David Byrne was not a fan of John Williams’ ‘Star Wars’ scores: “I can’t stand those”
Certain monoliths of pop culture make such a big splash and create so many years of metaphorical ringlets that it’s hard to imagine them potentially co-existing as “new things” in somebody’s brain.
If you were a kid who liked good music and sci-fi movies in 1983, though, just such a collision took place, as Return of the Jedi and Talking Heads’ Speaking In Tongues were released within one week of each other at the end of May, leading to a wondrous summer holiday season spent repeatedly injecting both of them back into your bloodstream.
Maybe you were one of the people who landed at the perfect intersection of this admittedly unusual Venn diagram, singing along to ‘Girlfriend is Better’ one moment, then humming ‘The Imperial March’ in the next. The latter was certainly a tad more universally recognised than the former, perhaps, but this was also Talking Heads at their commercial peak, as ‘This Must Be the Place’ and ‘Burning Down the House’ became mainstream radio hits.
“A year ago Talking Heads was considered a freak-sounding novelty to most mainstream disc jockeys,” David Byrne told USA Today in September of 1983. “Now top-40 radio stations in America regularly play new dance music like my band and Prince. New wave bands are now imitating what we did a year ago. Once you have a hit single, the most bizarre music you can play has a chance to get radio exposure until you abuse your free pass.”
Byrne and Talking Heads seemed to be affected by that free pass in some unexpected ways themselves, as their subsequent releases in the 1980s—following the incredible live album Stop Making Sense—continued in a slightly more poppy and radio-friendly direction.
Byrne was also arguably caught up in his own legend a little bit, showing a new determination to push beyond the confines of Talking Heads into ambitious new avenues. His work creating the score for the theatrical dance production The Catherine Wheel in 1981 had lit a spark, and by 1985 he’d be hard at work on what would become his feature film debut, True Stories.
Back in ‘83, though, Byrne had a very different sort of film project in mind, far from the surreal suburbia of Virgil, Texas. “I’d love to do an original soundtrack for a space movie like Star Wars,” Byrne told USA Today, although it’d be fascinating to know if he has any recollection of suggesting this 40+ years later.
It’s not completely shocking that an unpredictable artist like David Byrne—who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s with many of the same influences as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas—might like the idea of scoring a sci-fi film. He was a bit more specific, however, in noting that he was partly motivated by a rather aggressive dislike for the music of the existing Star Wars film series.
“I can’t stand those John Williams scores,” Byrne said. “They’re too old-fashioned. I’d give them the new outer space sound.”
And just like that, David Byrne pulled a classic David Byrne—making a wild statement that feels way off the mark, only to instantly get you back on board with his very next thought. Before you can even begin to defend John Williams’ legendary Star Wars themes, you’re bemoaning the fact that you never got to hear that “new outer space sound,” whatever it might have been.
