How a trip to Bali transformed David Byrne’s view of musical performance
If you were to ask 100 people what they think makes a good gig, you would likely get 100 completely different answers. Some people look for an energetic crowd that they can immerse themselves in; others prefer to sit in silence, the only noise coming from the performance itself, whereas some music fans want a mixture of the two. David Byrne of Talking Heads got an insight into how different cultures enjoy musical performance during a trip to Bali, a revelation which would go on to influence the rest of his career.
David Byrne, a pioneer of new wave, is hardly a stranger to stealing stages. His live performance is one which has received critical acclaim for decades now and is something which cemented Talking Heads as one of the most exciting bands of their time.
The recent release of Stop Making Sense, a concert film shot over three nights at the Pantages Theatre, has given audiences worldwide insight into Byrne’s theatrics on stage. Many would argue it was his live performance that gave rise to the opinion that Byrne was more important than the rest of the band, an opinion that eventually led to his pursuit of a solo career.
Good frontmen find inspiration from a variety of different places. Elvis famously said, “Some people tap their feet, some people snap their fingers, and some people sway back and forth. I just sorta do ‘em all together, I guess.” Unlike Elvis, though, Byrne didn’t stay entirely as domestic when shaping his views on musical performance.
“I was struck by other peripheral aspects of these performances,” he says, reflecting on a trip to Bali in his new book How Music Works. “The audiences, mostly local villagers of all ages, weren’t paying attention half the time.” Byrne goes on to describe how surprised he was at the casual approach taken towards live music. “People would wander in and out, go get a snack from a cart or leave to smoke a bidi cigarette, and then return to watch some more. This was more like the behaviour of audiences in music clubs than in Western theatres, where they were expected to sit quietly and only leave or converse once the show was over.”
Byrne realised that if he was to inject an element of theatre into his live performance, he didn’t need to make it inauthentic or forced. Taking from the shows he saw in Bali, he decided to do what they did and approached performance as if it were an aspect of his everyday life.
“I remembered a story about John Cage,” he said, “Who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn’t have a strict religion—they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn’t exist… It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.”
The performances he saw on his trip to Bali shone a new light on live performance, a light which Byrne was happy to step into with silly dance moves and an oversized suit. It’s hard to imagine what Talking Heads and his subsequent solo career would have looked like where it not for the engaging and fun live show he put on. Luckily, thanks to that trip, we will never have to know.
