David Byrne’s Lending Library (original) (raw)

“When a library is open, no matter its size or shape,” Bill Moyers wrote, “democracy is open, too.” A century and a half earlier, Thoreau extolled a different aspect of the library as a technology of thought, writing in his diary: “Those old books suggested a certain fertility … as if they were making a humus for new literatures to spring in.”

It was in a similar spirit that, in curating the 2015 Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank Centre, beloved musician David Byrne decided to turn his personal book collection into a lending library. “I love a library. The idea of reading books for free didn’t kill the publishing business,” he writes in The Guardian, “on the contrary, it created nations of literate and passionate readers. Shared interests and the impulse to create.”

His impressively worldly library of more than 200 titles spans nearly every aspect of music — from technique to theory, mechanics to memoirs, instruments to interviews — as well as psychology, art, architecture, history, and copyright law.

A lifelong lover of reading, Byrne grew up in a small suburban town near Baltimore, where the library was his only access point to the wider world and books became his formative creative sandbox. I asked him about his earliest memory of a formative book he borrowed from that childhood library and he points to The Phantom Tollbooth. How apt that the 1961 classic contains the now-iconic map of The Kingdom of Wisdom, with its Mountains of Ignorance, Foothills of Confusion, and Sea of Knowledge — an perfect metaphor for how reading itself equips us with an invaluable compass for navigating the landscape of life.

In resonance with Umberto Eco’s concept of the “anti-library,” Byrne points out that he hasn’t read all the books in his library, but has bought each one with the intention of reading it one day — a practice the Japanese call tsundoku.

I’ve digitized the complete alphabetized list of books in Byrne’s lending library, sent to me in a photograph by Brain Pickings reader Ben Hart. What emerges is confirmation that great art is always a mosaic of vibrantly varied influences.

1. 40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio (public library) by Sue Carpenter
2. A divina comedia dos Mutantes (public library) by Carlos Calado
3. A Photographic Record: 1969–1980 (public library) by Mick Rock
4. A Thelonious Monk: Study Album (public library) by Lionel Grigson
5. A Whole Room for Music: A Short Guide to the Balfour Building Music Makers’ Gallery (public library) by Helene La Rue
6. Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (public library) by Brandon Labelle
7. Acoustics for Radio and Television Studios (public library) by Christopher Gilford
8. Africa Dances (public library) by Geoffrey Gorer
9. African Music: A People’s Art (public library) by Francis Bebey
10. African Rhythm and African Sensibility (public library) by John Miller Chernoff
11. Afro-American Folk Songs (public library) by H.E. Krehbiel
12. AfroPop! An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music (public library) by Sean Barlow & Banning Eyre
13. All You Need to Know About the Music Business (public library) by Donald S. Passman
14. Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (public library) by Miguel Algarin & Bob Holman
15. An Illustrated Treasury of Songs (public library) by National Gallery of Art
16. And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (public library) by Studs Terkel
17. Arranged Marriage (public library) by Wallace Berman & Robert Watts
18. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (public library) by Cristoph Cox & Daniel Warner
19. Austin City Limits: 35 Years in Photographs (public library) by Scott Newton & Terry Lickona
20. Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music (public library) by Deborah Pacini Hernandez
21. Bandalism: The Rock Group Survival Guide (public library) by Julian Ridgway
22. Beats of the Heart: Popular Music of the World (public library) by Jeremy Marre & Hannah Charlton
23. Best Music Writing 2001 (public library) by Nick Hornby & Ben Schafer
24. Best Music Writing 2002 (public library) by Jonathan Lethem & Paul Bresnick
25. Best Music Writing 2003 (public library) by Matt Groening & Paul Bresnick
26. Best Music Writing 2006 (public library) by Mary Gaitskill & Daphne Carr
27. Best Music Writing 2007 (public library) by Robert Christgau & Daphne Carr
28. Bicycle Diaries (public library) by David Byrne
29. Black Music of Two Worlds (public library) by John Storm Roberts
30. Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific (public library) by Heidi Carolyn Feidman
31. Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music (public library) by Jas Obrecht
32. Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music that Seduced the World (public library) by Ruy Castro
33. Botsford Collection of Folk Songs Volume 1 (public library) by Florence Hudson Botsford
34. Botsford Collection of Folk Songs Volume 2 (public library) by Florence Hudson Botsford
35. Bound for Glory (public library) by Woody Guthrie
36. Bourbon Street Black: The New Orleans Black Jazzman (public library) by Jack V Buerkle & Danny Barker
37. Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship (public library) by Idelber Avelar & Christopher Dunn
38. Brutality Garden: Tropicalla and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (public library) by Christopher Dunn
39. Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise (public library) by David Rothenberg
40. But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (public library) by Geoff Dyer
41. Cancioneiro Vinicius De Moraes (public library) by Orfeu
42. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (public library) by Mark Katz
43. Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley (public library) by Timothy White
44. Chambers (public library) by Alvin Lucier & Douglas Simon
45. Chinaberry Sidewalks: A Memoir (public library) by Rodney Crowell
46. Chris Stein/Negative: Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk (public library) by Deborah Harry, Glenn O’Brien & Shepard Fairey
47. Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao (public library) by Peter Culshaw
48. Clothes Music Boys (public library) by Viv Albertine
49. Cocinando! Fifty Years of Latin Cover Art (public library) by Pablo Yglesias
50. Conjunto (public library) by John Dyer
51. Conversations with Glenn Gould (public library) by Jonathan Cott
52. Conversing with Cage (public library) by Richard Kostelanetz
53. Copyrights & Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (public library) by Siva Vaidhyanathan
54. Dancing in Your Head: Jazz, Blues, Rock and Beyond (public library) by Gene Santoro
55. Desert Plants: Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians by Walter Zimmerman
56. Diccionario de Jazz Latino (public library) by Nat Chediak
57. Diccionario del Rock Latino (public library) by Nat Chediak
58. Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters in the Land of Sugar Cane and Revolution (public library) by Carlo Gebler
59. Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (public library) by Mickey Hart & Jay Stevens
60. Essays on Music (public library) by Theodor W. Adorno
61. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (public library) by Michael Nyman
62. Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 (public library) by Negativland
63. Fela Fela: This Bitch of a Life (public library) by Carlos Moore
64. Fetish & Fame: The 1997 MTV Video Music Awards by David Felton
65. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (public library) by Stephen Sondheim
66. Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents (public library) by Bruno Nettl
67. Folk Song Style and Culture (public library) by Alan Lomax
68. Folk: The Essential Album Guide (public library) by Neal Walers & Brian Mansfield
69. Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (public library) by Iannis Xenakis
70. Fotografie in Musica (public library) by Guido Harari
71. Genesis of a Music (public library) by Harry Partch
72. Give my Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman (public library) by B.H. Friedman
73. Gravikords, Whirlies, & Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments (public library) by Bart Hopkin
74. Guia Esencial De La Salsa (public library) by Jose Manuel Gomez
75. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning (public library) by Gary Marcus
76. (public library) by
77. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity (public library) by Veit Erlmann
78. Here Come the Regulars: How to Run a Record Label on a Shoestring Budget (public library) by Ian Anderson
79. He Stopped Loving Her Today: George Jones, Billy Sherrill and the Pretty-Much Totally True Story of the Making of the Greatest Country Record of All Time (public library) by Jack Isenhour
80. Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Break Dancing, Rap Music and Graffiti (public library) by Steven Hager
81. Hit Men (public library) by Frederic Dannen
82. Hitsville: The 100 Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazines 1954–1968 (public library) by Alan Betrock
83. Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (public library) by Ellen Dissanayake
84. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (public library) by Alice Echols
85. How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (public library) by John Powell
86. Hungry for Heaven: Rock and Roll and the Search for Redemption (public library) by Steve Turner
87. I Have Seen the End of the World and it Looks Like This (public library) by Bob Schneider
88. I’ll Take You There Mavis Staples: The Staple Songers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway (public library) by Greg Kot
89. In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (public library) by George Prochnik
90. Indian Music (public library) by B. Chaitanya Deva
91. It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues (public library) by Paul Myers
92. Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (public library) by William P. Malm
93. Javanese Gamelan (public library) by Jennifer Lindsay
94. Jazz (public library) by William Claxton
95. Knitting Music (public library) by Michael Dorf
96. La Traviata: In Full Score (public library) by Giuseppe Verdi
97. Laurie Anderson (public library) by John Howell
98. Leon Geico: Cronica de un Sueno by Oscar Finkelstein
99. Lexicon of Musical Invective (public library) by Nicolas Slonimsky
100. (public library) by
101. Light Strings: Impressions of the Guitar (public library) by Ralph Gibson & Andy Summers
102. Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (public library) by Eric Weisbard
103. Listening Through the Noise: the Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music (public library) by Joanna Demers
104. Listen to This (public library) by Alex Ross
105. Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany (public library) by Stephen Sondheim
106. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Music Made New in New York City in the ’70s (public library) by Will Hermes
107. Love in Vain: The Life and Legend of Robert Johnson (public library) by Allen Greenberg
108. Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture (public library) by Tim Lawrence
109. Low (public library) by Hugo Wilcken
110. Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-dirty in Seventies New York (public library) by James Wolcott
111. Macumba: The Teachings of Maria-Jose, Mother of the Gods (public library) by Serge Bramly
112. Mango Mambo (public library) by Adal
113. Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB 1965–1985 (public library) by Charles Perrone
114. Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll (public library) by Steven Kasher
115. Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and the Shondells (public library) by Tommy James
116. Miles: The Autobiography (public library) by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
117. Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an imaginary Soul Superstar (public library) by Dori Hadar
118. Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (public library) by Alan Lomax
119. Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture (public library) by Thurston Moore
120. Music (public library) by Paul Bowles
121. Music and Communication (public library) by Terence McLaughlin
122. Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters (public library) by Bob W. White
123. Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music (public library) by MacDonald Critchley & R. A. Henson
124. Music and the Mind (public library) by Anthony Storr
125. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession (public library) by Gilbert Rouget
126. Music Cultures of the Pacific, The Near East, and Asia (public library) by William P. Malm
127. (public library) by
128. Music in Cuba (public library) by Alejo Carpentier
129. Music, Language and the Brain (public library) by Aniruddh D. Patel
130. Musica Cubana Del Areyto a la Nueva Trova (public library) by Dr. Cristobal Diaz Ayala
131. Musical Instruments of the World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia with More than 4,000 Original Drawings (public library) by Ruth Midgely
132. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (public library) by Oliver Sacks
133. My Music (public library) by Susan D Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi & Charles Keil
134. New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88 (public library) by Stuart Baker
135. Noise: A Human History of Sound & Listening (public library) by David Hendy
136. Noise: The Political Economy of Music (public library) by Jacques Attali
137. Notations (public library) by John Cage
138. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (public library) by David Toop
139. On Sonic Art (public library) by Trevor Wishart
140. Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Opera (public library) by Fred Plotkin
141. Patronizing The Arts (public library) by Marjorie Garber
142. Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (public library) by Greg Milner
143. Pet Shop Boys: Literally (public library) by Chris Heath
144. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (public library) by Peter Manuel
145. The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the Science of Song (public library) by Elena Mannes
146. Presenting Celia Cruz (public library) by Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte
147. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (public library) by Lester Bangs
148. Queens of Havana: The Amazing Adventures of the Legendary Anacaona, Cuba’s First All-Girl Dance Band (public library) by Alicia Castro
149. Recordando a Tito Puente: El Rey del Timbal (public library) by Steven Loza
150. Reflections on Macedonian Music: Past and Future (public library) by Dimitrije Buzarovski
151. Remembering the Future (public library) by Luciano Berio
152. Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording Music and Its Effect on Music (public library) by Michael Chanan
153. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties (public library) by Ian Macdonald
154. Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans (public library) by John Broven
155. Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History of Politics in the Music Industry (public library) by Steve Shapple & Reebee Garofalo
156. Rock Archives (public library) by Michael Ochs
157. Rock Images: 1970–1990 (public library) by Claude Gassian
158. Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews (public library) by Timothy White
159. Salsa Guidebook for Piano & Ensemble (public library) by Rebeca Mauleon
160. Salsa: The Rhythm of Latin Music (public library) by Gerard Sheller
161. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City (public library) by Vernon W. Boggs
162. Samba (public library) by Alma Guillermoprieto
163. Sonic Transports:New Frontiers in Our Music (public library) by Cole Gagne
164. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (public library) by Steve Goodman
165. Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture (public library) by Kevin Phinney
166. Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture (public library) by Frances Dyson
167. Soundings (public library) by Neuberger Museum
168. South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous (public library) by John Broven
169. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening: Experiencing Aural Architecture (public library) by Barry Blesser & Linda-Ruth Salter
170. Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music (public library) by Angelique Kidjo
171. Starmaking Machinery: The Odyssey of an Album (public library) by Geoffrey Stokes
172. Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (public library) by Jonathan Cott
173. Stolen Moments: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians (public library) by Tom Schnabel
174. Stomping the Blues (public library) by Albert Murray
175. Tango: The Art History of Love (public library) by Robert Farris Thompson
176. Text-Sound Texts (public library) by Richard Kostelanetz
177. The ABCs of Rock (public library) by Melissa Duke Mooney
178. The Agony of Modern Music (public library) by Henry Pleasants
179. The Anthropology of Music (public library) by Alan P. Merriam
180. The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help (public library) by Amanda Palmer
181. The Beatles: Recording Sessions (public library) by Mark Lewisohn
182. The Book of Drugs: A Memoir (public library) by Mike Dougherty
183. The Brazilian Sounds: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil (public library) by Chris McGowan & Ricardo Pessanha
184. The Faber Book of Pop (public library) by Hanif Kureishi & Jon Savage
185. The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places (public library) by Bernie Krause
186. The Human Voice (public library) by Jean Cocteau
187. The Kachamba Brothers’ Band: A Study of Neo-Traditional Music in Malawi (public library) by Gerhard Kubik
188. The Last Holiday: A Memoir (public library) by Gil Scott-Heron
189. The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (public library) by John Storm Roberts
190. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock (public library) by Charles White
191. The Merge Records Companion: A Visual Discography of the First Twenty Years (public library) by Merge Records
192. The Music Instinct (public library) by Philip Ball
193. The Music of Brazil (public library) by David P. Appleby
194. The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and the National Identity in Brazil (public library) by Hermano Vianna
195. The New Woman Poems: A Tribute to Mercedes Sosa (public library) by Ne?stor Rodri?guez Lacore?n
196. The Performer Prepares (public library) by Robert Caldwell
197. The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (public library) by Max Weber
198. The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl (public library) by Trevor Schoonmake
199. The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa (public library) by Evan Eisenberg
200. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (public library) by Alex Ross
201. The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s (public library) by Various
202. The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (public library) by Greil Marcus
203. The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World (public library) by Trevor Cox
204. The Sun and the Drum: African Roots in Jamaican Folk Tradition (public library) by Leonard Barrett
205. The Thinking Ear (public library) by R. Murray Schafer
206. The Traditional Music of Japan (public library) by Kishibe Shigeo
207. The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art (public library) by Tim Blanning
208. The Veil of Silence (public library) by Djura
209. The Wilco Book (public library) by Dan Nadel
210. This Business of Music: The Definitive Guide to the Music Industry (public library) by M. William Krasilovsky & Sidney Shemel
211. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of Human Obsession (public library) by Daniel J. Levitin
212. Through Music to Self (public library) by Peter Michael Hamel
213. West African Rhythms for Drumset (public library) by Royal Hartigan
214. What Good are the Arts? (public library) by John Carey
215. White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960’s (public library) by Joe Boyd
216. Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History 1955–Present (public library) by Gail Buckland
217. (public library) by
218. Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages (public library) by John Shepard, Phil Virden, Graham Vulliamy, Trevor Wishart
219. Why is This Country Dancing: A One-Man Samba to the Beat of Brazil (public library) by John Krich
220. Woody Guthrie: A Life (public library) by Joe Klein
221. The Rough Guide to World Music: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia, and Pacific: An A-Z of the Music, Musicians and Discs (public library) by Simon Broughton & Mark Ellingham
222. The Rough Guide to World Music: Salsa to Soukous, Cajun to Calypso (public library) by Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, David Muddyman & Richard Trillo
223. World: The Essential Album Guide (public library) by Adam McGovern
224. Yakety Yak: The Midnight Confessions and Revelations of Thirty-Seven Rock Stars and Legends (public library) by Scott Cohen

Complement with Byrne on how music and creativity work, then revisit the reading lists of Gabriel García Márquez, Leo Tolstoy, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, and longtime Byrne collaborator Brian Eno.