Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.
That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?
I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.
Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I'm riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park - no, I don't wear the dreaded helmet then.
I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'
Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.
Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.
Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around.
Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for.
I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.
There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.
Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you're working on.
The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.
People use irony as a defense mechanism.
The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.
I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.
Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.
With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.
Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.