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David Byrne was born May 14, 1952.in Dumbarton, Scotland.
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David Byrne, best known for his groundbreaking tenure fronting the new wave group Talking Heads , David Byrne's solo work, is no less adventurous, encroaching upon such diverse media as world music, filmmaking, and performance art.
Born May 14, 1952, in Dumbarton, Scotland, Byrne was raised in Baltimore, MD. The son of an electronics engineer, he played guitar in a series of teenage bands before attending the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, where, feeling alienated from the largely upper-class student population, he dropped out after one year.
However, he remained in the Providence area, performing solo on a ukelele before forming the Artistics (also known as the Autistics) with fellow students Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
After changing the name of the band to Talkig Heads and enlisting onetime Modern Lover Jerry Harrison, the group signed to Sire Records; a series of LPs, including the debut Talking Heads '77, 1978's More Songs About Buildings and Food, and 1980's Remain in Light followed, establishing the quartet as one of contemporary music's most visionary talents.
During a band sabbatical in 1981, Byrne teamed with Brian Eno, the producer of much of the Heads' work,
for the collaborative effort My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a complex, evocative album which fused electronic music with Third World percussion and hypnotic vocal effects.
That same year, Byrne also began exploring theater, composing The Complete Score From the Broadway Production of "The Catherine Wheel," a dance piece choreographed by Twyla Tharp.Byrne's next solo work appeared in 1985 with Music for "The Knee Plays," a New Orleans brass band-influenced project composed for a portion of Robert Wilson's theatrical epic CIVIL warS.
In 1986, Byrne wrote, starred in, and directed the feature film True Stories, a series of comic vignettes based on press clippings culled from tabloid publications like the Weekly World News.
He also wrote and produced the majority of music for the film's score in addition to performing his usual duties for that year's Talking Heads LP, also named True Stories.
In 1988, he wrote the score to the Jonathan Demme comedy Married to the Mob and, in tandem with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su, won an Academy Award for his musical work on Bernardo Bertolucci's historical epic The Last Emperor.Also in 1988, Byrne's fascination with world music, a longtime influence on 
his herky-jerky performance style as well as Talking Heads' complex polyrhythms, inspired him to form his own record label, Luaka Bop, to give widespread American release to global music.
That same year, the Heads released Naked, their final proper LP, leaving Byrne to give future solo work his full attention. In 1989, he resurfaced with Rei Momo, a collection inspired by Latin rhythms, and also directed the documentary Ile Aiye (The House of Life), which focused on the rituals of Yoruban dance music.
In 1991, he again collaborated with Robert Wilson on The Forest, writing music for a full orchestra.
1992's Uh-Oh marked Byrne's return to more conventional rock performance, a direction continued on a self-titled effort issued in 1994. Feelings, recorded with members of Morcheeba and Devo, followed in 1997.
Four years later, Look Into the Eyeball was issued on Virgin Records/Luaka Bop and captured Byrne's signature wry humor and musical diversity.
In 2003, Byrne's music for the film Young Adam (featuring members of Belle & Sebastian and Mogwai) was released as Lead Us Not Into Temptation by the Thrill Jockey label. Grown Backwards, his first for Nonesuch, appeared a year later.
Biography by Jason Ankeny ; allmusic.com
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David Byrne
Long Prose Biography
David Byrne is primarily known as the musician who co-founded the group Talking Heads (1976-88) in New York. On record and in concert, critics and audiences alike acclaimed the band; more importantly, however, they have proven to be extremely influential.
Talking Heads took popular music in new directions, both in terms of sound and lyrics, and also introduced an innovative visual approach to the genre.
During his time with the group, Byrne was involved with several other projects.
He composed and created an evening-length ballet score for choreographer Twyla Tharp’s The Catherine Wheel, directed many of the first videoclips to appear on MTV, collaborated with Brian Eno on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a record incorporating "found" voices such as radio preachers, talk show guests and Arabic singers, and created a brass band-and-spoken word score for a theater piece, The Knee Plays, directed by Robert Wilson.
In 1985, Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme made his prize-winning film of the Talking Heads in concert, Stop Making Sense. In 1986, Byrne went behind the camera to co-write and direct the feature True Stories. In 1987, he won an Academy award for co-writing the score for Bertolucci’s epic, The Last Emperor.
In 1989, Byrne collaborated again with Robert Wilson on The Forest, a theater piece, composing an orchestral score with mostly wordless vocals. After releasing a soundtrack of the production, he performed it live with various orchestras.
That same year, he also directed “Ile Aiye: The House of Life”, a documentary on African religion in Brazil; and recorded Rei Momo, a
collaboration with 15 of the best Latin musicians in New York. Byrne then toured with this group through Europe, Japan, and North and South America.
This record and tour were followed by one called Uh-Oh (92), on which funk and Latin grooves were mixed together, and a film was made at the end of tour called “Between The Teeth”.
Two more records followed the self-titled David Byrne (1994) and Feelings (1997); 1998 saw the release of The Visible Man, a record of re-mixed versions of songs from Feelings.
In late summer Byrne joined his touring band with the London based Balanescu string quartet for a series of live dates and an appearance on Sessions at West 54th, a weekly one hour PBS music show that Byrne began to host in the fall of 98 and spring 99, interviewing various musicians and introducing them to a new audience.
Byrne’s record label Luaka Bop, which was founded in 1988, has evolved from a label specializing in “world music” compilations to one with emerging acts such as Cornershop, Geggy Tah, Susana Baca, Zap Mama and a host of Alternalatino bands such as Bloque, Los Amigos Invisibles and King Chango.
David Byrne has been involved with photography and design since his college days, but has only recently begun to exhibit and publish his work.
Like his film and musical projects, his photography is often described as elevating the mundane or the banal to the level of art. In some ways, he creates icons out of everyday materials and finds the sacred in the profane.
Some of the photos might be considered "documentary," though they are not really about a specific place or time. Rather, they are about the choice of the things, or lack of things, that is photographed.
In particular, the lack of people stands out in his work.
On this aspect of photography the writer/critic, Wright Morris describes the sensation this condition creates: "Only in their absence will the observer intuit, in full measure, their presence in the object."
In a sense, Byrne’s photographs are about interiors, both physical and emotional, as much as exteriors. As a body of work, his photography deals with what lies behind the eyes as much as what is in front of them. 
Byrne shoots about half of the work on his travels in various parts of the world such as Mexico, Morocco, and Texas. The other half were composed in his studio, using a variety of photographic mediums, including polaroids, cibachromes, cibatransparancies, and digital processes. Recent museum shows in Germany, Italy, and Japan have mixed these pieces with audio elements, acoustiguides, and sculptural elements.
Three books have been published containing this work.
The first, Strange Ritual (Chronicle Press, 1995) mixed text and image in a notebook-type format.
The second, Your Action World (Edimar, Italy, 1998 and Chronicle, 1999), was modeled after corporate reports and inspirational and motivational literature.
The third book is a religious text called The New Sins, created for the Valenicia Bienal. Books were placed anonymously in hotel drawers during the Biennial. McSweeneys is publishing this book in the USA and Faber in UK.
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David Byrne was born 1952, Dumbarton, Scotland. Currently lives in New York.
Attended Rhode Island School of Design and Maryland Institute College of Art.