One of the most iconic images of the 1980s in general, and Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne specifically, remains the giant gray suit he wore in the concert film Stop Making Sense.
The offbeat costume has an intriguing borne of misunderstanding, and a unique construction that helped keep Byrne from overheating while wearing it.
Stop Making Sense, praised as one of the best rock films ever by critic Leonard Maltin, was shot by director Jonathan Demme during three nights at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood as the Talking Heads toured in support of Speaking in Tongues.
In an interesting effect, David Byrne walks on stage and then, as the 1984 film progresses, is joined by other members of the crew and bandmates Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. Guest performers include Lynn Mabry and keyboardist Bernie Worrell of Parliament-Funkadelic, and Brothers Johnson guitarist Alex Weir.
Byrne doesn’t appear in his oversized garb until late in the movie, during the song “Girlfriend is Better” — which gives the documentary its title. The suit, Byrne says, was inspired in part by Noh theater.
It quickly became the centerpiece of conversation about the film – and a key image for a clip announcing the remastered re-release of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.
“Yeah, a friend made a kind of quip, while I was trying to think of what to do on this next tour, what to wear, and he said: ‘Well, you know what theater is – everything has to be bigger,'” Byrne later told Entertainment Weekly. “And he didn’t mean the clothes had to be bigger, he meant that the gestures were larger, the music had to be more exaggerated, on stage than they would in real life.”
But Byrne said “I took it very literally and thought, ‘Oh, the clothes are bigger.’ I’d been in Japan recently and had seen a lot of traditional Japanese theater, and I realized that yes, that kind of front-facing outline – a suit, a businessman’s suit – looked like one of those things, a rectangle with just a head on top.”
For all of its bulk, however, Byrne told Entertainment Weekly that he never found himself too hot and bothered. That’s a credit to its unique construction.
“The actual suit hangs, barely touches your body,” Byrne says. “It’s 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’re facing sideways you look normal and when you turn to face the front, you’re incredibly wide. Most of the suit isn’t even touching you; it’s just hanging from this scaffolding.”
More recently, when Byrne was asked about the legendary outfit, he joked: “It should get special billing. The Big Suit should ask for more money.”
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