DAVID BYRNE
'NOT EVERYTHING YOU DO HAS TO FIND AN AUDIENCE':
A LETTER TO HIS YOUNGER SELF by Adrian Lobb / The Big Issue UK / courtesy of INSP.ngo
As a shy teen, David Byrne wondered whether he’d find his crowd. But the 1960s scene in New York gave him an exciting opportunity to be surrounded by authors, artists and musicians who would later inspire his music and creativity. He said he was inspired by his mother’s activism, and as a teen who liked music, it was almost inevitable he would be involved in the protests of the 1960s and 70s. Byrne started his letter to his younger self by reminiscing about the early days. At 16, I was extremely shy but already starting to perform. I was in high school and taking an interest in all kinds of music, but I had no aspirations that it would be my future. It was just something I loved and would tinker with. I had, for a brief time, a band with some schoolmates and then started doing very odd performances at coffee shops in Baltimore. So I was kind of precocious in that sense, yet I remained extremely shy. The two went hand in hand, because that was my way to communicate, by performing.
FROM THE STREETS
My pop music heroes were James Brown, The Beatles, The Temptations, but I had a growing awareness of all sorts of other music. I listened to electronic music and records on a label called Folkways, which was folk music from other parts of the world. It was available from the local public library.
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I can’t imagine how well the vinyl held up, being lent to all these people, but it opened up the world to me. Look, there’s all this other music besides the pop music you hear on the radio! It was incredible. Listening to experimental music, I realized there were so many ways of making music and constructing sounds, and that all kinds of sounds are valid. I drew surreal cartoon strips and my versions of the psychedelic posters that were around in the late 1960s. I had not done any drugs but I would go down to the basement, get out the paints and create my own trippy drawings. I was also fascinated by science so I applied for art schools, based on my drawings, and an engineering school. I thought: OK, let’s see where you end up. The engineering college was quiet. But when I visited art schools, there was more ferment, the creativity was on the walls. They’d scrawl things everywhere and work was spilling out of the studios. I would tell my younger self don’t worry, there are people like you and you’ll find them. At that age there
are worries your older self could help you with – I felt like a lot of people do, like you’re different and don’t fit in. Especially growing up in a little suburban town, you think, do I belong? Is there a place for me? Are there any other people like me? I’d like to have had that reassurance. People would find their people on the dance floor or through writing, but you had to actively seek them out. I’d wonder, where are these folks who are like me… maybe they are in art school. My mother was politically involved, starting from when I was an adolescent and the anti-Vietnam War protests. She continued to protest. She was out there
