“I knew what I wanted but I didn’t know how to get it in a nice co-operative way… I know that I was not always the most pleasant person to work with”: David Byrne admits he was a ‘bossy pants’ in Talking Heads

David Byrne, founding member and principal songwriter of the American New Wave band Talking Heads, photographed in 1987.

David Byrne has a new-ish album out, Who Is The Sky? and so as part of its promotional campaign, he’s popped up on Louis Theroux’s cunningly-titled The Louis Theroux Podcast.

The interview covers all the ground you’d expect it to. Byrne talks about the early days of Talking Heads: “Our record collections was a mix of things like Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, James Brown and Hamilton Bohannon, O’Jays. If you can imagine conceptually those things being put together. At the same time we had a few rules – we wouldn’t do long indulgent guitar solos, which we associated with the kind of big rock bands.”