Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

East Village Eye APRIL 1982 - by Bethany Haye

DAVID BYRNE

No need to introduce David Byrne with an impressive and patronizingly impressed list of achievements. I will, however, note that his schematic-thematic sensurround score for Twyla Tharp's Catherine Wheel has recently been released on disc and tape (ex-tricating it from the mostly disconcerting visuals) and both Remain In Light and My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (Byrne-Eno) continue to grow on one like regenerating amoebae.

Toward the end of '81 on a Sunday afternoon, I spoke with Byrne at his loft, about Medieval Christian cults, wall-to-wall home video screens, ritual exorcism, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Third World economic options, heavy metal, profit-motive culture, The B-52s' latest record (a David Byrne production), the '50s, and the place of the artist-philosopher in society. I didn't ask him much about the Talking Heads figure you can read about that in Trouser Press. Later, I noticed that a lot of things we talked about mirrored the same concerns that weave through Remain In Light, for example, on tracks like Listening Wind, The Great Curve and Cross-Eyed And Painless. At the time, I mostly noticed his knees shaking.

BH: One of the reasons people get excited about David Byrne/Talking Heads music besides the musical innovation, is that it lets you know someone is thinking about the world, noticing things both internal and external. And there's a good dynamic in the way the music plays off the words.

DB: I think music can articulate a world view that is difficult for people - myself anyway - to put into words. Sometimes the texture of a song more than the lyrics articulate a way of looking at things or organizing things in general - not just music - that people might find appealing and that may be why they like the song; the words may be just a gloss on top.

BH: In this country though, artists are the only ones who can question for ex-ample, the nostalgic-reactionary trend, and be acknowledged on a large scale because political opposition isn't tolerated.

DB: From my point of view, though it's occasionally worthwhile to point out what I see as errors in people's thinking or political decisions, lately I feel that the most effective thing would be to present very appealing alternatives. I... we try to present music that implies a way of thinking that's much more attractive and enjoyable, and in the long run less dangerous than the present way of thinking - not just to say "don't do this, do that" - but perhaps to say, "forget about trying to recapture the fifties and do something in the present that's more fun and at the same time won't lead to such disastrous results."

BH: Also, it's exhilarating to think of all the possibilities.

DB: That's why I would hope I - or anyone - can present an alternative that is more exciting and that you end up liking more. The same kind of thing happens in music. An awful lot of music refers back to early rock and these kinds of structures and feelings from the early '60s and the '50s. It's similar, an attempt to return to that myth. I was thinking the other day of the pilgrims and religious parties that settled this country and made a big impact on the direction it was to take in the beginning. What you've got is a group of people who were real religious traditionalists along the same lines as Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. These were people who had a nostalgia for the Middle Ages. They were worried about what was happening in England and Europe at the time, and they wanted to go back to wearing nuns' habits and a stringent ascetic code of morals. They saw the Middle Ages as the heyday of man's existence. So they had nowhere else to come but here to try to establish that sort of thing. Which is pretty bizarre! (Somehow or other, the conversation drifted, in geographical-historical sequence to the Third World.)

DB: I think the whole attitude of respecting Third World cultures has been very difficult for Europe and the U.S because in a way, they go against Christianity. Their religions and general way of looking at things is an attempt to integrate what they're doing with natural forces. Even in rituals that have to do with the weather, for example, the object isn't to overcome nature, but to collaborate with the elements, develop a diplomatic understanding with them. Whereas, ever since the Renaissance - even in the Medieval period when Christianity underwent a turnaround in some of its dogma - man was considered separate from nature. Nature was on the side of the devil, it represented temptation, something to be overpowered. Which justifies exploiting all your natural resources and exploiting the Third World heathens... morally justifies all that.

BH: Also, you used to hear about all those marines in Vietnam (some of them anyway) who just couldn't "I-Thou" it with the natives at all. They looked (talked, moved, etc.) so differently that they just figured they didn't feel the pain, didn't count.

DB: That's fairly common from one culture to another, where one is more sophisticated than the other. It requires an awfully big shift in values to begin to have a dialogue between north and south, the industrialized countries and the developing countries. It seems there really is a possibility that the Third World could get totally overrun by the big corporations because what the corporations offer is initially very attractive: slightly higher wages and material goods etc. On the other hand, many of these countries could turn around and say, "No, you're not going to exploit us because we've got the natural resources you want. We've got the social systems that aren't morally bankrupt. We've got what you need so we're going to take control and tell you what to do. " So it could happen that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the balance of power turns over, as the Arabs have done with oil. They said, "Wait a minute, we've got what you want, so now we're going to play the same game you've played with us for the last hundred years. We're going to raise prices and your use your rules on you." And I think that might be what's going to happen. Maybe not, but it might.

BH: It was a good example; it showed it could be done. Before that people probably never thought they could stand up to the superpowers.

DB: But they can if they decide to. Things could probably turn around, but it might take a while. It takes a while for people to realize what's being done to them that way.

BH: Also, we're just starting on a wider level to appreciate these cultures which is certainly in some part due to having their musical forms, for example, integrated into our accessible modern music. So it won't be like us against the aliens any more. And then popular support for the government and corporations in their Third World adventures won't be automatic. You know, going back to what you said about tribal religion and Christianity, it does seem pretty irreconcilable, yet Christianity is quite prevalent in parts of the Third World.

BH: You've just finished producing a new B-52s album.

DB: It's just about finished. I have to decide on the running order of the songs tomorrow.

BH: One of the things that has always been their trademark is these little icons of American life. Are the new songs similar to the strange take on American life in say, 52 Girls or Party Out Of Bounds.

DB: Some of the songs are similar, but the music is quite different from what they're used to doing.

BH: How? Did they pick up other influences?

DB: Yeah, they tried other things. In the studio, I manipulated some of their instruments and showed them how to rearrange the instrumental parts to get different effects.

BH: Did they consciously choose forms from other cultures?

DB: A little bit, but not too much They're still very American. I think it came out good. I'm very happy with it.

BH: Has the video you made been shown here?

DB: The one with me dancing in it has been shown a bit on cable and on TV in Europe. In fact, it's been seen more outside this country than here.

BH: Is there a bigger audience proportionally for the Talking Heads there than here?

DB: Certainly in the cultural centers, London, Amsterdam, Paris. But we don't sell that many records in the outlying districts. In Europe, we don't have that broad an appeal, where in this country it's become fairly even, although it's certainly not huge, but now, it's a certain sample over the whole country rather than just concentrated in New York and L.A. - which I think is real nice. It seem pretty healthy.

BH: Yeah. You don't feel like artists talking to artists.

DB: Yeah.

BH: Have you thought about doing a videodisc where the whole concept is both audial and visual?

DB: Yeah, I'd love to but it would really require a lot of time and money. To me there are two approaches to videos like that. Ultimately, they're going for the same end, but they take different paths One is the type of thing Brian (Eno) was doing where the music and the image are very subtle and change very slowly. and the other is one where it's very intense, sort of all crammed in... say like instead of reissuing Warner action films, it would make more sense to edit out the hot points like car crashes from a whole lot of films and make a tape of nothing but the exciting parts. 'Cause it seems like that's what's exciting in movies. So this would serve the same purpose, but you'd just need one movie, and whenever you looked at it car crashes! The other thing that's exciting is the whole cable hookup. For one thing, you could have access to TV from all over the world

BH: You mean like short wave radio?

DB: Yeah, you can already pick up lots of places by having a dish on the roof. And it's conceivable that one person could have a dish and hook the cable to it, and all their neighbors could watch it whenever they wanted to. One of the B-52s bought one of those home computers that hooks into a source that is a sort of information bank, and you can request all kinds of data: you can do research that way or find out what's going on in a certain place. Imagine if that was expanded. That's really making use of television as a communication tool, a line into things it would normally be difficult to have access to. Of course, it's not as beautiful, it could never have the same impact as watching a big movie screen.

BH: Shirley Clarke, another video artist, said in one of her portentous predictions, "By the year 2000, every home will have one wail that's a giant TV screen - Sony makes one now that's 20 x 20 - and we'll only go out to the cinema or the theater for the express purpose of sitting in the dark with a lot of other people. I wonder if that will isolate people more.

DB: I don't know about that. I tend to think that all those predictions about people becoming more isolated because they stay at home and watch TV are exaggerated. People still have the same impulses, they just manifest them in different ways. Like all the predictions about violence on TV. I think it has a very small effect.

BH: You don't think there's a sense that you're surrounded by violence?

DB: There is a bit, but I think that has very little effect on people. I don't think it makes them more violent or more prone to violence - certainly not as much as people think. Because in other coun-tries, Europe for example, they have the same shows on TV (though maybe not as many and yet their crime rates are not anywhere near America's. And even in a lot of so-called primitive cultures, or in traditional societies, say in Oriental ones, they put on plays and ceremonies with a lot of violence in them.

BH: Does it make any difference whether it's graphic violence or not? mean Shakespeare and Greek tragedy are full of violence but it takes place offstage.

DB: But even on TV, most of it isn't realistic. It's sort of mimed violence. If it were too realistic, it would turn people's stomachs.

BH: I think another difference is that in epic-myth violence, people got killed for some epic reason, not just because they happened to get in the way.

DB: No, but even in TV shows - to me they're all little morality plays. Nothing on the order of Shakespeare or anything. Since they have to turn them out one a week, all they can manage is a disposable little morality play. But all the seemingly gratuitous violence has made a point; some little moral has been applied. I don't watch a lot of it because I disagree with those values, and I think it's terrible that they should be promoted in every commercial and every show. In some ways it's insidious how they're reinforced without even being noticed half the time. Like, in thirty seconds, I can give you a picture of family life that in effect tells you, is what family life should be, this is the way a man and a woman are supposed to relate to one another" when what is stated is that they're talking about bleach or detergent or shaving cream. But it's always in the context of those dominant values. But that's the way it goes. I think every society demands that the values it thinks it wants to hold are reaffirmed constantly, whether it be in little plays or in newspapers or movies.

BH: I think that if we had put a value on learning how to think, we wouldn't settle for such paltry values.

DB: It's dangerous for too many people to think.

BH: I assume you're saying that facetiously (I should never assume anything). I suppose popular belief is that if they did, "My God, there'd be chaos."

DB: Well, it's true. I mean, if everyone went around questioning everything all the time, it would be chaos. I mean. everyone should examine things from time to time, but for the most part one has to have one's own values reaffirmed in one way or another. I do it by choosing records that I like because they reaffirm my values, or picking a TV show or movie that tells me I'm right. And other people do the same thing, there's just less around that I like, I guess. BH: Well, some values are better than others, like humanism and naturalism might have a more positive effect, so someone who holds these might object to the sort of things that are always on television.

DB: But at the same time, even if you want to put out the values that you think are better than the one being promoted, you still have to use some of the same methods to state them in non-verbal ways. Which is the same thing that happens with the values that you don't think are good.

BH: For example, the records you make are pretty subtle (songs like "Listening Wind" have a definite political point of view) but television is aggressive and subtle at the same time and the cost is artificially high- prohibitive - so it keeps out the minority point of view on any mass scale.

DB: Well, I think that's just the way things are for people holding the minority point of view. Then it sometimes happens that the minority point of view wins over. Going back to what you were saying before, that people should think a little more, but mainly they should have more respect for those who are out there investing in the future. Because when the old cultural forms aren't relevant any more, when the old values don't hold any more, there needs to be someone ready to apply alternatives and replacements. So if this minority who's out there exploring other ways of looking at things isn't given support and understanding, there won't be any alternatives when one is needed. And that could be a problem.

DB: In Africa it is.

BH: North Africa?

DB: The whole top of the continent, also in Latin America. Like any religion, it's mutated to fit the needs of the people in different areas. Catholicism in South America is vastly different from Catholicism in this country. Christianity in a black rural church is completely different from Christianity in a white rural church. For example, the singing.

BH: It's really a mixture, isn't it, of sacred music and vague reminiscences of African rhythmic structures? Like, do you know the Misa Luba and the Misa Criolla? One is a Mexican mass from the Yucatan and the other is a Congolese mass. Anyway, that seems to imply that the two can coexist.

DB: Yeah, I think so because... there are various tenets just being interpreted in musical terms. There were Christian cults in the third century and in the MiddLe Ages. Christianity at the time manifested itself in two different ways. One was the monastic way with monks and religious retreats and pristine meditation and whatnot. And the other was the complete opposite with sex orgies and people eating before, that people should think a little more - it's probably true, but it's the biological nature of people to delegate some small segment of the population to go out on a limb and question things. Every society delegates that function to some people who can naturally discipline themselves to do it. i think what's happening in this culture is that many of those people haven't been given the respect they have to be given. So. yes, everyone has to think a little more, but mainly they should have more respect for those who are out there investing in the future. Because when the old cultural forms aren't relevant any more, when the old values don't hold any more, there needs to be someone ready to apply alternatives and replacements. So if this minority who's out there exploring other ways of looking at things isn't given support and meditation and whatnot. And the other was the complete opposite with sex orgies and people eating as much as they could and partying generally.

BH: Like the Dionysians.

DB: Yeah, many of those were Christians. And they just reinterpreted parts of the Bible to mean that that's what should be done, and that would be the path to enlightenment. And I suppose for them it was. Different way to the same end.

BH: The difference between having all those diverse spiritual and practical options for the Right Way To Do Things, the difference between then and now is that we have the capability of destroying ourselves. So finding the path - breaking down boundaries between cultures to get to the real thing - seems a little more pressing. If you think it's worth trying to save the human race - that's the real choice.

DB: (long pause) Yeah, uh, I don't have many ideas about that.

BH: About whether it's worth saving?

DB: (scandalized) No, about having the capability to destroy the whole world a hundred times over or whatever. It's so strange, it seems there's always been some kind of heavy warfare or antagonism between one group of people and another and that's how it leads to this. It's probably healthy on a small scale but when you have the capacity to totally annihilate everything... I mean, it's probably only a matter of time before any small country that wants it can have the bomb and start dropping them or exploding at one or another. That seems pretty terrifying.

BH: You'd think everyone would agree that's ultimate urgency priority. Except the guys in overdrive who have this vast influence all over the world really think there is such a thing as limited nuclear warfare.

DB: Yeah, everybody's scared stiff to promote the fact that this knowledge has been abused in the past.

BH: When you think about the U.S. being so young by comparison to Europe and you realise how it was this great experiment, you see how easy it is to romanticise the U.S. because it doesn't have two thousand years of historical tradition.

DB: Yeah, there's nothing to fall back on so you have to.

BH: Anything could happen...

DB: You sort of have to make things up as you go along. There isn't a real foundation so you have to make up myths to live by as you go whether it be Hollywood movies or whatever. People feel forced to do that. For instance, in some cultures where there's possession, there are deities that have distinct personalities, and they manifest themselves in rituals and performances. When people become possessed by one of them, they take on very prescribed character traits so it's easy for others in the culture to know, "Oh, so-and-so is being possessed by this particular deity. " And then there's other ones where people put on masks etc., and become another personality. It seems important that these things be carried out, for these archetypal personalities to manifest themselves in a public setting every once in a while. And I tend to think that white pop performances are the exact same kind of thing.

BH: Sometimes it's more conscious. I mean, when people want to look like or be like someone else. Maybe that's what possession is after all, the extreme desire to be taken over by something that impresses you greatly. I was thinking about heavy metal music. It's so all-pervasive that that it virtually blocks out everything else.

DB: Yeah, I tend to think of heavy metal almost as a drug experience or something... or getting drunk... where there's a desire to be completely overwhelmed by something outside you. In the case of that kind of music, its sheer volume or the implication of volume on the record. And I guess when you go with it, you're just getting pummeled for a couple of hours by this singular force, whether it be this kind of music or drugs or alcohol. Some movies are like that, too. I thought Raiders Of The Lost Ark was just one overwhelming scene after another. You could almost ignore the plotline; it seemed like an excuse to link the scenes together. You just sit back and let yourself be taken over - sort of visual pummeling - and your thinking hasn't changed as a result. I think some people don't like that, and then some people do.

BH: I guess there's nothing wrong with watching a movie to be blitzed out for a while, but so much of the culture is like that, you really have to search to find art or performance where someone has invested the time and effort to express something that has affected them. When you're just flooded with that superficial stuff being marketed everywhere, it's easy to forget something powerful and insightful exists. I think people give up and begin to think there's nothing more.

DB: I suppose if you start worrying about what you're doing and what decision you should be making, it's easy enough to just go and get overwhelmed for a couple of hours and forget about it. Postpone any decision-making.

BH: So decisions get made by default. That's the catch to pop culture being so vacuous; there are no tanks in the street, you get up and your electric toothbrush is still there - it's an illusion that everything is fine. Like we don't have any problems that the rest of the world has. If we don't make an effort to see through the layer of cultural crazy foam, we won't.

DB: Yeah, I should think it's possible for the two kinds of thing to co-exist. For instance, you don't have to be dogmatic and say, "Music and movies should do this and be about that or have this affect on people." They can obviously have different reasons for existing. But you'd think it would be nice if the different forms were given equal importance and had equal popularity.

BH: Or just had a chance. Money is so over-important to whomever produces the stuff.

DB: Oh yeah, well, the whole culture is built on that. A thing's value depends on how easily and for how much it can be bought and sold. That's how it's decided what something is worth. I think there's going to be a real problem with that in the future, in this country anyway. because most people already have the material things. I mean there's no shortage of them so now, the corporations and government are attempting to apply the same ethic to information of all sorts - books, news, everything. They're attempting to apply the same standards to that as to products and you really can't because it's not a tangible thing.