David Byrne

Summary

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

Guest: David Byrne

Release Date: March 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this intimate episode, renowned fashion designer Bella Freud invites legendary musician and artist David Byrne “onto the couch” to delve into the intersection of fashion, identity, creativity, and vulnerability. The conversation is wide-ranging, touching on the symbolism and practicality of clothing, performance anxieties, personal transformation, love, collaboration, the evolution of musical and social technologies, and learning to embrace uncertainty—always through the candid, often humorous personal reflections of both guest and host.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Clothing, Identity, and Personal Choice

[01:10–05:40]

• David's Tour Wardrobe:
  • Prefers to pick clothes as needed while on tour, shopping for practical reasons, resulting in an eclectic, recently-purchased outfit.
    • “Everything except my shoes and my underwear I just bought on the road.” – David Byrne [01:18]
  • Values personal agency in choosing clothes, wary of becoming dependent on others’ opinions about his appearance.
    • “If I get too much help with my appearance, I forget that I know how to do things for myself and become a kind of infantilize myself.” – Bella Freud [02:28]
• Childhood Clothing Aspirations:
  • Longed to emulate TV figures—cowboys, spacemen, James Bond types—and experimented with statement garments, like a white plastic raincoat.

2. Shyness, Performance, & Movement

[05:40–12:01]

• Social Anxiety & Growth:
  • Byrne discusses being shy as a young man, including feeling out of place at dinner parties and learning strategies to cope (e.g., coming prepared with topics, not always successful).
    • “Afterwards I said to my wife, I think I failed dinner party.” – David Byrne [06:08]
• Dance & Physical Expression:
  • Inspired by a wide array of performers—Fred Astaire to James Brown to hip-hop street dancers—but had to invent his own movement style for the stage.
    • “At first, I had no idea what kind of movement I might be comfortable with. So I didn’t move. I didn’t move at all.” – David Byrne [09:59]
  • Developed signature moves by videotaping improvisations, such as stumbling/falling (seen in "Stop Making Sense") and puppet-like gestures.

3. The "Zone" Between Known & Unknown

[12:54–15:40]

• Attraction to Uncertainty:
  • Byrne articulates a fondness for lingering in the space between certainty and ambiguity, believing it’s healthy to accept not having all the answers.
    • “We don’t have the answers to everything, and maybe we’ll find some answers, but we’ll probably never find all the answers to everything… That could be okay.” – David Byrne [13:13]
• Music as Nonlinear Communication:
  • Music and performance allow for powerful, ambiguous communication—meaning can be felt without being spelled out.

4. Body Image, Comfort, & Iconic Costumes

[16:09–19:17]

• Self-image:
  • Favors his clavicle (“It’s like, oh look, I’ve got a coat hanger in here”), dislikes his lower back (“when we evolved to stand upright it was maybe a little bit too soon”).
• Costume on Stage:
  • Clothes can both reveal and obscure; for recent tours, the band wears matching ‘work outfits’ that foster both unity and individuality.

5. Talking Heads, Collaboration, & The Big Suit

[22:19–26:04]

• Art School Beginnings:
  • Briefly coordinated looks with bandmates, but intentionally moved towards outfits “that didn’t mean anything,” favoring cheap suits with no baggage—even at the expense of comfort.
• Invention of the Big Suit:
  • Inspiration arose in Japan—Byrne took advice about “making everything bigger” literally, sketching out the supersized suit and citing Japanese Noh theater as influence.
    • “I drew on a napkin a suit that was really big… influenced by Japanese Noh theater.” – David Byrne [24:10]
• Collaboration & Leadership:
  • Reflects on his formerly “bossy/dictator” persona and learning to become more collaborative, especially in work with Brian Eno.

6. Love, Aging, & Emotional Change

[27:40–30:31]

• Physicality of Love:
  • Discusses the intertwined physical and psychological nature of emotion—love isn’t just in the head; it causes real neurological and chemical changes.
    • “There are actual physical and chemical and neurological changes that happen...The emotions are not just ethereal.” – David Byrne [28:31]
• Growth Over Time:
  • Acknowledges maturation and increased self-assurance with age—willingness to “throw himself in the deep end,” trusting things will work out.

7. Authenticity & Invitation vs. Didacticism

[30:10–32:27]

• Letting Art Evolve:
  • Byrne creates projects without firm messages, letting content grow organically rather than adhering to a preconceived thesis.
    • “If I go in with a preconceived message…it’s going to sound didactic or stiff or too conceptual. So I let it evolve.” – David Byrne [30:43]
  • Values art that welcomes audience interpretation, likening it to the invitation needed in vampire lore.

8. Style Attraction, Trends, & Body Confidence

[33:52–36:23]

• Clothing & Attraction:
  • Admits unattractive or “ridiculous” attire can diminish attraction; finds the current “nude dressing” trend overwhelming.
    • “A lot of female celebrities have been doing it and revealing their breasts, backsides, all sorts of bits that were generally covered up in the past.” – David Byrne [34:59]
• Bella’s Perspective:
  • Expresses respect for those bold enough to dress revealingly, noting her own lifelong hang-ups and fascination with body confidence.

9. Music Technology, Live Experience, & Social Connection

[38:41–41:22]

• Crappy Sound Forever:
  • Byrne tells how music’s digitization, led by phone company technology aiming for minimal data transmission, reduced natural musical qualities.
    • “Phone companies wanted to cram as many conversations into the phone lines as possible…similar kind of thing was applied to music.” – David Byrne [40:03]
  • Live music’s potency comes from shared communal experience more than perfect fidelity; sometimes music is the facilitator or “excuse” for coming together.

10. Autism, Diagnosis, & Neurodiversity

[43:41–46:37]

• Growing Out of Shyness:
  • Reflects on mild autism and how self-awareness has brought acceptance and the ability to harness positives (focus, literal thinking).
  • Skeptical of over-diagnosis—many “disorders” are simply part of human experience.
    • “Sometimes it seems like people are looking for diseases so they can sell cures.” – David Byrne [46:48]

11. Performance Aesthetics & Constraints

[47:41–50:17]

• Choosing Group Outfits:
  • The choice of bright blue and orange workwear for recent performances resulted from in-person tests with fabrics under stage lights; practicality and color science prevailed.
• Tiny Desk Concerts:
  • Appreciates the enforced intimacy and level playing field; everyone must adapt their performance style to the limitations of the small space.
    • “You can’t have all your whatever lights and effects…You’re kind of reduced to just playing… So it’s nice.” – David Byrne [49:34]

12. Memorable Collaborations & Support

[50:39–51:24]

• Paul Thomas Anderson:
  • Gave thanks to the filmmaker for introducing “Stop Making Sense” at a re-release, though he didn’t work on the film itself.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Moment | |-----------|----------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:18 | David Byrne | “Everything except my shoes and my underwear I just bought on the road.” | | 06:08 | David Byrne | “Afterwards I said to my wife, I think I failed dinner party.” | | 09:59 | David Byrne | “At first, I had no idea what kind of movement I might be comfortable with. So I didn’t move.” | | 13:13 | David Byrne | “We don’t have the answers to everything… That could be okay.” | | 17:11 | David Byrne | “When we evolved to stand upright it was maybe a little bit too soon.” | | 19:17 | David Byrne | “We…all wear the same color and all wear the same thing…helps cement us all together as a group.” | | 24:10 | David Byrne | “I drew on a napkin a suit that was really big…influenced by Japanese Noh theater.” | | 28:31 | David Byrne | “There are actual physical and chemical and neurological changes that happen… (with emotions)” | | 30:43 | David Byrne | “If I go in with a preconceived message… it’s going to sound didactic or stiff or too conceptual.” | | 34:59 | David Byrne | “A lot of female celebrities have been doing it and revealing their breasts, backsides, all sorts…” | | 40:03 | David Byrne | “Phone companies wanted to cram as many conversations into the phone lines as possible…” | | 46:48 | David Byrne | “Sometimes it seems like people are looking for diseases so they can sell cures.” | | 49:34 | David Byrne | “You’re kind of reduced to just playing… So it’s nice.” |

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Timestamps for Major Themes

• Introduction, Clothing Choices – 01:00–03:13
• Early Style Influences, Identity Formation – 03:48–05:40
• Shyness, Performing, Dance – 05:55–11:18
• The Power of Laughter – 11:34–12:13
• Embracing the Unknown – 12:54–15:40
• Body, Iconic Costumes – 16:09–19:17
• Band Uniformity, The Big Suit – 22:19–25:33
• Working with Others, Breaking up the Band – 26:04–27:40
• Love, Emotional Evolution – 28:10–30:43
• Welcoming Uncertainty, Art as Invitation – 30:43–32:27
• Clothes & Attraction, Nude Dressing – 33:52–36:23
• Music Technology & Community – 38:41–41:22
• Emotions, Music as “Chords”, Breakups – 42:07–43:41
• Autism & Focus – 44:27–46:37
• Color Science, Group Outfits, Tiny Desk – 47:41–50:17
• Paul Thomas Anderson – 50:39–51:24
• Closing, Reflections – 51:40–51:55

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Tone and Style

The conversation is warm, candid, and tinged with gentle wit. Bella Freud’s inquisitive, empathetic questions coax reflections that are both personal and philosophical, while David Byrne answers with a characteristic blend of precision, dry humor, and self-effacing honesty. The mood invites listeners to interrogate their own style, anxieties, and creative impulses.

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Conclusion

This episode of Fashion Neurosis with David Byrne weaves together stories from the musician’s life with reflections on style, performance, vulnerability, and growth. Byrne’s thoughtful, idiosyncratic observations—on topics ranging from the comfort of suits to the chemistry of love—offer a rich, relatable meditation on how what we wear both shields and reveals who we are. Ultimately, the conversation demonstrates that fashion, like art and life itself, is an evolving experiment in being seen, in building connection, and in finding comfort within ambiguity.

Transcript

[A]

Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. There's a certain kind of person who delights in spending hours figuring something out for them. This kind of work isn't a waste of time. It's an irresistible pursuit of the aha moment when everything clicks. And that's exactly the kind of thinking that Claude was designed to do, to skip over the easy answers and dig into the deep stuff. Try Claude for free@claude aifashionneurosis and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, David Byrne.

[B]

Thank you. You'll fix me in the course of this?

[A]

I'll do my utmost, but maybe you'll fix me.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes I'm wearing?

[B]

I think everything except my shoes and my underwear I just bought on the road. I'm on tour right now and have been for quite a number of months. You just go, I need some trousers. So I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I went into a Target. I was in Basel and I got a nice turtleneck. And then I was coming back from the Hayward here, and I saw a shop with a nice jacket. I got myself a jacket and I thought, I'll wear. Those things are all new. I'll wear new clothes for this.

[A]

They're very good. You don't. You haven't got into the habit of having someone choose things for you, have you always chosen your own things?

[B]

Yes, I usually choose my own things. And.

[A]

Yeah, because I find if I get too much help with my appearance, I forget that I know how to do things for myself and become a kind of infantilize myself. And it's very easy to do that, you know, just assume that somebody else knows better how you look. So I'm impressed with what you've. What you've pulled out of the bag.

[B]

It's. I can imagine it might be nice to have someone kind of an extra eye telling you, oh, you look good in that, but not kind of false, not in a false way, but saying, that looks good on you. That other thing does not.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, that's always a good thing. And I remember where I was standing when I first heard talking heads in 1976, and I was about 15, 14 or 15, with fellow teens, and we listened to a cassette and it was instant love. And I just always remember psycho killer Kess Casset, and I wondered where the French comes in, why you chose French.

[B]

I imagined that this demented person would have pretensions of sophistication. And so he would occasionally pepper his speech with bits of French.

[A]

It's such a fantastic song. I can feel it as we're talking. And was there ever an item of clothing you focused on or longed for as a child?

[B]

As a child, I was probably influenced by the various TV shows and things that I'd seen. Like, maybe I wanted to. I wished I could look like a cowboy or I could look like a spaceman or maybe a kind of James Bond type spy. And I thought, those are really cool people. I should try and look like that.

[A]

And was there, like, a garment that you ever got that you felt kind of started to compound your identity as you felt it?

[B]

I remember once back in the day, I had a white plastic raincoat. I would wear that around. It had a practical use, but it was not very attractive.

[A]

How old were you then?

[B]

Oh, I might have been in my early 20s.

[A]

Oh, right.

[B]

Yeah. Then I had. I had pretentious, like, I'm gonna try and have a look.

[A]

Because you talked about. You've talked about being extremely shy and what's your introvert extrovert ratio? And I wondered, when does your extrovert feel safe to come out?

[B]

I think over the years, I'm not that young anymore, but over the decades I've become less shy and more comfortable around people. During one of the breaks on our tour, I went to a dinner party and. And afterwards I said to my wife, I think I failed dinner party. I didn't. I just sat there and I didn't. I barely talked. She gave me some handy tips.

[A]

What were the tips?

[B]

Think of something to talk about. Yes. Which I have done from time to time, and sometimes that's a disaster as well. I remember at another dinner party, I started telling the folks there about a book I was reading about eels. Really fascinating. The life of an eel is really fascinating. I was told. Maybe that wasn't the best dinner subject.

[A]

Yeah. Apparently Sigmund Freud studied eels.

[B]

He did. Early on in his career, his name comes up. He failed to find their sexual organs.

[A]

God, really? Is that what he was saying?

[B]

He was dissecting them in Trieste and he was hired to try and find their sexual organs, which apparently don't appear until a certain part of their life cycle. And so he was never going to find them.

[A]

God, that's so interesting. I knew the eel bit, but I didn't know anything more. I mean, I don't know a huge amount about him, so I like hearing it from other people. Your dance moves Are very specialized and mesmerizing. I wondered, whose dancing did you like to watch when you were a teenager? And were you influenced by any particular choreography?

[B]

As a teenager, I remember seeing, well, all sorts of things. You'd see Fred Astaire that was fairly unattainable. You'd see. But then you'd see things like James Brown doing all these quick moves and then he'd do a split. Yeah, I thought, I don't think I can do that. But that is amazing. Let's see who else. There's probably some other pop stars that I saw. Some of them tend to just wriggle around. And it's kind of expressive, but it doesn't seem to be worked out. The idea of working something out might have been anathema to pop stars at that time. Yeah. Then let's see. Later on, I remember seeing some street dancers. You know, whether it was other hip hop dancers or there was a group in LA called the Electric Boogaloos. And there was the Poppers and the Lockers and all those that had very specific kinds of moves. And I thought, that's amazing. Not that I should emulate that or try and copy it, but it inspired me that there's all sorts of ways you can move your body.

[A]

So did you figure a strategy for your movement, sort of from watching those things and the stylized things that people did?

[B]

At first, I had no idea what kind of movement I might be comfortable with. So I didn't move. I didn't move at all. And then gradually I realized that being on stage, There's nothing authentic about it. It's completely artificial. So you can move in a prescribed way. That's okay if it fits what you're doing. So I started kind of improvising things. And I had a little video camera at the time. And I would videotape some of my improvisations. I tried one where I. One movement where I appeared to be almost always falling down.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Stumbling, like on.

[A]

Stop Making sense. You do?

[B]

Yes. It might be one part where I'm kind of stumbling around.

[A]

Yeah, I like that.

[B]

Let's see what other ones there hit me. I think I might have improvised another one where I'm kind of like a stick figure or a puppet with invisible strings. Yeah, all that sort of thing.

[A]

Because even on the. When you played at the Governor's Ball, you did some raised hands movements, kind of quite as though puppeteered. They were very good.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

And you have this fantastic merry laugh. And I wondered, how old were you when it became your Laugh?

[B]

Oh, I don't remember. I don't remember. I like to laugh like that.

[A]

You're good at laughing.

[B]

It's great. It does feel like you. You're letting something out.

[A]

Also, you're kind of letting something in because your laugh seems like an invitation to join in, really. So it feels very nice.

[B]

Yeah, that could be. I've been told, don't laugh at your own jokes. You should tell them with a bit of a straight face and let the listener do the laughing.

[A]

I always laugh. I've only got two jokes and no one else finds them funny except me, and I laugh away. But Richard E. Grant was saying that when he was in Withenelle, he played everything dead straight to be funny and. But you can only do it if you can do it. I suppose

[B]

it worked in that film.

[A]

Yeah, it was so good. And you said, I love to hover in the zone between the known and the unknown. And I wondered, when did you first notice that zone? And why does it feel good?

[B]

I'm not sure when I first noticed that, but at some point I realized that, yes, we don't have the answers to everything, and maybe we'll find some answers, but we'll probably never find all the answers to everything, despite the kind of ideas from a century or a couple of centuries ago that we would inevitably know the answers to everything. So I thought, oh, that could be okay. That could be all right. I have to learn how to accept that there are things I'm never going to know.

[A]

There's so much attachment to certainty in this. I suppose maybe that comes a lot with technology. And I was reading something that said something to do with anxiety and. And certainty and how the quest for certainty actually didn't make you less anxious, it just made that whirring thing go faster.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's a false hope. There's certainly some answers we can discover, but there's others that we probably will never know.

[A]

I suppose that makes the Zone a great kind of accompaniment. So that just this idea of finding out the answers and everything having to be have an answer is very anxious making really. So to occupy the unknown, you know, to be kind of at ease in the zone in between is a great tip for life. I'm going to follow.

[B]

Yeah. I realized that music does that a lot and performing does that. You're communicating, but often not in a super direct way. And yet listeners or viewers, they understand what you're getting at, but you don't have to. Sometimes you don't have to say it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's true. And in your short self interview that you did, where you interview yourself and different characters in 1984, you said to yourself, never underestimate the power of a good hairdo.

[B]

That sounds like one of my attempts at humor. And I managed to say it with a straight face.

[A]

You have great hair. And I wondered, do you have a favorite part of your body?

[B]

Favorite part of my body? Maybe right here. My clavicle.

[A]

Oh, right. I suppose it's a very important does in turn. Why is it the favorite. Your favorite part?

[B]

It's very. It's very confusing. It's kind of like, oh, look, I've got a kind of coat hanger in here and other things are hanging off of it. Seems like, how did that come to be like that? My least favorite part is probably, and I think a lot of people will agree with me, is lower back.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

I mean, I've had, like others, I've had lower back pain. Not now, but from time to time. And I feel like. I feel like when we evolved to stand upright, it was maybe a little bit too soon.

[A]

How do you deal with that? How do you kind of manage it?

[B]

Very carefully, you know, I've been lucky. It hasn't been that severe. So I can kind of manage it with gradual, you know, some yoga positions and stretching and those kinds of things and doing that. And at one point I was told, oh, you think the problem's your lower back? It's because you have a weak tummy because that helps hold. Hold up your. Your middle. So that was. Oh, yes, the part that hurts isn't the problem. It's some other part that's causing that.

[A]

Yeah, I have a Pilates teacher and he says sometimes he tells me to breathe into my muscles and my bones, and it's so abstract, but I've tried it and it seems to work. It's odd when you ask to do things with your body that you can't. You know, they seem to have no science, but you do them and the body seems to like it.

[B]

I haven't tried that.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good one.

[B]

Look, Money's falling out of my pocket.

[A]

Maybe that's a positive.

[B]

It's not a donation

[A]

in your film, so stop making sense. You wear amazing clothes, including the famous big suit. And you said you go on stage as a way of dealing with shyness. And do you think you dress to hide or reveal?

[B]

Good question. Right now, we in the band and the dancers, we all wear the same color and all wear the same thing. They kind of looked like, very nicely made work outfits. And yeah, I like the idea that we. You can certainly identify each person. We're not trying to erase their personalities or individuality, but it also kind of helps cement us all together as a group or a team or another kind of organism.

[A]

It's very nice that it seems very friendly the way you have this color in common, these kind of variations on. On a look that you're pioneering. Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. We've all become so accustomed to getting instant answers to any question that crosses our minds, which is understandable. We've all had access to search engines for decades now. But often search engines will trade depth for expediency. And the answers you're given can be incomplete or compromised by advertisers. That's what sets Claude apart. Claude isn't interested in giving you quick and easy answers when you ask it a question, it's prepared to get into the why with you, to dig deeper and follow you down rabbit holes. What's more is that Claude can also support you with the kind of action admin tasks that are tedious to complete on your own, which is how I prefer to use Claude. It helps me with things like cleaning up a cluttered inbox or summarizing meeting notes or synthesizing a plan of action when I want to get started on a new project. In that way, Claude is more like an ally than a simple search engine. Try Claude for free at Claude AI fashionneurosis and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. And I was reading that your former art school friends Tina Weymouth and Chris France were the people that suggested you form a band, and you were always the captivating frontman and Tina Weymouth was like a sort of shimmering sliver behind you. And did you ever dress to complement each other's looks?

[B]

Early on, we tried. Kind of coordinating our outfits. I think at one point we all wore stripy, stripy shirts, T shirts or something like that. It didn't really hold, didn't really work. I know at one point, early on I tried. I wanted to basically wear something that didn't mean anything, that had no kind of prior significance, didn't carry any kind of associations. So I thought, oh, well, most of the people, or men, at least, they wear suits. So I went out and bought a really cheap suit. I think it was probably polyester. So when I wore it on stage, it was very hot. And then when I threw it in the washing machine, it shrunk So I realized this is. Yeah, some of these conceptual ideas are not very practical.

[A]

And was that.

[B]

That was around that time.

[A]

And was that where the big suit came out of

[B]

that? No, that came later. That came. I had the idea when I was in Japan. We were just finishing a tour, and I was talking with some friends there, and one friend was a fashion designer, and he said, sort of tongue in cheek, he said, well, you know, David, on stage, everything has to be bigger. Now, he was referring to the movement. Your movement has to be a little bit exaggerated and all of that so that it reads, you know, back into the. The back of the audience. But I took it very literally, and I thought, okay, now I know what to do with my clothes. I'll make. So I drew on a napkin a suit that was really big, sort of influenced by a Japanese Noh theater where they wear these very big kind of rectangular outfits. Of course, they look. They don't look like a Western suit, but they have that kind of very boxy, constructed look.

[A]

Yeah, because it's almost like a building, isn't it?

[B]

In a way, yeah. You inhabit it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing, because when you then take the jacket off, it's. The trousers is really another kind of what is happening there. It's sort of like another architectural structure

[B]

rather than, you know, there's all these girders and shoulder pads and padding and this and that help hold the thing up. This. The. The suit itself is barely touching my body. It's being supported by all these other things that I wear.

[A]

And you described yourself as a form of bossy pants and a bit of a dictator. And I wondered, is that what broke up Talking Heads?

[B]

I'm sure it didn't help. I'm sure it didn't help. But, yes, there were times when I had a good vision of what I thought a show should be or what some. How something should be and a lighting or whatever. And I would get very. Yeah, very adamant and bossy about it. Over the years, I've come to realize that that's not the best way to work with people. This is a way to actually bring them in, to welcome them into what you're doing and it becomes more of a collaboration.

[A]

Is that how you worked when you worked with Brian Eno?

[B]

To some extent, yes. Yes. It was very much a trade off. Like, you do this and I'll do this

[A]

because he's someone with a very powerful vision. And did you find that easy to kind of, you know, flow both ways when you work with him?

[B]

Sometimes it Was easy. Sometimes it's very challenging. Sometimes I think he intentionally wanted to challenge us or me. And see what. Just to see what happens. Sometimes it's nothing much, but sometimes you get something you didn't expect.

[A]

Yeah, it's very. You definitely got something great. I mean, it's such a fantastic album. I love that. And on your new album, who Is the Sky? You write about love. And in one of the songs it says, is it my body or my brain? And you've recently got married after swearing you'd never marry again. And I wondered if you'd come to any new conclusions about love.

[B]

I've got the answers.

[A]

I need them.

[B]

No, I certainly don't. Well, I believe in. My understanding now is we often think that these. These are strong emotions, might be whatever chemical or biological or something like that, and we tend to label them as psychological. But there are actual physical and chemical and neurological changes that happen. Our brains, when. When we have these kinds of emotions and. Yeah, so there are changes in our bodies and in our brains when we have these emotions. They're not. The emotions are not just ethereal things. They have. They. They kind of. There's actual physical changes that take place.

[A]

And did you find that those are sort of different variations of how you'd felt, experienced them before? I'm always interested in how somehow something that seemed challenging or sort of overwhelming suddenly is the opposite, depending on who you're with, I suppose, partly. And maybe your age or.

[B]

Oh, definitely with age. I've some things I feel like, oh, I know how to do that now. Yeah, that's not terrifying or. Yes, I can throw myself in the deep end and realize, oh, no, you'll figure out how to swim.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's such a great image, actually, because what's the point in anything much if you don't throw yourself in the deep end? And I'm definitely into that now.

[B]

Well, yeah, I guess you do have to have a little bit of confidence that you're going to be okay.

[A]

But I suppose it's part of that to do with the zone between the knowing and the not knowing. It's that, isn't it? And it's quite stimulating.

[B]

Yeah. You have to discover how to make this thing work. I'm currently on a concert tour. As I was beginning to work out what it might be, how it might be, friends would ask me, david, what's it about? What are you trying to say? And I felt kind of stupid because I couldn't give a good answer. I thought, oh, when I start to put Things together, it'll tell me what it is it wants to say. I realized if I go in with a preconceived message or statement or something like that, it's going to sound like that. Yeah, it's going to sound a bit didactic or stiff or too conceptual. So I kind of let it evolve. I trust that it will. That something will happen.

[A]

Yeah, that's really nice. It. Especially when you do have things to say, but they can become almost like armor rather than sort of, you know, being more inviting and people pay more attention. I think when it's more inviting, there's something in it for them.

[B]

Yes. It's better to welcome people in than to just lecture them.

[A]

I always, like in the vampire films, they can only go somewhere when someone invites them in and they standing around on the doorstep dropping hints to the humans to say the magic words.

[B]

Yes. You must have seen. There was that vampire movie, Let the Right One In.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that was.

[B]

I loved it.

[A]

That was so good.

[B]

That was another. Another failed dinner party conversation expressed. I was telling the story of that film. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It doesn't quite work as a story. It's so horrific.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My favorite one is what we do in the Shadows about the three vampires.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that's the comedy.

[A]

Oh, it's so good. And I've watched that a couple of times the whole series.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah, I find it very relaxing and so funny and anarchic. It just hits the sweet spot for me. I love it. And if you fancy someone and don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them?

[B]

Could be. Yes, it could be if I think someone's wearing something very inappropriate, or you go, oh, this person's very attractive or really intelligent or really interesting, or they really have something to say. And they're wearing something ridiculous, you sometimes have to get past that.

[A]

And what would the ridiculous thing be? Does anything spring to mind?

[B]

Well, I have to say this current trend of nude dressing is. When a few celebrities were doing it. Okay. But now everyone feels like, oh, yes, I have to expose myself. Yes.

[A]

Anything in particular? What exactly is nude dressing?

[B]

Men haven't started doing it yet, but maybe that's yet to come. But a lot of female celebrities have been doing it and kind of revealing their breasts and their backsides and all sorts of bits that were. Were kind of generally covered up in the past.

[A]

So that would.

[B]

There's nothing wrong with the human body. But yes, it's a bit of a trend that's run away at the moment.

[A]

I quite admire it in a way because I've had so many hang ups about my body through my life and always wanted to wear something that covered my chin to toe ideally. And now I'm sort of more appreciative of it. When I see people wearing very little, I don't know how they can not worry about where everything, what happens to everything.

[B]

I've thought that as well. I thought, careful you don't lean forward. Yes, everything might just fall out.

[A]

I have a lot of respect for that. I think, God, how great to be that free and to be able to be confident that this delicate arrangement will stay in place. It seems kind of fantastic, but. It's often said that creative people are not the best at managing business. We may know what we want, but we don't always know how to get it done. This is where I use Claude not to have ideas for me, but to help me navigate the administrative tedium of bringing my ideas to life. My inbox is full of unread emails. This is my system for reminding myself of things left to do. Claude looks at my inbox and my calendar and tells me what needs my attention and what can safely be ignored. Before meetings, Claude reads long email threads so I don't have to pretend I can remember everything. Claude helps me keep track of what I said I'd do, what I've already done and what everyone else has quietly forgotten. And when I'm working on a project, I can give Claude some context and it helps me sort through my ideas and prioritize the order of things. To me, Claude feels less like a tool and more like an authoritative ally. I can spend more time thinking, listening and making decisions and less time managing chaos. Try it for yourself at Claude AI Fashionneurosis. In your book How Music Works, one of your chapters is called Crappy Sound Forever. And you talk about a doctor who treated psychotic patients with music and he said it could soothe and calm them. And then he claimed that the natural properties of music were lost in the rush to digitize. And his patients became agitated and twitchy when they were played digitized music. And do you think that's why people love live music so much?

[B]

Well, yes, they might like the sound of live performances. I think a good part of that is people love being together with other people who are there to see the same here, see and hear the same thing. It's a kind of big communal event where people join together with kind of like minded people. Or so they imagine at least. And the music? I hope they like the music, but Sometimes it seems the music is really just a facilitator.

[A]

I mean, it was so interesting, that whole chapter about. And you talk about the dots and dashes of digitized music and immediately it doesn't seem to sort of flood into your heart the way music you imagine music does. And then this crappy sound thing. And it was such a brilliant story about also about how music technology was developed quite a lot for phone. It was sort of came out of phone companies and the kind of improvement of sound when you're on the phone.

[B]

Yes, it was. What's the least amount of information that you can transmit via a phone line and it'd still be intelligible, identifiable as the person you're talking to. And because the phone companies wanted to cram as many conversations into the phone lines as possible, especially in the kind of international undersea cables where the number was kind of limited. So they kind of developed this kind of encoding technology where you could kind of encode voices and break them down into eventually into digital bits. And that allowed them to kind of put a lot of signals, a lot of signals and a lot of voices into kind of a small number of lines and that. Yeah. And then the similar kind of thing was applied to music. How low or kind of, how much can you reduce the information? And it still kind of perceptually sounds like the music you're kind of used to hearing.

[A]

It's such a sort of contradiction. But you say it can. It's very effective too.

[B]

Yeah, it really fools us.

[A]

Yeah. Did you ever read Neil Young's autobiography where he spent quite a lot of years dedicating to sort of dedicating himself to having another platform for hearing music that isn't so reductive. I don't know if. Did you ever.

[B]

No, I didn't. I haven't read that, but I'm aware that, yes, he really focused on that. Yeah, for quite a bit. Kind of higher quality, higher resolution digital music files.

[A]

Yeah. I suppose things are always interesting when they're a chord. I mean, even in, you know, how to handle experiences of life, I find I think of things as chords or so you got some sort of creative thing going alongside your misery or sometimes when I've been in a breakup from a relationship and that person, it's like my thoughts are like cords where they always part of my thought until eventually, thank God, it wears off. But have you ever had that experience?

[B]

Maybe not exactly, but I've noticed with music a little bit like what you're saying, you can have conflicting emotions Occurring simultaneously. You can have a song where the words are really sad or tragic, but the music is really kind of has great groove and it's kind of makes you want to. It's uplifting and dynamic and ecstatic. So you've got two completely different feelings going on simultaneously, which I think echoes a lot of what we feel. Sometimes

[A]

it feels like. I mean, if I think back to when I first heard your music and why it just went in so fast and it was immediate and it was something to do with some feeling of urgent questioning of life with all this fantastic kind of beat and things slightly to do with funk music, which I've always loved. And. And it was like. Yeah, it was like when everything goes in at the same time. It sort of combined it so perfectly. And you've spoken about your autism and I wondered, has it changed as you've got older?

[B]

Oh, yeah. I think I was much more socially uncomfortable when I was younger. Whatever it was, it was fairly mild. But yeah, I remember at some point, I forget what year it was, when there was a number of articles coming out in different magazines about the spectrum.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And a friend. A friend read aloud to me some of the symptoms that were described and said, david, this is. You said, well, sounds like it.

[A]

What in particular, was there anything you remember

[B]

being somewhat socially uncomfortable, Being maybe overtly overly literal?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Maybe being a tendency to sometimes focus very intently on some task or project or whatever. They're not all negatives. Some of them are kind of positives.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Because I was reading a bit about ADHD because there's also so much about it, and. And I read that you could grow out of it, and I recognized quite a lot of the things that I'd experienced. Sort of chaos, really, and fuzziness, not dynamicness. I like the idea of being hyper focused, but feel like I'm. And then I thought, oh, yeah, I've had that. And now I'm going somewhere else, which feels much better because it's more. I like being able to think of what I have to do and doing it instead of it crashing around in my memory somewhere.

[B]

That's encouraging. Yeah, it is.

[A]

Yeah. It was really good because there's such a diagnosis industry these days, and I don't know how helpful that always is.

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes it seems like people are looking for diseases so they can sell cures.

[A]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, certainly it's great for some. For a lot of extreme sort of misery that it causes people. But somebody told me that their child was suffering from Defiance disorder and I thought, isn't that what children are supposed to have? You know, you're supposed to question. It just sounded so tragic.

[B]

You mean kind of. No, Mom, I'm not going to do that.

[A]

I mean, I.

[B]

Yes, that is. That's what they do from time to time.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's what you'd hope for. But I mean. And I watched your Tiny Desk concert, and you were all wearing these blue outfits that you were talking about. And how did you come to that color?

[B]

It was very practical. I did want a bright color.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I knew I wanted a bright color. Done a lot of gray in the past. I said, I'm done with your gray. So we went to a stage, turned on the stage lights, and I had brought with me big bag, a big bag of fabric swatches. And I also had a couple. I think they were cheap pajamas that I bought online, but in bright colors.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I said, okay, let's look at all these different things under the light and see what's going to work. And the lighting designer that I worked with said, basically, the blue and the orange are working really well. The green, when you put a warm light on it, it tends to get muddy. The color.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, that's just basically color science. So we just said, okay, we'll go. We'll see if we can have both of those colors and alternate one on one day and one on another day.

[A]

Oh, right. Yeah. Because I saw the blue, and I love Tiny Desk. And why. Why do musicians love to gather behind that small space? What do you love about it?

[B]

It's kind of a level playing field. Everyone basically is restricted in the same way.

[A]

Oh, right.

[B]

You have to. You can't be doing a lot of choreography in there. You're squeezing into this tiny space. You don't. You can't have all your whatever lights and effects and whatever else you want to use. You're kind of reduced to just kind of playing, basically playing and singing. So it's nice. It's the same. It makes every act have to kind of deal with the same restrictions.

[A]

Yeah. A tight edit is sometimes a liberating thing, isn't it?

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

Do you think that's why everyone enjoys doing that so much?

[B]

Yes. Yes. You get to hear their performance or see it or hear their songs kind of stripped of a lot of the extra baggage.

[A]

Yeah, I love it. The bigger the group, the better. I watched one with Trouble Funk, and there were so many people. It was so good.

[B]

You can barely fit in there.

[A]

I know. And in the credits, to stop Making sense. There's a special thanks to Paul Thomas Anderson and I wondered what he did on the film.

[B]

He didn't do anything on the film. He did a chat and kind of introduced. Presented the film when we screened it. The re release, they're kind of revived, rereleased version a few years ago in Los Angeles.

[A]

Yeah, I was curious. He's such a fantastic filmmaker and I love his work and I was so glad to spot his name on this. Fantastic.

[B]

It was really nice of him to do that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, he's an amazing director. I hope he wins the Oscar. Sure he will. Well, thank you so much, David Byrne, for being on Fashion Neurosis.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. It's been. I've had quite a few laughs and this is very relaxing. If I didn't have to be somewhere else, I'd happily just fall asleep here.

[A]

Oh, well, thank you so much.

[B]

It's been great.

[A]

Thanks again to Anthropic, the team behind Claude for supporting this show. Claude is the AI for people who want a thinking partner. People who aren't satisfied with good enough, but instead want to understand the why of the thing more than just getting a simple answer. If that sounds like you, you can try Claude for free@claude aifashionneurosis.