May never be achievable, lets think about what it is we want and what it is we would like to chahange and whwhat where we would like to be. How would we like to be . That k kind of thing. And i thouought, thats part of what that is part of what the show is. It shows people an alternative way of being. Amy all that and more, coming up. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the e war and peace report. I am a amy goodman. Today wewe are joined by david byryrne, the celebratated musician, artist, writer, cycling enenthusiast, fifilmma, and nonow broadway star. His new broadway show is called american utopia. It is receiving rave reviews. amy american utopia grew out of david byrnes recent world tour, which the British Music publication nme said may j just be the best live show of all time. Ththe production f features dad byrne and 11 Musical Artists from around the globe, including six percussionists performing a a selection of sons from throughout his remarkable career feured on hihis most recent album american utopopia to highlight from his legendary band talking heads including burning down the house. Amy also, this must be the place. E. amy american utotopia is just one of d david byrnes currrrent projecects. He also recently launched the online magazine reasons to be cheerful to highlight s Solutions Oriented stories around the globe. David byrne recently came into the democracy now studios on his day off. I asked him to talalk about the name of his recent album anand broadway showw american utopopia. It is wow. Partly because its sort of the last thing you expect to hear the words, especially connected with me, and at this particular time, everything thats going on, its kind of like, is he seriouous . Is he being ironic . Is he does it havee some otherer kind of meaning . And i thought, no, lets be serious about it. Lets be sincere. Although utopia may never exist may never be achievable, lets think about what it is we want and what we would like to change and where would we like to be . How would we like to be . That k kind of thing. And i thought, that is art of partrt of what the show is. It shows peoplple an alternatie way of being. Amy you also quote James Baldwin in the play. I still believe we can do with this country, something that has not been done before. Its not typical. But i thought, but he said this. And i thought so he, despite of his life and everything he wrote about, he didnt give up. He didnt get totally cynical. He felt like theres still a possibility here amy do you share that optimism . Not every day, but i try to. I try to keep that alive. Amy so i called this production a play because thats what we say on broadway. Its not really well, its certainly not just a play. Its not a rock opera. What words do you use . I think we just call it a show. [laughter] ok. It evolved from a concert tour, as you mentioned, but then we realized, okok, in a broadway setting, you have the opportunity to do Something Else with it. You still play a lot of songs, but you have an opportunity to a createn arc and sort of tetell a story. Not in the literal story like, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. But you can kind of make it in a story of ideas that takes you from one place, and then you end up somewhere else at the end. Amy and you begin by talking about how babies have way more connections in their brains than we do. Yeses, yes. It really is something ive read recently that babies have lot more neural connections than we do. Until we are 20 years old, those connections s are beingg pruned and stripped back. And what a thing to think about. On the face of it, they are kind of our it would seem like, well, does that mean we are less that babies somehow have more or perceive more than we do and that we have and i think it is kind of true. I think babieses are kind of getting everythihing. They just cant make any sense of it. And theyre trying to figure it out. And to try to figure it out, they have to say, im going to ignore this. Mom is more important than that person over there. Amy so babies have more connections, but then as we grow older, maybe to compensate a little, we build connections outside. Thats what im saying. Im saying are social connections are connections that other people is something that we, as you s said, that we grow as we mature. Amy and the show american utopia is certainly a manifestation of that. I mean, its so simple. I wont exactly use the word austere, but very stripped down and explain who you wrote this show for. Oh, [laughteter] im sure, like a lot of things that i do, the show was c conceived as a kind of therapy f for myse. You want can we present Something Like this and is it going to have the effect on me and on the audience that i hope it might . I imagined that by stripping everything away, all the projectitions and d equipment and stage paraphernalia and letting it be just us just us, the musicians i thought, that puts us kind of on the same levell as the audience in a way. We are not protected by having all the stuff. Its just kind of us as human beings talking to you all out there as human beings. And i thought, that can be pretty powerful. I mean, you see it with a standup comedian or somebody doing somethining like that, but you dont see it in a music show very often. So i thought, lets see if that feels like a more immediate kind of connection between us and the audience. And then well start from there and see where that goes. Amy so here you have 12 musicians, including yourself. And you were all there in your somewhat austere grey suits, but the opposite of austeree as you perform, and you introduce us to everyone with a simple sentence. Can you share that sentence . About immigration . Oh, yes, yes, yes. That. Yes. I make various points throughout the show, but i try and always make i it very b be very whatever personal or immediate or not a kind of didactic point, but kind of like, there it is, you see it right in front of you. At one p point, i make a point that myself, im a naturalized citizen and some of amy scotland. Yes. Some of the band members are from france and brazil, etc. And i said, yes, were all immigrants and the show, you know, would not exist wiwithout us being ablele to be here. Amy so would you like to elaborate further . Because you have more than a sentence in between performances about the pointed reference you are making about immigration, about this, for example, show not being able to happenn if it werent for all of you from around the globobe. Exactly. The audience the good thing about putting that in the context of ththe show is the audidience get it immediate. They have been dancing and enjoying this music and then you realize that you can say to them, this thing that you just enjoyed, itit would not be e here unless these people were allowed into o our counun. That includes me. And so its very its a very visceral way of making the point rather than kind of a dogmatic policy way. Its like, you just enjoyed d something that would not have happened if we werent here. Amy in n 2018, you said it in a slightly different way. Last year, you said you created an online playlist titled beautiful [bleep] in response to trumps comments. People didid write me from various places and say thank you for this. Yeah, i thought, well, let the music speak. That the music speak for these pepeople from these e countri. Let them listen to the music they are making, which is incredible. Amy can you give us a thumbnail david byrne sketch of your life, how you came into music, especially for young people . Talk about where you were born, where you grew up, and then how you discovered music. Ok, i was born in scotland. My parents came with me to canada and then moved to baltimore for work. I was in high school, say, in the late 1960s. Im old enough to have experienced that and the explosion of pop music. Lots of people wanted to be an bands or musicians or performer in kind of thing. And i did, too. I was very, very shy. But i realized that perform became an outlet. I could get on stage and d do kd of outrageous things, and then retreat into my shell. And i would have an outlet. I had announced my existence and creativity and then i could kind of f retreat again. Maybe relevant to kind of young people, i had d no ambitions to b be a musician. My ambition was to be a fine artist and show in galleries and things like that. That is what i wanted to do. Where i wanted to be an engineer, to do technical kind of work. Amy your dad did that . And i saw creativity there. It was similar to the arts, but itit was and our woworld, it is always kept very separate. So i thought of music as what does what you call, an avocation . It w was something that itit d for pleasure with friends and i i took it very seriously, but i never thought it would be a career or a way to make a living. I thought there e are people who have g gone to school for ts and pepeople that are really, really good. Im just doing it for fun. But eventually, it kind of one won out. Amy so you went to school. I went to maryland institute, another art school and i was constantly making things with her in hopes of kikind of getting a show. I had nono idea how to do that. But at the same time, i was writing songs. Yes, audition some clubs downtown and i i kind of i i was very lucky. We were very lucky. Its kindnd of the right the right thing at the right moment at the right time. And there were other groups emerging from this club, the press all of a sudden was kind of payiying attention to what was going on. We were playing original music, which was very unusual at that time for bands at a bar to play original music post of amy like the remains . Thehere was a group called television, patti smith. So we were all kind of playing the same venues, same places. Amy your college pal was named i had a College Friend named marquis. I hahave my friends that were inin talking headsds for chris and tina. Amy and tina actually did not naturally play the bass guitar. No,o, she didnt. Like chris, they were painters. Their training was as painters. Chchris, especially like music, and tina took an interest and dedecided she would learn. Amy so you needed a bass guitar is. So she came and said, she said, ill do that. Coming out of, say, sort of an arty millieu, we felt that virtuosity in itself was not a high priority. It was not a value in as far as music goes. What was more important was that what you could comommunicate. And if you could communicate that in fairly simple means whatat that was available to you as long as you did not try to do something beyond your means. But you could. With very little, could communicate quite a lot. And so the idea that we just brought in friends who would learn how to plalay didnt seem that strange e to. Amy so yoplplay at cbcbgbs not very much and you open for the remounts and a music producer hears you from outside on the s sidewalk. Well, yes. So people in the kind d of musc world and record labels and alternative press, etc. , started coming in hearing us and the other bands. And we were very lucky to be part of that at that time. I mean, if we had been i can imagine if wed been somewhere else doing the exact same thing we would have gone completely unnoticed. I would like to think we were writing something that had somome kind of intereststing quality toto it, but i also know thatat theres a certain amount of luck involved as well. Amy david byrne, the legendary musician and now broadway star. His showow american utopia is on n broadway now. When we come back, he will talk about collaborating with brian enono, reasons s to be cheerfulul, and the swedish climate activist greta thunberg. [music break] amy this is democraracy now , democracynowow. Org, ththe war and peace e report. Im amy goodmaman. Are c continuining our conversation with david byrne, cofounder of the talking headss and star of the e new broadway show amamerican utopia. The show has drawn some comparisons to the talking heads 1984 concert film stop making sense directed by Jonathan Demme. amy i asked david byrne to talk about working with Jonathan Demme on the film. He shot a performance we did. And thats kind of its kind of a document of the tour that we were doing at the time. Amy like four nights in a row. Yeah, he shot four nights in a row in one place so that it could be edited together to appear to be one night. And that was kind of the tour that we were doing. The film version is a little compressed. But similar to this, the show that im doing now, it was a very simple idea. But then fairly complicated to realize it. In that one, the idea was, start with the stage with nothing o on it, bring everythihing on and show the audience what it takes to make e a show. Bring on the lights and projectors in the wheel in the equipment and this and that, and they get to see everything assembled one by one until by about i dont know, halfway throug, everytything i is working. Its like, oh, weve seen how this comes together now. Its was an attempt to be really transparent. Amy so tell us about your collaboration over the years with brian eno, one of the great musicic producs of thehe last decades, how you memet him, and what it meant for the to view work together. Talking heads worked on three records with brian eno and i worked with him on two or three as well, including this most recent one. And we were introduced when we played in a small club in london. It was our first show in england by anothther musician, a y named jojohn cale whwho was in a band called the velvet underground and we idolized john and velvet underground and brian eno in the band, he was in roxy mususic. We were kind of bowled over by meeting these people that we admired very much. Similar to what i was saying about working with musicians who wewerent virtuosos, brian isnt a virtuoso musician or technician, but he has lots of ideas. And hes willing to experiment a lot in the studio and whatever. So that appealed to us. It also appealed that we could talk to him just as a friend, as a person, and it wasnt all music business talk. You could spend the wholee evening togegether and never talk about music at all, which i thought was a goodod sign. Amy and you collaborate on for example, i zimbra. talk about that. In the yeah, ok come in the show that we are doing, i mentioned that brian eno suggested that we use thisis nonsense pom by a dada artist for the lyrics of a song that we were having trouble finding lyrics to. We had a melody, but we could not figure out the lyrics. So the kind of world ofdada, this current show, i describe a little bit about what was going on at the time. And the context of these artists, they both did these nonsense chants or poems or, well, twitter is called his his a sonata. Quite a few w became exiles. S. This was in the 1930s. A lot of them were exiled to zurich. They ended up in zurich and a lot of them hung out at a performance place there. A lot of their art was performancebased. It was called cabaret voltaire. So it was this community of exiles and refugees that came together making this art movement amy fleeing the nazis. Yes, fleeing the nazis. And a lot of them converge there. Their art was very absurd and funny and but in a way, it was a direct response to what they were seeing around them. Amy why did you feel it was important to address fascism in the 1980s and again right now . And never say that bubut i think the connection is pretty obvious to an audience. I describe the context that these nonsense poems and their artwork came out of. There had been an economic crash. The nazis were coming to power, there was whole countries were sliding into authoritarian and fascist regimes. And i thought sometimes i pause and i go, let just let that sink in. See if you might see some parallels there. But i never say that. Let the audience make the connection. And then i go on and t talk abot how these artists respond to what theheir response was. Amy do you have a great desire to burn down the house right now . No, im trying the reasons to be cheerful thing. Im giviving it a good tryry. Amy explain reasons to be cheerful. Explain what youve started with this online magazine. It started at least a couple of years ago. Like a lot of people, i wake up in the morning and read a lot of news and enend up either depressed or c cynical or angry y or what. And i i thought, well, thats a reasonable response given what id read. But i also thought this is not good for my health. Anand its also not good d forw to respond to o these things that i had been reading about. In being finding yourself in that frame of mind isnt a very constructive place to kind of respond to it. So i started saving things that seseed hopefulul or initiative, sometimes small things that have been dodone in a little t n oror in another country that hae proved to be successful. At first i started just posting those online. More recently, it became more official with a little tete of editors and writers and web designers and all that kind of thing. And itits often called solutions journalism. It focuses not just on good news, like some someones donated a lot of money to schools or someoeone has done a good de, but onon a whole initiative ththat has proven to be successl and that one would hopope can e then used as a model and d adopted by other places. Thats the idea. We dont have the time. We are not activists in that we dont try and get these things adopted. The assumption is that if we put it out there, people might discover it and realize, oh, someones found a sosolution to this. Maybe we should look at that. It constantly shocks me that people try to reinvent the wheel with various policies or whatever it might be when you realize, but wait a minute. Theyve got a perfectly Good Health System that works over there, why dont we just do that . Amy so one of the things that youve gotten involved with is the bard prison initiative. Can you talk about that as one of these solutions . That yes, ok. Bard college, just a little bit upstate here, started a program where inmates at some of the colleges in that area and there are quite a few percent in that area can actually get t degrees, full on degrees. They have teachers and it works. People get the degrees. What happens is they emerge from the prison ready to get jobs, trained not jusust trained in makaking license plates or Something Like that but real training and the recidivism rate, the rate that they might go back in prisojujust dps. I i mean, its likeke line so ththrecididivism rate in the United States is terrible. I mean, instead of preparing people to return to society, its almost like yourere creating criminals. Youre creating prison because that ends up being what t they know. This turns that around and makes people have a possible future, and itit works. So other p places have been adopting it. Otother colleges and u universi. I thinink wesleyanan in pennsyla and a few others. And so stepbystep it gets adopted and seems to be a Good Alternative to what generally happens in prisons here. Amy i want to ask