Daily News from New York, New York • 660

DAVID BYRNE continued from page 27 singers like Nona Hendryx and keyboardists like ex-Funkadelic Bernie Worrell, the Heads have mixed and matched music with art. Byrne was an art student before becoming a rock-and-roller, and he is to a large extent still an art student; someone who relates to the world through the medium of art, who uses the vocabulary of music and the medium of film to alter the tired way we look at things; who compels us to alter the bored glances we cast on everyday objects that clutter our lives. In "True Stories" the images are the messages; commonplace objects become profound, moving fluidly through space. Color and light meet density and hold us captive. People say the damndest things into the dead air, and the music pumps blood into the eye.

The result is provocative, dizzying, satisfying and, above all, tremendous fun. 'I'm a real he says. 'Mild-mannered guy gets on stage and turns into a maniac. Spills it all out in front of an audience and goes back to his mild-mannered life.9 about three years," Byrne explains. "Then I wrote the music to fit the different scenes and people, since some of the songs are specifically keyed to a particular character." We talk about how photogenic a lobster is in the movie, and how great the fish cakes and cucumbers and chocolate look; it's so challenging to find food that doesn't wilt under heavy lighting, and that looks edible, he explains.

With that comes Byrne's order of mushrooms (called "fungus" on the menu) sauteed in something fragrant. After a few mouthfuls of gab about food, it occurs to me that David Byrne is the same in real life as he is in the movie. "Yeah, that was me in the movie. I was performing at times, though. I'd try giving my lines a funny reading intentionally.

But I wasn't a character, no." David Byrne doesn't have to be a character; something about his intensity, the concentration with which he approaches people and projects, makes him the odd man out. And when he gets on stage, a palpable change comes over his even features. "Ah yes, I'm a real cliche," he says. "Mild-mannered guy gets on stage and turns into a maniac. Spills it all out in front of an audience and goes back to his mild-mannered life." I think aloud that David Byrne may be a control freak, considering the control he exercises over his personality.

"I am, a lot of the time. I know that about myself. Occasionally, I let things be a little looser." Was he ever sorry to let go? He deliberates. "Well, when we first got involved with making videos, I didn't think I could do them myself, so I put up money and had other people do a couple of them. Though I didn't mind the way they came out, they weren't successful at all.

Then I realized I had to get my hands dirty and start doing them myself." i hat if "True fT Stories" is a huge hit? WiU Vl Byrne g0 Ho1" 'A 1ywood? 0r A 3 move up to Sneden's 1 Landing? "I guess I have to be very careful not to get carried away," says Byrne, as he ponders global adulation. "I do want to direct another film, and that would help me get the chance, I suppose." But he concedes that success is not without sacrifice: "If I want to do movies, I'll have to do less music. Less touring with the band." Although, "if the movie flops, I still have my music." Yes, he still has a fruitful relationship with drummer Chris Frantz, and his wife, bassist Tina Weymouth, and the lesser lights of Talking Heads. After all these years of experimentation, innovation, flirting with both cults and mainstream, the Talking Heads has withstood the test of time; their cohorts of the early days, Blondie, the Ramones, Tuff Darts, Television, have all lost it. Though Frantz and Weymouth formed the Tom Tom Club and had a disco hit with "Wordy Rappinghood," they are, firstly, Talking Heads.

Is the band mad at him? "They're not mad. I think sometimes they're curious about what I'm gonna do. In some sense, it affects them." Now there's the understatement of the year. "Well," he says, "they all make records on their own." We do a little cocktail-party chatter over coffee. Did you know his favorite actor is Peter Sellers? That he sleeps in pajamas only when it's cold? That he pays a lot of attention to Japanese clothing and design? That he lives down town and has a girl friend? That he was an art student at the Rhode Island School of Design before he came to New York? That he worked at an ad agency prior to becoming a rock-and-roller who developed a rather unique stage presence by acting like he was alternately electrocuted andor comatose? David Byrne is aware of all the early comment about his stage act, in which he walked around with his guitar spasming arhythmically.

"I think I have a fair amount of rhythm," he defends himself. "But in my early performances my toe might have been tapping out of time due to nerves. A lot of it was nerves. It's a little embarrassing to be identified as a spazz. Later, I got better at being deliberate.

If I wanted to look twitchy, I could do it on purpose. But at first I would try to emote and the wrong thing would come out. I'd push some inner button and the wrong movement would come out. I was trying to discover the white person's equivalent of cool dancing." Well, cool dancing is the one thing any person of any color can do to Talking Heads records. Though David Byrne says his favorite is "Fear of Music," I'd vote for "Remain in Light." Both those LPs were co-produced by Brian Eno, the British sophisticate who made airport music respectable and who pioneered a lush ethnocentric sound among the art bands of the mid-'70s.

Though Byrne says he now listens mainly to Brazilian music, old Cuban records, sambas, calypso and general Caribbean brew, it wasn't always like this. "We only knew how to play a little bit when we started at CBGB's," he explains. "Tina didn't know how to play. But we rehearsed a lot so when we finally went on stage, we knew our stuff. We'd strip our songs down till the instrumentation was real simple." The Heads went from simple to complicated, from high Gothic to electronic, from giddy to psycho-illogical, from imagistic to straightforward pop, from alienation and art to accessibility.

All this in nearly a dozen records, a couple of videos, a collection of high-tech covers. Through it all, we don't know continued on page 43 meet David Byrne at Bar Lui on Broadway the day he's to leave for the Edinburgh film festival. Since Byrne was born in Scotland (May 14, 1952) and left when he was two, it's the return of the local hero. "No one over there picked up on what I was doing till the last record," he says. "Then a song called 'Road to Nowhere' became a hit in England, and now a busload of Browns and Byrnes is driving down to meet me." Image-wise, David Byrne hasn't changed much; he's neat and clean in button-down shirts and L.L.

Bean-type trousers; same as he ever was. He is quiet, reserved, shy. He cuts his food into one-inch squares before attacking it. He has hairy arms. He makes eye contact and laughs, just like a normal person.

He seems to save the greater part of his energies for his work, parceling out the remainder in small doses and short phrases. Like many people who work in the visual medium, he has little to say. Verbal explanations are, for him, redundant. "The idea for "True Stories' came first; I'd been sitting on it for DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 28. 1986 31.