Brian Eno
| Brian EnoRDI | |
|---|---|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Brian Peter George Eno |
| Born | (1948-05-15) 15 May 1948 (age 72)
Melton, Suffolk, England |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | |
| Instruments | |
| Years active | 1970–present |
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | |
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno RDI (/ˈiːnoʊ/; born Brian Peter George Eno; 15 May 1948) is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop and electronica.
A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music.
He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures.
Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art.
He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesizer player in 1971, recording two albums with the group but departing in 1973 amidst tensions with Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry.
Eno went on to record a number of solo albums beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets (1974).
In the mid-1970s, he began exploring a minimalist direction on releases such as Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), coining the term "ambient music" with the latter.
Alongside his solo work, Eno collaborated frequently with other musicians in the 1970s, including Robert Fripp, Harmonia, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie, and David Byrne.
He also established himself as a sought-after producer, working on albums by John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads, Ultravox, and Devo, as well as the no wave compilation No New York (1978).
In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record solo albums and produce for other artists, most prominently U2 and Coldplay, alongside work with artists such as Daniel Lanois, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Karl Hyde, James, Kevin Shields, and Damon Albarn.
Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including sound installations, film, and writing.
In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking.
From the 1970s onwards, Eno's installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016.
An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation.
In 2019, Eno was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
Early life
Brian Peter George Eno was born on 15 May 1948 in the village of Melton, Suffolk, the son of William Arnold Eno (1916–1988), a postal worker and clock and watch repairer, and Maria Alphonsine Eno (née Buslot; 1922–2005), a Belgian national.
Eno is the eldest of their three children; he has a brother, Roger, and sister Arlette.
They have a half-sister, Rita, from their mother's previous relationship.
The surname Eno is derived from the French Huguenot surname Hennot.
In 1959, Eno attended St Joseph's College in Ipswich, an Catholic grammar school of the De La Salle Brothers order.
His confirmation name is derived from the school, taking the name Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.
In 1964, after earning four O-levels, including one in art and maths, Eno had developed an interest in art and music and had no interest in a "conventional job".
He enrolled at the Ipswich School of Art, taking on the newly established Groundcourse foundation art degree established by new media artist Roy Ascott.
Here, one of Eno's teachers was artist Tom Phillips, who became a lifelong friend and encouraged his musical ability.
Phillips recalled the pair doing "piano tennis" in which, after collecting pianos, the two stripped and aligned them in a hall and struck them with tennis balls.
In 1966, Eno studied for a diploma in Fine Arts at the Winchester School of Art, from which he graduated in 1969.
It was at Winchester where Eno once attended a lecture by future Who guitarist Pete Townshend, also a former student of Ascott's, and cites that moment when Eno realised he could make music without formal training.
Whilst at school, Eno used a tape recorder as a musical instrument and in 1964 he joined his first group, the Black Aces, a four-piece with Eno on drums that he formed with three friends he met at the youth club he visited in Melton.
In late 1967, Eno pursued music once more, forming the Merchant Taylor's Simultaneous Cabinet, an avant-garde music, art, and performance trio with two Winchester undergraduates.
This was followed by short stints in multiple avant-garde and college groups, including The Maxwell Demon and Dandelion and The War Damage which featured Eno as frontman who adapted a theatrical persona on stage and later played the guitar.
Career
Awards and honors
Asteroid 81948 Eno, discovered by Marc Buie at Cerro Tololo in 2000, was named in his honor.
The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 May 2019 (M.P.C.
114955).
In 2019, he was awarded Starmus Festival's Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication for Music & Arts.
Influence
See also: Recording studio as an instrument
Eno is frequently referred to as one of popular music's most influential artists.
Producer and film composer Jon Brion has said: "I think he's the most influential artist since the Beatles."
Critic Jason Ankeny at AllMusic argues that Eno "forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence."
Eno has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production; his distinctive style informed a number of projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" (helping to popularize minimalism) and the albums he produced for Talking Heads (incorporating, on Eno's advice, African music and polyrhythms), Devo, and other groups.
Eno's first collaboration with David Byrne, 1981's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, utilised sampling techniques and broke ground by incorporating world music into popular Western music forms.
Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies have been used by many bands, and Eno's production style has proven influential in several general respects: "his recording techniques have helped change the way that modern musicians;– particularly electronic musicians;– view the studio.
No longer is it just a passive medium through which they communicate their ideas but itself a new instrument with seemingly endless possibilities."
Whilst inspired by the ideas of minimalist composers including John Cage, Terry Riley and Erik Satie, Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work and defined the term.
The Ambient Music Guide states that he has brought from "relative obscurity into the popular consciousness" fundamental ideas about ambient music, including "the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation."
His groundbreaking work in electronic music has been said to have brought widespread attention to and innovations in the role of electronic technology in recording.
Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright said he "often eulogised" Eno's abilities.
Eno's "unconventional studio predilections", in common with those of Peter Gabriel, were an influence on the recording of "In the Air Tonight", the single which launched the solo career of Eno's former drummer Phil Collins.
Collins said he "learned a lot" from working with Eno.
Both Half Man Half Biscuit (in the song "Eno Collaboration" on the EP of the same name) and MGMT have written songs about Eno.
LCD Soundsystem has frequently cited Eno as a key influence.
The Icelandic singer Björk also credited Eno as a major influence.
Mora sti Fotia (Babies on Fire), one of the most influential Greek rock bands, was named after Eno's song "Baby's on Fire".
In 2011, Belgian academics from the Royal Museum for Central Africa named a species of Afrotropical spider Pseudocorinna brianeno in his honour.
In September 2016, asked by the website Just Six Degrees to name a currently influential artist, Eno cited the conceptual, video and installation artist Jeremy Deller as a source of current inspiration: "Deller's work is often technically very ambitious, involving organising large groups of volunteers and helpers, but he himself is almost invisible in the end result.
I'm inspired by this quietly subversive way of being an artist, setting up situations and then letting them play out.
To me it's a form of social generative art where the 'generators' are people and their experiences, and where the role of the artist is to create a context within which they collide and create."
Personal life
Eno has married twice.
In March 1967, at the age of 18, Eno married Sarah Grenville.
They had a daughter, Hannah Louise (b.
1967), before they divorced.
In 1988, Eno married his manager Anthea Norman-Taylor.
They have two daughters, Irial Violet (b.
1990) and Darla Joy (b.
1991).
Eno has referred to himself as "kind of an evangelical atheist" but has also professed an interest in religion.
In 1996, Eno and others started the Long Now Foundation to educate the public about the very long-term future of society and to encourage long-term thinking in the exploration of enduring solutions to global issues.
In 2005, through the Long Now foundation's Long Bets, he won a $500 bet by challenging someone who predicted a Democrat would be president of the United States in 2005.
The Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition mobile phone features exclusive music composed by Eno.
Between 8 January 2007 and 12 February 2007, ten units of Nokia 8800 Sirocco Brian Eno Signature Edition mobile phones, individually numbered and engraved with Eno's signature, were auctioned off.
All proceeds went to two charities chosen by Eno: the Keiskamma AIDS treatment program and the World Land Trust.
In 1991, Eno appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
His chosen book was Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty and his luxury item was a radio telescope.
Politics
In 2007, Eno joined the Liberal Democrats as youth adviser under Nick Clegg.
Eno is now a member of the Labour Party.
In August 2015, he endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.
He said at a rally in Camden Town Hall: "I don't think electability really is the most important thing.
What's important is that someone changes the conversation and moves us off this small-minded agenda."
He later wrote in The Guardian: "He's [Corbyn] been doing this with courage and integrity and with very little publicity.
This already distinguishes him from at least half the people in Westminster, whose strongest motivation seems to have been to get elected, whatever it takes."
In 2006, Eno was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter calling for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions.
and in January 2009 he spoke out against Israel's military action on the Gaza Strip by writing an opinion for CounterPunch and participating in a large-scale protest in London.
In 2014, Eno again protested publicly against what he called a "one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing" and a "war [with] no moral justification," in reference to the 2014 military operation of Israel into Gaza.
He was also a co-signatory, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker and others, to a letter published in The Guardian that labelled the conflict as an "inhumane and illegal act of military aggression" and called for "a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid."
In 2013, Eno became a patron of Videre Est Credere (Latin for "to see is to believe"), a UK human rights charity.
Videre describes itself as "give[ing] local activists the equipment, training and support needed to safely capture compelling video evidence of human rights violations.
This captured footage is verified, analysed and then distributed to those who can create change."
He participates alongside movie producers Uri Fruchtmann and Terry Gilliam – along with executive director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven.
Eno was appointed President of Stop the War Coalition in 2017.
He has had a long involvement with the organisation since it was set up in 2001.
He is also a trustee of the environmental law firm ClientEarth, Somerset House, and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, set up by Mariana Mazzucato.
Eno opposes United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
Following the June 2016 referendum result when the British public voted to leave, Eno was among a group of British musicians who signed a letter to the Prime Minister Theresa May calling for a second referendum.
In November 2019, along with other public figures, Eno signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him for in the 2019 UK general election.
In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election.
The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."
Brian Eno is early and prominent member of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) where he contributes, issues statements, take part in discussions and media events.
Discography
Main article: Brian Eno discography
Solo studio albums
Ambient installation albums
- Extracts from Music for White Cube, London 1997 (1997), Opal
- Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace (1997), Opal
- I Dormienti (1999), Opal
- Kite Stories (1999), Opal
- Music for Civic Recovery Centre (2000), Opal
- Compact Forest Proposal (2001), Opal
- January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now (2003), Opal
- Making Space (2010), Opal
- Music For Installations (2018), Astralwerks
See also
Credits to the contents of this page go to the authors of the corresponding Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian Eno.