Happy Birthday to David Byrne

 

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David Byrne

Happy Birthday to David Byrne, who turns 73 today. 

Robert Rauschenberg | The Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues

When I first posted the below text twelve years ago, I got an email from a publicist, asking if I wanted to interview Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, to promote their new Tom Tom Club record. I thought about it and - after listening to the disc - declined, explaining that while I was a fan of the Talking Heads, I had written this because the record was designed by an artist, and that the site was not music-based. 

Looking back, I regret it. I should have just talked to them and tossed off some quick post. 

Here’s the text again, with some new images. The original can be found here. 

After their debut in 1977, the Talking Heads released a studio album a year for the next three years (More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light), all produced by Brian Eno. Their fifth studio album, Speaking in Tongues, took three years to produce, with a live album in released in 1982 as a stop-gap). All members of the group put out solo projects in this time, but part of the delay might also have been the ambitious plans for the album packaging.

“I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover…I had recently seen some of his black-and-white photo collages at Leo Castelli’s gallery on West Broadway and thought they were amazing, and I wondered what he would do with an LP cover,” Byrne wrote in an op-ed obituary for the artist, published as Bob The Builder in the New York Times in May, 2008.

Rauschenberg agreed, but didn’t simply want to provide an illustration for the standard 12” cardboard sleeve. “His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.”

The design harkens back to Rauschenberg’s contribution to the boxed work entitled Artists & Photographs, which was published in 1970 by Marian Goodman’s imprint Multiples, Inc. [see below]. The portfolio of nineteen artists’ publications included many works that are now considered classic editions: Mel Bochner’s Misunderstandings, Dennis Oppenheim’s Flower Arrangement for Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson’s Torn Photograph…, Ed Ruscha’s Babycakes and many more, with works by Christo, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Long, Allan Kaprow, Dan Graham, etc. Rauschenberg’s contribution, Revolver, was a portable version of a larger, motorized work, of the same name, from 1967. It comprised of five rotating plexiglass disks (9 inches in diameter), each screenprinted. The box was published in an edition of 1200 copies.

Due to production problems and escalating costs, it was decided that the Rauschenberg designed Speaking in Tongues would only be released in a limited edition, of 50,000 copies. The record would also be released in a standard package with a cover by Byrne, which he designed by painting onto the white sleeves of test pressings. Guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison lists “Helped coordinate the manufacture of the Robert Rauschenberg cover for Speaking in Tongues” as one of four achievements in 1982, on his autobiographical timeline. Apparently it took a year and a half to find a company that could vacu-form a clear vinyl record. Eventually Harrison turned to the Oscar Meyer hot dog packaging company.

Speaking in Tongues, was a commercial breakthrough for the band, producing their only American Top Ten hit, "Burning Down the House". The tour to promote the album, documented by Jonathan Demme’s feature film Stop Making Sense, would be their last.

In 1983 Robert Rauschenberg won a Grammy Award for the album cover art, the first and only for the band while they were active. In 2005, fourteen years after their break-up, the group was awarded a Grammy for the packaging of the retrospective Once in a Lifetime box set, which featured paintings by Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov. The band have never been awarded a Grammy for their music.

Most copies of Speaking in Tongues have yellowed over time from exposure to light, though periodically copies found stored in boxes remain transparent. These are often offered for exorbitant prices, but tend to sell for between $40 and $120.00, with the higher end being sealed copies, or less yellowed.

At least one promotional event was held at the time of the album’s release where Byrne and Rauschenberg signed copies of the record together. These are increasingly rare now.

In 2000 a copy signed by both was auctioned for $646 and recently the Gagosian Shop offered one for $2000. This week [in 2012] on Ebay a copy housed in a specially designed plexi-stand failed to reach the minimum bid of $1500.00.

David Byrne | Strange Ritual

David Byrne

Strange Ritual

Faber and Faber, 1995

192 pp., 26 x 19.5 x 1.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Strange Ritual is the Talking Heads singer’s first stand-alone book (True Stories from nine years prior was ultimately a companion to the film of the same name). Subtitled Pictures and Words, the book is collection of photographs of icons, graffiti, consumer displays, advertising and book covers. The latter have titles that read like the works of Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber: “The Truth About Mars”, “I Dare You”, “How to do All Things”, “The Secret Museum of Mankind”, “Ponder on This”.

The book takes its title from  song from Byrne's third studio album (not counting film and theatre soundtracks), released two years prior. 

The leather-bound volume features a promotional wrap-around, and the Japanese edition was issued with a colourful dust jacket [see below]. 

"Internationally renowned musician, filmmaker, performer, David Byrne is an artist of diverse talents. Strange Ritual is Byrne's extraordinary first work of photography and words. Witty, antic and seductive, this book is a barrage of color photographs that reinvent the icon: playful religious images of high-rise madonnas and squadrons of crucifixes; incantorial representations of worldwide consumerism, from altars of food displays to retail signs out-shining the stained glass of cathedrals; culture-scapes of the omnipresent grid that video has imposed on our perception of reality.

Juxtaposed with the photographs are excerpts from Byrne's travel observations, unpublished song lyrics and poems, including a list of the gods and goddesses of the 90's. Byrne has also compiled found writing in the form of computer-generated poetry, odd book titles, poems and unusual messages found on the street. Traveling in Mexico, he writes, "Anything is up for grabs. Anything is available for everyone to use. Language, clothes, religions, facial features, narratives, gestures, foods, colors."

Strange Ritual offers 240 jam-packed pages of exciting, challenging, ironic, and often hilarious art and words that address the universals in an honest and direct voice. More than a book of photography, it is a bizarre, brilliant vision."

- Publisher's press release

David Bryne & Brian Eno | Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Bryne & Brian Eno

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

New York City, USA: Todomundo, 2008

5.1 x 12.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

A limited edition deluxe tin package for Bryne and Eno’s second collaborative album (their first - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - being released twenty-seven years prior, in 1981). 

The deluxe edition of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today includes a second enhanced CD featuring four exclusive bonus songs (“Never Thought”, “Walking Along The River”, “The Eyes” and “The Painting”) as well as a short film about the album by Hillman Curtis, and a Holding Pattern screensaver app. Also included in the tin is a miniature hardbound book, a red and white pill and a die with six sentences. 

Designer Stefan Sagmeister was inspired by the opening track (and album highlight) “Home” to create images of domestic setting with a “dark edge”. This includes a discarded condom wrapper in the gutter, a man looking out the window with binoculars, and a gasoline canteen in the kitchen. Closeup images of the home appear in the liner notes and an image of the lawn adorns the CDs. 

A microchip inside the tin plays the sound of someone walking down a hallway in the house and slamming a door when the package is opened.

Sagmeister had previously collaborated with Byrne on the 1997 album Feelings and the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime box set from 2003. The latter won a Grammy for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package Grammy. 

This was also nominated for a Grammy in the same category, along with Best Alternative Music Album, and Best Recording Package, winning the latter. The deluxe edition packaging was given a bronze medal by the Art Directors Club of New York and was also nominated for a Technical Excellence & Creativity Award in the Record Production/Album category.