David Byrne Quotes

I play these [folk acoustic] concerts and I ask myself, 'Would you come see me tonight?' - and I'd have to answer truthfully, 'No, I wouldn't come. I'd rather be doin' something else, really I would. That something else is rock... The words are pictures, and the rock's gonna help me flesh out the colors of the pictures. (1965)

I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip.

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.

I think hip-hop needs a little bit of diversity.

I’ve been making electronic music for twenty some odd years but, because I grew up playing in punk rock bands, when I started touring, I thought in order to be a viable touring musician I had to do it with a band. I would DJ or tour with a full rock band.

We dragged English guitar music out of the gutter.

I never could understand - it was impossible for me to get my head around - what the furor was, what the sense of betrayal and anger and rage was about Bob Dylan's beginning to perform with a band, to play rock-and-roll, to get on the radio.

As I define it, rock and roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn't have the same meaning. The attitude, though, is still very much alive - and it still informs other kinds of music.

I wouldn't say rock & roll is dead but the current music made by young people isn't really rock & roll.

Progression is important. I'm always going to play music in the general vein of rock'n'roll, but when I started I was very much associated with the West Coast lo-fi thing and I didn't want to get anchored in with anything that was just in vogue for the time being.

I never really liked the lyrics or the sameness of the music. It always seemed to have the same rhythm or whatever. But when it turned a little more rock, I kind of liked it. I like what Kid Rock did to country. I like all the modern, new stuff that's coming out, and it just so happens that my boyfriend is not a country player, but he was a rock musician.

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.

Today the most outlaw thing you can possibly do in Nashville, Tennessee, is play country music.

I'm writing new music all the time. I'm just not writing pop stuff. It's not my goal.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

I wrote my first song when I was seven and that was kind of country. Now I'm just like 'No! Why did I play country?'

I just put out a hardcore double album. Next I'm gonna put out an introspective album.

Prog rock, with a little good taste, is ok. I tried to bring some of it into this century, I guess.

I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.

I play classical music almost exclusively. I never mastered jazz or gospel in the way that my mother did. She was a fine improvisational musician. I pretty much have to stick to what's written on the page.

Everything changes in every genre, whether it's pop, rock or country.

I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.

I guess when I got into my preteens, I turned about 12 and I decided to sing R&B, because I felt like one day there were some things I felt like I would want to say, that I couldn't say with gospel music.

It's like hip hop all over again, back in the '70s back in the Bronx, when it was just bubbling. But it's going to be huge.