Quick to Byrne

IT’S early in the morning and composer, musician, artist and designer David Byrne has just returned from a bracing bike ride around the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

“I enjoy spending time in a new place for a day or two,” says the softly-spoken New Yorker.

“I travel with a folding bicycle, so I get a chance to explore which is exciting. This is a really interesting place – and I’ve just been looking at some disturbing erotic statues!”

Despite just arriving from Stockholm in neighbouring Sweden, where he was playing the night before, he is bursting with enthusiasm.

It appears the stage persona of the former Talking Heads frontman, twitching with nervous and physical energy, is no act. He really is a human dynamo, verging on the hyperactive.

While exploring, he has been taking pictures. For, as well as his bike, he is also inseparable from his camera – taking it everywhere he goes.

Performer, photographer, film director and author, Byrne is a true renaissance man. He is currently partway through a European tour, which on Thursday arrives in Oxford.

You’d think that with a vast back catalogue of Talking Heads and solo material behind him, going back to the band’s new wave 1977 debut – the appropriately titled Talking Heads: 77 – David has a huge repertoire to chose from. But a greatest hits tour just isn’t David’s style. That would be just too easy.

Instead, he’s presenting a selection of his work with iconic producer, and friend, Brian Eno.

Titled Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno, the tour features work from collaborations My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and new joint album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, along with songs from the Talking Heads albums produced with Eno – namely More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light, which, by common consent, also happened to be their best.

So why is he doing it? “Not surprisingly, when I finished recording the album with Brian, I wanted to go out and only play the new stuff, which is a lot of fun,” he explains.

“But secretly the audience is thinking ‘throw us a bone – give us something we know’.

“I thought, ‘how can I do this, but also make a thread connecting some of the stuff they know with the new stuff?’ And Brian was that link.”

While Talking Heads broke up nearly 18 years ago, the show gives fans of the seminal art-punk/funk band a chance to hear some their favourite songs. It also includes much of David’s preferred work.

“Remain in Light I’d say was my favourite album,” he says cautiously – as if realising it for the first time.

“But I also like the last one we did – Naked. I liked the way the songs were written, because everyone contributed to the music – though some less than others.”

Eno had a massive impact on Talking Heads, introducing them to some of the African and Latin American styles that gave the band their funk, and igniting David’s love of world music, that would go on to see him set up the influential Luaka Bop record label.

“He was definitely the fifth member of the band,” he says. “He made us feel courage in the recording environment, but was not ‘all over’ the records.”

So, will Brian, whose credits also include collaborations with Roxy Music, David Bowie, Ultravox, U2 and Coldplay, be making an appearance at the date at Oxford’s New Theatre? “Not that I know of,” he laughs. “He does live near there so he might take a bow, but I really doubt he’ll play.”

One thing David is looking forward to, however, is hitting the streets of Oxford on two wheels. “I'll have my bike so I will be riding around. People can come and say ‘hi’ if they want. But usually they don’t recognise me – unless the town has been plastered with posters with my face.”

Under Byrne’s direction, Talking Heads were the archetypal New York band. They formed in the city and played their debut gig alongside the Ramones at its legendary CBGB club.

And David remains an iconic New York artist. Much of his work was created in, and for, the Big Apple – including his Playing the Building installation, an audience-interactive project which allowed visitors to ‘play’ Manhattan’s Battery Maritime Building, on an organ keyboard connected to parts of the structure.

So it comes as some surprise to learn that Byrne is actually a Brit – born in Dumbarton, Scotland, where he lived before his family crossed the Atlantic, when he was two.

His parents retained their heavy Scottish accents, however, and David recalls having to translate for friends.

So does he feel at home over here?

He pauses thoughtfully. “To some extent,” he admits. “I like the honesty, and I’m a fan of the British attitude and humour.”

With so many ‘80s bands getting back together, is there any chance of a Talking Heads reunion? “No, I don’t think so,” he says. “Bands split up for different reasons while others go on making exactly the same music. But with us it was personal and musical. We needed to change.”

And changed he has. He also, I suggest, seems mellower than in the past. “There’s still plenty to be angry about,” he says. “But I have mellowed in the sense that every little tiny detail isn’t going to get me into a frothing anger.”

* THE Byrne/ Eno connection – pick of the best collaborations l More Songs About Buildings and Food – The band’s 1978 second album was the first to benefit from Eno’s distinctive touch.

l Fear of Music – Commonly regarded as the band’s greatest album, and far ahead of its time, this 1979 masterpiece featured elements of Eno’s unmistakable world music stamp.

l Remain in Light – This powerful album established the band as creative geniuses with the likes of the jerky Houses in Motion, The Overload, and Once in a Lifetime.

l My Life in the Bush of Ghosts – More ‘out there’ electronic and ambient experimentation from Eno, this time working alone with Byrne, without the Heads. Featuring African influences and taped otherwordly samples from Arabic singers, DJs, an exorcist. Recorded in 1980.