Last Words On Byrne

I remain struck by how resonant David Byrne’s show at the Palace remains. I emailed my old compatriot, Ken Wilson, asking him what he made of Byrne’s constant references to house and home. Always one to break on through to the other side, to muse one step beyond, my pal offered these salient observations. Ken Wilson:

“Several years ago I found a tape – a ‘not-for-sale’ promotional tape intended only for dj’s – that Brian Eno made to promote a short-lived band called Hugo Largo. In the course of the tape Eno talks about what he sees as happening in rock or pop music. The texture (he’s big on ‘texture’) of the music creates a world, then a landscape, then the objects or structures in that world and landscape – and the singer tells us how to negotiate that landscape. He mentions David Byrne and Talking Heads in passing. To Eno, Byrne, or his persona, is a naïve, fresh viewer of the landscape he finds himself in. He asks questions; he tries to figure things out. There is something wide-eyed and vulnerable about that self.

“And yes, it is a landscape of buildings and homes, and focused on the quotidian, on the surroundings of home: there is curiosity and paranoia and wonder… surprise inside architecture. Remember, an early album of TH was More Songs About Buildings and Food. Even a song like ‘Life During Wartime,’ which seems spoken by an aggressive persona, is simply a man in a space trying to define that space as he stockades and stockpiles. Both Byrne and Eno, despite their hip, urbane personae, are in fact more concerned, like Andy Warhol, with finding and refining a personal, homey space, a place. Try to find Eno’s  A Year with Swollen Appendices, an odd memoir that shows how much of a homebody Eno is.

“Byrne was born in Britain and moved to Baltimore, then to NYC. “How did I get here?” is a logical question. He must have always been both outsider and in-groupie, and home, well, home is heaven, and nothing ever happens there.”