David Byrne (The Talking Heads)

0:00How are you? I'm very good. Good to hear. I want to talk to you about the Wired article quite a bit because I find it absolutely fascinating. Oh, okay. You're in Calgary, is that right? I am, yeah. Have you ever been up here? Have you ever played up here? Yeah, I did a festival there about three years ago or so. Folk festival maybe? Yeah. Oh, okay, cool. That was really good and rode my bike around. Yeah, it's nice. It was a nice day, so it was good. Good to hear. How are things? Where are you right now? New York? Yeah, I'm in New York. How are things there? Just kind of writing. Oh, yeah, a new record or are you working on... New record. Oh, yeah, so you're a big bicycler. Yeah, not as a... anything like that, just as a way of getting around. Oh, yeah, very nice. Are you an American citizen? Can you vote?

0:50I used to be able to. I'm not an American citizen. I have a green card and I used to be able to vote. And then recently, either they changed the laws or I got caught and they said, no, you can't vote. Oh. I swear I learned when I was going to grade school that I could vote for everything except the president. Hmm. Green card holders. But now maybe they've changed that. Interesting. Well, it's an interesting time to be down there, that's for sure. Yeah. With everything that's going on. That's an understatement. Yeah, I know. Oh, boy. Well, even especially this week with the whole Spitzer thing. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. I think a little too much publicity for something, but maybe that's just me.

1:38Oh, man. So tell me about this thing going on too. I'm still wondering, yeah. What's that? Why are they not telling us about the other clients? I read your blog about that. Yeah, it's true. I wonder who they are. Yeah, I wonder. They must be kind of wealthy and important people. And it's kind of amazing that they're only talking about Spitzer. Yeah, I wonder if one of them is Bill Clinton. Wouldn't be overly surprised. It wouldn't be surprised. So tell me about this thing you got Tuesday in Brooklyn, the benefit for peace in Iraq and justice. It's an event that I think mainly Laurie Anderson kind of came up with it. I think she just said, oh, maybe it's time to do something to remind people that the marches against the invasion of

2:24Iraq haven't happened much recently. The policy. She said it might be important to kind of make that point from time to time. And let's do a concert. Let's do a little concert to raise money and awareness and that sort of thing. So I said, sure, sure. If it's just a couple of songs, I can do take a break and do that. Do you have a band that you do that kind of stuff or you just sit up there on your own? A couple of people from my own band and I'm going to do some songs that I haven't put on records. And I've asked some of the others like Nora Jones and Jake from Scissors Sisters and see who else is there. Damien Rice. He's phenomenal. Yeah, a few of the others.

3:11I said, will you sing backup? I'll teach you the harmonies. Oh, that's cool. And we'll just do it as like a little harmony, like a little vocal harmony group. I like that. That's cool. I thought, oh, that'll be really nice. Yeah. Yeah. Why not use their talents if they're going to be there. Right. Okay. So let's get into this Wired article because I do a show for local musicians here in town. We talk a lot about the business on the show and how they can move to that next level almost, if you will. And my major concern about the whole industry at the moment is, and I don't understand why labels, for example, I know your buddy, Eno is working with Coldplay right now. The record, I think they're mixing it right now. So it'll be mastered in what, a month or so. Why can't they just put it out right away? Why must their

3:57be this marketing and promotion wait time? And some others would have kind of like... No, not when you have that brand name, right? Huge fan base. They wouldn't go and get it. I suspect that Coldplay, they'll Coldplay's with EMI, aren't they? I think. Yeah. I think it's their last one for them too. Yeah. So you would think that maybe EMI would say, this band is going to be up for it. Let's

4:46try something different. Yeah, hopefully. I know there's a band from Canada called Stars. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but they decided, we're just going to throw it out there as soon as it's done because no one's going to steal it that way. There's no reason for you to steal it if it's not out there for free first. Yes, yeah, yeah. I think that's more of an issue for bands like that. As soon as they release something on sites, and I think I know the radio had people basically felt people are going to be put our record out there for free anyway. We may as well, we may as well make it available ourselves. Not everybody has that kind of problem.

5:34Not everybody has that kind of fan base. Yeah, exactly. And the radio had fans or diehard music fans, at least for the most part. Now I know that there's some other things. I think Bare Naked Ladies had their arrangement where... Yeah, what did they tell me? They were on the show about a year ago. It's kind of like they have their own record company or like their management runs their record company or something. Yeah, that's it. Network runs it. And then their label, I guess, just does the marketing and distribution kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that's the future? I know you talked about that in the article a little bit. That's the way the label will go. That's one future. It definitely, I think, seems like a viable future, at least for hard product for CDs to have somebody else manage all the day-to-day running of things

6:23like that. It could get a bit much for some of the bands. And I think if somebody, like the management or a network or somebody else runs it for a number of groups, then it becomes cost-effective. Do you think we're going to get away from album artwork though, if that's the case? If you're not really, if you're only doing a little bit of manufacturing, product isn't as much as it seems to be going? Is that a shame? You're going to miss it? I probably will. Yeah, I mean, I like reading about having holding it in my hand and reading it, the record, that's a nice convenience. I mean, I can, if they make a nice F or something that has

7:15lots of information about the songs and how it was done or the band or print that out and read that as well. It's not quite the same as having it linked to the package that the music comes in. But as people spend more and more time in front of their computer, it does seem like that's going to be where all the stuff is based anyway. Yeah, it's true. And that you give people things that you can't give them. You can give them little movies or recordings of interviews and all kinds of stuff like that. It's funny now that people want more. You can't just have a record. You have to throw in that

8:03extra stuff for people to buy it. It's like DVDs. It's the bonus stuff itself. Yeah, exactly. It's not enough anymore just for the main product. Yeah. It's all these crazy features. I know it's not always the case, but you still think for bands to actually get out there and to become, I guess not every musician wants to be famous. You just love the artwork and you want to do it for that. But to get those TV performances, and I work on the radio. I know how this business works. It's very homogenized. You need that label backing you. How can a band without it be considered a serious act? Oh, that's yeah. I know locally, and I'm familiar with not all of them, but some of their CDs or MP3 is online somewhere. And some of them I really like. But I have no idea what

8:55record label they're with or anything like that. And the marketing, although they're written about in the press, pretty much exclusively was online. And they have some of these bands have then developed sizable followings. And I go, well, there's them. And then there's some other groups I've seen that seem to sell out the small, you know, the music halls or whatever here in town. Yeah. And I go, how did everybody find out about this group? I've never seen ads for them. I've never, they're never going to get played on kind of regular radio to develop a following and connect to the people who are interested in them.

9:41How different is it now? That's very encouraging, I think. Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, especially with MySpace and all that, it's just, it's completely changing the way people find out about music. Do you think there's, I don't want to say there's too many bands because that's not the way I want to say it properly, but people are spoiled for choice. I think so too. And I've been down to, not this year, but you get there, you just go, oh my God. Oh, I can imagine. We don't need any more singer song right now. I think we have enough. We've got our quota now. It worked. The experiment worked. But then somebody will come along and they'll write something that is in a pre-existing genre and they'll do it.

10:41You think we'll ever have an explosion like the Beatles again? You think it's possible? I'm a little hard to imagine because that was something that seemed to reach from like the super mainstream esoteric music fans. Well, especially now, people are spoiled for choice. People are on the internet all the time. It's not as easy to, there were only three TV channels back then. You got on one, you get one third of the population almost. Exactly knew about that week. Imagine that kind of thing happening. But at the same time, you look at other things that happen on the internet, like in blogs or some image or some

11:39kind of thing that somebody finds gets passed around. And it seems like half the world has seen it in two days. And she'd go, wow, the fact that something can be so speed makes you think that, well, if it's the right kind of thing, excite really quickly. But those things, everybody kind of gets bored with it and turns away from it in five minutes. Very true. It's almost like they're all once in a lifetime things. You like that little segue? Let's play a song. So why don't you tell us about once in a lifetime? When improvising different things, and then we'd work something like that, but we'd say, okay,

12:37and that'll be the ending. And it was an awful lot missing. It had the underlying structure of a song. And then improvise, sometimes improvise melodies on top of it, or in that case, got myself up into this, this rant and I'd write it down. I was like, oh, I thought it was like a picture. Very nice. Yeah, definitely. They juxtaposed each other quite well.

13:59Oh, really? It just became... And I still had signals. Yeah, they still do in England now though. Really? And well, the radio and play. It really kind of happened. So it came out for years. We were going into a trance. Yeah. When they played video.

14:55Myself and it seemed like just a handful of other artists. If we'd give them something, they'd play it to death. Must've been nice. So that song got on there and they liked it. It's all these little... And I guess they liked it. And it still works this day. It's crazy. You write a song 20 years ago and it's still out there. I know. Must be a really cool feeling. It is pretty nice. Yeah, I can't deny that. You think... I remember Jason Moraz was on the show a few years ago and he was talking about,

15:42you can't be in this business to make money. He'd be fine going back to playing coffee shops and sleeping on people's floors just because he loved playing music so much. And I wonder if that's the way it's going to go because you can't make money off the product anymore. They're going to be hurting for a while, but I think a lot of them are finding that reach an audience. And maybe they're finding other sources of income. I don't know. If it's enough, people talk about that they're getting income from licensing songs.

16:36Well, I license songs to movies and TV shows. You sell that song to Microsoft too, right? Yes. And I know that part of the reason I can do that is because those songs were popular to begin with. But to license an unknown song for a band that's coming up, pay you that same amount of money. But then if they kind of help establish you, TV shows or whatever, then... Well, look at Feist. I mean, she has a following up here in Canada. But now, because of the Apple iPod commercial, I don't know if she's raking in the coin,

17:26but I know she's doing all right. It's an interesting conundrum because that used to be selling out, right? And now it's like, well, you got to eat. This is how it's got to be done. At the same time, really does the trick. I don't know if she got incredibly well paid by a very large audience. I don't think anyone gets incredibly well paid by Apple. I mean, I thought you made more in the music store than it seems that you're saying in the article here, that it basically is like a record deal. You're not making the money that people think you are. Yes, it's true. Unless I wonder, what if you have no label and you sell your stuff yourself to iTunes?

18:17You still don't make the dollar though. You don't. Yeah, you still, iTunes still takes 30 percent and a whole lot more than if you did it through, you would still get only like 15 percent of the dollar. Whereas if you do it yourself, you're getting closer to that 70 percent, which is a huge difference. Oh yeah, for sure. And you posed an interesting question in the article. In order to make more money, can recording artists band together and go on strike like the writers did? Which seems impossible, but it's not a bad idea. Do you think it can happen? Do you even, is there a union?

19:02I think too many people can do that. No, there's not many names. Well, look at Trent Reznor basically did that. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, he just said the hell with it. I'll put it out myself and see what happens. Uh-huh. And I heard- Really, it's doing really well. That's what I hear, 1.6 million dollars in its first week. That is pretty good. Yeah. There's nothing to sneeze at. No, I mean, especially not in this stage, 10 years ago, maybe not, but now it's like, wow.

19:51It worked. Yeah, I would say so. Have you heard it? It's actually pretty cool. No, I haven't heard it. It's all instrumental tracks. Yeah, atmospheric, very, you know, just sit in the room and chill kind of thing. Uh-huh. Yeah, it's nice. That sounds great. It's different for him at least. Do you prefer home recording or studio? I do a mixture. I'll do, and sometimes I'll do like part of them or guitar overdubs or something. I'll do that kind of stuff at home and then bring in what I want to do. Like if I play, I can't do that at home. Yeah, fair enough. But I can do a lot of the kind of time-consuming stuff at home, chunk out of the bill.

20:38Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, when I read about artists who've made their record and just said, wow, we spent months and months and months in the studio and I'd go, I'm watching. Why would anybody spend that much time in a recording studio anymore? But some people have a lot of money and they can do that. Yeah, I guess. Or they know people and somehow got deals or whatever. I don't know. Tell people about ArtistShare because I think it's a really cool website and a way to get the music out there that's different than anything else I've ever heard of before. Yeah, I wonder what kind of thing that is going to work for certain kinds of artists.

21:25It's not that strong. It's going to be hard to do something like that. But to get the kind of jazz artists that they have kinds of, yeah, that model could certainly work. And how does it work? You just throw money into a pile kind of thing and then that goes to fund the record. It seems to work on different levels that they ask people to basically pre-buy the record. It's kind of in a way what they're saying. For the most part, they're asking people contribute this amount and we'll promise you,

22:13or maybe other things, maybe they might promise a concert ticket as well. And the more you get more students, you get to be listed as like executives. Oh, that's kind of cool. Eat your name in the booklet. Everyone wants that. All that, yeah. How are you going to do? You mentioned earlier you were working on some music. What are your thoughts if it ends up being a record, how you put it out there? Because I'm working on a few different projects. And I think one will be, I will license it to a distributor, so that I guess. Yeah. And there's another one that I'm talking about selling it directly on,

22:59the kind of thing. Yeah, doing it that same way kind of through your own server. Yeah. Cool. Through none such records. Oh, yeah. Okay. Like back in the day. A lot of things to keep track of, but I think that's possible too. And what are these projects? Are they still too new or vague to talk about? Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm not a Brian Eno. Very nice. He's really busy these days.

23:45I know. That much works so far in this. He basically had a bunch of tracks that he didn't know what to do with. And I said, give him to me. I'll finish him up. Oh, okay. And the third one is a long cycle about Mel DeMarco's. Well, that was the play of sorts. Yeah. And so now I'm recording different singers. Okay. That's cool. And I'm recording different singers. Female singers to sing each song. Oh, I can imagine. You're going to perform that again? I know it got performed what, twice? Three times? Yeah. All right. Would you do it again?

24:31Yeah. Yeah. Once we get it all, now it seems like I can see the record actually getting finished. And then bring it on the road maybe? Something. Something. Come up to Calgary, perhaps? Could be. That'd be nice. I ask everybody that comes on the show five questions, one word answers. Okay. iPod or CDs? Wow. Oh my God. I'm looking around at, I'm sorry, this is not a one word answer. That's fine. I look around and there's stacks of CDs everywhere in front of me. But I mainly listen to the music on an iPod. Yeah, conundrum. Yes. Lennon or McCartney? Okay, I'll say Lennon. Alcohol or marijuana? Alcohol. Song you've written you're most proud of.

25:16Oh, geez. Yeah, don't make them easy ones. Noxication. And one word, David Byrne. Dopelganger. Here you go. Very nice. Thank you so much. Okay. Let's close out with a tune. I'll give you an option. Let's go, and she was or burning down the house? Burning down the house.