On this morning's edition of Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs program, David Byrne talked about the inspiration behind The Knee Plays. The piece was originally devised as part of an epic theater piece by director Robert Wilson in 1984 and has just now been released on CD by Nonesuch.

Here is what David told Today:

I could see connections between elements of traditional Asian theater and kind of experimental or avant-garde theater. And I thought, There's a lot of parallels there. There's more connections between traditional Asian theater and what these kind of theatrical innovators in New York and London and elsewhere were doing than there is between what they're doing and kind of traditional Western theater.

Looking at lists and instruction manuals and all the various texts that float around our lives, you can tell a lot about a people and a culture ... There's no obvious emotion in those texts, but buried in there are a lot of assumptions about life and what's important, but they're kind of buried under this cool surface ... and I thought wouldn't it be great to try and incorporate some of those kind of texts into song lyrics.

This was done during a period when Talking Heads was having some of their biggest pop hits, which is a little bit odd, but I thought, "I like this stuff too. I find that kind of innovative theater ... the things those people are doing are going to rub off on me, they're going to inspire me for live performances that I do. And they did. I learned a lot.

To hear the complete interview and clips from the record, visit bbc.co.uk for Today's "Listen Again" page. For more on The Knee Plays, visit kneeplays.com.