David Byrne (musician)

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For other persons named David Byrne, see David Byrne (disambiguation).
David Byrne
David Byrne speaking at the 2006 Future of Music Policy Summit hosted by the McGill University Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Canada
David Byrne speaking at the 2006 Future of Music Policy Summit hosted by the McGill University Schulich School of Music in Montreal, Canada
Background information
Born May 14, 1952 (1952-05-14) (age 56)
Origin Dumbarton, Scotland, UK
Genre(s) Experimental music
Worldbeat
New Wave
Alternative rock
Occupation(s) Musician, Artist, Singer, Actor, Director, Producer
Instrument(s) Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Synthesizer, Flute, Clavinet, Slide Guitar, Autoharp, Harmonium, Buildings[1]
Years active 1974 to Present
Associated acts Talking Heads
Brian Eno
X-Press 2
Website Official Website
Notable instrument(s)
Fender Mustang

David Byrne (born May 14, 1952, in Dumbarton, Scotland) is a Scottish-American musician and artist. He is perhaps best known as a founding member and the principal songwriter of the new wave band Talking Heads, who were active between 1974 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo projects on record, and worked in a variety of media, including film, photography, opera, and internet-based projects. His achievements have been recognized by Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards. David is a SubGenius[2].

Contents

[edit] Early years

Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, on May 14, 1952. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and then to Arbutus, Maryland, when he was 8 or 9 years old. He graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. He then attended the Rhode Island School of Design for one year before dropping out and forming Talking Heads in 1974 with fellow RISD students Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, later joined by Jerry Harrison. He also attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, for one year.

During his time in the band, Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno in 1981 on the album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted considerable critical acclaim and featured a groundbreaking use of sampling.

Byrne married costume designer Adelle Lutz in 1987. They have a daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Byrne, born in 1990. Byrne and Lutz divorced in 2004. Byrne currently lives in New York City.

[edit] Varied work

In 1981, Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, scoring "The Catherine Wheel," a ballet prominently featuring unusual rhythms and lyrics. Productions of "The Catherine Wheel" appeared on Broadway that same year. In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape David Byrne produced for the Belgian dance company Ultima Vez.

His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score. In 2004, Lead Us Not Into Temptation (music from the film "Young Adam") included tracks and musical experiments from his score to Young Adam. Byrne also directed and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of quirky Americana released in 1986, as well as directing the documentary Île Aiye and the concert film of his 1992 Latin-tinged tour titled Between the Teeth. He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of Stop Making Sense in 1984.

Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score for Robert Wilson's Opera The Knee Plays from The CIVIL warS. Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbuhne, Berlin in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel.

Byrne also appeared as a guest vocalist/guitarist for 10,000 Maniacs during their MTV Unplugged concert, though the songs in which he is featured were cut from its album. One of them, "Let the Mystery Be", appeared as the fourth track on 10,000 Maniacs' cd single "Few and Far Between".

Byrne also worked with "Queen of Tex-Mex", Tejano superstar Diva Selena, writing, producing and singing a song ("God's Child (Baila Conmigo)"), included on Selena's last album, "Dreaming of You", before Selena's death.

Byrne was the host of "Sessions at West 54th" during its second of three seasons.

Byrne founded Luaka Bop, a world music record label which releases the work of artists Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, Jim White, Zap Mama, Tom Zé, Los Amigos Invisibles and others.

Byrne is also a visual artist, and has shown his work in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. He has also created a number of public art installations, many of them anonymous. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC.

[edit] Recent activity

In 2001 a censored version of Byrne's single "Like Humans Do" was selected by Microsoft as the sample music for Windows XP to demonstrate Windows Media Player (not included in SP2 installs). [3][4]. The next year, he provided vocals for a track, "Lazy" by X-Press 2, which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 on the U.S. Dance Charts. David said in an interview in BBC Four Sessions's coverage of his Union Chapel performance that Lazy was number 1 in Syria.

In April 2003, Byrne appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons, "Dude, Where's My Ranch?".

In late 2003, Byrne released a book with a companion DVD called Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (ISBN 3-88243-907-6). The work included artwork composed entirely in Microsoft PowerPoint. It includes one image that depicts, according to Byrne, "Dan Rather's profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlaid on the back of Patrick Stewart's head." [5]

Byrne's latest solo album, Grown Backwards, was released on March 16th, 2004 by Nonesuch. This album used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias. He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005. The following year, his singing was featured on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.

In 2005, Byrne initiated his own internet radio station, Radio David Byrne[6]. Each month, Byrne posts a playlist of music he likes, linked by themes or genres. Byrne's playlists have included African Popular Music; Rednecks, Racists, & Reactionaries: Country Classics; Vox Humana; Classical Opera; Italian Movie Music. Byrne also posts personal comments on the music and, occasionally, on the state of the recorded music industry. In July 2007, Byrne posted the following comment:

There was another piece in the Times today about yet another 20 percent drop in CD sales. (Are they running the same news piece every 4 months?) Jeez guys, the writing's on the wall. How long do the record execs think they'll have those offices and nice parking spaces? (Well, more than half of all record A&R and other execs are gone already, so there should be plenty of parking space). They, the big 4 or 5, should give the catalogues back to the artists or their heirs as a gesture before they close the office doors, as they sure don't know how to sell music anymore. (I have Talking Heads stuff on the shelf that I can't get Warner to release.) The "industry" had a nice 50-year ride, but it's time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it's closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It's about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together. It's not about selling the (often) shattered plastic case CDs used to come in.[7]

Returning to this work in the theatre, in late 2005 Byrne and Fatboy Slim began work on Here Lies Love, a disco opera or song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former First Lady of the Philippines. Some music from this piece was debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in February 2006 and the following year at Carnegie Hall on February 3rd, 2007.

Byrne and Eno's influential 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest site was launched. Later that same year, Byrne released Arboretum, a sketchbook facsimile of his Tree Drawings, published by McSweeney's. He also had an exhibition of his chairs — drawings, photographs, sculptures, and embroideries — at Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC.

Byrne was profiled in the New York Times in January, 2007.[8] The article refers to his April 15, 2006 journal entry, in which he wrote: “I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess.”[9]

It was recently announced that David Byrne is working with Brian Eno on new music.

In April 2008 Byrne took part in the Paul Simon retrospective concert series at BAM performing You Can Call Me Al and I Know What I Know from Simon's Graceland album[10].

In 2008, Byrne and his band programmed the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.[11] [1]

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

[edit] Contributions

  • "Liquid Days" and "Open the Kingdom;" lyrics by David Byrne, music by Phillip Glass (1986)
  • Main title theme for Alive From Off Center, Season 1 (1984)
  • Something Wild, directed by Jonathan Demme: "Loco de Amor" song co-written with Johnny Pacheco; sung with Celia Cruz backed by Ray Barretto's band (1986)
  • Married to the Mob, directed by Jonathan Demme (1988)
  • A Young Man's Dream and a Woman's Secret, film by Philip Haas (1990)
  • The Giant Woman and The Lightening Man, film by Philip Haas (1990)
  • Producer: Elegibo, Margareth Menezes, tracks "Canto pra Subir" and "Abra a Boca", Mango/Island Records, 1990
  • "Sing" co-writing and backing vocals, song on Bernie Worrell's album Funk of Ages (1990)
  • Forestry, with Jack Dangers and Rudy Tambala (1992)
  • "Let The Mystery Be," "Dallas," and "Jolene" duet with Natalie Merchant on MTV Unplugged, 10,000 Maniacs (1993)
  • "God's Child" (Baila Conmigo) duet with Selena (1995)
  • "No Controles" vocals, Café Tacuba, Avalanche de Exitos (1996)
  • Jim White & David Byrne, Talk and Talk and Talk (2001)
  • "Rio" lyrics & vocal, Vinicus Cantuaria, Vinicius (2001)
  • "Lazy" lyrics & vocal, X-Press 2 (2002)
  • "Heart is a Lonely Hunter" lyrics and vocal, Thievery Corporation, The Cosmic Game (2004)
  • "Glass, Concrete & Stone" from the In Good Company soundtrack (2004)
  • Forro in the Dark, Bonfires of Sao Jao: vocals on two songs, "Asa Branca" and "I Wish (Bundle of Contradictions) (2006)"
  • "Hoy no le temo a la muerte" lyrics & vocal, La Portuaria (2006)
  • Score to Dead End Kids: A Story of Nuclear Power, film by Joanne Akalaitis
  • Producer: Mesopotamia, The B-52's
  • Producer: Waiting, Fun Boy Three
  • 2004 Contributed the song "My Fair Lady" under a Creative Commons license to The Wired CD.
  • Appears as himself in Fabricando Tom Zé (Fabricating Tom Zé), a Brazilian documentary about Tom Zé, directed by Decio Matos Jr. (2006)
  • Score to second season of Big Love, an HBO original series (2007)
  • Featured on the Baby Elephant single "How Does the Brainwave?" (2007)
  • Featured on the Paul Van Dyk track "Fall With Me" (2007)

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Kennedy, Randy. "David Byrne’s New Band, With Architectural Solos", The New York Times, The New York Times Company, May 30, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-05-30. 
  2. ^ Celebrities in the COS "David Byrne is a dues-paying Member, although we haven't heard from him since the TRUE STORIES mess"
  3. ^ David Byrne to Provide Promotional Music for Windows XP: "Like Humans Do" to Give Music Fans a Taste of the Digital Music Experience in Windows XP
  4. ^ You May Find Yourself On Windows XP - Forbes.com
  5. ^ Wired 11.09: Learning to Love PowerPoint
  6. ^ Radio David Byrne. David Byrne.com.
  7. ^ Radio David Byrne, June 2007: "I Still Buy CDs!". David Byrne.com.
  8. ^ Indie Rock’s Patron Saint Inspires a New Flock - New York Times
  9. ^ David Byrne Journal: 4.15.06: Military revolt, back pages
  10. ^ David Byrne joins Paul Simon on stage in New York, NME
  11. ^ Thill, Scott. "David Byrne Converts Building Into Giant Instrument", Wired.com, Advance Publications, May 12, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-05-30. 

[edit] External links

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[edit] Books

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Talking Heads
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