Jeff Koons and David Byrne in Conversation
Jamie Dalglish
David Byrne: When I sit I always have to try to remember to be near the microphone because it’s not like The Mike Douglass show or something like that where they have the microphone on your neck. Although, lately, I’ve been learning sort of to yell at it from a distance. I don’t know if that works or not. And then I discovered one thing. I’ve discovered that sometimes when I sing the parts that I think, when I get the most involved, if I get goose bumps or something like that, I think that it’s very touching, then that’s not necessarily what’s coming across. And sometimes another part of the song, when I would just be sort of concentrating on technical aspects, it might come across as more touching. So that’s something that you can apply to your day to day life because when you do think about something technically, well, it might be appreciated as being more sincere than when you do something that is really from the heart.
Jeff Koons: I would think that if it would be from the heart it could not come out wrong.
DB: Yeah that’s what you would think. That’s what I always thought. If it comes from the heart you can’t make a mistake. It has to come across it must bridge that gap.
JK: I don’t know, the technical thing just seems so different. Like sometimes I can see a band and I can tell when they miss a note and then other bands I could never tell if they missed a note or not.
DB: Yeah.
JK: Do you feel that you miss a note? Or something as such?
DB: Yeah sometimes I do that. You know you have to try to make up for it. Sometimes I’ll sing a phrase and I’ll think, I didn’t really mean it. I didn’t sing it like I meant it so the next word I have to say, make it sound like I really mean it. And I have to really think about it very quickly and it goes so fast, like sometimes I think it’s really good and the rush of adrenaline that lasts for a long time and because you work so fast you just sing a couple of words and then all of a sudden you think okay, I have the next one I have to change and you think about how you’re gonna change it and make it different and stuff like that, you know. It all goes so fast.
JK: It would seem like just writing a song, like putting those words down saying, is that right? Like I spent the energy on those lyrics. It would seem harder to me.
DB: Another hard part is just to say them with conviction every time. ‘Cause a lot of times you can, you can write the worst drivel but if you say it with conviction then it’s um, universal truth and stuff like that. You know just things like a penny saved is a penny earned and, uh, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Things like that. They’re not. They’re nothing new. It’s like if you, um, what’s that one? Is it the, the Bob Newhart Show where he’s a psychiatrist?
JK: Yeah.
DB: He always says those.
***
DB: There are so many bars here.
JK: Yeah. Middle class bars I can’t stand. Yeah where I’m from middle class bars have bands that’ll just play contemporary, you know pop music that you hear all the time and then as soon as you got out that’s what you hear again.
DB: They used to have one in Baltimore that had a fountain in the middle of the dance floor. But they took that high. I guess people bump into it.
JK: That’s where I spent my New Years Eve. A good strip bar.
DB: Which, which one?
JK: I don’t know what the name of it — The Clock or something. But there were 5 girls on stage who were —
DB: All taking their clothes off?
JK: Yeah at New Years. They were all dancing too at the same time. You know, it’s real nice, real comfortable feeling, cause you don’t feel like you have to be something or anybody. It’s pretty real.
DB: They have lots of magazines there that they don’t have anywhere else. They have that one uh, the Pen Press. It was just all made up stuff with porn, like the way Esquire used to be. Stuff about how – there was a story about how Westinghouse had commissioned a factory in Japan to make robots and they were bringing them over on a tanker and the tanker ran into a thunderstorm and got hit by lightening and so they thought something might have happened to the robots so when they unloaded them in San Diego, they all started walking ashore and got away. And they said there were newspaper articles about how the robots were all over the southwest at this point and they had sexually attracted to small, medium sized actually, small mechanical objects like Volkswagens and dance parts. They wouldn’t harm people but they had, they were doing great damage to these — and so if you had a Volkswagen, you had to get away fast from the robot that was trying to attack it sexually.
JK: That’s printed straight.
DB: Yeah printed straight. This is what’s going on in the South West these days. South West is a great part of our land I think. They have all those deserts and things. I guess for somebody who lives there and grew up there it’s not, it might not be so exciting, but for someone from the East it’s very exciting.
JK: When did you go out there?
DB: I went there a couple times and it was just — big open spaces and things like that. Gas stations.
JK: People complain about states like Kansas they say it’s flat but its great just for that. I went not through the southwest, but through the Midwest, Colorado and I would meet a lot of weird people like that. Always remember the stories from that. I had a killer picked me up one time.
DB: He said he had killed people?
JK: Yeah.
DB: Did he do it for a living?
JK: Yeah he said he finished off a client and he had three big bowie knives, the type that are red at the top laying right between us.
DB: What did the, what did the killer do? Did he seem like a pretty cold hearted guy? Or did he just say well it’s just, it’s my job and –
JK: He seemed real crazy. He was like a real uh wiry looking. And uh a little greasy looking. And he just looked like the kid that in school nobody paid any attention to. Just kind of hung out by himself. His face was all bloody and scabby and his arms were cut up. I don’t know. I got out of the car and ran when we pulled out over for gas.
DB: Where did you run to?
JK: Into a Ponderosa.
DB: Is that the steak house?
JK: Yeah. I stayed in there for a half hour.
****
DB: I used to be uh, when I was in high school, I used to wish I was bald cause I used to think that really looks good. Really looked smart when you’re bald so I used to think, I can’t wait to lose my hair. I lost a little bit. I think I’ve lost for a couple months there, it fell out of my temples on the side here. So I had a little bit of this here. But it never, I don’t think I’m gonna lose it on the top. But uh, now, now I’ve pretty much given up on that idea. I just thought well I guess I’m not gonna be bald. For awhile I wanted to get haircuts that made me look like I was going bald, but uh, those didn’t work either because it would be really hard and you’d really have to work at it to make your hair look like it was thin and falling out. And then the next day or if you, if you didn’t wash it and take care of it just the right way, it would look thick and fluffy again. So after awhile I figured it wasn’t worth the effort and I have to do whatever my hair wanted to do. Right now this is pretty much nothing that I wanted to do. It’s wants to just kind of, I think it wants all to go to one side here. I think it all wants to be big on one side and little on this side.
JK: I can never do anything the way I’d like to do it. I started to go bald one time.
DB: Then it, then it went away?
JK: Yeah I just started uh circles of hair would fall out.
DB: Would fall out?
JK: Yeah.
DB: Did you have to get treatment or something.
JK: No the guy just said shampoo. You shampoo your hair too much.
DB: Sometimes they make you put tar in your hair. Real street tar.
JK: Yeah but, people that are bald, they really hate it.
DB: Yeah that’s what they say. I couldn’t understand it cause I thought, there’s so many of them, how come they happen to hate it, cause everybody looks that way. How can they dislike it? It’s like half the country is the male population is bald. How can they dislike it?
JK: One of my girlfriend’s mother’s was completely bald. She had no hair on her body at all. She had to wear wigs all the time. She just lost every hair.
DB: That must have looked nice.
Vito Acconci and David Byrne
David Byrne: I think pause…when I see things like when I go to places and look at stuff and go to movies and stuff, especially arts stuff, it seems like people have all these romantic ideas about stuff. Like they want, they have all these um, sort of ideals about one thing or the other, but they want to —I pause…..
Vito Acconci: People doing the stuff, people seeing the stuff or both?
DB: Yeah both. The people that do the stuff get a lot of it from the um from the way they think people see the stuff. Like uh, you know like when they grow up, they read this and that and the way things are written about in magazines and on TV and shit, they think that it’s real good and they think that uh, you should just pick something.
VA It’s like, you know, frames of mind, things that are in the air start to shift after awhile for a certain — far a certain time science has this kind of plane as something to be sort of like tamed. Like every, every, every set of parents wants their child to be a scientist, but now there’s a kind of almost reaction against it, yeah. Science as cause of atom bomb. You know that kind, that kind of stuff. Science as unbridled, sort of keeps shifting, but it’s a, but I mean your, you know I, I —
DB: People still think that the majority that there’s only a few perverse — you know that the scientists themselves are working and they just do their work —
VA But then?
DB: And then these perverse people that take it and make atom bombs out of it and you know that make them, make it political and you know, like even people doing medical research manipulate it so that…
VA The thing starts out in a realm of neutrality, but then —
DB: Yeah. I don’t think it even starts out that way.
VA No, no, but you mean the general view of it is that there’s this neutral realm.
DB: Yeah. I like all these hospital shows they have on TV now. They have ones where, where it doesn’t look like the hospital is a real maniac type place and uh —
VA I don’t really know that much, about, prime time television. It really bothers me cause I’m all — I don’t have a television.
DB: I used to be able to get real worked up about stuff ordinary news events and get, you know, get sort of involved in it, you know to the extent where I’d think about it, but now, it just seems, it’s just like a TV show or something. You just don’t care. They just, these people are doing their thing and you just watch it and it goes by and they die and they get, you know, they get beat up and everything. And, you know, scandals on. It just, who cares? But at the same time, I feel like I’m, I want to be real good and make the world a better place to live in, everything like that, although you know, although that seems real silly. And it just, you know, it seems real naïve, but uh, if for a long time, time I feel like why bother, you know? Why bother, you know, I’ll just, I’ll just join it and uh be like everybody else and try to grab my share and uh, try to uh, hustle and feed other people and get my share and scrape my way to the top and all that sort of thing and uh, and, and I’m caught between wanting to do that and wanting to be a good guy.
VA: Where is this place? The top is misunderstood.
DB: The world’s just so crazy. It’s, it just seems so off base. I just uh, I just can’t feel anything about it. It’s just like people say there’s things and, and you know, do all that stuff and it just, it just seems so off base and —
VA How do you, how do you mean off base?
DB: I mean it just seems, it just seems in uh, well it just seems like, like well like lines out of a movie or, or like out of a history book or something like that. And it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with uh, the way things really are and all that sort of thing. It just you know, it seems real empty.
VA: It has all been dealt with in a beautiful condensed form.
VA I have a hard time disassociated myself from New York. I don’t even know if I can say, I like New York, but I still like New York as a base. I mean I like the idea of, of leaving New York for awhile, but it’s difficult for me to think of existing elsewhere. But maybe that’s just with me. I was born here. Not in the city. I was born in the Bronx, but it’s always been such a part of me. And very likely just because of, you know, what I’ve forced myself to think of as need, but I’m, but I, I can’t, I can’t really think of myself outside of New York. I need gallery art world what ever. I hate that need. I’ve convinced myself that I need it.
DB: Yeah when I’m here I think of, I don’t know. I don’t think anymore about whether I want to be happy or not. It just, it doesn’t even enter it.
VA Oh yeah. Yeah.
DB: I just think I want to do this and I want to do that and I don’t care if I like it or not. I just do do do.
Maybe it’s all wrong and people in little cities are happy.
Jeff Turtletaub and David Byrne
David Byrne: I decided the other day I didn’t like the Rolling Stones anymore. It was like a half an hour before they did that thing on Fifth Avenue.
Jeff Turtletaub: Yeah.
DB: Just before that, I didn’t even know, you know, I didn’t know about it or anything, it was just like they were playing live and on the radio and stuff a lot of their songs. They were gonna tour and I decided I don’t like them anymore. I can’t stand this. I said the only things I liked that they did was when they were psychedelic. Cause at least then they didn’t sound like they were trying to be Black. They were trying to be real tough. They were just trying, they were just doing things.
JT: So you don’t like them now?
DB: Maybe they’ll get better, but I just don’t like them any now.
JT: Think that has to do cause they’re older? Think they’re getting too old?
DB: I don’t know. I mean I’m getting older, but they do the same things now that they did when, when they were young, you know. And it’s not they even try to sound like they did when they first started. And they try to sound like their young and they pretty much do sound like they’re young. And you know, you can’t really tell they’re old. It’s just uh, it’s just boring uh. It’s not interesting at all. It’s going over the same thing over and over again.
JT: Well you changed too.
DB: Yeah but sometimes I think I’ve grown up and sometimes I think I should just, I should like what the kids like. I should really try to like what the kids like.
JT: Don’t you like the idea of being grown up though and doing adult things?
DB: Yeah sometimes I think — no I don’t [like] what the kids like. You’re older now. You’re not that much older, but you should be what you are. If you’re older you should like older things and do things like people your own age do.
JT: I find that as I get older that I’ve, you know – all new things open up and like the older world is opening up for me and I find out what they do. Before I never even knew about it. Now it interests me.
DB: Uh old people seem, I don’t know. They always seem so serious. Most of the time.
JT: Tell me about your job.
DB: Oh you know my job, it’s just a job. I’m real confused about my ideas about working and what you should do and what kind of work that you do. It seems like, you know, almost everybody does stuff they don’t really want to do. I mean that’s just so obvious, but it just seems so fucked up.
JT: Well it’s hard when it really hits home. I mean I think I’m feeling I like working. It keeps me busy, it keeps me occupied.
DB: Yeah.
JT: But then if I think what am I doing and where, what’s it doing for me, it’s very depressing.
DB: And sometimes people say that’s good for you. It’s good for you just to have, have it for something to do or something to give your life order because everything that goes on around is just chaos. And the work gives it order, it keeps you from going insane. That just seems so, that just seems really perverse.
JT: I think that’s totally perverted, but, but —
DB: It might be true, but it really is perverted.
JT: You know, when I was out of work and I had all that time and, I, I went crazy because I had no structure and so now I’m working and I’m doing the same things I did when I was out of work, but in a much more depressed period of time.
DB: I used to think oh there’s certain things I’d like to do, I’d like to do this in order to do that. But then when I really think about it, I think well you’re doing it, it’s just a job like any other job. And it’s not exciting. It’s not really exciting and you know you’re still in the same position. You’re activity might be something that you thought you’d like to do, but then when it comes down to it, your situation is like —
JT: Just a job.
DB: Yeah just a job, just like anything else. Even, you know, even if you’re Johnny Carson or somebody like that.
JT: Do you think some people that you work with like their job? How are they in particular?
DB: Yeah, yeah some people. Yeah they really seem to.
JT: You been there a long time.
DB: Four years, five years. They think it’s okay. They seem to really like it. It just seems like you only got one life to live, it should, you know. And all that. Why are you doing this shit.
JT: Yeah.
DB: Yeah but it’s bad to think about that. That’s, really it. You’ve only got one life to live. It should be like having R and R. If it’s possible and it should —
JT: I climbed up the summit to figure out what can I, if I wanted —
DB: Well it’s my only life, I want it to be the best I can have and so you think well things are so fucked up, I’m just gonna take what I can get.
JT: Then you get into that road and then you get, then you get –
DB: Yeah I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna grab and grab and be as greedy as the next guy, but I think I can be a little better than he can. And so I’m gonna, you know, take a little more than just, you know fuck, fuck everybody else and all that kind of stuff and uh, but I don’t. I don’t think I can be happy that way.
JT: Yeah hold onto humanity.
DB: You should be good ,I want to be the one fucking over other people.
JT: But like what kind of job would you like to have if you could have your choice that you think would make you happy?
DB: That’s, you know, it’s, it’s, this thing’s ridiculous, but, but I’d like to be, I’d like to have songs on, on you know on the top 40 radio like that would be the job. But that’s like uh, it, it, it seems like you know that’s like a one shot thing. Where you’d have it and you, and you —
JT: It’s not some kind of real sustaining —
DB: Yeah it’s not like work. I, I mean, it’s not, you know it’s work, but it’s not like uh, you go to work and it doesn’t really order your life in, in the way that other jobs do, but uh.
JT: I like other types of jobs that give you something that you can grow with and have.
DB: Yeah and, and really a sense of uh accomplishment, rather than just a sense of being lucky. If your gonna be on the radio or any of that kinda stuff it’s the kinda thing you can’t do it forever your gonna have to retire, You might as well kill yourself after you’ve done it and and then what do you do.
DB. When I was little, I used to think my parents ate pretty good, but now when I go back, it’s so terrible.
JT: Are they eating frozen pizza yet?
DB: It’s all they eat now is frozen pizza. These TV dinners. I go home and I come in to every dinner and I think I’m gonna love it and then when I was real little I told my parents my favorite dessert is cherry pie. My mistake you know.
JT: Every time you go home.
DB: Cherry pie frozen. Frozen cherry pie every time.
JAMIE DALGLISH: David just remember your just the information giver and Jeff your the receiver you can take it what ever way you want but that’s the structure of the piece.
DB: Yeah now my parents have two refrigerators. I don’t know when I’ll get to do that, but it’s not like a freezer and a refrigerator. One, one refrigerator’s just all soda and frozen food and, and —
JT: Are they both in the same room or is one in the basement?
DB: One’s in the dining room and one’s in the kitchen.
JT: No. I hope the refrigerator in the dining room has paneling on it.
DB: No. It has those magnetic letters you stick on and like um, those magnets that you stick on the refrigerator.
JT: Magnetized pot holders.
DB: Yeah put your children’s drawings on there and uh that’s and the other good thing — I can’t believe it the things they do.
JT: Is that because they’re Scottish?
DB: Yeah I think it’s cause they’re getting old too. Just can’t be bothered doing anything. Like when ever I go to visit them they want me to cook and wash the dishes and everything. I don’t um – I saw this TV show the other day about the wilder beast. You see that one?
JT: No what’s that?
DB: At first I thought, oh I don’t want to watch this. I don’t want to know about this stuff. Who cares? But I watched it anyway. It was pretty good. It made me think about animals and it made me think that I really couldn’t care if there was no more animals at all. And uh, I said if we could pull it off, it would be just as good if we could get rid of them all. Why keep them around at all? They’re just, you know, they’re just there for National Geographic specials now.
JT: What’s a wilder beast Dave?
DB: It’s like an antelope with a big head.
JT: Is it a real animal?
DB: Yeah and it’s in Africa. And it has, it’s like, it moves real spastic. And it’s like, you know it has a big head and a little bit of, you know scraggly hair. Real dumb looking. One of the, one of the weirdest things was uh, when they showed when they give birth, they you know, just like almost hurry. One of them goes off, lies down, this uh, baby starts to come out the backside and the baby’s like half out. Then the thing stands up and you see the baby’s head and front, front half, you know like arms and the head.
JT: Hanging out.
DB: Hanging out the ass. And the thing’s walking around with his thing going like this.
JT: Shakes it loose?
DB: Yeah. It’s just walking around like this, you know, like in uh, watching out for predators and all that kind of garbage.
JT: Something can gobble it up cause it’s coming out.
DB: Just kind of go like this, trying to shake it out, and after awhile it comes up and the little thing has to learn how to run and walk and everything real quick or otherwise it’ll get eaten up and stuff like that. And you know it’s just the normal, the normal thing. But it was weird to see it running around with baby hanging out its ass.
JT: Yes that is weird.
DB: We don’t have it together enough to get rid of all the animals or plants.
JT: Yeah plants make me sneeze.
DB: Yeah. But like I said before I’ve been getting lonely. I guess it’s cause my birthday’s coming around. And so I think well maybe when people feel that they want to have pets and stuff to you know talk to and play with, make them feel like they’re not all alone.
JT: Would a pet be a substitute for another person?
DB: Yeah I think it is a lot of times. But it seems I think, they’d think of something better, but that’s the way it goes. It’s not their job to do that. I don’t understand why people have fish.
JT: Usually the only reason is because they go to little fairs and they win them.
DB: Yeah.
JT: That’s the only reason I had them.
DB: So um. Sometimes, sometimes I think about the rest of the country. The rest of the USA. Not so much the rest of the world. We can pretty much do our own thing here. You can go look at things in the rest of the country and if you can do it right without being miserable like when you’re a tourist it’s real fun. I mean you feel real good as long as you can keep it up.
JT: What do you mean keep it up?
DB: As long as you’re not stuck somewhere and get bored.
JT: You know have a car.
DB: Yeah as long as you can keep going and not have all the problems that sometimes occur. You know like so many problems, but if you work that out.
