David Byrne

Birthday: 14 May 1952, Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, UK

Height: 183 cm

David Byrne is an Oscar winning composer, songwriter and singer, best known for being frontman of the New Wave/punk band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Born in Scotland but raised in the United States in Maryland, Byrne began performing musically in high school.Byrne attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) between 1970 and '71. He dropped out to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art before dropping out for good in 1972. He returned to Providence and started a band in 1973 called The Artistics with Chris Frantz, whom he knew at RISD. The band broke up in May '74 and Byrne moved to New York, followed by Frantz and his girlfriend Tina Weymouth in September. The three started performing as Talking Heads in 1975. The band was one of the major acts of the punk and new wave scene of the 1970s.Byrne won an Oscar and a Grammy Award for his soundtrack to the movie The Last Emperor (1987) in 1988, the same year Talking Heads ceased to function. Except for a brief reunion in 1991, the band stopped recording together in '88 as Byrne launched a solo career. Talking Heads were inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Show less «

I feel like if you license a song to a television show or a film, people understand that the song is...Show more »

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! Show less «

When you have a little bit more sales and popularity, as Talking Heads did then, you could say, "Oh,...Show more »

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. Show less «

You knew that as Bush (George W. Bush) left the economy was in tatters and people were going to be o...Show more »

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. Show less «

David Byrne

David Byrne's FILMOGRAPHY

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