THE LANDFILL CHRONICLES — David Byrne — Look Into the Eyeball (Chapter 10.1)
The Landfill Chronicles — THE GENIUS OF DAVID BYRNE
By Dan Ouellette
Chapter 10.1
INTRODUCTION
In 2017 the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy celebrated its 45th anniversary. In the ancient central Italy town, the party atmosphere was omnipresent. It was hot in temperature and songs through the different venues were broiling. But outside at the festival’s large-scale Arena, the star of the gala event proved to be not jazz but transcendently beyond — the brilliant David Byrne performing decidedly non-jazz, Afro-punk-funk and rock-fueled new music from his latest album American Utopia augmented by dance-crazed Talking Heads hits.
His American Utopia showcase toured Europe before its North American shows and over a year before its celebrated runs on Broadway stages. That alone was a rare treat. But David’s ambitious part-theater, part-dance, part-rock, part-funk show proved to be the best pop concert I’ve ever seen.
At 66, he was in amazingly terrific physical shape as he energetically delivered with his 11-piece band — all dressed in matching gray suits and with the exception of one player playing in barefoot — a constant dancing motion choreographed to perfection. His setup was radical, at once making the traditional rock setup (all band members standing in place) obsolete. No wires or amps visible. Even the six drummers were a part of the funky procession for each song.
David and co. played killer tunes from the new album — his first solo recording in 14 years — including the lyrical “Every Day Is a Miracle,” the stomping “I Dance Like This” and the fun but poignant singalong chorus, “Everybody‘s Coming to My House.”
Mindful of how influential his Afro-punk-funk band Talking Heads still are, he delivered dance-frenzied tunes “Slippery People,” “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),” and “Once in a Lifetime.” Right in the middle of the latter, David halted the song, called for security and told them to get rid of the barriers and “let the people dance.” The crowd flooded the stage for the rest of the show.
David also added in “Like Humans Do” from his 2001 solo album Look Into the Eyeball and two tunes he collaborated on with British rapper Fatboy Slim (“Toe Jam” and “Here Lies Love”). Of course (about as predictable as he can be) the show ended with a torrid run through the T. Head’s dance floor hit, “Burning Down the House.”
There’s a political vein in David’s music, especially on the latest album, but it’s not stated as politics. It’s more, as he says in his liner notes, a reflection on the “utter collapse” of the American experiment in dreaming for a better, more hopeful life. In a profound end to the 90-minute show in the second encore, David and his band stood at the edge of the stage and soberly rendered Janelle Monáe’s powerful tune “Hell You Talmbout,” the chanted list of black Americans killed by police. As David writes in the album’s liners: “It’s not easy, but music helps. Music is kind of a model — it often tells us or points us toward how we can be.”
The show was an entrancing dance party with a strong beam of human hope. And it took a jazz festival to bring this light to a small town in Italy.
**
David is a genius. He’s active in the conceptual arts and just recently took the stage at this year’s Academy Awards show singing “This Is a Life,” a song he composed for the Oscar-winning best movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. It was one of the best-song nominations (though it didn‘t get the award). For the song’s live performance, supporting actress nominee Stephanie Hsu filled in for original artist Mitski.
Along with David and Son Lux, Hsu put her Broadway-honed theatricality into a performance with David as a vocalist foil. The big production featured martial-arts choreography, backup dancers, and from the movie’s psychedelic fuel David revealing long hot dog fingers (think way back to his Big Suit in Jonathan Demme’s classic concert film Stop Making Sense). Like the movie the song was written for, Everything Everywhere All at Once must be seen to be believed.
I met up with David in 2001 to talk about his new Look Into the Eyeball album, the Luaka Bop label he founded and of course, Talking Heads — one of my favorite pop bands of all time.
A VISIT TO LUAKA BOP HEADQUARTERS
On a damp, rainy New York day in early June 2001, David sits in the lower level of his Greenwich Village office that houses his boutique Luaka Bop label and serves as an art studio. To get here from the sidewalk, you climb a few stairs then have to pass by a life-size, lightweight black boxer dog statue that stands guard at the front door. Upon entry, you walk down a corridor lined with CD boxes and photos of album covers and head downstairs to a spacious room where various quirky and mildly subversive Byrne art projects are scattered about, including a giant blow-up photo of a George Bush mask turned inside out.
Dressed casually in black jeans and a gray button-down shirt, the 49-year-old David is still as slender as his nerdy-looking Talking Heads days. His close-cropped hair has gone silver with age, and he wears wire-rim glasses that make him look, well, business-like. Nowhere in sight is his restless, quirky big-suit stage persona best captured in Stop Making Sense. It was the definitive 1984 concert film directed by Jonathan Demme that documented the Heads in their prime (it was heralded by many as the best rock-oriented film since the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night).
Sipping a cup of almond tea, David is mild-mannered, even shy, but articulate and funny in a low-key way.
On the eve of releasing his new CD, Look Into the Eyeball), he seems fulfilled as an artist — proud of the T-Heads legacy, his various artistic pursuits and his record label that has given voice in the U.S. to an array of musicians from around the world, especially Brazil. His latest disc is his seventh as a solo artist, his first album for Virgin, his first venture since 1997’s Feelings and arguably the best outing of his post-Heads career. It’s a groove-and-strings affair, a catchy classical-tinged pop disc that’s also spiked with the percussive funk he and his former bandmates employed for burning down the house in the late ’70s through the ‘80s.
But there’s a hint of insecurity in David’s voice as he talks about the album. He admits he had doubts about it when he finished it. “But after getting over the initial repulsion, I find that it does what I hoped it would do,” he says, then adds, “I just talked with a journalist in Munich who said he and his friends felt the album was too commercial. I don’t know exactly what that means. I’m thinking that Look Into the Eyeball doesn’t sound anything like the latest new thing they’re into.”
The fact that it doesn’t has its pros and cons. As a solo act, David hasn’t enjoyed the commercial popularity of his days with the Heads when the band dominated the pop music scene for nearly a decade with a string of hot-wire albums: Talking Heads ’77 (1977), More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979), Remain in Light (1980), Speaking in Tongues (1983), the film soundtrack Stop Making Sense (1984) and Little Creatures (1985).
Yet David has maintained a vital creative presence by steering clear of the same-as-it-ever-was pop mindset. In addition to scouting new acts for his label, directing videos and films, and delving into photographic art projects, he continues to write oddly whimsical songs that deviate from the norm.
On Look Into the Eyeball, David gets high marks for his melodies — catchy enough to sing along to while driving on the open road — and his funky beats. But it’s his use of strings that sets the album apart from anything that’s on the pop map today. “I wanted to move people to dance and cry at the same time,” he says. “These tunes are emotional, warm, but they also have beats.” And the strings? “Most of the time in pop music they’re added as icing on the cake, to sweeten a tune. But I wanted them to be part of the cake, to replace keyboards and guitars as well as add to the rhythmic drive.”
As with his Talking Heads collaborations, the result is a blend of pop accessibility crafted with artistic sensibility. This, in essence, is David Byrne’s modus operandi.
END OF CHAPTER 10, Part 1 of 3 Parts