After Byrne and Frantz were unable to find a bass player in New York for nearly two years, Weymouth learned to play the bass guitar. Byrne moved to New York City in May that year, and in September of that year, Frantz and his girlfriend Tina Weymouth followed suit. He returned to Providence in 1973 and formed a band called the Artistics with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as ' April Showers', ' 96 Tears', ' Dancing on the Ceiling' and Frank Sinatra songs. He started his musical career in a high school band called Revelation then between 19, he was one half of a duo named Bizadi with Marc Kehoe. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island during the 1970–71 term and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore during the 1971–72 term before dropping out.Ĭareer Early career: 1971–1974 īyrne graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County, Maryland. His father used his electrical engineering skills to modify a reel-to-reel tape recorder so that Byrne could make multitrack recordings. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. From a young age, he had a strong interest in music. He was rejected from his middle school's choir because they said he was 'off- key and too withdrawn'. But we’re all here.' īefore high school, Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. But then I realized the world was made up of people who were all different. He later recalled 'I felt like a bit of an outsider. Byrne stated that he initially grew up speaking with a Scottish accent but adopted an American one in order to fit in at school. When Byrne was eight or nine years old they moved to Arbutus, Maryland, in the United States, where his father worked as an electronics engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and his mother later became a teacher. The family left Scotland in part because there were few jobs requiring his father's engineering skills and in part because of the tensions in the extended family caused by his parents' interfaith marriage.

Two years after his birth, the family moved to Canada, settling in Hamilton, Ontario. Byrne's father was Catholic and his mother Presbyterian. Early life and education ĭavid Byrne was born on 14 May 1952 in Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the elder of two children born to Tom (from Lambhill, Glasgow) and Emma Byrne. He has received an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, a Special Tony Award, and a Golden Globe Award, and he is an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Talking Heads. He was a founding member, principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.īyrne has released solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, fiction, and non-fiction. David Byrne ( / b ɜːr n/ born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist, and filmmaker.

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