enjoy tension, don't they?
37:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, they enjoy tension. There's probably some lines in the in the song that say things that people wish they could say.
37:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
37:38 Speaker 01 Or that they've they've said to themselves, but they would never say out loud.
37:43 Speaker 00 It's a, and it's a great song. Yeah, maybe that maybe that's what it is. Once in a Lifetime is third, which was the first one. I remember seeing that on Top of the Pops. Did you, around this era, when, sorry, when the first album came out, you went to the UK at a certain point. Did you break here first or you were just here to see what happened?
38:04 Speaker 01 Well, obviously, we'd been playing in clubs in New York and we could play in clubs in. I think we maybe had a gig in Boston and some other places where you could drive within a few hours, so within a radius. And then, yes, the next audience we found was in UK. And I thought, yes, it's a bit of a ways to go to play in a club, but it was.
38:34 Speaker 00 You didn't have a huge following here.
38:37 Speaker 01 No, not at all.
38:38 Speaker 00 The album had sold some copies.
38:40 Speaker 01 A little bit, a little bit, but I think there was a lot of curiosity. There was curiosity like, oh, there's this new thing coming out of New York. Let's see what this is. So we played at a little club in Covent Garden. And I think maybe on the same trip, we were a support act for the Ramones at the Roundhouse. They'd been around a little bit longer than us. And it's kind of a tribute to that moment that an audience, a curious audience would be interested in us and the Ramones. Musically worlds apart, but.
39:19 Speaker 00 Right, they're sort of primitive, not in a bad sense, but quite basic chord changes, kind of guitar.
39:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, but.
39:29 Speaker 00 All of guitar sound.
39:31 Speaker 01 An audience could go, oh, we like, we like both bands.
39:33 Speaker 00 Yeah. What do you recall? Did you rub shoulders, elbows, whichever part of the body, with the UK bands at that time? I think you went and saw The Clash.
39:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, went to see The Clash somewhere. It might have been Brighton, possibly, something like that. It was, I think it was out of town.
39:54 Speaker 00 You didn't think that much of it.
39:56 Speaker 01 Oh, no, I enjoyed it.
39:58 Speaker 00 Were you aware of the Sex Pistols?
40:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they had just kind of come out at the time, maybe. I'm not sure of the whole timeline. But, yeah, I became aware that the music scene here in UK was more kind of consciously political and rebellious and.
40:26 Speaker 00 Angry.
40:27 Speaker 01 Angry and all that, and was. And it's reflected in the album covers and their stage presence and everything, so.
40:36 Speaker 00 Yes.
40:38 Speaker 01 I remember going to Virgin Records and we weren't signed to Virgin Records, but everyone was kind of friendly. And sitting, I don't think he was there, maybe sitting in Richard Branson's office and watching a bunch of videos of Sex Pistols performances. And I thought, this is, I mean, they're really good songs, but I also thought this is some of the funniest performances I've ever seen.
41:09 Speaker 00 What did you find funny about it?
41:12 Speaker 01 It was, it was kind of Keystone Cups. It was really kind of, here you might say shambolic or something like that. But the songs were really good.
41:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:25 Speaker 01 So I thought, oh, this is really a kind of wonderfully entertaining combination.
41:32 Speaker 00 That's interesting.
41:33 Speaker 01 Maybe not the way it was being perceived here at the time.
41:36 Speaker 00 Maybe not intended, but maybe, you know, Malcolm McLaren probably had a good sense of humor.
41:41 Speaker 01 I would imagine, yes.
41:43 Speaker 00 We should anemabert on the fact that you have a Scottish heritage, had been born in Scotland. And at that time, I think, had a British passport and not an American one, right?
41:55 Speaker 01 That is true.
41:56 Speaker 00 And so, just dialing back for a second.
42:01 Speaker 00 Your parents had emigrated, right, from Don Barton, which is what.
42:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, from Glasgow, yes. I was born in Barton, but they lived in Glasgow, really.
42:11 Speaker 00 And you'd come over quite a bit, what, every couple of years?
42:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, every couple of years, they'd come over because all their family was there. Their parents, sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, everyone was around Glasgow. So they'd come over and bring me.
42:31 Speaker 01 Boy, Glasgow was black in those days.
42:34 Speaker 00 Was it?
42:35 Speaker 01 Just covered in soot.
42:37 Speaker 00 How old were you?
42:37 Speaker 01 I started to associate the smell of coal fires with family, with grandma and granddad and all that. So it became this kind of ode to family.
42:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. How old were you when you left?
42:56 Speaker 01 Oh, really young, two. I was two when I left Scotland and then went to Canada for some years. And following work, there was very little work in Scotland at that point.
43:11 Speaker 00 Your dad was an electrical engineer?
43:13 Speaker 01 That's, that's correct.
43:16 Speaker 00 And what did your mum do?
43:17 Speaker 01 She, I think, had worked in Glasgow, had worked in the post office. And later on, when she got to the States, she got a degree, going to night school, got a degree and started teaching, teaching kids in, in school.
43:36 Speaker 00 So that growing up, there was this sort of somewhat of a sense of being a little bit apart from your peers and you, you basically at a certain point, you arrive in Baltimore, right? In the outskirts of Baltimore.
43:49 Speaker 01 The, the other kids couldn't understand a word my parents were saying. Obviously, at that age, I want to fit in. So I lost my accent really quickly, but my parents didn't.
44:05 Speaker 01 I remember the other kids would say, are they speaking English? And then my mother would say, we're speaking proper English.
44:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's the right answer. Queen's English. In the notes, it said that your dad once fixed a submarine with a coat hanger. Can that be true?
44:22 Speaker 01 It could be, it could be. He didn't go into, he didn't go into details, but that's the sort of thing he would do if something needed fixed, fixing around the house. Sometimes it would be, yeah, with a coat hanger or duct tape or wedge a bit of whatever in there and that'll hold for a while.
44:42 Speaker 00 That'll do it.
44:43 Speaker 01 And that'll hold for a while. And I thought, yeah, submarine, yeah.
44:47 Speaker 00 Did they, did they appreciate your musical efforts? And then, once you became successful, what sense did they make of all of that?
44:55 Speaker 01 As far as I could tell, they appreciated my focus and passion for what I was doing, whether it was my little drawings or the music I was doing. It wasn't certainly not to their taste. Occasionally, they would say, David, David, David, that's not a rhyme. Those words right there.
45:19 Speaker 00 Not a full rhyme.
45:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I think they really appreciated that I was fully committed to doing this. And to their credit, they didn't say, oh, you've had your fun, now get a real job.
45:33 Speaker 00 And then, but then when you made hit the big time, would they come to shows?
45:37 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
45:38 Speaker 00 And be grooving around?
45:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, they'd see all this, these, all the audience having a great time and they were, I think, made them very proud. Even if they still didn't quite.
45:48 Speaker 00 Didn't quite get it.
45:49 Speaker 01 Get what, why that was, but they could see that we'd connected with an audience. So it was like, oh, look, it actually did pay off eventually.
46:04 Speaker 00 How, when was the last time you played with Talking Heads?
46:09 Speaker 01 I think when we got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
46:14 Speaker 00 Which was 2002, something like that.
46:15 Speaker 01 Probably something like that.
46:17 Speaker 00 And we can pass over this if you prefer, but it's part of Talking Heads lore that there was friction within the band and that you were difficult to work with at times.
46:29 Speaker 01 I won't deny that. I think, as I said, my, my social skills were limited. But if, if I had a kind of artistic vision, like the Stop Making Sense show, that tour, that performance, I'd say, okay, here's what I think we should do. And we're all going to wear gray and we're all do da, da, da, da. I got to be a little bossy, a little bit of a boss, yeah, bossy pants. It was kind of, I knew what I wanted and I thought, I didn't know how to. Get it in a kind of nice cooperative way.
47:14 Speaker 01 It was more like, okay, it has to be this, which is often true of musicians and bands. When they're younger, they have an idea of what it has to be. And so it'll be like, no, the drum sound has to be like this. And that that means the world. It's actually not as important as all that. But when you're that age, it can be everything. Yes, so I know that I was not always the most pleasant person to work with.
47:47 Speaker 00 It's bringing to mind the old Keith Richards expression about Mick Jagger. I think he's like, that's actually, that's Mick Jagger impression. Keith Richards, what does he sound like? I can't do it. Anyway, he'd say he's got LSD. Do you remember this one?
48:00 Speaker 01 No, no.
48:01 Speaker 00 What's that? It's a lead singer disease.
48:06 Speaker 00 And there was this sort of tension between, because as a consumer, you think, well, the guy in front is singing and he's got the best lights. And he or she is obviously the most important one. And then you find out, oh, actually, you know, Roger Daltrey didn't write the songs. Pete Townsend did, right? And maybe it's more of a cooperative than you might think.
48:27 Speaker 01 Exactly.
48:27 Speaker 00 So with respect to Talking Heads, sometimes I hear it described as your band, you know, David Byrne and The Talking Heads. Or sometimes it's Talking Heads, like a band which is a kind of collection of equals, right? Which was it, do you think?
48:47 Speaker 01 Well, a bit of both. I think sometimes, as I said, sometimes I had a had an idea stuck in my head about this is what we're going to do. And I would kind of push for it. But it would have never worked if it wasn't a great band.
49:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
49:05 Speaker 01 If we didn't play incredibly well together.
49:09 Speaker 00 And the songwriting duties were shared or somewhat.
49:12 Speaker 01 Sometimes, sometimes they were shared, sometimes not. Yeah, really depended. Sometimes we would, there were records where we kind of jammed and then I would write words and a tune on top of some kind of improvisation that we'd come up with.
49:32 Speaker 00 And now, all these years on, are the four of you in a good place, would you say?
49:38 Speaker 01 Pretty good, yes. The Stop Making Sense film came out a year or two ago.
49:45 Speaker 00 They did a remaster.
49:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, remaster.
49:48 Speaker 00 Which means what, they cleaned it up and cleaned up the sound?
49:50 Speaker 01 They found the original negative in Kansas and managed to, yeah, have it looking better than it ever did. So, yeah, did all that and low and behold, there was an audience, not just the original fans, but a whole younger generation that was discovering this stuff, which was really kind of wonderful.
50:16 Speaker 00 It's been described as one of, or maybe the greatest concert films of all time. And again, I remember when it came out and there's a lot that could be said about it, the staging. It was directed by Jonathan Demme, who also directed Silence of the Lambs, speaking of psycho killers. Do you want to explain what it was about the staging that made it felt special and what the kind of the impulse was behind it?
50:41 Speaker 01 Well, one part of the staging was that I wanted to reveal how the music was put together and let the audience in on that, like pulling back the curtain in a way. So we'd start with just me and then add Tina playing bass and then add some singers and then add this and the, one by one, adding the things. So as each person came in, you heard what they were adding to the sound, until the whole thing was assembled and then, boom, and then we're off to the races. So I thought that was one part of it. And I think the other part was in the...
51:24 Speaker 01 Some of the staging and lighting and movement and things, there was a movement that was emerged out of improvisations and there was, the lighting was almost entirely what would be referred to as white light, but white light from different instruments, different lighting sources. So it might be fluorescent light, or it might be incandescent. And each one has a different quality. To the eye, after you've become accustomed to it, it all seems white. But it actually is very different. Of course, fluorescent light is very, you know, on the blue-green side of things, but our eye kind of, and brain
52:06 Speaker 01 kind of filters that out and it looks like it's just a cold office, office light. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to do the typical rock band things with colored flashing lights, flashing in time to the song, or kind of washing us all in all these colors. Let's keep it, again, in a way that reveals rather than obscures. So that was a lot of it. And I think that whole, all those things gave it a kind of narrative arc, in a way, which, at least then, that was kind of rare for a concert. Concerts were, you play one
52:51 Speaker 01 song after another, sprinkle the hits in there and you're done. So this was something where you actually go on a kind of journey. And you start in one place and you end somewhere very different. So I think that may have been the strength of that and what Jonathan captured as well.
53:11 Speaker 00 It's putting me in mind of, you, because you made that film, you also made a fictional feature film, which has a musical element as well, True Stories, right?
53:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:24 Speaker 00 I remember being aware of it when it came out, but I didn't see it. So I watched it in preparation for this. And it's, it's a really interesting piece of work. The tone in particular, the way it's pitched, where it's, it's about a middle American town in Texas. With kind of quirky stories of different people who happened to live there. There's a main character played by John Goodman, a young John Goodman. And what's striking is it's, you know, because it came out at a time when I suppose there was things to like about America and things to be less keen on, whether it was the politics or aspects of the culture that might have seemed small minded. I mean, that was kind of a long summation, but I guess I'm curious about how you come
54:06 Speaker 00 to make it, but also in general, this relationship that you have with America, certainly at that time that was ambivalent, but was neither obviously critical, but nor was it fully comfortable?
54:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'll take that. It started off as a series of images. I was kind of, I loved a lot of Fellini movies and other films like that. And I thought, oh, I can start with kind of images of America from a slightly surreal point of view. How kind of odd it can look when you just really just look at it in a straight ahead way. I thought, okay, now we need a story. And I remember reading stories about these people who had curious lifestyles or done odd things in their lives in kind of tabloid newspapers in the supermarket.
55:03 Speaker 01 I thought, oh, those will be the people who live in the town. So then I started doing some location hunting and things like that.
55:11 Speaker 00 Stories like what from the Weekly World News or National
55:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, Weekly World News and
55:15 Speaker 00 Woman doesn't leave her bed for 30 years.
55:18 Speaker 01 Exactly. Woman doesn't leave her bed for 30 years. She has her food brought in and everything. A man advertises for a wife.
55:27 Speaker 00 There was another one, coupled and hasn't spoken.
55:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, a couple that lives together, but hasn't spoken directly to one another.
55:32 Speaker 00 Was that a real story?
55:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, those were all real stories. Well, I can't verify for that they're all true, but they were presented as if they were true, hence the title of the movie. And so I thought, oh, these will be the people that have found very quirky and creative ways to make a life that kind of works for them.
55:59 Speaker 01 Anyway, so I spent a lot of time kind of looking around in Texas for where where we would shoot these different things and found that a lot of people in Texas are quite eccentric and they're proud of their eccentricities. So when the film came out, quite a number of critics and viewers thought I was, you know, making fun of these people. But the people in Texas who saw it thought, no, that's us. We're proud of our kind of individuality and the strange things that we do.
56:39 Speaker 00 What do you think your attitude is? Like, I feel like I'm asking, how did you do the trick? You know, magician, but in a sense, like, if you were to show your hand, because I couldn't tell sometimes, does he love these people? Does he feel a little bit of metropolitan disdain? Because you came from a Manhattan art scene, so they obviously weren't your tribe, and I couldn't quite tell where you were landing.
57:05 Speaker 01 I think that confused a lot of people. People assumed that because I was from the kind of Manhattan art scene, as you say, that I was looking down at these people. I didn't feel that way. I felt they were just as creative in their own way as any of the people I was kind of normally associated with. I felt like I was celebrating their creativity and originality. I was obviously meant to be amusing as well. So I didn't feel that way, but I knew, I became aware relatively quickly that people assumed that because I was part of this arty scene, that I couldn't be truly sympathetic with these people.
57:46 Speaker 00 What do you feel, you know, about someone who...
57:50 Speaker 00 In some ways, you've been a student of America and American culture. Do you, it's such a big, grand question, but to what extent do you feel comfortable in America? You've got quite a political outlook at times. I remember it's striking, reading something you wrote when the first Gulf War was going on, and you said, this would have been 2004, I'm guessing, "It made me feel like I didn't know my country and its people, or even my own friends anymore. I felt lost and adrift in my home. I felt angry and fucked up every day."
58:26 Speaker 01 That was when the United States invaded Iraq.
58:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
58:31 Speaker 01 With basically no cause.
58:35 Speaker 00 But I'm curious, so now, in a weird way, don't you feel even more that way now? I mean, as we speak, the National Guard has been unleashed in Los Angeles.
58:45 Speaker 01 And probably in other cities, but today.
58:47 Speaker 00 Which bears some of the hallmarks of a kind of coup d'etat in some respects, right? And it feels like that's been going on for a few years now.
58:57 Speaker 01 Exactly. The process that I think resulted in this is long going. I think it began in the 80s, maybe, maybe even before, but definitely in the 80s, where there was a shift in laws and financial situations, in laws governing finance, laws governing voting, all kinds of things that caused, say, a good part of the country, their wages and jobs to be stagnant. They maybe went up a little bit, but for the most part, they were kind of stagnant, whereas, and then kind of the rich just got richer and richer and richer.
59:39 Speaker 00 Reagan-Bush kind of era.
59:41 Speaker 01 Reagan-Bush, but it continued through Clinton and Obama. They didn't stop it, they just continued the same policies.
59:47 Speaker 00 Baster verges of incomes.
59:49 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. I mean, you have to remember, it was Clinton who was involved in repealing a lot of the laws that were regulating finance. Those kinds of things, you can go, well, we'll see what that did. Not too long after that, you have like 2008 and you have the whole finance collapse of almost the whole system and the government bailing out the banks, but not the people who lost their homes. And so you have all that and people are gonna be really angry, really feel like we don't trust the government, look what they've done to us. So I get that.
1:00:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I'm kind of torn because I completely empathize with where those feelings are coming from, but I feel like there's been an effort to kind of prey on those.
1:00:39 Speaker 00 Have you met Trump?
1:00:43 Speaker 01 No, no.
1:00:45 Speaker 00 I feel like he's copying your big suit.
1:00:52 Speaker 00 Have you noticed how big his suit is?
1:00:56 Speaker 01 It is pretty big. It's long, the tie is everybody knows.
1:00:59 Speaker 00 Do you know about the tie?
1:01:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I thought he believes it has a slimming effect to have this long tie.
1:01:05 Speaker 00 And also a very long suit jacket as well.
1:01:08 Speaker 01 Yes, it's very kind of presentational. So like it's TV, it's a show.
1:01:13 Speaker 00 He has a sense of theatrics. Do you see him as a showman?
1:01:17 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:01:18 Speaker 00 Because his live events are like live shows. And, you know, you've spoken over the years about your adoption of preacherly cadences or a kind of call and response. I guess gospel influenced preacherly delivery famously on Once in a Lifetime where you said you repeated phrase, "You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile." Apologies for maybe, maybe you won't appreciate the comparison, but I think he's doing something similar at his live events and his ability to command the crowd. Like, so that power clearly resonates with people.
1:02:03 Speaker 01 Yeah. I haven't been to one of his rallies either, but I gather it's kind of a riveting performance, even though when you literally...
1:02:15 Speaker 01 Translate what he's saying sometimes is complete gibberish.
1:02:21 Speaker 00 Yes, I feel like you appreciate gibberish.
1:02:24 Speaker 01 Yes, yes, I'm aware that how things are said is as important as what's being said.
1:02:32 Speaker 00 You know, I think we're doing great. How's your energy? Are you okay?
1:02:34 Speaker 01 I'm okay.
1:02:35 Speaker 00 Have I dragged you into political terrain? How comfortable are you there?
1:02:38 Speaker 01 I'm okay, I'm okay. I mean, I have a online magazine, Reasons to be Cheerful, and we try and find people who've found solutions to things. So we're not just looking for cheery, it's called cheerful, but we're not just looking for cheery stories of, oh, here's, you know, someone who rescued a dog out of a tree.
1:02:57 Speaker 00 Which would be good, though, by the way.
1:02:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, if a dog could get up there.
1:03:03 Speaker 01 And I think a lot of the music I do is meant to be a kind of, or maybe not meant to be, but it acts as a kind of counterforce or counterbalance, acts as a kind of resistance to a lot of the partisanship and anger that's out there.
1:03:25 Speaker 00 Having sort of talked a little bit about Trump and then the other kind of elephant in the room of the culture, I guess, is the idea that, oh, well, we're sort of, it's a bit passe now, but this idea of cancel culture, which hit movies. I mean, actually, that suggests I endorse that term, which I don't know if I necessarily do. But is that on your radar at all? Do you have a view on any of that?
1:03:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it's nuanced. If someone has actually done kind of not so good things kind of recently and had tried to kind of hide them, then I thought, oh, it's fine to call that out. Sometimes people are.
1:04:17 Speaker 01 Cancelled or, you know, present or non grata. If they've done something way in the past, twenty, thirty years ago. I feel like, hmm, human beings can change. We can, we can learn from our mistakes. We do make mistakes. In that case, let's look at what, what they've done since then. If they made a mistake, and it's not this really, really horrible thing, then let's see if they've kind of made amends in how they've behaved since then. Because maybe, maybe that was just a mistake. And the thing with the internet is you can dredge up the past on everybody
1:05:01 Speaker 01 and embarrass almost anybody by something they've done in the past.
1:05:06 Speaker 00 Yes, although it kind of seems to stop around two thousand or two thousand and five. Like, anything pre-digital media is sort of, then you have to actually go into the stacks or a newspaper.
1:05:17 Speaker 01 It's a bit, yeah, a bit more work.
1:05:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:05:21 Speaker 01 I, some years ago, I realized that this promotional video that I did for Stop Making Sense, when it first came out in the mid eighties, that I did this little, funny little thing where I interviewed myself as all these different characters. A woman, an old man, a black man, a whole number of characters. And I realized, oh, God, look, I'm in blackface.
1:05:55 Speaker 00 For real?
1:05:56 Speaker 01 For real. Not doing, it was not done as a parody or caricature or anything like that. But that was one of the characters. And I realized, oh, God. I would never do that now. That was a long time ago.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 This is a clip that's available online. It's probably on YouTube. It's probably available on other places as well. So I thought, this is not hidden. This is not something that's on some obscure piece of videotape or whatever. It's right there. So I said, OK. And I made an announcement and said, I did this. Here it is. I did this. I would never do this now, but here it is.
1:06:44 Speaker 00 You self canceled.
1:06:45 Speaker 01 I self canceled. And I called up Spike Lee and said, you know, I did this. I'm just want you to want you to know that I'm going to announce that I did this. And he said, David, I know you. People know you. Don't worry about it. We know, we know. But at the same time, there were a few organizations that did cancel me. They said, OK, we
1:07:12 Speaker 00 Really?
1:07:13 Speaker 01 You have a speaking engagement. We can't have you talk.
1:07:16 Speaker 00 For real?
1:07:17 Speaker 01 Yeah. That's it. That was a few years ago. That was the tenor of the times that anything that might appear tainted, a person that might appear tainted, well, you have to like distance yourself from that.
1:07:32 Speaker 01 There was a little tinge of like the Red Guards.
1:07:38 Speaker 01 Ah, culturally incorrect.
1:07:42 Speaker 01 Off to the farm for you. There was a bit of that. And it was off like the Red Guards. It was often kind of younger people who were the arbiters of who is going to get sent to the work farm.
1:07:57 Speaker 01 I think that's receded a lot. But there are, yeah.
1:08:03 Speaker 01 People have made mistakes. But there's also people who don't regret what they did and have continued to do things like that, which should be called out.
1:08:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's complicated, isn't it?
1:08:16 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:08:17 Speaker 00 Uh, I think sometimes people get quote-unquote cancelled and people think, "Well, all that guy did is this." And then you realise, actually, like an iceberg, under the surface, there's a kind of community of people who had a horrific experience with this person. And that you're just seeing a small part of it. And that the reason there's a swarm, it's like Spike Lee spoke up for you, but in a situation where you had not been a stand-up guy, then he wouldn't have, and other people wouldn't have. And people are like, you know, David Burns had it coming for a while, you know?
1:08:49 Speaker 01 Absolutely, and justifiably so, yeah.
1:08:54 Speaker 00 I think you got away with it. I think you walked that line. I don't...
1:09:00 Speaker 01 Saying "got away with it" doesn't sound that good.
1:09:06 Speaker 00 Well, when we, although white guys pontificate,
1:09:11 Speaker 00 we should be on our manners.
1:09:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, hey, absolutely.
1:09:14 Speaker 00 Know what I mean?
1:09:15 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:09:15 Speaker 00 Well, thank you for coming by, David.
1:09:17 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:09:17 Speaker 00 It's a thrill for me, like, the 15-year-old me, well, actually, and the 25 and the 35 and the 45-year-old.
1:09:24 Speaker 00 They're all super excited. And thanks for indulging my slightly chaotic romp through your catalogue and your life.
1:09:32 Speaker 01 Thank you. Thank you for having me on your show.
1:09:46 Speaker 00 Welcome back. And thank you to David for joining me. He is, I think we can say, iconic.
1:09:54 Speaker 00 He's a brilliant musician and a maker of images,
1:09:58 Speaker 00 a stager of extravaganzas, and by his own admission, a bit of a bossy pants, which is a nice phrase.
1:10:09 Speaker 00 Nice that you can own that. Maybe that was his way of doing some accountability because
1:10:17 Speaker 00 his bandmates have made some unguarded remarks in other forums about their feelings. "You called Trump obese?" says Millie. "Yes, I did." "Well, I don't think I called him it. I think I made a clinical observation
1:10:33 Speaker 00 because that implies judgment."
1:10:37 Speaker 00 Millie's done some research. She says that in his February 2019 annual physical, Trump, who is six feet three, is he? "Tipped the scales at 243 pounds. That gave him a BMI of 30.4, just over the edge of obesity. But in the 2025 report, this is a lot of information. The president weighs 224 pounds and stands six feet 2.5 inches." Where are we going? "Under the BMI calculator, he would currently be categorized overweight, but not obese. Maybe an apology is in order," says Millie facetiously.
1:11:16 Speaker 00 But the general point, I think, still stands. He said if you wear a tie, it has a slimming effect. And that, I think, came courtesy of Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey. I think he revealed that piece of information. "I'm trying to, I want to do better with my singing. I have a gold record and I have a record label."
1:11:37 Speaker 00 What would you say was their biggest hit?
1:11:39 Speaker 01 Psycho Killer, surely.
1:11:41 Speaker 00 Millie says Psycho Killer. "Kiss, kiss, say..." Oh, Jesus. No, that's going nowhere.
1:11:48 Speaker 00 "Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa. I work better in falsetto. Fa, fa, fa. It doesn't work."
1:11:54 Speaker 01 What are the high ones?
1:11:54 Speaker 00 "Run, run, run, run. Doesn't work. My range. It doesn't work in my range." "It's interesting that he's never embraced rap, has he? You may find yourself, it's kind of rap, living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself, it's not really singing, living in a beautiful house." I'm not feeling, I'm not feeling, I can't, I'm not channeling it. I can't dial it in.
1:12:19 Speaker 01 Burning Down the House?
1:12:21 Speaker 00 Burning Down the House was a good one.
1:12:26 Speaker 00 No, it's not happening there. What was that? My good friend Adam Buxton, host of the Adam Buxton podcast, has also done an interview with David Byrne, did it around the same time I did mine. That may be, I think we've interviewed the same person before, but never in such a short space of time. Interesting to compare them, maybe? Fun homework, fun little assignment. That's about it. Apart from the credits, psycho killer, qu'est-ce-qu'on peut dire? The producer was Millie Chu. She's not the psycho killer. The assistant producer was, burning down the house, Artemis Irvin. The production manager was, I'm having, I've run out of, you may find yourself,
1:13:11 Speaker 00 Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by, living in a shotgun shack, Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was, I'm gonna stop doing it now, Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse production for, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa better, Spotify. It's bespoke.
Previous S6 EP4: Malala Yousafzai discusses misrepresentations of Islam, the Taliban's ‘gender apartheid’, and her views on marriage Next S6 EP6: Florence Pugh discusses intimacy coordinators, jumping off buildings and getting into character Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated