Watch On <\/a><\/p>\nOutside of these readings, the actual reality of the idea to don the big suit was first hit upon following a conversation between David and his friend, fashion designer Jurgen Lehl.<\/p>\n
Discussing ideas for the upcoming tour, Lehl had joked to Byrne that \u2018everything onstage needs to be bigger.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Though Jurgen had been referring to the presentation of the music itself and the show’s staging, Byrne was immediately reminded of an experience that took place during the band’s previous tour, in Japan. Suddenly, Kehl’s words took on a different, very literal meaning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe [previous] tour had taken us to Japan, where I went to see the traditional theatre forms: Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku,\u201d Byrne recalled in his book How Music Works. \u201cThese were, compared to Western theatre, highly stylised; presentational is the word that\u2019s sometimes used, as opposed to the pseudo-naturalistic theater we in the West are more used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The exaggerated proportions of the Japanese Noh tradition was a direct influence on the big suit (Image credit: Junko Kimura\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Byrne doodled an image that would serve as the suit\u2019s starting point – a business suit that took its cues from the unreal, hyper-stylised world of Noh performance. Byrne was also struck by the idea of perfect geometric shapes, and the fundamental oddness of housing a human within one. \u201c[In Noh] everyone wore massive, elaborate costumes and moved in ways that were unlike the ways that people move in real life,\u201d Byrne remarked in How Music Works.<\/p>\n
David told Entertainment Weekly that, \u201cI realised that yes, that kind of front-facing outline, a suit, a businessman\u2019s suit, looked like one of those things, a rectangle with just a head on top.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of distorting the performer\u2019s appearance was also expressed in a suitably disorienting self-interview that Byrne conducted with himself (adopting a range of characters) to promote the Stop Making Sense film.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like symmetry and geometric shapes,\u201d deadpanned Byrne. \u201cI wanted my head to appear smaller, and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger, music is very physical, and often the body understands it before the head.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a concept envisioned, the actual suit was created by Gail Blacker, based on a number of drawings from Byrne. Gail was quite bemused at first by this outlandish conceit, but then figured out a way of making it work – and still allowing Byrne to perform within it. <\/p>\n
The (grey, to match the rest of the show’s performers) fabric was attached via an external frame. When trying it on, David was thrilled when he discovered that he could manipulate the suit in a way which he couldn\u2019t if he were actually \u2018wearing\u2019 it. <\/p>\n
Blacker later told the New York Times that making the suit a reality was more of an \u2018architectural\u2019 challenge than a typical clothing design.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actual suit hangs, barely touches your body,\u201d David told Entertainment Weekly. \u201cIt\u2019s got these giant webbed shoulder pads and a webbed girdle that you wear around your waist and pads inside that give you incredibly wide hips and no butt. So when you\u2019re facing sideways you look normal and when you turn to face the front, you\u2019re incredibly wide. Most of the suit isn\u2019t even touching you; it\u2019s just hanging from this scaffolding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though used minimally during the show itself, Byrne made (what would become known as) the ‘big suit’ a veritable character.<\/p>\n
Using both facial and physical movements, Byrne fully inhabited this peculiar persona, reacting spasmodically to Girlfriend is Better\u2019s instrumental bridge section, before vibrating the fabric and undulating the material in time with the arrangement’s hyper-tight rhythm section and the colourful, jagged synth sounds. <\/p>\n
The suit magnified Byrne\u2019s mannerisms and bizarre dance moves, giving them the exact \u2018bigness’ that he wanted. His total investment to making the idea work made for a riveting watch.<\/p>\n
And it’s this part of Stop Making Sense which has gone on to be the most regularly repeated on television and on the web, Byrne’s electrifying big suit dance has fast becoming an instant reminder of Talking Heads\u2019 stature as the principle art rock (read; weirdest) band in the pop music canon.<\/p>\n
David Byrne dancing in a big suit – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI could wiggle a little bit and it would ripple like curtains or sheets or whatever. So you could do all these things with it,\u201d Byrne told Fresh Air, \u201cIf I wiggled side to side, it would kind of shimmy around. I could do all these things with it that I couldn’t do just by myself. It had its own properties that you can kind of activate that way. I thought it was kind of odd, kind of slightly surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byrne lost the jacket for the following song – the band\u2019s cover of Al Green\u2019s Take Me to the River – distorting his appearance in a different way, with his seemingly scrawny body in a short-sleeved shirt sitting atop the massive, boxy trousers of the big suit. A red baseball cap completes the look, before Byrne, now freed from the shell of the big suit, returns to a normally-fitting outfit for the Stop Making Sense finale, Crosseyed and Painless.<\/p>\n
With a still of Byrne clad in the big suit adorned the resulting film\u2019s poster, and the cherished place that Stop Making Sense holds in music history, David Byrne\u2019s big suit look has gone on to be one of the defining images that many mentally leap to first when hearing his name. <\/p>\n
But, like many artists, the question of \u2018why\u2019 is something that Byrne himself tires of discussing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat will be the inscription on my tombstone – ‘Here lies the body of David Byrne. Why the big suit?’\u201d Byrne said to writer Ian Gittings.<\/p>\n
![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/CqWGX2GoZGHgaaLFrRLdMY.png\")
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So, David, why the big suit? (Image credit: John Atashian\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A concert film that any self-regarding music fan should watch at least once, Stop Making Sense regularly, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-19023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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