David Byrne is, without a doubt, one of the most delightfully and intriguingly odd musicians alive today. Through his work with Talking Heads, he influenced modern-day pop music in a major way. But like all of the greatest musicians around, he was also a young person who found inspiration in the bands of his day. And David Byrne has gone on record to say that the psychedelic rock/pop outfit The Byrds inspired his own new wave stylings. In fact, The Byrds inspired David Byrne to produce his own music.
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Byrne was inspired by many musicians through the years. David Bowie and The Velvet Underground are just a few icons that the “Once In A Lifetime” hitmaker has raved about in the past. However, one band that holds a particularly special place in David Byrne’s heart is The Byrds.
How the Byrds Inspired David Byrne as a Young Man, Years Before Talking Heads Existed
Byrne grew up with more access to non-mainstream music than most people from his generation. However, he wasn’t particularly inspired to create his own tunes until he was a teenager. That was when he discovered The Byrds for the first time, and his life was changed for good.
“The Bob Dylan song ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ was like a psychedelic version of a Woody Guthrie song, but then the Byrds turned it into something unlike anything my young ears had heard before,” said Byrne.
To Byrne, the song “sounded like jangly pots and pans” and bells. The Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” was like an otherworldly message from outer space. Especially to a young man living in a quiet neighborhood in Baltimore.
“The song is like a little telegraph from someplace else,” Byrne continued. “Hearing that, I realised, ‘I have to get out of here, because there are people in other places. There’s a whole world out there that I don’t know anything about.’”
The Byrds inspired Byrne to jump headfirst into making his music. One could say that if it weren’t for The Byrds, David Byrne would not have started playing music in Maryland clubs. Nor would he have formed the iconic new wave outfit Talking Heads.
Sometimes, it just takes one song to inspire someone to get out there with their own unique, otherworldly, and groundbreaking music.
Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for The New Yorker
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