David Byrne

Overview

Born
May 14, 1952 · Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, UK
Height
6′ (1.83 m)

Biography

Family

Spouse

Trademarks

Edgy persona
Black hair (when he was younger)
Dark staring eyes
Over-sized suit
Unusual dancing on stage

Trivia

The Talking Heads' trademark song, "Psycho Killer", was inspired by a phrase used by his art school friend, Barbara Conway. She used the phrase, "psycho killer", to describe things she thought were cool. Conway was murdered by a female stalker in the 1980s.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 as a member of the Talking Heads.
When he was two years old, his parents moved the family to Hamilton, Ontario. Byrne lived in that area until he was 8 or 9 and then moved to Maryland, where he stayed until college.
He is left handed but plays guitar right handed.
Attended the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970, where he met fellow Talking Heads members, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, who became a couple in 1973. He transferred to the Maryland Institute of Art in 1971 and travelled in a band called Bizadi through 1972. He then dropped out of college for good. He returned to Providence in 1973 and formed a band called The Artistics with Frantz but they broke up in 1974 when Byrne moved to New York. He remained friends with Frantz and Weymouth who moved to New York in September 1974. Unable to find a willing bass player for their forming band, Frantz persuaded Weymouth to learn the bass guitar under the tutelage of David. They began rehearsing in January 1975 and had their first gig as Talking Heads in June that year at punk club CBGB.

Quotes

When you have a little bit more sales and popularity, as Talking Heads did then, you could say, "Oh, can we have this kind of lighting or can we do a video on our day off?" And people would appear and make it happen. So I miss a little bit of that ease of getting things done but I don't miss arenas. That terrified me. When it got to a certain scale the audience became this abstract mass and you started to lose that connection. Other people can deal with that but I can't.
You knew that as Bush (George W. Bush) left the economy was in tatters and people were going to be out of jobs and out of homes. I thought, "People are going to be pissed off real soon and whatever's closest at hand they'll blame it." And, God forbid, they're not going to blame themselves for voting for George Bush and the guys whose policies got them into this mess. Poor Barack Obama is going to have to take the stick for everything that went before.
I feel like if you license a song to a television show or a film, people understand that the song is a quotation. With me they often pick some classic song that's representative of an era or a mood and it's an easy way for them to instantly push some buttons with an audience. But with an advert it's a little bit different because then people assume that you are endorsing whatever it is. And also it gets played over and over and over again and it really tends to cement the link. And you think, "Oh, that's the song from the Toyota commercial", as opposed to, "This is the song he wrote when his girlfriend died." I'm not ready for that!
Despite having toured with her [St. Vincent] for almost a year I don't think I know her much better, at least not on a personal level ... mystery is not a bad thing for a beautiful, talented young woman (or man) to embrace. And she does it without seeming to be standoffish or distant.