Browse content similar to Brian Eno - artist and musician. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur. My guest today is a hugely | :00:00. | :00:16. | |
influential contemporary music maker, once styled the brainiest man | :00:17. | :00:29. | |
in pop. Except the word" pop" doesn't fit Brian Eno. He was a | :00:30. | :00:33. | |
member of Roxy Music in the early 70s, but he went his own way, | :00:34. | :00:37. | |
developing ambient music, audiovisual installations and | :00:38. | :00:39. | |
collaborative with a host of big names, including David Bowie, U2 and | :00:40. | :00:45. | |
Coldplay. His output has been prolific and very, but was easy, -- | :00:46. | :00:52. | |
what is he, musician, composer or an artist impossible to label. | :00:53. | :01:18. | |
Brian Eno, welcome to HARDtalk. You have got a body of work, musical | :01:19. | :01:26. | |
creativity that spans almost five decades. And yet you have in the | :01:27. | :01:32. | |
past described yourself as an nonmusicians. What do you mean by | :01:33. | :01:36. | |
that? When I started using that term, I had appeared at a point | :01:37. | :01:43. | |
where there was a huge stress on musicianship, and there were bands | :01:44. | :01:45. | |
backs turned to the audience. I playing, very things with their | :01:46. | :01:51. | |
didn't come into music from that route, I did not come into music | :01:52. | :01:54. | |
from learning an instrument and then standing up and writing songs on it. | :01:55. | :02:00. | |
I came out of painting, that is what they studied. I realise that | :02:01. | :02:05. | |
contemporary music, Canterbury studio practice in particular, was | :02:06. | :02:09. | |
really a way of painting with sound. -- contemporary. It was quite a | :02:10. | :02:13. | |
natural transition to move into music. Plus, at that point, you had | :02:14. | :02:18. | |
recording studios, a whole set of new instruments, electric | :02:19. | :02:22. | |
instruments. You still had to have some basic musicianship to begin | :02:23. | :02:27. | |
with, did you play instruments? Not really. I very poorly play the | :02:28. | :02:32. | |
guitar, and keyboards. But really not very well. Can you read music? | :02:33. | :02:39. | |
No. But most of the people I know can't read music. That's not | :02:40. | :02:42. | |
unusual. Most of the state read music. It is fascinating to think of | :02:43. | :02:51. | |
you seeing music as meeting painting and visual art, somewhere in the | :02:52. | :02:55. | |
middle. Can you explain to be more about that sensibility, how that | :02:56. | :03:01. | |
works for you? When you are creating a sound, are using it? Sometimes, | :03:02. | :03:08. | |
yes. And I'm thinking in sort of pictorial or sculptural terms, a lot | :03:09. | :03:13. | |
of the time. Thinking of a musical space of some kind, and what | :03:14. | :03:18. | |
populates that space. I'm not usually thinking in terms of, this | :03:19. | :03:22. | |
is in a minor and that is a G Sharp, and I don't know what these | :03:23. | :03:27. | |
things mean. I don't really work that way. I am just thinking back to | :03:28. | :03:32. | |
the beginning, I know you often say, I do like to look back, but I can | :03:33. | :03:36. | |
still picture you in Roxy Music with the long hair, alongside Bryan Ferry | :03:37. | :03:42. | |
and the others, playing music. You are performing, do you not believe | :03:43. | :03:47. | |
in performing any more? I do particularly like doing it myself. | :03:48. | :03:52. | |
Most of what I do in a recording studio. -- do not particularly like. | :03:53. | :03:57. | |
It is quite hard to take to the stage. It is a little like asking a | :03:58. | :04:02. | |
painter to do a picture on stage for you. It is not the performance art | :04:03. | :04:07. | |
in a painting. And what I do isn't really a performance art. I make | :04:08. | :04:11. | |
music in the way someone paints a picture. I add things, take things | :04:12. | :04:16. | |
away, stretch them very much like a graphic artist. I tell you what, | :04:17. | :04:21. | |
let's begin by actually listening to you, the most recent sound you have | :04:22. | :04:29. | |
created. You have an album out, called The Ship. Let's get a flavour | :04:30. | :04:38. | |
of what you are doing. (AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS). | :04:39. | :04:53. | |
Is that what most of us would now know as ambient music, how would you | :04:54. | :05:01. | |
describe it? I think you could call it that. I mean... Ambient is a word | :05:02. | :05:07. | |
that I came up with. You invented it. I cannot really say I invented | :05:08. | :05:14. | |
the music, more and more people had been trying to work in an area of, | :05:15. | :05:18. | |
sort of, spacious, environmental type of music, I gave the movement | :05:19. | :05:24. | |
and name, really. I can't claim that I invented the music, but I did | :05:25. | :05:28. | |
identify it as a separate category, I guess. Listening to it, the | :05:29. | :05:34. | |
features of it that struck me are... It's the sort of music that | :05:35. | :05:39. | |
doesn't really seem to have a narrative as such. It is open-ended | :05:40. | :05:43. | |
will stop one gets the feeling you could listen to it and then sort of | :05:44. | :05:48. | |
zone out for a bit and pick it up again, is that the idea of it? Yes. | :05:49. | :05:54. | |
I think of it like a painting. You don't sit and look at the painting | :05:55. | :06:03. | |
all the time it is on your wall. You can do something else and turn away. | :06:04. | :06:08. | |
The picture is always there but your attention is not always necessary | :06:09. | :06:11. | |
there. I wanted to make the kind of music that operated more like that, | :06:12. | :06:15. | |
that did not demand continuous, focused attention. But in a sense, I | :06:16. | :06:21. | |
have never before come across a musician who, if that is what you | :06:22. | :06:26. | |
call yourself, and you debate that, somebody who creates a sound that | :06:27. | :06:29. | |
says, I create this sound deliberately with the idea that | :06:30. | :06:32. | |
people often want really be listening to it. That's right, | :06:33. | :06:40. | |
that's my mission. It is at my methane, that sounds absurd. Why | :06:41. | :06:43. | |
bother if you don't really want them to listen. -- if you don't mind me | :06:44. | :06:48. | |
saying. When they do listen it is very rewarding. That is different | :06:49. | :06:56. | |
with what is happening with muzak, which is when you do start listening | :06:57. | :06:59. | |
to it, there is not much happening. Isn't that what a lot of your | :07:00. | :07:02. | |
critics claim you have been producing? Some of them. The album | :07:03. | :07:07. | |
titles themselves are an indication of what you are about. One of your | :07:08. | :07:13. | |
earlier -- early ambient albums, music for airports, indicates you | :07:14. | :07:19. | |
wrote something that you think would be suitable for people rushing from | :07:20. | :07:24. | |
A to B, catching a flight, and your music could help them destress, calm | :07:25. | :07:29. | |
down, I don't know. It seems a decent thing to do. Even that, even | :07:30. | :07:36. | |
worse than muzak, elevator music. I don't think there is anything to | :07:37. | :07:40. | |
Kelly wrong with having music in elevator is or airports, but I still | :07:41. | :07:45. | |
think it is something that composers could address. When that idea | :07:46. | :07:50. | |
appeared of elevator music, people just talk already quite bad music | :07:51. | :07:54. | |
and made it a little bit worse. And then put it in elevator is. I | :07:55. | :07:58. | |
thought, what about taking this job seriously, just like, you know, you | :07:59. | :08:03. | |
can have people just paint their war with any old colour they want, or | :08:04. | :08:06. | |
you can have people who think about it, interior designers, they called, | :08:07. | :08:11. | |
who think about, how could we make this really work well. What I am | :08:12. | :08:14. | |
saying is, we use music in all sorts of places all the time. But most of | :08:15. | :08:19. | |
the time we don't think very well about what we are doing with it. So | :08:20. | :08:22. | |
I want to say that composers should be responsible for that job. They | :08:23. | :08:26. | |
should take the responsibility of that job. It seems to me there is | :08:27. | :08:30. | |
another interesting thing going on with your music, and it ties into a | :08:31. | :08:34. | |
wider cultural point you have in making for years now, which is that | :08:35. | :08:39. | |
you feel there is a real sort of lack of attention span about so much | :08:40. | :08:42. | |
of what we do and what we create, and I think you have been involved | :08:43. | :08:48. | |
with this long now movement, which calls for a more measured, longer | :08:49. | :08:54. | |
term approach to human life and all forms of creativity. Your music | :08:55. | :08:56. | |
doesn't really have a beginning, middle and end. It just feels like | :08:57. | :09:02. | |
it could go on forever. Yes. And in fact, my ambition always, was to | :09:03. | :09:07. | |
make pieces of music that are theoretically infinite in length. So | :09:08. | :09:12. | |
I invented another word after ambient, which is generative, which | :09:13. | :09:19. | |
is music that is made by a set of instructions, essentially, a set of | :09:20. | :09:22. | |
rules, and somehow reduces itself for a long period of time. This | :09:23. | :09:28. | |
fascinates me because this is you, in recent years, using the latest | :09:29. | :09:32. | |
computer technology and software, so you, in essence, load some thematic | :09:33. | :09:38. | |
instructions into a computer, and then the actual music, the sound, is | :09:39. | :09:45. | |
a sort of randomly generated... Variation on the theme is that you | :09:46. | :09:50. | |
have laid down. So you actually haven't written the specific sounds | :09:51. | :09:57. | |
that emerge. I haven't written it. And furthermore I won't ever hear | :09:58. | :10:01. | |
all of it either, because the piece can carry on creating itself out of | :10:02. | :10:07. | |
my presence. So you fundamentally undermine our notion of what the | :10:08. | :10:09. | |
composer is. Yes. That's exactly right. Again I was in the first | :10:10. | :10:14. | |
person to do this. It was part of the brief of people like Philip | :10:15. | :10:20. | |
Glass and Terry Reilly, all of those kind of composers, who started | :10:21. | :10:25. | |
working with, not specific pieces of music, but with sets of instructions | :10:26. | :10:30. | |
for making pieces of music. The idea was that that is like a little | :10:31. | :10:36. | |
genetic message like like a seed, you plant the seed and turns into | :10:37. | :10:40. | |
something, it can't predict what it will exactly turn into. On a | :10:41. | :10:44. | |
philosophical level that is fascinating, on any given moment | :10:45. | :10:46. | |
when you are hearing that sound it is unique and will not ever be | :10:47. | :10:50. | |
reproduced ever again. Philosophically that is really | :10:51. | :10:52. | |
interesting, on a practical level, even the sort of subtlety and nuance | :10:53. | :10:57. | |
that comes with this sort of music, which to a layman like me frankly | :10:58. | :11:07. | |
can sound the same, on a practical level, what does an audience get out | :11:08. | :11:10. | |
of these extraordinarily rendered nuances? They are not completely | :11:11. | :11:16. | |
random. In the same sense that the seed of a flower isn't completely | :11:17. | :11:20. | |
random. That seed is something that has slightly randomised a large set | :11:21. | :11:24. | |
of instructions that have been carried on the many generations. | :11:25. | :11:31. | |
Like a pattern. It is adaptive. It is not just any old set of sounds | :11:32. | :11:36. | |
doing any old thing, it is actually quite a honed process, within which | :11:37. | :11:42. | |
there is a certain amount of probability, rather than randomness. | :11:43. | :11:46. | |
It can behave in some different ways and the permutations can be | :11:47. | :11:48. | |
different from one moment to another. But the way I tried to | :11:49. | :11:54. | |
explain it to people is, we tend to think of composers as sort of | :11:55. | :11:59. | |
architects of sound, so an architect being someone who specifies every | :12:00. | :12:02. | |
part of a building, every door handle,... Every little bit is | :12:03. | :12:08. | |
consciously created. That's right. That's how we tend to think of | :12:09. | :12:12. | |
composers. What I am saying is that we should stop thinking of them as | :12:13. | :12:15. | |
architects and start thinking of them as gardeners full people who | :12:16. | :12:20. | |
plant things, and those things grow and have their own lives, separate | :12:21. | :12:25. | |
from the intentions and desires... The phrase sound landscaping... I | :12:26. | :12:31. | |
will be brutally honest, that sounds somewhat pretentious. But that makes | :12:32. | :12:36. | |
sense to you. Everything good sounds pretentious at first. You are a | :12:37. | :12:42. | |
sound landscaper, not the composer. Yes. I would be quite happy with | :12:43. | :12:47. | |
that ascription. Let's actually take some of those fascinating thoughts | :12:48. | :12:50. | |
and apply them not just to sound, but the visuals as well, you | :12:51. | :12:55. | |
actually went to art school, you came out in the visual sensibility | :12:56. | :12:58. | |
before a musical one, and you have done loads of installations, art, | :12:59. | :13:04. | |
using light in different ways, if we can bring up some shots here of an | :13:05. | :13:08. | |
amazing project you did on the Sydney Opera House, is this | :13:09. | :13:15. | |
reflective of your generative idea, you have, I don't know how many | :13:16. | :13:18. | |
thousands and thousands of lights that you were projecting onto the | :13:19. | :13:22. | |
sales of the Opera House, what was this all about? This was a | :13:23. | :13:28. | |
three-week peace, I was project in from a huge battery, a very powerful | :13:29. | :13:36. | |
project, onto the sales, and it was a generative piece so I do not know | :13:37. | :13:40. | |
what was... If we just breathe at a moment -- freeze that. It looks like | :13:41. | :13:46. | |
a fascinating piece of abstract art, but in fact, you had never seen | :13:47. | :13:51. | |
before. It came up from the instructions that you have loaded | :13:52. | :13:55. | |
into your system. That's right. I had seen individual parts of it, but | :13:56. | :13:58. | |
never seen that particular permutation before. Really it is to | :13:59. | :14:03. | |
do with permutations. I make all the elements, but then of course the | :14:04. | :14:07. | |
elements, since there are several 100 of them, can mutate in millions | :14:08. | :14:12. | |
and millions of different ways. I let the process run, and it all | :14:13. | :14:17. | |
happens quite slowly, which is an important part of it, while you are | :14:18. | :14:21. | |
looking at this, it were not really conscious that it is changing. Until | :14:22. | :14:25. | |
you realise a few minutes later that it has changed. | :14:26. | :14:35. | |
You are embracing the idea that it does not really have narrative stop | :14:36. | :14:46. | |
it is just there as the background and people can take it or leave it. | :14:47. | :14:52. | |
Most artists are driven by at the vigil of vision they want to get | :14:53. | :14:59. | |
down, on paper, canvas, musical score, what ever. I have the vision, | :15:00. | :15:06. | |
it has to do with what for me was the great understanding of evolution | :15:07. | :15:14. | |
theory that complexity arises out of simplicity and I think that is such | :15:15. | :15:18. | |
an important message because I atheist and one of the most | :15:19. | :15:23. | |
difficult things that atheists have to say to the world is all this | :15:24. | :15:27. | |
complexity, came from the bottom up. Upon to make the kind of art | :15:28. | :15:35. | |
that proves that is possible. The elements are simple, I being | :15:36. | :15:40. | |
transparent and now I let them to mutate and it makes this | :15:41. | :15:46. | |
extraordinary... It is absolutely the antithesis of the artist as | :15:47. | :15:53. | |
creator, god figure. It you do not mind, I want to look back little bit | :15:54. | :15:59. | |
at your past. In your primary business, your first real creative | :16:00. | :16:04. | |
business which is rock 'n' roll, contemporary music, you worked with | :16:05. | :16:08. | |
a lot of people thinking early days of right ferry and Roxy Music, your | :16:09. | :16:17. | |
collaboration with Bali, the epitome of the talented, arguably ingenious, | :16:18. | :16:23. | |
individual artist. Try to get their vision down and you worked with them | :16:24. | :16:30. | |
very happily. Very happy. Even though they were sort of playing | :16:31. | :16:36. | |
God... It is not what I want to do but I do not mind other people doing | :16:37. | :16:42. | |
it. I see those people as theatrical presences, people who design | :16:43. | :16:48. | |
themselves to be theatre. The theatre was the whole history of | :16:49. | :16:53. | |
rock music, the whole scenario of rock music. That is an interesting | :16:54. | :17:02. | |
phrase, but what about Bowie and other artists such as Prince, the | :17:03. | :17:09. | |
claims for those two would be they work transformative in some ways, | :17:10. | :17:15. | |
they were geniuses. You buy the idea that individual artists of that | :17:16. | :17:20. | |
character can be classed as transformative and genius? I think | :17:21. | :17:25. | |
there are clearly some artist that make more difference than others but | :17:26. | :17:42. | |
I have another word, which is. There are all fertile people interactive | :17:43. | :17:48. | |
and occasionally they come up with something and that something can | :17:49. | :17:55. | |
manifest in David Bowie or Prince, or me. They are manifestation of a | :17:56. | :18:04. | |
lot of ideas. They did not invent it all themselves. We are making and | :18:05. | :18:11. | |
synthesis of history. If I may intrude into your past, if you work | :18:12. | :18:17. | |
-- when you are working with Bowie and seminal albums, would you call | :18:18. | :18:25. | |
yourselves the producer? What was your role? This creative... Sort of | :18:26. | :18:31. | |
effect you are describing is fascinating. We think of Bali and | :18:32. | :18:37. | |
think of his music and we think of his music at is it really? -- | :18:38. | :18:43. | |
Bowie. It is so hard to talk about this because in the popular arts in | :18:44. | :18:49. | |
particular, it is repackaging of thousands of things you have heard | :18:50. | :18:54. | |
and something that you have added to it. What you added might just be the | :18:55. | :19:01. | |
way you put it together. How much did you add to what he did? First of | :19:02. | :19:10. | |
all, I was not the producer. I was collaborating with David. David had | :19:11. | :19:15. | |
been listening to pay particular album of mine, my first ambient | :19:16. | :19:22. | |
album, called discreet music. Months before that he had said that was the | :19:23. | :19:26. | |
only thing he could listen to for along time. He was getting over very | :19:27. | :19:33. | |
problematic period in his life. I was just the working with the idea | :19:34. | :19:41. | |
of landscaping music and he wanted to do that. I would set up sonic | :19:42. | :19:48. | |
scenarios for him and he would react to them. It is fascinating | :19:49. | :19:56. | |
discussion because it gets to the heart of creativity and | :19:57. | :20:01. | |
collaboration. David Bowen is undisputedly fascinating and great | :20:02. | :20:06. | |
popular artist. You also have done work on some of the great commercial | :20:07. | :20:12. | |
pop albums of our time, from Coldplay, U2, bunch of others as | :20:13. | :20:18. | |
well. Is that different process all the same sort of creativity. | :20:19. | :20:24. | |
Basically it is designed to sell billions of records. I think they | :20:25. | :20:30. | |
are inviting me to work with them for the same reason. They want to go | :20:31. | :20:35. | |
somewhere different. People do not realise that artists do not just | :20:36. | :20:40. | |
want to have the same heat over and over again. It is boring. The thrill | :20:41. | :20:44. | |
of being an artist is going somewhere you have not been before. | :20:45. | :20:49. | |
If you have been with the band for along time, everybody gets into | :20:50. | :20:52. | |
habits and things tend to turn out the same. You can hear that in a lot | :20:53. | :20:59. | |
of bad music. Career prize of the same old thing. -- Reprise. And | :21:00. | :21:07. | |
record companies like that. They would hire producers who would say | :21:08. | :21:12. | |
to the ban, let's do another one like that. How can we make this song | :21:13. | :21:22. | |
stumble like that song that was hit. -- sound more like. I never did | :21:23. | :21:28. | |
that. So I think that is why I was asked to produce lots of records. | :21:29. | :21:33. | |
You are still very busy, we talked about the ship, your latest project. | :21:34. | :21:39. | |
When you see the most exciting, arguably most transformative music | :21:40. | :21:44. | |
or maybe other art form is happening right now? What really excites you | :21:45. | :21:50. | |
as the new and innovative right now? There is the whole lot of class of | :21:51. | :21:54. | |
things that I have little contact with and do not understand very well | :21:55. | :22:03. | |
which are complex games like... You see a lot of creativity? This is | :22:04. | :22:10. | |
really the future, in away, for some big new interactive art form. | :22:11. | :22:16. | |
Really? I do not play them, my kids do, I would dismiss it as | :22:17. | :22:22. | |
moneymaking commercial ventures... That is how pop music was thought of | :22:23. | :22:27. | |
for very many years at the beginning. That is how everything is | :22:28. | :22:33. | |
thought of... Are you getting into that creative sphere? Not really, I | :22:34. | :22:38. | |
hardly understand it but I know it is something important. Not from my | :22:39. | :22:44. | |
generation but I know where something is going to come from. I | :22:45. | :22:49. | |
realise I67 and I am not going to start... The final thought and it | :22:50. | :22:57. | |
goes back to the idea that we need to think about different timescale | :22:58. | :23:02. | |
for the way we behave on this planet and the way we create also. I | :23:03. | :23:07. | |
wonder, when we think in those terms, when you think of your music, | :23:08. | :23:14. | |
will it stand the test of centuries and not just decades? It is an | :23:15. | :23:21. | |
interesting question. I am surprised that it has stood the test of | :23:22. | :23:27. | |
decades, I have to say. Would not have thought music airports, for | :23:28. | :23:40. | |
example would still be selling. You know, when Prince died, they found | :23:41. | :23:46. | |
thousands and thousands of hits of music of unheard and unpublished | :23:47. | :23:50. | |
music. Have you got the same thing? Yes, terrible. I have an archive | :23:51. | :23:57. | |
which is enormous. I do not know what is in it. I worked pretty much | :23:58. | :24:01. | |
the whole time and I always make little nicks of whatever eye have | :24:02. | :24:08. | |
been working on. Even if it is just little test. I put it in the | :24:09. | :24:14. | |
archive. We will hear it one day... I hope not, there is some trash in | :24:15. | :24:21. | |
there. Thank you so much for being on HARDtalk. Thank you. | :24:22. | :24:48. | |
A day of huge contrasts on Tuesday across the UK. | :24:49. | :24:50. | |
The southern half of the UK, warm and humid, but cloudy and wet, | :24:51. | :24:53. | |
whereas it was very warm and largely sunny across Scotland, | :24:54. | :24:57. |