Leading up to his conversation with David Byrne for the Unterberg Poetry Center, the acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, and the new Utopia Avenue talks to us about the music that inspired his new novel, why Fear of Music is his favorite Talking Heads album, and much more.
Utopia Avenue is a novel about a fictional rock ‘n’ roll band from the 1960s. Let’s say you could go back in time and see a band play a particular show. Who, where, when?
Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett; in spring 1967; at The UFO Club in Charing Cross Road. Lacking a reliable time machine, I wrote the scene in Utopia Avenue. Would it be too greedy if I also asked to lie in a hammock on a veranda in Laurel Canyon on a warm night in 1968 while Joni Mitchell plays the songs from her first album, Song to a Seagull, by the light of the silvery moon?
Did writing the novel change how you felt about certain musicians, bands, songs?
Certainly. Research led me to dozens of memoirs, biographies and cultural histories. Knowledge informs feelings. Greil Marcus taught me a lot about the wellspring of American music. Keith Richards’ book Life helped me to a better appreciation of the Stones. David Byrne’s book, How Music Works, bristles with original thoughts about music and insights into music-making. Currently, I’m writing the lyrics to all Utopia Avenue’s songs. Doing so has renewed my respect for lyricists and librettists. Writing words for music that doesn’t even exist (yet) is harder than you might think. It can’t be poetry (or there would be no room for the music) but it must be more than verse. Kudos, Bernie Taupin, et al.
What are you listening to now?
A friend assembled an EDM playlist. It’s perfect music for Q&As—full of propulsion, like musical caffeine, mostly without lyrics. As I type this sentence, a composition by Stavroz called The Finishing is playing. If I could describe how great it is, you wouldn’t need the song.
What's your favorite album cover?
Sheesh, that’s like asking, “What’s your favorite tree?” or “Which is your favorite face?” Perhaps it would have been easier to answer when we were kids and great graphic design was harder to come by, and less accessible because laptops weren’t a thing. I’ve gotten used to excellence, so it stands out less.
Just to play the game, I’ll nominate the austere Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division: the only cover I know to use electromagnetic waves from a pulsar.
If you could see anybody play right now, who and where would it be?
Apart from David Byrne playing his American Utopia show, you mean? Rostam (formerly of Vampire Weekend) wherever I could get to see him. I’m besotted with his solo album Half Light. Radiant voice, image-steeped lyrics, hypnogogic songs: he’s the real deal.
Utopia Avenue is scattered with original song lyrics. Are there fully formed David Mitchell songs with chords and melodies hidden away somewhere in your files?
No chords or melodies anywhere, I’m afraid. Every time I try to think of an original melody it slips into an existing one. That’s if I’m lucky. If I’m not lucky, I’m just left with an unsavory puddle of bad scat. This didn’t really matter when I wrote Utopia Avenue, as novels don’t have speakers or wifi. Lyrics were another matter, however. After about a hundred pages it began to feel weird that we weren’t hearing any of the words or phrases that Elf, Dean and Jasper were singing, so I had to grasp the nettle and show some of the lyrics the band was writing and performing.
Is there a relationship between writing songs and writing sentences?
On the one hand, no: songs are propelled by music, a thing above or below or beyond language. Sentences, by contrast, aren’t propelled by anything. They just sit there on a page, waiting for a literate eyeball to come along and discern meaning in its ink squiggles. But on the other hand, yes: sentences can be rhythmic, they can scan, they can rhyme, they can deploy alliteration and assonance. Sentences can be music-like.
You’ll be talking to David Byrne at 92Y this week. What does he mean to you as an artist?
Firstly, David Byrne was the remarkable singer from the videos for “Once In A Lifetime” and “Road to Nowhere” on BBC’s Top of the Pops when I was a kid. I still recall seeing them, and the conversations at school the morning after. Talking Heads’ music and David’s originality stood out like a pulsating house of mirrors in a suburban avenue of identikit buildings. The band redefined what a song could be. Secondly, David Byrne is the solo performer I saw at Edinburgh on his “Uh-Oh tour” in 1992. I was way up at the back of the theater. The first few songs were stripped-down Talking Heads songs; then a curtain fell and a Latin band from Dante’s lesser-known circle of bliss performed David’s (then) newer solo songs. The colors, the sounds, the spectacle, the show! Ah... Thirdly, David Byrne is the primary creator of the Talking Heads album Fear of Music, the first CD I bought after moving to Japan in 1994. I venture to suggest I’ve heard it more often than he has. It's one of those inexhaustible albums I’ve never mined out. “Heaven” is an utterly right song—every single decision taken during its creation, lyrical and melodic, was correct, and couldn’t have been any other way. There aren’t a whole load of songs like that. If nobody else is around, I’ll join in on the final third of “Memories Can’t Wait.” Dogs miles away hear me and howl. Fourthly, David Byrne is the curator of Brazil Classics 1, a groundbreaking anthology of Brazilian music. My wife gave it to me when we were dating. It introduced me to Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento, amongst others. There is a “fifthly,” “sixthly” and even a “seventhly” but I’m afraid David might read this before our event and worry about what, or whom, he’s let himself in for. So I’ll end by observing that David’s meta-artwork is his whole career: his Talking Heads albums, his pioneering My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the Latin-infused ‘80s and ‘90s work, his 21st century recordings, his EDM-leaning work, his work for stage. Few musicians survive venturing beyond the work that first made them famous. David has made a lifelong art of it.
Join David Mitchell and David Byrne in conversation at 6 pm on Tuesday, July 14.