Pop auteurs David Byrne and Adrian Belew have arrived at the right moment to bare their emotions.
The two musicians, who briefly worked together in Talking Heads during 1980-82, have recently released albums-“David Byrne” and Belew’s “Here”-that delve deeper and more openly into their personal feelings than they ever have before. They’ve written songs about love, ruminations on death and philosophical meanderings on the state of their lives.
It’s a significant change in direction for both. Since Talking Heads emerged in 1977, Byrne has specialized in “funny, quirky little songs” about psycho killers and other misanthropes. Belew, meanwhile, pursued “more metaphorical songs about cars and rhinos and elephants.”
But major turmoil in each of their lives led Byrne and Belew to strip away some of those disguises on their new albums.
“It does feel like a new start,” says Byrne, 42, who broke up Talking Heads to pursue a solo career during the early ’90s. “These songs are less from the point of view of imaginary characters and imaginary points of view. Those can reveal something of yourself, but sometimes you do use them to just espouse some peculiar, imagined point of view.
“These new songs are more from the heart.”
Byrne cites two factors for his change. One was his last concert tour, during which he performed a few songs alone with an acoustic guitar and discovered both he and the audience “could hear what the song was about more.”
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The AIDS-related death two years ago of his sister-in-law, designer Tina Chow, also contributed to the personal approach of Byrne’s new songs.
“We were staying very close to her,” Byrne says. “Something like that, the death of a family member, helps to catalyze your deeper feelings.”
For Belew, it was divorce and remarriage that prompted the more personal songs on “Here.” “I think I had difficulty before in revealing too much of my personal life because it was an unhappy one,” says Belew, 44, who has four children from his first marriage. “It’s hard to write a love song when you’re not in love and going through the motions just because you’ve got a family and you feel responsible.
“So this album has the personal thread of someone who’s in love and is much happier with their life. It sure is nice to actually pen a love song for a change.”
In fact, “Here” starts off with one of those sunny love songs-“May 1, 1990,” which commemorates the day Belew met his second wife, Martha, while he was on tour with David Bowie.
Clearly, both Byrne and Belew are excited by their new directions, but that hasn’t stopped them from pursuing other musical ventures.
Byrne-whom Time magazine once dubbed “Rock’s Renaissance Man”-is also exhibiting his photography in European galleries and is planning to publish a photo book. He also remains busy supervising his label, Luaka Bop, which recently released new albums by the groups Geggy Tah and Zap Mama.
Belew’s plate is equally full. He also has a label, Adrian Belew Presents, which he plans to use for albums of experimental guitar music that he’ll record in the studio he built in his home near Nashville. Belew has kept his sideman credits up, too, performing this year on hit albums by Crash Test Dummies and Nine Inch Nails.
Most noteworthy of all, Belew is part of the revived King Crimson, the band he was part of from 1980-84. Belew says the new version-a sextet-is “really dense, really burning.”