David Byrne Quotes

Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren't hearing an expression of a solitary individual's pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically universal? Dan eliminating some portion of the authorial voice make a piece of music more accessible and the singer more empathetic? ~ David Byrne

Another Elvis will not come along. He got wasted, but it's alright. ~ David Byrne

We do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that - the art of it - is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. That's part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And it's a joy to sing, like the birds do. ~ David Byrne

All that interconnectedness that facilitated much of the explosion of megawealth over the last decade also facilitated the interpenetration of everything, so no one or no building is truly isolated and 'safe' anymore. Safety is in getting along. (p.261) ~ David Byrne

People will do odd things if you give them money ... ~ David Byrne

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I'm someone else. ~ David Byrne

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove. ~ David Byrne

Language as a Prison

The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.

One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity - but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names - who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadmi ~ David Byrne

I don't care how impossible it seems. ~ David Byrne

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good. ~ David Byrne

I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster. ~ David Byrne

People look ridiculous when they?re in ecstasy ... ~ David Byrne

I had grown up on Folkway's Nonesuch field recordings and the stuff Lomax had done for the Library of Congress, but the production values on the Ocora releases were on a whole other level. Eno and I realized that music from elsewhere didn't need to sound distant, scratchy, or 'primitive.' These recordings were as well produced as any contemporary recordings in any genre. You were made to feel, for example, that this music wasn't a ghostly remnant form some lost culture, soon to be relegated to the almost forgotten past. It was vital, and it was happening right now. To us there was strange beauty there, deep passion, and the compositions often operated by rules and structures that were radically different from what we were used to. As a result, our limited ideas of what constituted music were exploded forever. These recordings opened up myriad ways that music could be made and organized. There were many musical universes out there, and we had been blinkered by confining ourselves to only one. ~ David Byrne

Rich people will travel great distances to look at poor people ... ~ David Byrne

You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly. ~ David Byrne

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.' ~ David Byrne

I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve. ~ David Byrne

...I would hope very much that the converse of that myth isn't true - that one does not have to be nuts to be creative. ~ David Byrne

Temple and cathedral are attractive because they spatially and acoustically recreate the cave, where early humans first expressed their spiritual yearnings. ~ David Byrne

There's a good chance that you might be inspired by ideas that originate outside of yourself. ~ David Byrne

I resent the implication that I'm less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works. ~ David Byrne

Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times? ~ David Byrne

We don't make music - it makes us. ~ David Byrne

In acoustic culture, the world, like sound, is all around you, and comes at you from all directions at once. It is multilayered and nonhierarchical; it has no center or focal point. ~ David Byrne

I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do. ~ David Byrne

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas. ~ David Byrne

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence. ~ David Byrne

I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility. ~ David Byrne

Music, I would argue, is a part of what makes us human. ~ David Byrne

We're on a road to nowhere, come on inside. Takin' that ride to nowhere, we'll take that ride. I'm feelin' okay this mornin', and you know, we're on the road to paradise, here we go, here we go. ~ David Byrne

Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in architecturally similar monasteries and cloisters. ~ David Byrne

It seemed as if Muzak had sucked the soul out of the songs, but in fact they had created something entirely new, something close to what Satie imagined: furniture music, music that was clearly a useful and (to their subscribers) functional part of the environment, there to induce calm and tranquility in their shops and offices. Why is it that Satie's compositions, Brian Eno's ambient music, or the minimal spaced-out ~ David Byrne

Some things, I feel like no, I never could have the depth of experience of their own music and culture - but sometimes if I'm collaborating with somebody, they're interested in me bringing my own stuff into their thing, and sometimes that works. ~ David Byrne

With the advent of recorded music in 1878, the nature of the places in which music was heard changed. ~ David Byrne

If photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless. ~ David Byrne

Private listening really took off in 1979, with the popularity of the Walkman portable cassette player. Listening to music on a Walkman is a variation of the "sitting very still in a concert hall" experience (there are no acoustic distractions), combined with the virtual space (achieved by adding reverb and echo to the vocals and instruments) that studio recording allows. With headphones on, you can hear and appreciate extreme detail and subtlety, and the lack of uncontrollable reverb inherent in hearing music in a live room means that rhythmic material survives beautifully and completely intact; it doesn't get blurred or turned into sonic mush as it often does in a concert hall. You, and only you, the audience of one, can hear a million tiny details, even with the compression that MP3 technology adds to recordings. You can hear the singer's breath intake, their fingers on a guitar string. That said, extreme and sudden dynamic changes can be painful on a personal music player. As ~ David Byrne

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique. ~ David Byrne

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior. ~ David Byrne

What's been missing from digital music sales has been the possibility of added depth. In a printed package one can only include so many images and so much text - for example - but digitally it's wide open. For the most part at the moment we get less information for slightly less money - though we could be getting a lot more. ~ David Byrne

There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told. ~ David Byrne

Something about music urges us to engage with its larger context, beyond the piece of plastic it came on-it seems to be part of our genetic makeup that we can be so deeply moved by this art form. Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can't conceive of it being an isolated thing. ~ David Byrne

The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part. ~ David Byrne

According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooke
that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives
were so hard that they didn't really know what happiness was anyway. ~ David Byrne

I'm guarded; I don't talk much. ~ David Byrne

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there. ~ David Byrne

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously. ~ David Byrne

Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms. ~ David Byrne

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down. ~ David Byrne

Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily. ~ David Byrne

I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer. ~ David Byrne

Music as social glue, as a self-empowering change agent, is maybe more profound than how perfectly a specific song is composed or how immaculately tight a band is. ~ David Byrne

I think sometimes I get carried away, like I'm speaking to an imaginary audience rather than just trying to figure something out for myself. Ideally, I try to balance that - that I'm asking these questions of myself, how does this work, why does this happen, what's going on here. ~ David Byrne

When you fall in love, you feel like a missing piece of a puzzle that's been found. ~ David Byrne

Performers try harder. ~ David Byrne

I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well
they certainly are
but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed
there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases. ~ David Byrne

I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing. ~ David Byrne

I was a student in London in the '70s, so CBGB really wasn't on my radar at all. Obviously, I was aware of the emergence of the Police in England and as an art student, I was very aware of David Byrne, but I suppose my musical taste at that time certainly didn't stretch towards the Dead Boys or the Ramones. ~ Alan Rickman

People will remember you better if you always wear the same outfit ... ~ David Byrne

I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be. ~ David Byrne

Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry - banal things I do more or less on a day-to-day basis. We deal with the issues involved in our mundane activities as they come up, ~ David Byrne

Crime is a job. Sex is a job. Growing up is a job. School is a job. Going to parties is a job. Religion is a job. Being creative is a job ~ David Byrne

Body odor is the window to the soul. ~ David Byrne

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored. ~ David Byrne

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask. ~ David Byrne

We tend to mistake music for the physical object. ~ David Byrne

Maybe the difference between speech and music isn't all that great. We infer a lot from the tone of someone's voice, so imagine that aspect of speech pushed just a little further. The weird cadences of a Valley girl, for instance, might be viewed as a species of singing. The malls of Sherman Oaks are a setting for a kind of massed choir. ~ David Byrne

A soap opera character on the bar TV says, "You killed him, you smothered him with doughnuts!" Another character, another scene--she is sitting in a room with a man and an elderly woman--the leas character wonders if she's dead. The man says, No, you're alive," and the other woman hands her a plate of doughnuts.
A commercial comes on. A couple are on a date and the woman's voice-over articulates interior thoughts of what a wonderful guy her friend has set her up with: "He's so cute, and his IQ is higher than my bank balance . . . but she didn't tell me he has . . . Tourette's syndrome. ~ David Byrne

I'd argue that contemporary hip-hop is written (or at least the music is) to be heard in cars with systems like the one below. The massive volume seems to be more about sharing your music with everyone, gratis! ~ David Byrne

You may say to yourself: "Well, how did I get here? ~ David Byrne

Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good. ~ David Byrne

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop. ~ David Byrne

There's a great temptation to clean everything up and make everything more perfect. You have to know when to stop and stop doing it, or you might end up with something that sounds metronomic. ~ David Byrne

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music - they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can't listen to because they've been "ruined" by bad words - my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh. ~ David Byrne

It's not music you would use to get a girl into bed. If anything, you're going to frighten her off. ~ David Byrne

I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either. ~ David Byrne

A history of nightlife!
what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse. ~ David Byrne

I've rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert. ~ David Byrne

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car. ~ David Byrne

Sometimes the European and North American public like some things to be exotic and kept at arm's length. They don't want sometimes to know that foreign artists are doing something that's at least as relevant as what's being done here. ~ David Byrne

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over? ~ David Byrne

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary. ~ David Byrne

I'm very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories. ~ David Byrne

I'd like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit. ~ David Byrne

Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story. ~ David Byrne

Stop making sense ~ David Byrne

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market. ~ David Byrne

I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn. ~ David Byrne

Some of you people just about missed it ~ David Byrne

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that. ~ David Byrne

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music. ~ David Byrne

It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic, but a monk in the bohemian order. ~ David Byrne

People use irony as a defense mechanism. ~ David Byrne

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time. ~ David Byrne

I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar. ~ Anthony Bourdain

London's tempo is 122.86 beats per minute. ~ David Byrne

Science's job is to map our ignorance. ~ David Byrne

no one has ever gone to war over music. ~ David Byrne

Every outfit carries cultural baggage of some kind. It took me a while to get a handle on this aspect of performance. ~ David Byrne

Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time. ~ David Byrne

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you're working on. ~ David Byrne