David Byrne on Talking Heads and ‘Here Lies Love’

This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘David Byrne on Talking Heads and ‘Here Lies Love’’

Lilah Raptopoulos
I went to a musical recently on Broadway called Here Lies Love, and it was honestly different from any musical that I have ever been to. For one thing, the music that it’s set to is disco.

[SOUNDTRACK FROM ‘HERE LIES LOVE’ PLAYING]

The theatre also didn’t look like a theatre. It looked like a dance club and a lot of the audience was ushered on to the set with the actors on catwalks above them. So during the performance they had us do synchronised dances and sing some of the songs. I basically felt like an extra in the musical.

[SOUNDTRACK FROM ‘HERE LIES LOVE’ PLAYING]

The subject matter is pretty unusual too. Here Lies Love takes place in the Philippines during the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos dictatorship, mostly in the 1970s. The main character is Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. A lot of people know her for having the world’s largest shoe collection and for being a fixture of the 70s New York club scene.

David Byrne
When I first became aware of her, I’m old enough to have remembered when she was, say, hanging out with socialites and going to Studio 54 and everything like that in New York. She was kind of this glamorous, larger-than-life, flamboyant creature who sometimes made crazy pronouncements and was the wife of a dictator.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the musician David Byrne, who conceived and co-wrote the musical. By that I mean the David Byrne, the former frontman of one of the most influential bands of the 80s, Talking Heads. As David started looking deeper into Imelda Marcos’ life, his understanding of her changed.

David Byrne
When I started doing research, I found that that was a very kind of surface perception, that there was a whole back story of Philippine politics. And that made it a lot, a lot more interesting than just this wacky character.

Lilah Raptopoulos
A musical about Philippine politics may not be the first thing you would expect from David Byrne, but it’s not not what you might expect from David Byrne because he does a lot of seemingly disparate stuff. He’s written a ton of books. He’s composed an original ballet score. He won an Oscar. He’s also starred on Broadway before in his hit musical concert, American Utopia.

You’re known for about a million and a half things. The band Talking Heads, the concert films Stop Making Sense and American Utopia, the book How Music Works. You’re known for riding your bike everywhere. You’re known for wearing white. (Chuckles) There are many ways that people describe you, and I’m curious to start just how you would define what you do, how you would define maybe what kind of artist you are.

David Byrne
I think a lot of what I do is some or well, anyway, some of what I do is take a very simple idea and put it in a different context and it takes on a different meaning. I’ve also been able to go where inspiration strikes me. Sometimes it takes a long time. The Here Lies Love show has been in the works for, I don’t know, 15 years at least. At least. So sometimes kind of jumping into another arena — in this case, a musical — it takes a while for that to be accepted, especially when it’s a kind of radical reworking of what a musical can be.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Today, David is here to tell us why he made a Broadway musical about Imelda Marcos. He also reflects on his days with the Talking Heads. A remastered version of their cult concert film Stop Making Sense is being re-released this month. And in our conversation, David talks me through how he’s made his creative choices over the past 45 years.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

David Byrne, Welcome to the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you.

David Byrne
Thank you for inviting me on. It’s nice to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So your show is about the life and times of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines. She was the wife of the brutal dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. It’s kind of a disco musical. You co-wrote it with the DJ, Fatboy Slim. It’s a musical, but it’s not. It’s a concert, but it’s not. It’s a history lesson, but it’s not. It kind of defies categorisation. I’m sure people ask you to defi . . . (chuckles) to describe it a lot. What have you narrowed it down to? How do you describe it?

David Byrne
An immersive disco karaoke musical (chuckles) that . . . Yes, and this is what it’s about. It’s about her rise and eventual fall, although she’s still alive and back in the Philippines.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What drew you to her story? Why did you want to spend so much time with her and with this story?

David Byrne
It’s a really good question. I ask myself the same question. I had an idea about doing some sort of theatrical thing in a disco of telling . . . using that as the theatrical setting and telling a story somehow. And when I read about this, I thought, “Oh, she lives in that environment. She loves that environment.” She obviously expresses something about her way of living, her perception of the world. That kind of excitement, exhilaration that she feels. Maybe other powerful people feel that way, too. So this might be worth looking into.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

David’s interest in Imelda Marcos began when he came across a video of her dancing under a disco ball with the Saudi arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi. That video highlighted this dissonance between Imelda’s pop culture persona and the dark reality of her reign. The Marcoses ruled the Philippines for nearly 30 years, and they’re known for imposing a brutal martial law in the 70s. But before they cracked down, people kind of liked them. Even in the Philippines, the Marcoses were popular in the beginning. David chose to start the show with that story.

[SOUNDTRACK FROM ‘HERE LIES LOVE’ PLAYING]

David Byrne
I mean, at first I just thought the part of the concept was, let’s do a show in a dance club where the audience can be dancing while they apprehend a story that’s told maybe on little platforms with singers and actors around them. And that still happened. That’s still part of the show. But there’s a lot more now. I mean, you realise as things get realised, you learn what it is or what it wants to be. In this case, I sort of realised that in many ways, unlike a lot of normal movies or theatre . . . In normal movies and theatre, the protagonist change at some point. In this case, they . . . maybe they change, but maybe not so much. But it’s the audience that changes. The audience has an insight at some point during the show and realises that what they thought was real is not real.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And if they sort of fell in love with these dictators. And . . . yeah, that they couldn’t trust that.

David Byrne
Yes you can’t yet you can’t ever. We’ve been tricked.

Lilah Raptopoulos
There’s a disloyalty or something, right?

David Byrne
Yes. Yeah, and I thought, oh that’s kind of the flips the whole way the theatre often works where you’re watching a character change. In this case, you’re changing. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, that’s interesting.

David Byrne
Where I sometimes get in trouble is the whole disco aspect of it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes. When David says he gets in trouble, he means he’s been criticised for making Imelda Marcos too relatable. With songs like the show’s title track, “Here Lies Love”.

[SOUNDTRACK FROM ‘HERE LIES LOVE’ PLAYING]

For about the first 45 minutes of the show, you’re clapping and dancing along to Ferdinand and Imelda’s rise. It feels a little weird.

[SOUNDTRACK FROM ‘HERE LIES LOVE’ PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, a lot of your work is very delightful and sort of earnest, and this show is delightful, but it’s also about this brutal dictator and there’s nuance to it. And I’m sure you knew it would be controversial, and I’m kind of just curious about, like, there’s more criticism for this show than for your other work. And I’m curious what you how you feel about it.

David Byrne
Yeah, I . . . when I discovered after visiting the Philippines the kind of nuanced view the people there held about all of their local politics and the Marcos regime, I thought, I need to let the audience know that the Philippine people, to a large extent, loved them in the beginning. The world loved them, on the cover of Time magazine with glamorous pictures. And I wanted to reflect that and have the audience experience that, to have the audience be seduced.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Kind of fall for them.

David Byrne
Yeah, I want the audience to love them before they . . . things turn dark and the audience and the Philippine people have the rug pulled out from under them. And so it ends with the ousting, the peaceful ousting of the Marcos dictatorship by the Philippine people and what was called the People Power revolution. It was triggered by a contested election. The Marcoses lost and said, “No, we didn’t lose.” Sounds a little familiar.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. It does. (Chuckles)

David Byrne
And so being incumbents, they sent out the troops. But even the troops wouldn’t fire on their own people. The soldiers got out of the tanks and started mixing with the crowd. So it’s very inspiring. And very relevant to . . . things that are happening all over the world today.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

David Byrne has been an enduring cultural figure for decades. He’s constantly doing something new. And part of the reason people love him is that you don’t always know what he’s doing, but it’s always kind of innovative and it almost always kind of works. In Talking Heads shows, he danced in these weird, jerky movements. His most iconic look was this oversized suit that has been parodied throughout the years. It was comically large and it made his head look tiny. In his concert show, American Utopia, he had a postmodern dancer named Annie-B Parson choreograph the whole thing. He wanted to take a highbrow art form and put it in this mass appeal context so millions of people could encounter her work, who never otherwise would.

I would love to go back to this idea of this show sort of being a musical, but not a normal one. I feel like in much of your work, what I really admire about it is that it’s often different than the thing it’s purporting to be. Like Stop Making Sense, the concert film that you and the Talking Heads released in 1984, people watch it over and over again and it feels like there’s a reason. You know, our executive producer Topher, he said he discovered it in the pandemic and just started watching it everyday.

David Byrne
Oh, my goodness.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It was just full of joy. It was like a coping mechanism for him to just watch it over and over. And it’s being re-released in August by A24 and it’ll be in theatres again. And I guess I want to know, I’m curious how it works. Like, I know you’re very deliberate with form. I know you’re doing something. Sometimes the audience doesn’t know why they love it, doesn’t know why they keep watching it, doesn’t know what they’re drawn to, but they know they love it. And, yeah, and I’m curious if you have an answer to that, if you can kind of tell us what you’re doing.

David Byrne
I can only guess. For that show and that film I see a couple of things. I see a kind of narrative. There’s a visual narrative. It starts with one person, me alone on stage. And then gradually the various elements that make the show, the other band members and parts of the set and lighting instruments and all get drawn on little by little.

So you have this whole arc of the whole thing being created in a very transparent way right in front of you. And then it gets clicked on and all those things get put into action. So you have that kind of visual arc, and then you have this arc of me, the character who seems very odd and very alienated — I have to say, having watched it again recently — who finds a kind of community and release and joy probably through the music and through the connection with the other musicians. And yeah, and you see that happen and it happens organically. It’s not . . . no one says, “Oh, I’m happy now” or “I wasn’t happy then.” None of that. It’s one of those things where you see it happen. You see that transformation happen.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. It’s slowly happening. And then suddenly you’re like, dancing in your living room. (Chuckles) Don’t know how you even stood up.

[‘BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE’ BY TALKING HEADS PLAYING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos
What was it like to rewatch it? What has it been like to return to it? (Chuckles)

David Byrne
I hadn’t seen it as a film, certainly in at least 10 years. Maybe more. And there’s a new transfer from the original negative, a new sound mix that’s much crisper. All those kinds of things. All that was just really great. And we go, “Boy, this looks great now.” It holds up. It doesn’t look old. Sounds great. But I’m looking at my younger self from — what is this, like, 40 years now? Forty years? I’m looking at this guy, and he seems like a stranger. And I go, “Who is that strange guy?” This is a very clever show he put together, but as a person, he looks pretty odd. He’s pretty odd. And he seems, at least in the beginning of the show, a very serious young man. (Chuckles) He is not like laughing and joking around with everyone. He’s very kind of . . . very kind of focused. And I thought, “Oh, that’s a very different person than who I am now”.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s interesting. Seeing yourself back then and from the outside sort of, and with all that distance, does it spark any memories of what it felt like to be that guy back then? Like you have probably a memory of that time. And I imagine that putting that up against you seeing yourself then from the outside now, I’d be curious what you’re reflecting on.

David Byrne
It’s a really good question. I’m . . . I can absolutely connect with all the decision-making that I went through. I was involved with the lighting and this kind of improvised choreography that we came up with. All those kinds of things. I remember all, that whole process, the decision-making process of how to stage that show. But how I felt at the time, I have trouble accessing that. I seem to recall that (chuckles) I was just very, very determined that this happen and I had a vision of how it should be and I wanted it to happen that way. And I can recall that . . . I don’t think I was the easiest person to work with in those days. Because of that, because I thought, I know what I want and no one is going to turn me from that path of getting that. Which is . . . there was easier ways to achieve that than with that attitude.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. How do you work now?

David Byrne
Much more collaborative now. And I realised that if you can relax, if you . . . if the communication is good, if people can understand the project, the idea and all be on the same page, then wow. they bring things to me certainly that I would never . . . that would never have occurred to me. If they understand the vision, it’s a lot more fun.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. David, I’ve heard you talk about the importance of making things accessible. And like, no matter how artistic or hard to understand something is, there’s always a way to bring people in. I feel constantly like more people should feel that way and should be trying to do that. And I think more people secretly want that. I think a lot of people are scared to ask the dumb question.

David Byrne
When I say accessible, that doesn’t mean pandering to or pandering to an audience, giving them what they already want. But it means that not doing things that are intentionally obscure or difficult or hard to understand. They might be unusual or surprising or unexpected, but they shouldn’t be like pushing people away. They should be inviting them in to kind of to appreciate and understand and enjoy something. And even if it’s something they’ve never seen before.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So you think about it more in terms of like, I’m not going to think that this is off limits to explore just because it might be niche or and accessible.

David Byrne
Yes. If something seems really beautiful or exciting and it might be kind of a niche thing, there might be a way sometimes to take that and use that as a form or content or whatever to make something that is accessible to everyone or accessible to a lot more people, and without losing the essence of what that thing is.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. So are there things that like you do practically or that we could do or questions that we could ask ourselves to do that to, like, take a piece of work and take something that seems inaccessible and actually make it more accessible without dumbing it down?

David Byrne
I don’t know if there’s a formula. I don’t know if there’s a formula. I think comedians do that a lot, too. They talk about things that in another context could be really difficult or disturbing to talk about, and then they bring it in and give it a little twist and it’s kind of accessible and funny.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
In New York City, David Byrne is more than just an eccentric artist. He’s also sort of a mythical creature. He’s always riding his bike around the city, appearing and disappearing, famous enough to be this beloved figure, but niche enough to be able to get around.

I’d love to ask you about your relationship with your role as a public figure. You know, in preparing to have this conversation with you, I’ve been telling people that I’m interviewing you, and a lot of them have a story about seeing you around New York (chuckles) and having sort of brief encounters with you. And the stories are really sweet. You know that someone said “Thank you” and then you asked for their name and said goodbye, you know, 10 minutes later. And I imagine people tell you about the stories of times that they’ve seen you or met you. How do you feel about that sort of mythology around you? I imagine it must be weird when it’s about you, but maybe it’s sort of performance art. (Chuckles) How do you think about it?

David Byrne
It’s really complicated. When people say they . . . they’ve been touched by your work, that’s obviously really very moving, hugely flattering. And I need to remember to be humble and just say, “Thank you for saying that.” That means a lot to me that somebody appreciates what I’ve done. But it often goes into other areas that people kind of assume that because they’ve known your work for a long time that they know you. There’s a lot of me in my work, but there’s also a different person that lives a daily life. (Chuckles) 

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s breakfast and (inaudible).

David Byrne
Yeah, yeah. It’s breakfast, and I’m not served dancing around and singing all the time. Yes. It’s also . . . (chuckles) it’s not uncommon where somebody will say, “I said hello to you 10 years ago. Do you remember that?” And it’s so embarrassing, it’s so embarrassing because . . . well, occasionally you do, but occasionally it was such a brief encounter that you go that “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t.” I feel terrible. But that’s just the truth. That if it was a very . . . just a handshake or a selfie or something that you just don’t remember.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So out of that, why do you feel terrible?

David Byrne
I feel like because it had meaning for them and they remembered it. And I wish I could say it was reciprocal in the same way.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right. David, my last question is, just when are you creatively . . . when do you feel creatively most fulfilled?

David Byrne
I feel creatively fulfilled when something I’ve done surprises me. When I seem to . . . obviously I wrote it or sang it or whatever it might be, but it’s seems like . . . I ask myself, where did that come from? Where . . . how did I come up with that? And I don’t know. And sometimes I can’t even articulate exactly what it means, but it feels right that, well, that’s very fulfilling. When it seems that . . . when it’s a little bit of a mystery about why that thing came into being.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. David, I loved this conversation.

David Byrne
Thank you.

Lilah Raptopoulos
This is a real honour. Thank you so much.

David Byrne
Thank you very much.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show this week. Thank you for listening to FT Weekend, the Life and Arts podcast of the Financial Times. I wrote a profile of David Byrne based on this conversation for the FT Weekend magazine. I put a link to that which will get you past the paywall in the show notes.

Next week I am speaking with the singer songwriter Jenny Lewis. She recently released a new album, Joy’All, and she tells us about that, but also about her past lives as a child actress and as the frontwoman of the indie 2000s band Rilo Kiley.

Another exciting thing we are getting ready for this fall’s FT Weekend festival, which is on Saturday, September 2nd, in Kenwood House in London. I will be there alongside a ton of my colleagues and some incredible guests. We have links and a special discount for you in the show notes alongside, as always, discounts for a subscription to the FT.

As you know, we love chatting with you. The show is on Twitter @ftweekendpod and I am on Instagram and Twitter, mostly Instagram @lilahrap. I am Lilah Raptopoulos and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Molly Nugent is our contributing producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll find each other again next week.

[MUSIC PLAYING]