When Talking Head talks, do we need to listen?
David Byrne offers an insider’s look, but it isn’t endlessly fascinating
The plush white cover and title of David Byrne’s treatise How Music Works is both attractively minimalist and somewhat off-putting — a cross between an instruction manual and a coffee-table book. It’s as if music, that most ephemeral art, could be dissected as a “thing,” like a car or toaster. Music has always seemed to me to be too mysterious a subject to be reduced to hip postmodern design.
Happily, the former head Talking Head is eager to shed light on all kinds of facets that affect the making of music, from the environments of venues and recording studios and the composing process to the business of making and distributing records and the difference between live gigs and studio work. It’s a softsell how-to book often filtered through his experiences in the grand game.
At Pop Montreal on Saturday, Byrne will be talking about his book and musicmaking with Win Butler of Arcade Fire.
One thing he doesn’t talk about is the proverbial driven “tortured artiste” — “the swollen egos that drive some artists, although the psychological makeup of musicians and composers shapes music at least as much as any of the phenomena I’m fascinated by.” That’s a large omis- sion (especially regarding managers and agents and PR flaks), as ego is the engine that, more than any one factor, wills people to perform; his book would’ve been more complete if he examined how temperamental artistes have subverted or sabotaged (or self-destructed) the rules of the game he so cogently describes. He tells a few fleeting anecdotes about the Talking Heads business and creative process, and frankly, it’s not all that fascinating.
I couldn’t help but feel that I had read a lot of How Music Works before: There has been a spate of books in recent years trying to pin down the infernal thing, and Byrne liberally quotes and cribs from them. These books go into more detail than Byrne’s, including Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz; Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner; Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks; Listen to This by Alex Ross; and This Is Your Brain on Music by Montrealer Daniel Levitan. As for the (dirty) business of music, Hit Men by Frederic Dannen, remains nonpareil, giving Byrne the cover to mention the music industry’s driving cog — payola.
While those books are rich in the kind of historical and scientific lore that Byrne generalizes, as a plain-spoken guide, How Music Works is an adequate introduction to the business of music, but less so when he dares to explain the creative process. He has a common-sense approach; he’s an insider without an elitist bone in his body. As such, his prose is levelled down to a flatness that excludes excitement.
He explains that technology has changed the music at each step, from the making of instruments to venues: The concert or opera hall could embrace more detail from an orchestra than a rich man’s chamber room, and as orchestras got bigger, composers got bigger ideas. Here he takes a swipe at so-called classical elitism, and snooty attitude toward the lower arts. Why, he asks, does every city have to build a new state-of-the-art orchestral hall but not bother with one for non-classical music? There are intriguing passages on how computers
“The more involved the artist is in the recording process ... the more likely he or she will retain a bigger slice of the pie.”
DAVID BYRNE
change music, and the challenge to create something human.
His strongest chapter explains the pros and cons of seven types of royalty deals, from the “360 deal” (or equity deal), in which all aspects of a career are handled by others, to self-distribution and licensing. “The more involved the artist is in the recording process — from creation to production to distribution — the more likely he or she will retain a bigger slice of the pie per unit sold.” However, attaining this state of grace is easier said than done.
Byrne writes: “The list of successful artists who at some point in their career went completely broke is astounding – TLC, the Ramones, Terence Trent D’Arby, Seal, Ron Wood, Meatloaf, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Sly Stone, and Toni Braxton. … Some of the artists simply didn’t manage their finances well and spent their money on drugs and limos, but some did nothing ‘wrong.’ They were just part of a business that wasn’t designed to sustain them over the long haul.”
The Internet changed the landscape, for good and bad, for musicians. Acts obtained an alternative to radio for exposure, yet more listeners were buying songs rather than albums, resulting in less revenue for the artists. Byrne isn’t too happy about the cut iTunes gets from each sale.
He makes the case that music and arts programs should be expanded, and not cut, in schools, and suggests music as a balm to violence. But his anti-elitism gets the better of him when he claims it’s “more important” to learn to make music, draw or whatever than to “appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare — to say nothing of opera as it is today.” He fails to say that creativity and appreciation are not mutually exclusive.
It’s as if Byrne has skimmed influential books and articles, and presented a potpourri of ideas that just kind of hang there, almost at random, in the ether.
How Music Works, a conversation with David Byrne and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, takes place Saturday at 8 p.m. at Ukrainian Federation, 5213 Hutchison St. Tickets cost $15. Visit www.popmontreal.com.
David Byrne and St. Vincent perform Friday at 8 p.m. at St. Jean Baptiste Church, 309 Rachel St. E., as part of the Pop Montreal festival. The remaining tickets are priced at $49.50. Call 514-790-1111 or visit www. ticketpro.ca.