The song that pushed David Byrne into the unknown
Best known as the lead singer for new wave titans Talking Heads, David Byrne has been continuously active in music and art since the early 1970s. A much-loved innovator and champion of originality, Byrne has made a huge impact on the music industry since his band debuted at the iconic punk venue CBGB in 1975, supporting the Ramones.
The songwriter was born in Scotland but spent most of his early life in Ontario, Canada, and Baltimore, USA. It was in Baltimore that Byrne had his musical awakening, setting him on a path that would eventually lead to the establishment of Talking Heads.
Growing up with Scottish parents, Byrne recalls that the house was often soundtracked by folk music, particularly Woody Guthrie. The anti-fascist folk singer clearly impacted the young Byrne, showing him that music could communicate important messages. Of course, the spirit of Guthrie was later honoured by Bob Dylan.
Dylan encapsulated the counter-cultural movement of the US in the 1960s, earning him a reputation as one of the greatest songwriters of a generation. A favourite of Hunter S. Thompson, Dylan’s 1965 track ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was one of the definitive tracks of the ’60s and is still hailed as one of the greatest songs of all time. Byrne compared the track to a “psychedelic version of a Woody Guthrie song”.
For Byrne, however, it was the rework of Dylan’s track by The Byrds that really captured his imagination as a youngster. The California group pioneered the folk-rock genre and later helped to establish psychedelic rock. Speaking to Pitchfork, the Talking Heads frontman said: “The Byrds turned it into something unlike anything my young ears had heard before. It sounded like jangly pots and pans, bells”. The cover established The Byrds on the scene and is widely considered to be one of the first American tracks to challenge the chart success of British invasion bands like The Beatles.
More than just a great cover version, for Byrne the Byrd’s track acted as an awakening for him to set his sights higher than Baltimore. “Hearing that, I realised: I have to get out of here,” the singer revealed, “because there are people in other places. There’s a whole world out there that I don’t know anything about”. During this time, Byrne was playing cover versions of The Kinks and The Who around the coffee shops of Baltimore, but once the effects of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ had set in, the Scotsman visited New York City.
Although his initial exposure to the city was isolating, he said of his experience visiting Max’s Kansas City, “I remember David Bowie came in dressed in his full glam outfit, with the orange hair, the space suit, everything. And I just thought, We don’t fit in here. We better go”. The singer eventually found his home at CBGB and it can all be traced back to The Byrd’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.
