David Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, and then to Arbutus, Maryland. Before high school, David Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. He was rejected from his middle school's choir because they claimed he was "off-key and too withdrawn." From a young age, he had a strong interest in music. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. In his journals he says, "I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess." As revealed by Tina Weymouth in the commentary for the concert film Stop Making Sense, Byrne is left handed but plays guitar right handed.
He graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. Byrne started his musical career in a high school duo named Bizadi with Mark Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as "April Showers," "96 Tears," "Dancing On The Ceiling," and Frank Sinatra songs. Byrne then attended the Rhode Island School of Design (during the 1970–71 term) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (during the 1971–72 term) before dropping out and forming a band called "The Artistics" with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. The band dissolved within a year, and the two moved to New York together with Frantz's girlfriend Tina Weymouth. Unable to find a bass player in New York, Frantz and Byrne persuaded Weymouth to learn to play the bass guitar.
After some practice and playing together they founded the group Talking Heads which had its first gig in 1975. Multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison joined the group in 1977. The band released 8 studio albums before going into hiatus in 1988. David Byrne desired to go solo, but it took 3 years to announce that the band was breaking up in 1991. A brief reunion for a single "Sax and Violins" in 1991 occurred before again dissolving. The band was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, when they reunited to play 4 tracks.
During his time in the Talking Heads, Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno during 1979 and 1981 on the album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted considerable critical acclaim due to its early use of analogue sampling and found sounds. Following this record, Byrne focused his attention on Talking Heads. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest site was launched.
Rei Momo (1989) was the first solo album by Byrne, after leaving Talking Heads, that features mainly Afro-Cuban, Afro-Hispanic, and Brazilian song styles including popular dances including merengue, Cuban Son, samba, mambo, cumbia, cha-cha-chá, bomba, and charanga. His third solo album Uh-Oh (1992) followed that featured a brass-section and was driven by catchy tracks such as "Girls on My Mind" and "The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Lookit Me Now)". His fourth solo album, titled davidenryb (1994), was a more proper rock record, with Byrne playing most of the instruments on it, leaving percussion for session musicians. "Angels" and "Back in the Box" were the two main singles released from the album. The first one entered the US Modern Rock Tracks chart, reaching #24. For his fifth studio effort the emotional Feelings (1997), Byrne employed a brass orchestra called Black Cat Orchestra. His sixth Look into the Eyeball (2001) continued the same musical exploration of Feelings, but was compiled of more upbeat tracks, like those found on Uh-Oh.
Grown Backwards (2004), released by Nonesuch Records, used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias as well as a rework of X-Press 2 collaboration "Lazy". He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005.
Byrne and Eno reunited for his eighth album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008).
He assembled a band to tour worldwide for the album for a six-month period from late 2008 through early 2009 on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour.
In September 2012, Byrne and St. Vincent released a collaborative album, Love This Giant.
In 1981, Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, scoring music he wrote that appeared on his album, The Catherine Wheel for a ballet with the same name, prominently featuring unusual rhythms and lyrics. Productions of The Catherine Wheel appeared on Broadway that same year. In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape David Byrne produced for the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus's dance company Ultima Vez.
In 1991, Byrne released a classical instrumental album The Forest, where some of the tracks were already featured as a score for 1988 Robert Wilson theatre piece of the same name.
His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 2004, Lead Us Not Into Temptation (music from the film "Young Adam") included tracks and musical experiments from his score to Young Adam. Byrne also wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of discordant Americana released in 1986, as well as producing most of the film's music. Byrne also directed the documentary Île Aiye and the concert film of his 1992 Latin-tinged tour titled Between the Teeth. He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of Stop Making Sense in 1984. Byrne added "Loco de Amor" (Crazy for Love) with Celia Cruz to Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild.
Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score for Robert Wilson's Opera The Knee Plays from The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbühne, Berlin in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel.
In late 2005 Byrne and Fatboy Slim began work on Here Lies Love, a disco opera or song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former First Lady of the Philippines. Some music from this piece was debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in February 2006 and the following year at Carnegie Hall on February 3, 2007.
In 2008 Byrne released Big Love: Hymnal – his soundtrack to season two of Big Love. These two albums constituted the first releases on his personal independent record label Todo Mundo.
Byrne and Brian Eno provided the soundtrack for the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Byrne has contributed songs to five AIDS benefit compilation albums produced by the Red Hot Organization: Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter, Red Hot + Rio, Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin, Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon, and Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip. Byrne appeared as a guest vocalist/guitarist for 10,000 Maniacs during their MTV Unplugged concert, though the songs in which he is featured were cut from their following album. One of them, "Let the Mystery Be", appeared as the fourth track on 10,000 Maniacs' CD single "Few and Far Between". Byrne worked with the "Queen of Tex-Mex", Tejano superstar Selena, writing, producing and singing a song ("God's Child (Baila Conmigo)"), included on Selena's last album, "Dreaming of You", before her death. Byrne was the host of Sessions at West 54th during its second of three seasons and collaborated with members of Devo and Morcheeba to record the album Feelings in 1997.
In 2001 a version of Byrne's single "Like Humans Do", edited to remove its drug reference, was selected by Microsoft as the sample music for Windows XP to demonstrate Windows Media Player (not included in SP2 installs).
In 2002, he co-wrote and provided vocals for a track, "Lazy" by X-Press 2, which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 on the U.S. Dance Charts. Byrne said in an interview in BBC Four Sessions's coverage of his Union Chapel performance that "Lazy" was number 1 in Syria. The track later featured with orchestral arrangements on his Grown Backwards (2004) album.
In 2006, his singing was featured on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.
He is featured on the tracks "Money" and "The People Tree", on N.A.S.A.'s 2009 album The Spirit of Apollo. Also in 2009, David Byrne appeared on HIV/AIDS charity album Dark Was the Night for Red Hot Organization. He collaborated with Dirty Projectors on the song "Knotty Pine". In the same year, Byrne performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. He also was a signator of a letter protesting the decision of the Toronto International Film Festival to choose Tel Aviv as the subject of its inaugural City-to-City Spotlight strand.
In 2007, David Byrne provided a cover of The Fiery Furnaces' song "Ex-Guru" for a compilation to celebrate the 15th birthday of Thrill Jockey, a Chicago-based label.
In 2008, Byrne and his production team turned the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, into a playable musical instrument. The structure was connected electronically to a pipe organ and made playable for a piece called "Playing the Building". This project was previously installed in Stockholm, Sweden in 2005, and later at the London Roundhouse in 2009. It bears similarities to a series of installations created by New Zealand and Detroit based artists Alastair Galbraith and Matt De Genaro, which were recorded on their 1998 record Wire Music and on the 2006 follow-up Long Wires in Dark Museums, Vol. 2. Byrne says that the point of the project was to allow people to experience art first hand, by creating music with the organ, rather than simply looking at it.
In April 2008, Byrne took part in the Paul Simon retrospective concert series at BAM performing "You Can Call Me Al" and "I Know What I Know" from Simon's Graceland album.
In 2008 Byrne collaborated with The Brighton Port Authority, composing the music and singing the lyrics for "Toe Jam".
In May 2011, Byrne contributed backing vocals to the Arcade Fire track "Speaking in Tongues" which appeared on the deluxe edition of their 2010 album The Suburbs.
In March 2013 he will debut a fully staged production of his 2010 concept album Here Lies Love at New York's Public Theater directed by Tony Award Nominee Alex Timbers following it's premiere at MoCA earlier in the year.
Byrne founded the world music record label Luaka Bop in 1990. It was originally created to release Latin American compilations, but it has grown to include music from Cuba, Africa, the Far East and beyond, releasing the work of artists such as Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, Jim White, Zap Mama, Tom Zé, Los Amigos Invisibles and King Chango.
In 2005, Byrne initiated his own internet radio station, Radio David Byrne. Each month, Byrne posts a playlist of music he likes, linked by themes or genres. Byrne's playlists have included African popular music, country music classics, Vox Humana, classical opera, and film scores from Italian movies.
In 2006, Byrne released Arboretum, a sketchbook facsimile of his Tree Drawings, published by McSweeney's. Byrne is also a visual artist whose work has been shown in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. Represented by the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, he has also created public art installations, many of them anonymously. In 2010 his original art work was in the exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
While working on the film True Stories, Byrne met costume designer Adelle Lutz whom he married in 1987. They have a daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Byrne, born in 1989. Byrne and Lutz divorced in 2004. Byrne had a relationship with the artist Cindy Sherman from 2007 to 2011.
Although a resident of the United States since childhood, Byrne is a British citizen,[26] and only recently[clarification needed] applied for U.S. citizenship. He lives in New York City.
Cycling [edit]
Byrne is known for his activism in support of increased cycling, and for having used a bike as his main means of transport for most of his life, especially cycling around New York. He has a regular cycling column in the New York Times, and does not own a car.
He says that he cycled when he was in high school and returned to it as an adult in the late 1970s. He likes the freedom and exhilarating feeling cycling gives him. He has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book, Bicycle Diaries. In August 2009, he auctioned his Montague folding bike in order to raise money for the London Cycling Campaign.
In 2008, Byrne designed a series of bicycle parking racks in the form of image outlines corresponding to the areas in which they were located, such as a dollar sign for Wall Street and an electric guitar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Byrne worked with a manufacturer that would construct the racks in exchange for the chance to sell them later as artworks, and the racks remained on the streets for about a year.
His most recent release, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is also his first collaboration with Brian Eno in 30 years. You can stream the full album or download an MP3 at EverythingThatHappens.com.
David maintains a frequently updated journal/blog. A detailed official bio and discography are available on his website.
His song "Like Humans Do" was featured in many installations of Microsoft Windows XP.
Dance on Vaseline
David Byrne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I'm taking back the gentleness
I'm taking back the ritual
I'm giving in to sweetness
Oh preacher man
Shoot me with your poison arrow
But I dance on Vaseline
Workin' on a revolution
Gon' let the music in
I'm taking back the children
I'm taking back the ceremony
I'm taking back my offerings
I'm taking back what you mean to me
You're dangerous!
Shoot me with your poison arrow
But I dance on Vaseline
I'm slippin' out
Workin' on a revolution
Go'n let the music in
And war is all around us
The Gods are dead and buried underground
Your hollow Gods are burried underground
I was a silly putty
Your big ideas are useless to me now
My baby saw the future
She doesn't want to live there any more
It's lousy science fiction
Gets on your skin and seeps into your bones
You're dangerous!
Shoot me with your poison arrow
But I dance on Vaseline
I'm slippin' out
Workin' on a revolution
Go'n let the music in
Started in Oklahoma
You always think it happens somewhere else
This madness is attractive
Until the day it happens to yourself
& Power might seem sexy
But check her in the cool grey light of dawn
A legislative body
And all at once your lust for her is gone
& I'm trippin out
Workin on a revolution
Gon' let the day begin
We'll turn it out
Monkey time for evolution
Gon' let the music in
The lyrics of David Byrne's Dance on Vaseline reflect the theme of taking back control and going against the mainstream. The song's refrain, "Shoot me with your poison arrow, but I dance on Vaseline", suggests that the singer is ready to challenge authority, though it may take a toll on their life. They are motivated by a desire for change and are working on a revolution. The second stanza of the song addresses the idea of war and religion. The line "Your hollow gods are buried underground" suggests that the singer has lost faith in religion and its ability to bring peace.
The next set of stanzas addresses the idea of power and politics, with Byrne proposing that power may seem attractive, but in reality, it is not what it seems. The use of "cool grey light of dawn" brings up imagery of a new day or a new beginning, potentially symbolizing hope for a better future. The last lines of the song repeat Byrne's desire for revolution, ending with, "Gon' let the music in". The music could be interpreted as a metaphor for change, with Byrne suggesting that by embracing a new way of thinking, he can make progress towards reform.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm taking back the knowledge
The singer is reclaiming their understanding and awareness of their surroundings
I'm taking back the gentleness
The singer is repossessing their kindness and compassion towards others
I'm taking back the ritual
The singer is reclaiming their customs and traditions that they practiced before
I'm giving in to sweetness
The artist has relaxed their resistance and is going with the flow of comfort and joy.
Oh preacher man
The one being addressed is seen as a religious leader
Shoot me with your poison arrow
The singer is challenging the religious leader to use their words to inflict harm
But I dance on Vaseline
The singer won't be affected by the poison because they are above the situation and enjoy the chaos
I'm trippin' out
The artist is experiencing a hallucination or distortion of their senses and perception
Workin' on a revolution
The artist is in the process of organizing a movement to instigate change
Gon' let the music in
The artist is letting music become a symbiotic part of all their motives and ambitions
I'm taking back the children
The singer is getting back control over the younger generation
I'm taking back the ceremony
The artist is regaining power over an event that typically has religious or traditional significance
I'm taking back my offerings
The singer is reclaiming their generosity as something precious and not to be taken for granted
I'm taking back what you mean to me
The singer is reclaiming the positive influence someone else had on their life
You're dangerous!
The orator sees the other person reference as dishonest, harmful, and detrimental.
And war is all around us
There is chaos and conflict everywhere
The Gods are dead and buried underground
Traditional mythology and religion are no longer relevant, and society has moved on
Your hollow Gods are burried underground
The irrelevant and empty things that the other person mentioned are unimportant
I was a silly putty
The singer was easily manipulated and advised others.
Your big ideas are useless to me now
The artist does not subscribe to the other person's grand plans
My baby saw the future
The artist's child is wiser and can anticipate problems that are on the rise
She doesn't want to live there any more
The current environment is not conducive to the child's well-being, and the child chooses to remove themselves from the said space.
It's lousy science fiction
The scenario described appears fictional, far-fetched, or too unwelcome to accept as genuine
Gets on your skin and seeps into your bones
The far-fetched scenario is so infectious that it deeply affects one emotionally and is hard to move on from
Started in Oklahoma
Everything started from the singer's roots
You always think it happens somewhere else
People tend to believe negative events only happen to others and not to themselves
This madness is attractive
There is something appealing about the chaos and unpredictability of a situation
Until the day it happens to yourself
The attractive madness now becomes something very real and unpleasant
& Power might seem sexy
Influence and authority appear to be intriguing and fascinating
But check her in the cool grey light of dawn
The singer advises others not to fall for the deceit of power and respect it soberly when analyzed in the morning light
A legislative body
The reference is to the government, and the way they govern is unclear or unsatisfactory
And all at once your lust for her is gone
The artist asserts that everyone will eventually lose interest in trying to obtain influence and authority over others
We'll turn it out
The artist and their audience have the strength to bring about revolutionary changes
Monkey time for evolution
The fight toward positive revolution requires periods of rash enthusiasm and goofy experimentation
Gon' let the day begin
The singer is ready to start its actions and endeavors with enthusiasm and energy.
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: DAVID BYRNE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind