Celebrating David Byrne on his 71st birthday. —Ed.
Am I the only one who thinks the pre-Remain in Light David Byrne was the funniest rocker this side of Randy Newman? He turned twitchy paranoia into humor, and then did such a good job of channeling his alternately hysterical and wooden persona we were left wondering whether we were listening to an actor or the real David Byrne. He was, in his own way, rock’s equivalent of Andy Kaufman.
Take “Animals” off my favorite Talking Heads LP, 1979’s Fear of Music. It may open with “I Zimbra,” that portent of the Talking Heads future what with its tribal disco, heaps of percussionists, Afro-centric rhythms, and lyrics by Dadaist Hugo Ball (to say nothing of Robert Fripp on guitar!), but on the remainder of the LP Byrne has yet to stop making sense. Crazy sense, perhaps, but sense nonetheless.
And on “Animals,” which I consider one of the funniest songs ever, Byrne plays a barking mad fellow with a paranoid grudge against our cohabitants in the animal kingdom. “I’m mad/And that’s a fact/Animals don’t help/Animals think/They’re pretty smart/Shit on the ground/See in the dark.” He then adds, “Trusting them/A big mistake!” followed by “They’re never there when you need them.” And he concludes his diatribe by ensuring us that we’re being snickered at behind our backs by our animal fellows: “I know the animals/Are laughing at us,” he sings, and then adds, “They think they know what’s best/They’re making a fool of us.” I crack up every time I hear the tune.
On “Electric Guitar,” meanwhile, Byrne fears electric guitars, or at least considers them “a crime against the state.” Indeed, a guitar finds itself before a judge and jury; their verdict, “Never listen to electric guitar.” And it’s sound advice, because as he repeats at the end of the tune, which is catchy as all hell by the way, “Someone controls electric guitar.” He never says whom, but if that isn’t paranoia, I don’t know what is.
Meanwhile, on the lovely “Air,” Byrne turns his sights on oxygen, and how it “can hurt you too.” He adds, “Some people say not to worry about the air/Some people never had experience with… /Air… Air.” And this when it’s crystal clear to Byrne that walking around in the stuff is nothing short of lethal, as he notes when he sings, “What is happening to my skin/Where is that protection that I needed?” Evidently Byrne did not consider this “protest song against the atmosphere” a joke, although I myself doubt him, and think he was pulling an Andy Kaufman stunt by insisting upon its seriousness.
On the great “Memories Can’t Wait,” which has the kick of a mule and is probably the hardest rocker the Talking Heads ever released, Byrne utilizes echo to play the role of a man who has a party in his head 24/7. “Other people can go home/Everybody else can split/I’ll be here all the time/I can never quit.” And when the party stops he’s left alone and wide awake, haunted by memories that can’t wait.
Meanwhile, on the brilliantly funky and discofied “Cities,” which includes one fantastically deranged guitar solo, Byrne plays a fellow seeking a city to live in, but although he says he has it “all figured out” his logic is insane; “Look over there,” he sings about Birmingham, “Dry ice factory/Good place to get some thinking done.” And then there are those wonderful lines that go, “I forgot to mention, forgot to mention Memphis/Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks.” And who knows what he’s talking about when he sings, “Do I smell? I smell home cooking/It’s only the river, it’s only the river.”
“Life During Wartime” constitutes the perfect blurring of paranoia qua paranoia and paranoia qua comedic shtick. On the face of it we’re listening to the bald facts of an urban revolutionary, but he keeps tossing off amusing lines like, “I changed my hair style/So many times now/I don’t know what I look like.” And despite the talk of unmarked graves “out by the highway” and “a van that is loaded with weapons” it’s virtually impossible to take the chorus (“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco/This ain’t no fooling around/No time for dancing, or lovey dovey/I ain’t got time for that now”) or his references to the Mudd Club or CBGBs as anything but a lark.
Meanwhile, “Mind” doesn’t—or at least so far as I can tell—have a funny bone in its body. It is, I think, I lover trying to talk his beloved into some reciprocity. “I need something to change your mind,” sings Byrne, because nothing else, not drugs or religion or money or science has worked, and he’s at his wit’s end because as he notes at the song’s end, “You’re not even listening to me/And it comes directly from my heart to you,” after which Byrne plays one ferocious guitar riff until the tune fades out.
I’ve got to admit “Paper” goes right over my head; its lyrics read like the work of some post-modernist French novelist, Alain Robbe-Grillet perhaps. He pathologically focuses on a piece of paper and the rays that pass right through it, and while it isn’t particularly the work of a paranoid person it’s so strange you can’t but wonder about the sanity of its writer. Will it (whatever it is) fit on the paper? Would you check to make sure? Is your love affair only paper? Is your fun only paper? In the end, Byrne gives up: “Don’t think I can fit it/On the paper/Don’t think I can get it/On the paper/Go ahead and rip it up/Rip up the paper/Go ahead and tear up/Tear up the paper.”
Meanwhile, the lovely and stately “Heaven” turns the other world into a place of dystopian statis, “Where nothing/Nothing ever happens.” Sure, the band will play your favorite song, but they’ll play it all night long, and everybody at the party will “leave at exactly the same time.” And you’re unlikely to believe him when he sings that, “It’s hard to imagine/That nothing at all/Could be so exciting/Could be this much fun.” Even sucking face is eternal: “When this kiss is over/It will start again/It will not be any different/It will be exactly the same.” Byrne posits a place of eternal recurrence and then celebrates it, but his vision of the afterlife is your vision of Hell, where everyone goes through the same motions forever. Heaven? More like the worst eternity this side of the Hotel California.
The slow, heavy breather that is “Drugs” is atmospheric in a Berlin-Bowie period sort of way, and all I can say is that no one can accuse Byrne of encouraging drug use. Because whatever it is he’s taken isn’t much fun; “I’m charged up,” he sings, “Don’t put me down/Don’t feel like talking… Don’t mess around/I feel mean… I feel O.K./I’m charged up… Electricity.” He then goes on to add, “I’m charged up… I’m kinda wooden/I’m barely moving… I study motion…/I studied myself… I fooled myself” and so on. Like “Heaven” it’s a study in stasis, only a quivering stasis brought on by chemistry, and it’s always been my least favorite tune on the LP because I don’t hate drugs the way Byrne the workaholic, who most likely considered them a waste of his valuable creative time, did; I’ve just found out through hard experience that I can’t do them myself.
After Fear of Music Byrne and the Talking Heads took a hard right turn into polyrhythmic optimism, and Byrne abandoned his paranoid shtick in favor of a positivism that was full of innocent wonder and practically sage-like. And while I enjoy the rhythmic ecstasy of the albums that followed, I can’t help but miss Byrne the paranoid twitch, who looked at the family cat and saw only Benedict Arnold with a tail, and wondered and wondered who it was who actually controlled the electric guitar. And who, I should add, distrusted the very atmosphere of the planet on which he exists. He was a hoot. He could induce paranoia with his voice, and in so doing make you fear that Heaven is every bit as boring a locale as people have always said it will be. He will always be the king of the paranoids, from “Psycho Killer” to “Air.” It was a great act, and I wish he’d come back for a return engagement, the dangers of exposure to air and all.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
