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David Byrne.
 It has been snowing heavily in New York. David Byrne thinks it's a beautiful sight. His apartment is deliberately under-furnished. He inherited most of the 1950s and 1960-style furniture from its previous owner, and there aren't many paintings on the wall. "This way I'm not confronted by it, I don't like too many visual stimulants," he explains.
But as his solo projects show, Byrne is stimulated by many things. He's to do a lecture tour in the US behind his CD and book 'Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information' on the art of Power Point presentations. There are art projects, his work as a film maker and photographer, his world music label Luaka Bop, and a book inspired by the evolution of trees is due in June.
His solo album from last year, 'Grown Up Backwards', covered everything from Verdi and Bizet arias to bossa nova, Broadway, French pop and electronica to Dialog Box which was inspired by listening to Missy Elliott on his iPod and digging her inventiveness and playfulness.
The cold frost between Byrne and the other Talking Heads - he told the world the band had split before telling them - has thawed somewhat. In 2002, they reunited to play four songs to mark their inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
There was a 'Heads boxed set, 'Once In A Lifetime' last year. Work has started on a 2-DVD set of their TV appearances ("including some BBC and Channel 4 specials that have not been seen") and there are plans to reissue the albums including tracks that were left off.
Working on the boxed set got Byrne interested in bringing back Burning Down The House, Psycho Killer, Road To Nowhere, And She Was and Once In A Lifetime back to his live set to mix with his solo stuff. In America, the two hour set with his 10-piece band (which includes a string section) turns arenas into giant dancefloors, with crowds sometimes calling him back for five ovations.
He's more comfortable onstage, he agrees, "I enjoy myself and I have realised it's a real pleasure to sing and perform." Rather than the innovative staging or lighting of the past, he's using many costume changes. "They're quicker to move than sets and lighting, and less expensive... except for the dry cleaning bills. Changing wardrobes, I found, changes the mood onstage. You can make it sound silly and light, or dark and slightly creepy."
At 51, he is tall, thin, with very long fingers, silver haired, with an expression stuck to "stunned". After 30 years in the spotlight, Byrne remains truly enigmatic. Misunderstood genius and eccentric as Brian Eno says, or cold-blooded egomaniac who discards people when they are no longer useful, as ex-Talking Heads charged? Or both?
"I don't know what people think of me exactly. But sometimes I do. I was poking about in a bookstore the other day, and a guy came up truly astonished I was there, without being surrounded by celebrity friends or bodyguards. That's a sad reflection of the celebrity culture."
After the Iraq invasion, Byrne, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and many other musicians took out newspaper ads damning the war. The live set includes two new anti-war songs, Empire and Astronaut. He worries that people might not get the irony of their lyrics and think he means it. What about Listening Wind from the Heads' 1980 album 'Remain In Light', about a foreign guerrilla Mojique who plans to bomb American colonists. "Woah! If I played that, I'd be dragged off to Guantanamo! That song, as old as it is, tells you how little things have changed. It tells us this is not like a new issue, it's an old problem. I've traveled, so I can understand America is not universally loved. But a lot of Americans just dismiss it as 'they're jealous of us'."
Eno reckons Byrne is most comfortable in the world of art. In his life, the head 'Head changed not only the way pop music is perceived, but also how world music is seen. Is his next challenge still in music, or in the other artforms he explores? "Half and half. Music has a way of reaching emotional centres that sometimes other things have a harder time reaching. It's important for me."
Christie Eliezer
 | David Byrne plays the Norwood Concert Hall on Sat 12 Feb. |
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