For David Byrne, Talking Heads was about making emotional sense — not literal sense

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is David Byrne. He was a founding member of the band Talking Heads, one of the seminal bands of the punk, new wave period of the '70s. The Talking Heads weren't exactly punk, but they weren't like any band that came before them. They recorded eight albums between 1977 and when they stopped playing together in 1988. If you love their music or if you never saw or heard them, this is a great time to watch the 40th anniversary edition of their concert film "Stop Making Sense," which is playing in theaters. It's newly restored with a remastered soundtrack. Many music critics and fans consider it among the best concert films ever made.

Byrne went on to record solo albums, collaborate on experimental theater pieces with Robert Wilson and Spalding Gray and a ballet with choreographer Twyla Tharp. He still has the record label he founded in 1988, Luaka Bop. His first releases were compilations of Brazilian music, but then he expanded into African pop and, later, jazz and gospel, as well as his own solo albums. Spike Lee directed the film version of his 2019 concert Broadway show "American Utopia." Byrne's musical "Here Lies Love" is currently on Broadway. He won an Oscar as one of the composers of the score for the Bertolucci film "The Last Emperor" and was nominated for one for the song he co-wrote with Mitski and Son Lux for the 2022 film "Everything Everywhere All At Once."

That's a long way to go from CBGB.

DAVID BYRNE: It is a long way to go. Who would have thought?

GROSS: So - who would have thought? David Byrne, welcome to FRESH AIR. Welcome back.

BYRNE: Thank you. Good to be back.

GROSS: Great to have you on the show.

BYRNE: It's been a really long time.

GROSS: Yes. So let's start with "Psycho Killer," the first song Talking Heads wrote, which is on their first album, "Talking Heads: 77." And it also starts off "Stop Making Sense." So you walk on stage with a boom box. You put down the boom box. It plays the rhythm track. You play along on your guitar and start singing.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "STOP MAKING SENSE")

BYRNE: (Singing) Can't seem to face up to the facts. I'm tense and nervous, can't relax. Can't sleep, bed's on fire. Don't touch me. I'm a real live wire. Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est? Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa (ph), better run, run, run run, run away. Oh, oh, oh, oh, ay-ya-ya-ya-ya (ph).

GROSS: So, David Byrne, "Psycho Killer" was the first song that you wrote with drummer Chris Frantz and bass player Tina Weymouth. What was the germ of the idea? Was it your idea to write a song about a serial killer? Do you think of him as a serial killer or just a kind of really bad date?

BYRNE: Yes. Well, I don't know if he's a serial killer. But, yes, somebody who's kind of deranged and is a killer. And it was an experiment to see if I could write a song. Chris and I had a band, and we played, you know, other people's songs at school dances and things like that. And I thought, oh, let me see if I can write a song. I tried years ago when I was in high school and failed miserably. Said, let me try again. So I thought I would try and write something that was maybe a cross between Alice Cooper and Randy Newman.

GROSS: Were you fans of each of them?

BYRNE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: Because they're kind of on opposite extremes.

BYRNE: Kind of on opposite extremes. So I thought I'd have the kind of dramatic subject that Alice Cooper might use but then look at kind of an interior monologue the way Randy Newman might do it. And so I thought, let's see if we can get inside this guy's head. So we're not going to talk about the violence or anything like that, but we'll just get inside this guy's kind of muddled up, slightly twisted thoughts. I imagined that he would imagine himself as very erudite and sophisticated and he - so he would speak sometimes in French. And so I went to...

GROSS: Oh, so that's why.

BYRNE: So I went to Tina, who had grown up some of the time in Brittany and her mother's French. And I said, oh, can you help me? We want him to say something pretty grand here but say it in French so that - as if he's going to tell us what kind of ambitions and how he sees himself. So...

GROSS: What does he say in French? I've never - it's like...

BYRNE: It's like I realized my destiny. It's very kind of old-fashioned. I think Tina said this is very Napoleonic kind of French. It's very kind of - I realized my destiny. I must do what I must do. Something - things like that.

GROSS: I love that song so much. Now, you also sing the fa-fa-fas in there.

BYRNE: Oh, yeah. That was a little reference to an Otis Redding song.

GROSS: Otis Redding. OK, I was wondering about that.

BYRNE: Yes, absolutely, Otis...

GROSS: 'Cause he had - "Sad Song" has - it's also called the "Fa-Fa-Fa Song" (ph).

BYRNE: Yes. So that was a little...

GROSS: It's a parentheses song.

BYRNE: Yeah, a little parentheses - a little thing where reference an Otis Redding song in there. I'm not sure exactly why.

GROSS: Except you do the deranged version of it.

BYRNE: Yes (laughter). But, you know, well, that's the subject. That's the voice of the guy who's singing.

GROSS: Yes. No, exactly. Exactly. A character song, like Randy Newman.

BYRNE: Yes. So - but that was - to me, that song was unique in everything that we did in that once we did it and we started playing it around the schools in Providence, people liked it. They said, we want to hear you play that song. And I realized, oh, OK, now I realize I can write a song. So now let me write some that are a little more what I want to say and how I want to say it, and I'll experiment with the song format and the way the songs are constructed. And so, yeah, that song, to me, seemed like a unique early experiment.

GROSS: So Talking Heads started by stripping everything away and then later adding things in. So I'm going to quote you from your book "How Music Works" in terms of what you stripped away. You wrote you wanted "no rock moves or poses, no pomp or drama, no rock hair, no rock lights, no rehearsed stage patter, definitely no noodling guitar solos." So why did you want to remove all of that? And is there anything you left out in that sentence that you wanted to remove?

BYRNE: (Laughter) I think that covered a lot of it right there.

GROSS: OK.

BYRNE: The idea was - I was aware that other contemporary acts, people around us, some of them were adopting poses or clothes or guitar styles or whatever that seemed to be from a previous era, from a previous generation. And I thought to myself, well, those are - those were invented or created by other people and they belong to them, and they express something about their generation. But how do I do something that belongs to us, that speaks to our generation, that speaks to our concerns? And I thought, well, then I have to jettison everything that went before and be very careful not to adopt any of that stuff.

GROSS: But then you started adding things in. And it wasn't the things that you wanted to take out, but it was things like, you know, more - an expanded rhythm section, a more theatrical presentation, as we see in "Stop Making Sense." And what you're doing onstage during that concert in "Stop Making Sense" is, for a lot of the film, you're basically jogging in place very rhythmically and very energetically. And I don't know how you managed to do that and sing at the same time. Then the backup singers end up doing that, too. So, like, you're not doing fancy dance moves, but it's so kinetic, and your - I don't know - your body - even when you're not doing the jogging thing, your body just seems to be pulsing with the rhythm. Like, your chest is pulsing. Your head is pulsing. So that's the choreography for you.

BYRNE: Yeah. I mean, there's other things that are a little more elaborate, but, yes, a lot of it is really kind of just moving with the rhythm of the songs. When we expanded the lineup - the performing lineup - and added more musicians, our recent records became more kind of rhythmically oriented. Although, we were always very kind of a rhythmic band.

GROSS: It was maybe more of a twitchy rhythm, but it was rhythm.

BYRNE: Yeah. But it was more twitchy. And now it became more funky and kind of more sensuous in a way. And I thought, oh, this makes me want to move in a different way. And I can't stop. I can't resist moving.

GROSS: So I just want to ask you about the big suit that you wear for a little bit of the performance in "Stop Making Sense." And in the credits it says the suit was built by. It doesn't say costume designer or designed by. It says built by as if it were, like, architecture.

BYRNE: That's true. It is. And it's also true that I didn't go to someone and say, I just want a big suit. I had a little drawing of what I wanted the end product to look like - very sketchy. It was just a little line drawing. But it was basically a rectangle with feet sticking out the bottom and a little tiny head on top. And so I went to a kind of small clothing manufacturer designer in downtown New York, Gail Blacker, and I said, how can we do this? I wanted to - I'm kind of influenced by kind of Japanese theater - no costume - where it's wide. It's rectangular. But when you turn sideways, it's not fat. So it's not really a fat suit. It's...

GROSS: More like a box.

BYRNE: It's more like a box, a flat box that's facing the audience, and it's meant to face forwards. So we had to realize I had to wear a kind of girdle underneath and put the pants on. The pants attached to this padded girdle thing. And so the pants kind of just hung down. They barely touched my legs. And same with the jacket. The jacket had a big shoulder armature, and the jacket just kind of hung down from that and barely touched my chest.

GROSS: The suit has become iconic, but what was it like to inhabit it? How did it change you as a performer on stage?

BYRNE: When I started wearing the big suit, I realized that it had a life of its own because it kind of just draped down like curtains from my hips and shoulders. You - I could wiggle a little bit, and it would ripple like curtains or sheets or whatever. So you could do all these things with it. If I wiggled side to side, it would kind of shimmy around. I could do all these things with it that I couldn't do just by myself. It had its own properties that you could kind of activate that way. I thought it was kind of odd, kind of slightly surreal. It meant something. I don't - wasn't sure what it meant. (Laughter) And...

GROSS: I guess it didn't matter. It sure made an impression.

BYRNE: Yeah. Yes. People have interpreted it as meaning like, oh, this is the archetypical businessman kind of imprisoned in his suit, imprisoned in his whole situation.

GROSS: But that's not what it was?

BYRNE: Well, it might have been - that might be unintentional, but it might be there. But I don't deny it. But it wasn't my intention to kind of - oh, I want to kind of make fun of businessmen.

GROSS: Right. OK. Let's take a short break here. Then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Byrne. And the newly restored version of the Talking Heads concert film, "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Byrne, a founding member of the band Talking Heads. A restored and remastered 40th anniversary edition of the band's concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters.

So let's hear another song from the film "Stop Making Sense." And I want to play "Burning Down The House," which is one of your best known songs. And it holds up so well so many years later. So now it's sometimes interpreted about - being about global warming, climate change, you know, burning down the house, fight fire with fire. What were you really thinking of when you wrote it?

BYRNE: The phrase burning down the house I'd heard being used as a chant at a Parliament-Funkadelic concert that I'd seen. They didn't have it in a song. It was just a kind of chant that they started chanting, and the audience joined in. And it was - it meant like, we're going to blow the roof off the sucker. We're going to set this place on fire. It's going to be - you know, we're going to have a really amazing time here. Yeah. It didn't mean literally, let's set fire to our houses or anything else.

GROSS: Or the world is burning.

BYRNE: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

BYRNE: And the rest of it, I thought, let me see if I can make a song that is basically a lot of non sequiturs that have a kind of - some kind of emotional impact, that they have some kind of emotional resonance, but literally, they don't make any sense.

GROSS: I'm so glad you said that, because, you know, I've never understood exactly, what is this song about?

BYRNE: (Laughter).

GROSS: I love it, and I love the individual lines. But, yeah, I could never find, like, what is the narrative here?

BYRNE: Yes. So, like the film title, it doesn't make literal sense but it makes emotional sense.

GROSS: Sure. Yes. And rhythmic sense.

BYRNE: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. All right, let's hear it. This is the version from the concert film "Stop Making Sense."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "STOP MAKING SENSE")

TALKING HEADS: (Singing) Watch out. You might get what you're after. Cool babies. Strange but not a stranger. I'm an ordinary guy burning down the house. Hold tight. Wait till the party's over. Hold tight. We're in for nasty weather. There has got to be a way. Burning down the house. Here's your ticket, pack your bags. Time for jumping overboard. Transportation is here. Close enough but not too far, maybe you know where you are. Fighting fire with fire. All wet. Hey, you might need a raincoat. Shakedown, dreams walking in broad daylight. Three hundred sixty-five degrees - burning down the house. It was once upon a place, sometimes I listen to myself. Going to come in first place. People on their way to work said, baby, what did you expect? Going to burst into flames. Go ahead.

GROSS: That's Talking Heads from the 40th anniversary restored edition of "Stop Making Sense," the Talking Heads concert film. So I'm going to quote you again from - this is from your book "How Music Works." And you're talking about dancing and you say, "a nerdy white guy trying to be smooth and Black is a terrible thing to behold"...

BYRNE: (Laughter).

GROSS: ..."I let my body discover, little by little, its own grammar of movement, often jerky, spastic and strangely formal." How did you come up with who you were on stage, moving in space and not doing, you know, either, like, Temptations moves or hip-hop moves?

BYRNE: Wow. Yes. I had to resist kind of adopting moves that I loved, that I'd seen other people do. And so I - let's see, I think - yeah, by that time, I'd worked with Twyla Tharp. She did an evening-length dance piece called "The Catherine Wheel."

GROSS: Yeah. And I'm going to interrupt you right there for a second because one of the things you do, in addition to jogging in place, is you kind of stagger or stumble around stage - around the stage very intentionally. You know, and it looks like you're almost going to fall, but you don't. And I thought, like, that is so Twyla Tharp because she - her choreography is, like, normal movements elevated to dance. And, like, stumbling, staggering, that's one of those normal movements that I've seen her use.

BYRNE: Yes. So I was around when they were rehearsing things and doing a lot of that kind of movement, not that I lifted any directly. But I thought, oh, there's all - this is - the vocabulary of what's available, what you can do, is really wide.

GROSS: So you were inspired by her approach to movement.

BYRNE: I was inspired by her and the stuff that she was doing. I was inspired by a lot of folk dance or dance that I'd seen on kind of ethnographic films of rituals. Stumbling and the stuff on "Once In A Lifetime" - by kind of the Baptist church, people going into trance, whether it was in Baptist Church or in Santeria or whatever. I thought, oh, this is - they might not think of it this way, but it's a kind of dance. It may not be choreographed in the same kind of way, but it is a kind of dance. It's definitely movement, and it's definitely connected with music. So I thought, OK, I'm not going to copy that, but that's - that direction is someplace I can go as well.

GROSS: My guest is David Byrne. The new restored version of the Talking Heads' concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. We'll hear more of my interview with David Byrne after a break. Let's listen to the concert film version of the Talking Heads song "Life During Wartime." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "STOP MAKING SENSE")

TALKING HEADS: (Singing) Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons. Packed up and ready to go. Heard of some gravesites out by the highway, a place where nobody knows. The sound of gunfire off in the distance. I'm getting used to it now. Lived in a brownstone, I lived in a ghetto. I've lived all over this town. 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. Transmit the message through the receiver. Hope for an answer someday. I got three passports, couple of visas. Don't even know my real name. High on a hillside, the trucks are loading. Everything's ready to roll. I sleep in the daytime. I work in the night time. I might not ever get home. This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no fooling around. This ain't no Mudd Club or CBGB. I ain't got time for that now.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with David Byrne, a founding member of the band Talking Heads. A restored and remastered 40th anniversary edition of the band's concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. Byrne has since gone on to start his own record label, Luaka Bop, collaborate on experimental theater pieces, win an Oscar and be nominated for another, and create Broadway shows, including "American Utopia" and "Here Lies Love," which is currently on Broadway.

Let's talk about the early music in your life. Was guitar the first instrument that you got?

BYRNE: No, it was a violin. At first, I had a hand-me-down violin.

GROSS: How'd you like it?

BYRNE: It's a very difficult instrument to get it to sound nice. It's not like you can - once you can play some notes, that they sound good. You play notes, but they sound bad for a long time. So it's not a very satisfying instrument in that way for a young person to learn, to me. But I persisted. I kept playing it. I ended up with a friend, playing it on the street sometime - you know, busking for money, that sort of thing.

GROSS: The guitar became more comfortable for you.

BYRNE: Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it was just - it was the iconic instrument for kind of...

GROSS: Yeah, absolutely.

BYRNE: ...The top music.

GROSS: Yes. Good and bad musicians all played guitar (laughter). Was rhythm the first thing that really captured you in music?

BYRNE: No, I think it was texture. I think that one of the first things I heard was - on a little transistor radio - was The Byrds version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." And I'd never heard any sound like that, the kind of - this jangly guitar and these really kind of lush harmonies mixed with that. And I thought, that's a sound that I've never heard before. I've never heard it on any (laughter) - on my parents' "Sound Of Music" record. It doesn't sound like that.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: No, it doesn't.

BYRNE: I thought, there's another world out there that I don't...

GROSS: Is that where your parents had, mostly Broadway?

BYRNE: No, they had some - they also had Scottish folk music and Mozart.

GROSS: OK. Yeah, so The Byrds would definitely be different.

BYRNE: And so that - said, there's a whole nother world out there. This is just - you're getting a peek at it.

GROSS: What were the first songs you learned to play?

BYRNE: I decided to teach myself. So I think I went and got a Bob Dylan songbook and probably a folk song songbook that had, you know, the chords written in, maybe a Beatles songbook, maybe some other kinds of things, maybe Smokey Robinson songs. You could buy the songbooks of the songs that were in the radio. And I thought, let me just learn the easy ones. So start with the easy ones and see if I can do that. And to me, that was immensely satisfying. Of course, I'm just doing this in my bedroom. And I realized that for learning something like this, I thought, what's really important is that you get this positive, satisfying feedback as fast as possible. That was the problem with the violin. It took a long time before you got the positive - thought, no, this way, you get to - you're singing a song within, you know, hours or a day or something like that - a song that you love. And I thought, that's a great way to learn.

GROSS: So what did you think of your singing voice then?

BYRNE: Oh, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was - of course, it sounded better to me in my head than what I heard on recordings. But I thought, I'm doing this because I'm writing the material. So I'm going to - it looks like I'm going to be singing it too. And later on, I realized how very peculiar my singing at that time was.

GROSS: Well, apparently the choir teacher in your junior high or high school felt the same way. What I read is - tell me if this is true - that you were rejected from choir because you were off key and - what? - too self-conscious or uncomfortable.

BYRNE: Yeah, definitely off key. Yes, yes, and I was asked to leave the school choir.

GROSS: So did that make you think, OK, give - like, this - you're bad, no one wants to hear you, you should stop singing for anyone, give up?

BYRNE: Why is it that people don't give up? That's a real puzzle to me. I didn't...

GROSS: Yeah. When somebody tells you you're not even fit for high school choir.

BYRNE: Yes, or they tell you, your paintings are ugly or this idea you have of doing this project or company or whatever - it's a stupid idea. And sometimes people persist and they're - sometimes they're right. It's kind of - it's really puzzling. What makes them persist? I mean, I don't remember thinking to myself, I'm right, they're wrong. I just thought, no, I love this. I'm going to keep doing it myself. I'll just do it in my bedroom or to a smaller group and do that. I didn't think, oh, that stupid choir leader. You know, what does he know? I just thought, no, I'll do it myself. And I keep - because I enjoy it.

Yeah, so I kept going and started singing again and eventually started singing in local - they called them coffee shops around town. They were like - the local university had one and there were some others. And they usually had folk singers in. And at that time, folk singers only sang kind of songs within a prescribed repertoire. So I went in kind of as a folk singer, but I sang what I felt were very literate rock and pop songs. And they'd never heard them before. They would say, who wrote that song?

GROSS: The - songs like what?

BYRNE: They were, like, songs by The Who or The Kinks or different people like that.

GROSS: So let's take another break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Byrne. The new restored version of the Talking Heads' concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AND SHE WAS")

TALKING HEADS: Hey.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Byrne, a founding member of the band Talking Heads. A restored and remastered 40th anniversary edition of the band's concert film, "Stop Making Sense," is playing in theaters.

I want to go back to the early days of Talking Heads. I want you to describe your first night at CBGB on a double bill with the Ramones. You opened for them. CBGB was, like, the most famous of the New York punk new wave clubs in the '70s. Did you already know the Ramones when you opened for them?

BYRNE: When we opened for the Ramones, I think probably the first time we didn't know them that well personally. We'd maybe said hello.

GROSS: But musically.

BYRNE: But musically, yes, we'd seen them play a couple of times there, and we knew what we were dealing with. We knew that...

GROSS: What were you dealing with?

BYRNE: We knew that they did kind of hilarious pop songs, but musically it was, like, this roar. It was like standing next to a jet engine or something. And so - and we often got called, you know, an art rock band. But I think we also thought that the Ramones were very much an art rock band. It was very conceptual, what they did and how they did it and how they looked. It was all very considered. So we really liked it. We didn't want to sound like them. That wasn't what we were doing, but we liked it. But we realized, wow, I don't think we can play after them. It's - the audience will be kind of stunned and maybe slightly deaf, but so we'll go before. And it was a wonderful time when the audiences were just curious about what was this new kind of pop music that was emerging downtown and in different places in London and elsewhere? They didn't know much about any of it, so they were just curious, and they would go, oh, this band, you know, sounds like a jet engine playing pop music. And this one is kind of this twitchy, kind of angsty songs as well. And they accepted all of it.

GROSS: So you were considered part of the punk new wave scene in New York. When I interviewed Seymour Stein, the co-founder of Sire Records, the label that signed Talking Heads, he told me that he came up with the expression new wave because the promotion people for Sire were describing Talking Heads as punk, but Stein thought you were, quote, "the furthest thing from punk." Did you feel like the furthest thing from punk?

BYRNE: We felt that, yes, musically we sounded very, very different. And visually we felt very, very different than what was then considered punk rock. But this kind of DIY, that do-it-yourself idea that was prevalent amongst the punk rockers and us - we thought we had that in common. We have in common the fact that, OK, we can do it, and we can do it with the means that we have available, and we can speak to the concerns of our generation and our contemporaries. And they felt the same way.

GROSS: You've often been described as not the most social person. I heard - read one description that at a party you'd be the person sitting alone in the corner. So as somebody who I assume is something of a loner socially - I don't know. I'm just...

BYRNE: Less so now, but yes, there was definitely a time when that was the case.

GROSS: So...

BYRNE: And I have to make clear that...

GROSS: Yeah.

BYRNE: ...That didn't mean I was unhappy.

GROSS: No, no. Right. Right.

BYRNE: Yeah.

GROSS: Right. But being somebody who was more of a loner than, you know, a group person, what was it like for you to be or at least be perceived as part of a scene?

BYRNE: (Laughter) At first I found it really annoying because I thought of myself and what we were doing as being very unique, and being part of a whole kind of scene or style or name or whatever it might be, I thought, no, it's - no, just listen to us for what we are. But then later on, I realized, oh, having a kind of handle like this has been very handy for the press to say, OK, we're going to write an article about punk rock. And we'd get included in that, which was, for us, not a bad thing. And I realized, oh, we kind of - we benefited by riding on the coattails of that. And then eventually people got to know us for what we were.

GROSS: You've described yourself as being on the autism spectrum, although you've never been officially diagnosed. Can I ask what makes you think you're on the spectrum?

BYRNE: A friend told me. This was - oh, what year was it? My - early 2000s, late '90s, maybe, a friend of mine picked up a book about the autism spectrum, which was kind of a - it's an old idea, but it's an old idea that had come back into vogue at that point. And she read aloud to me the various aspects of people who are on the spectrum. And then she said, David, this sounds like you. And I couldn't disagree, at least on the mild end of the spectrum.

GROSS: So what sounded like you, what characteristics?

BYRNE: Kind of the ability to kind of intensely focus on something that interested you, to kind of exclude other things and really kind of be intensely focused, maybe being somewhat socially awkward, socially uncomfortable, a little bit, taking things sometimes very literally. I still do that a bit (laughter). Like, when - sometimes having a conversation with someone, they'll say something, and by the tone of their voice or their look or whatever, they'll understand that they're telling me no, but I'll hear them say yes, the word, you know, yes or whatever. And so I'll go but you said yes. What - I don't understand. So, yeah, there's a little confusion there sometimes, but most - those were the main symptoms that I can remember.

GROSS: What about, like, repeating things over and over, whether it's, like, listening to something over and over again or seeing something over and over again or doing a gesture or a movement over and over again?

BYRNE: Wow. I hadn't even thought of that. I think you might be right. I mean, some of that is what dancing is when...

GROSS: Especially when you're doing the same movement over and over.

BYRNE: Yes, that - sometimes there's a kind - yeah, there's an attachment to that kind of repetition, that it actually has a - when something is repeated, it has a different meaning than when it's done just once.

GROSS: Do you find it soothing?

BYRNE: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: So when your friend suggested that maybe you're on the autism spectrum and you thought, yeah, yeah, maybe, why didn't you bother to get an official diagnosis?

BYRNE: Probably because I thought this is just me. I'm not unhappy. I might be a little bit different than some other people, but I'm not unhappy. This is the way I experience the world. But I'm doing fine. I'm - I really enjoy writing the songs and performing and the other things that we do. So why act like I have something wrong that needs to be treated?

GROSS: Let's take a short break here. Then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Byrne, and the newly restored version of the Talking Heads' concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF TALKING HEADS SONG, "THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (NAIVE MELODY)")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Byrne, a founding member of the band Talking Heads. A restored and remastered 40th anniversary edition of the band's concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters.

I don't think Talking Heads was ever famous for, like, love ballads and that - you know, those kinds of songs. But you've recorded them, and I wanted to play one. I don't think this is one of your best-known songs, but it's from your 1997 album "Feelings," which was your fifth studio album. And it's a song called "A Soft Seduction." I think it's a really good song, and it's just really interesting to hear you singing a ballad like that. Can you say a little bit about it?

BYRNE: That - I was - thank you. I really like that song too. I realized, as life went on, that I could write really beautiful, moving melodies occasionally.

GROSS: When did you realize that?

BYRNE: Oh, little by little. It was a very gradual process. I also was listening to other people, other musicians, whether it was, you know, like, Paul McCartney or Caetano Veloso or others, who could write these beautiful melodies and had, you know, amazing voices. And I'd realized, oh, how do they do that? How do they do that? And little by little, learned, oh, I can do a little bit of that.

GROSS: Well, let's hear it. This is David Byrne singing his song "A Soft Seduction."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A SOFT SEDUCTION")

BYRNE: (Singing) The words of love are not enough, though sweet as wine, as thick as blood. Passionless moments and we are homeless, out on the street. But life is cool and things aren't bad. Got what he wants, lost what he had. He soon adjusted and got accustomed to these new ways. Blame God, how can you lose singing such sweet rhythm and blues? Strange days, she said to me. Being in love don't mean you're free. But night reveals what daytime hides...

GROSS: So that was David Byrne from his 1997 album "Feelings." And the song is called "A Soft Seduction." It's a song he wrote. You know, when I think of "Feelings," I think of that song "Feelings." Were you concerned that people would think that that was one of the songs that you did on it?

BYRNE: I thought that would be very funny if they thought that I was doing that song, and I thought it was also funny that - myself - it was intentional. That...

GROSS: Really?

BYRNE: I was often portrayed as being a little bit cold and analytical in my songwriting and performing. So I thought it might be funny to call a record "Feelings," especially coming from me. And I also put a picture of me as a kind of Ken doll on the cover.

GROSS: How timely now.

(LAUGHTER)

BYRNE: Yes.

GROSS: That would be back in fashion. One of the things you do in some of your songs is a kind of speak singing that reminds me of, like, a cross between some Kurt Weill songs and Lou Reed. And I'm wondering if either of them have been inspirations to you in that style that you have.

BYRNE: Both of them have been inspirations to me. I was a big fan of Velvet Underground when I was younger, and I'd never heard anything like that - not the kind of music they did, but also the kind of subjects they were singing about. I thought, wow, this is the - this is not peace and love here. But it was also - but that's part of the world, as well. They're acknowledging a different part of the world. And, yes, Kurt Weill and Brecht - those songs where they had sometimes these beautiful melodies interspersed with kind of talking, talk-singing parts - I'd also heard things, like preachers, whether it was on the radio or in a church, where the sermon would start, and the energy would get higher and higher and higher, and then it would kind of cross over a line, and it became like singing. It became, like, an incantation, a rhythmic incantation that then - and kind of the band or organist or whoever is playing along. And it was like crossing over a line and becoming music. It started, and it kind of gradually transformed from one thing into another.

GROSS: I want to get back to something that you said earlier. You know, you said that you've changed in terms of being social, that you think you're more social than you used to be, more comfortable around people. What changed? Like, how did that change evolve?

BYRNE: That's a really good question. I think it - music helped me socially, that - as you can see in "Stop Making Sense." And "Stop Making Sense," this concert and film, is kind of a model of what happened to me. You see this person in the beginning who's kind of angsty and twitchy and stumbling around and - while singing about a psycho killer, and then by the end, he's surrendered to the music and is fairly joyful, as much as he could be at that point. And he's found a kind of community. This happens in the "American Utopia" show as well. He finds a community, a community that's diverse, that's made of all sorts of different people that are very different from him, but they're all making music together, and the music together is something that none of them could make by - just by themselves. It's a very collective enterprise.

GROSS: It seems like that's a great way of having a community without having to have - without necessarily having to have, like, heart-to-heart personal emotional discussions 'cause it's...

BYRNE: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...You know, seriously, like, you're relating through music, and you're with each other, like, on stage. You have this, like, totally engaged, like, loving audience, but you don't have to interact with them, you know? Like, you're separated from them. You're on stage. They're in the audience. So it's kind of both at the same time, this sense of connection with people, but also being apart.

BYRNE: I think you're right. There was a real kind of safety net there (laughter). There wasn't - it wasn't this feeling of the danger of falling into a total social engagement. But there was enough that kind of - it opened a door.

GROSS: I just want to say it has been so much fun to talk with you. Thank you so much.

BYRNE: Thank you. Thank you. It's been too long.

GROSS: Yes. You were on our show in 1992, a long time ago.

BYRNE: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. It's great to talk again.

BYRNE: You too. Thank you very much.

GROSS: David Byrne co-founded Talking Heads. His record label is called Luaka Bop. The 40th anniversary restored and remastered edition of the Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense" is playing in theaters. We'll close with a song from the film, the band's cover of Al Green's "Take Me To The River."

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about how Israel failed to detect Hamas was planning a massive attack and assumed that the threat from Hamas was contained. My guest will be New York Times investigative correspondent Mark Mazzetti. We'll also talk about the possibility of a pact between Saudi Arabia and Israel and how this war is a setback. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on our show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "STOP MAKING SENSE")

TALKING HEADS: (Singing) I don't know why I love her like I do. All the changes that you put me through. Sixteen candles there on my wall, and here am I, the biggest fool of them all. I want to know. Can you tell me? Am I in love to stay? Take me to the river. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. Drop me in the water. Dip me in the river. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. Drop me in the water, water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water, water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water, water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water, water. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.