![]() ![]() What’s best about “How Music Works” is that Byrne concentrates on his own experience, from a teenage geek splicing layers of guitar feedback on his father’s tape recorder (he had a mild self-diagnosed case of Asperger’s syndrome, he writes) to arty if neo-primitive rock star with the early Talking Heads at CBGB to increasingly sophisticated, globe-wandering art-rocker, happily collaborating with all manner of world musicians and pop-technological innovators (Brian Eno, Fatboy Slim). Most books that attempt to explain music’s mysteries have been technical or historical in nature and concerned primarily with classical music. Since he appeals to people generously diverse in age and interests, however, that’s a pretty big potential readership. It’s a little bit of both, proudly or unashamedly exposing Byrne’s biases and aimed at a particular audience: his own fans. It is not exactly a series of essays about music, either, though it is some of that. It is not exactly a memoir - “the ‘aging rocker bio’ is a crowded shelf,” as he puts it in his acknowledgments. ![]() David Byrne is a brilliantly original, eccentric rock star, and he has written a book to match his protean talents. ![]()
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