The Same as He Ever Was, Despite the Passage of Time

The psycho killer looks almost suave. David Byrne’s hair has turned gray, his skin is tanned, his eyes no longer telegraph anxiety. Hard to believe, but Byrne is 48. It has been 15 years since Time magazine dubbed him “Rock’s Renaissance Man” and more than 25 since he wrote his first song for the Talking Heads, the one that began, “I can’t seem to face up to the facts, I’m tense and nervous, and I can’t relax . . . “

Once he was at the center of pop culture, an art-world iconoclast who had infiltrated the mainstream with unconventional songs (“Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down the House”) and quirky films (“True Stories”).

Now he is a family man (with a wife and daughter), record-label president and cult artist who puts out pop albums such as “Look Into the Eyeball” (out Tuesday on Virgin Records) in between art projects (in recent years he developed a 3,600-square-foot sound sculpture at the Houston airport with Texas artist-musicians Terry Allen and Joe Ely, and scored a theater production for the Ultima Vez Dance Company). He still tours every few years, and will headline the El Rey Theatre in L.A. on June 1.

Phase two of his career may find Byrne less in the public eye than he once was, but still operating much as he always has. He continues to slide dexterously among offbeat projects in a variety of disciplines, and he looks more comfortable than ever doing it.

When he ponders whether his fame gives the exotic cult acts on his Luaka Bop record label a leg up on other world-music artists trying to break through in North America, Byrne laughs.

“I think that was true when I first started the label [in 1989],” he says. “A few people might have listened to the first compilations of Brazilian and Cuban music we were putting out because I was behind them. But my stock fell and the stock rose of the records we put out. I’m getting much more credibility from being associated with the artists on the label than they get from being associated with me.”

Byrne exaggerates, but there is little doubt that Luaka Bop has become one of the most influential purveyors of world music in the United States. In the last decade, Byrne’s skills as a talent scout have helped establish or expand careers for numerous international artists: Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca, Colombian psychotropical rockers Bloque, Belgian-African vocal group Zap Mama and Brazilian Tropicalia pioneers Caetano Veloso and Tom Ze.

“Without David Byrne, no one would care about my music,” says Ze, a classically trained avant-garde songwriter who helped revolutionize Brazilian music in the 1960s. The singer has released three albums on Luaka Bop and toured North America two years ago for the first time, backed by the members of Chicago post-rock band Tortoise--an astute pairing brokered by Byrne.

Veloso, Brazil’s answer to Bob Dylan as a social commentator and songwriter, appeared on Luaka Bop’s first release, “Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical,” a collection of tracks hand-picked by Byrne. “David Byrne has been a great friend to Brazilian music,” Veloso says. “We owe him a great debt.”

When looking for artists to sign to Luaka Bop, Byrne applies the aesthetic principles he championed with the Talking Heads: “You never want the audience to get bored, but you can also challenge them, throw them a few curve balls. Entertainment doesn’t mean you have to give them conventional things.”

Shy Scottish Youth Came to Life Onstage

From his earliest days, Byrne’s desire to disrupt convention was fueled by an almost desperate desire to be heard. Born in Scotland in 1952 and reared in Baltimore, he had to overcome debilitating shyness to become a performer. “One on one, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, I couldn’t speak,” he recalls. But put him on a stage, and Byrne was the life of any party.

“Somehow I had to let people know I’m alive, here’s what I think, here’s what I feel, I’m an interesting person,” he says. “So I would jump onstage and do these outrageous things.”

In one performance-art piece, Byrne shaved with beer foam while an accordionist played “Pennies From Heaven” and another performer flashed hand signs in Russian.

The attitude carried over to the Talking Heads, the band he formed with fellow Rhode Island art-school students Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. They were later joined in New York by keyboardist Jerry Harrison, and became a fixture on the then-nascent punk scene. In early performances at the dive CBGB’s, Byrne’s bug-eyed stare and spastic stage moves were welcomed.

Implicit in songs such as “Psycho Killer” was Byrne’s disgust with rock as usual. ‘Say something once, why say it again?” he sang. Byrne freed rock guitar from its traditional solo role by adopting the clipped, abstract phrasing he heard on R&B; records. Similarly, Frantz and Weymouth pounded out grooves more akin to disco than to rock ‘n’ roll.

Now the Heads are long gone (they disbanded in the late ‘80s), and the sales of Byrne’s solo records have diminished. But “Looking into the Eyeball” retains many of the characteristics that made the Heads a pivotal rock group (see accompanying review).

“I keep making records for the same reason I jump onstage and do something foolish: I have to,” he says. “Even though I am not in the center of the commercial tornado, I do feel like some kind of survivor. I’ve been able to make the kind of music I want to make. I’ve been able to do side projects and quirky things, and to make pop music the way I want to make and not cater to whatever the flavor of the month is. I’ve been lucky, because there aren’t too many people in a position like this.”

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* David Byrne plays June 1 at the El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., 8 p.m. $30. (323) 936-4790.