David Byrne at the Ear Inn

I bring up the rerelease of the excellent Talking Heads concert film, "Stop Making Sense," directed by Jonathan Demme. Much has been written about how this film presents a Talking Heads performance as a seamless avant-garde theater piece. As our drinks come, I ask Byrne if he has been hammered by questions from the press (as if I'm not the press).

"Yes. I get the same ones quite a lot," he says, sipping his Boddingtons. "They ask, 'Why a big suit? Why are you rereleasing this movie? When are you guys going to regroup?' My answer to the last question is always, 'We're not gonna.' Later on it comes back, 'So. Well. Why don't you get back together? Why don't you do one of those reunion things?' They just keep hammering at you. 'So why don't you get along?' Which is -- as Elliot Roberts, my old manager, says -- it's like you've had a real painful divorce and they want you to relive that pain for them. 'Let me see you bleed again! Do it for me!'"

I tell Byrne that when I interviewed Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth (the husband-and-wife members of the Tom Tom Club and Talking Heads), they both suggested the Talking Heads will get together when the group is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"Oh really?" Byrne says, raising his eyebrows. "Ah-ummm. The ceremony is televised. Now it's choreographed and done like a television show. Before it was sloppy and people would get up and play -- and nobody saw it except your peers." He pauses. "You know, once I would probably do it, but now I don't think so."

The movie "Stop Making Sense" begins with Byrne singing "Psycho Killer" to a boombox. Then, song by song, one by one, the other band members (and additional musicians) take the stage, to play the band's African-influenced funk music -- "Burning Down the House," etc. At the climax of the concert, Byrne dons what has been popularly called the "Big Suit" -- a huge white suit jacket with football-player-broad shoulders - in which he looks like a scarecrow designed by Edvard Munch.

"Did you invent the Big Suit in Japan?" I ask.

"Yes. I was in Tokyo around 1983. I had just met a fashion designer named Bonnie Lutz." He smiles and says, "I was smitten with her."

"Was she smitten with you?" (Lutz is now married to Byrne.)

He looks away. "I think she thought I was bizarre. I was painfully shy." Byrne then tells me they were having dinner at a restaurant with another fashion designer, a German.

"A Japanese restaurant in Japan?"

"Yes," he says, adding, "later, for a joke I'd go to a Japanese French restaurant or whatever. The food was good, but there was always something a little bizarre about it. There are Japanese Italian restaurants where they serve the pasta with fish eggs on it."

Byrne told the German that on the next Talking Heads tour, Byrne should have a costume. "The German made a pronouncement," Byrne recalls, then starts speaking in a guttural voice, "'Well David, in the theater everything is bigger than real life.' I think that was all he said. He didn't say, 'You should have a big suit.' When I had time I would go to a Kabuki theater performance or a noh theater performance or sumo wrestling, just to see all the Japanese stuff. I drew this thing that looked like a Kabuki costume, which is also very rectangular. And the person's head looks like a very small ball. But I thought, What if you take that kind of silhouette, but put it in a Western business suit? I became fascinated with the idea of taking things that look very everyday or commonplace and stretching that in some way, rather than making something totally fantastic and imaginary. I like to restrict myself, OK? It has to look like a suit, even if it's pink fur. It makes reference to the businessman. It has some kind of psychological meaning besides being a costume. He is lost in his suit. Or his suit is swallowing him. It implies all these other things that a wild fantasy costume wouldn't say."

"I've only seen 'Stop Making Sense' on video," I tell Byrne. "The thing that struck me is that the Big Suit doesn't seem so big in 1999. If I saw someone wearing it on the New York street, I wouldn't look twice."

"Yeah, with the whole extra-large look -- baggy pants," Byrne says. He abruptly stops Myrna Loy, our waitress, as she's walking by. "Can we order some food?" She takes out her pad. "I want to get an arugula salad," he instructs her.

"Without the turkey," she remembers.

"And catfish," Byrne adds.

"The catfish will come with a small salad and home fries."

"Sounds great," Byrne says.

I order a cheddar omelet and bowl of chili. Jerry Jeff Walker has been playing on the tape system. I'm feelin' Texan.

"The Big Suit wasn't the first time you did Robert Wilson-style performance pieces," I say. "When you were in art school in Rhode Island, didn't you shave off your beard with beer and bleed all over the stage?"

Next Page: Let it bleed

• View blog reactions