Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (31 page)

Continuing along the ambient path of
Discreet Music
– which proved so calming it was used in hospitals for childbirth – Eno released a series of records to be used as aural decorations for the environment, including
Ambient 5 / Music for Airports
(which was broadcast at LaGuardia Airport) and later, the evocative
Ambient 4 / On Land
. Though these records are peaceful to the point of boring, Eno’s ambient works definitely reward repeated listenings. While they can be blamed for giving birth to shelves of awful New Age music, they also inspired musicians over a decade later to explore the connections between tranquility and dance with “ambient house.”

Alex Patterson, the Orb:

I only met him once, like in 1984, at EG [Eno’s label, where Patterson worked]. We shook hands and said hello, that was it, really. But the influence is there because I got the EG back catalogue [Eno’s ambient work]. And that was the connection I put together, really. Dance music and ambient together in what became ambient house.

While Eno’s ambient works gained him few pop fans of his own, during the same years he was closely involved with a number of high-profile rock records. He produced the debut albums by Devo and Ultravox, and also compiled
No New York
, the essential document of the radical late ‘70s no wave scene (featuring
DNA
and
Lydia Lunch
). In addition, between 1977 and ‘79, Eno collaborated with David Bowie on a trilogy of albums – Low, Heroes, and Lodger – which many consider to be Bowie’s artistic peak.

Eno helped shape the Talking Heads’ sound by producing three of their early records. Following 1980’s Remain in Light, on which Eno co-wrote many of the songs with Talking Heads leader David Byrne, he and Byrne collaborated on a hugely influential record,
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
, that merged nonwestern (or “world”) music with western dance beats – something he’d begun earlier with his
Possible Musics
release. Both records anticipated the next decade’s ethno-techno/trance music of Banco de Gaia and Loop Guru.

David Byrne:

We [Talking Heads] met him early on and he felt like a kindred spirit. Here’s somebody who looks at music from a “what if” point of view. It’s from a composer’s point of view, but not from a musician with chops point of view. It was a way of breaking out of tried and true formulas. We also learned a few gimmicks, like the many uses of the Roland space echo.

Beginning in the early ‘80s, Eno collaborated with Canadian producer Daniel Lanois. Early joint efforts included work on a record by Eno’s brother, Roger, and with composer Harold Budd on
The Pearl
. Their best known co-credits, however, began in 1984 when they remade U2’s sound on hugely popular albums, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. For 1991’s Achtung Baby, Eno and Lanois earned themselves a Grammy for reshaping U2 once again. Though Lanois left to pursue other high-profile production work (including Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel), Eno stayed on for the band’s Zooropa album, and participated in yet another makeover on 1997’s Pop. In 1995, Eno, along with the members of U2 (with guests including Luciano Pavarotti), recorded under the name Passengers. Their
Original Soundtracks
compiles music they’d written for imagined movies, something Eno had done decades earlier with his
Music for Films
.

The ‘90s have seen a bit more of everything Eno has offered in the past: more production work (for James,
John Cale
), more collaborations (with
Cale
, as well as
Public Image Limited
’s Jah Wobble), more ambient music (
Neroli
), and even a return to pop-oriented composition (
The Nerve Net
). Recently, composer
Philip Glass
, an important early influence, has arranged symphonic treatments of the three albums Eno made with David Bowie in the ‘70s. Beyond music, Eno has pursued visual art (through video works and installations), created CD-ROMs, appeared as a visiting professor, donated time to the War Child charity, published an extensive diary (A Fear with Swollen Appendices), and even at one point conspired with Peter Gabriel and performance artist Laurie Anderson on developing a sort of multicultural avant-garde theme park in Europe. While he remains one step removed from the limelight, Eno continues to tirelessly push the limits of his own creativity – and by extension the creativity of everyone he’s touched over the years.

DISCOGRAPHY

Here Come the Warm Jets
(Island, 1973; EG, 1982)
; continuing in the direction of Eno’s work with Roxy Music, this first solo album is a triumph of eccentric pop.

(w/ Robert Fripp)
(No Pussyfooting)
(Antilles, 1973; EG, 1981)
; an experimental guitar album featuring “Frippertronics.”

Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
(Island, 1974; EG, 1982)
.

(w/ Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Nico)
June 1, 1974
(Island, 1974)
; a live album featuring former members of the Velvet Underground and Soft Machine.

Another Green World
(Island, 1975; EG, 1982)
; Eno’s classic, a middle ground between his pop-oriented early albums and the ambient directions he would head.

Discreet Music
(Antilles, 1975; EG 1982)
; an album of highly listenable program and self-generative music.

(w/ Robert Fripp)
Evening Star
(Antilles, 1975; EG, 1982)
.

Before and after Science
(Island, 1977; EG, 1982)
; Eno’s last vocal album for many years.

(w/ Cluster)
Cluster and Eno
(Sky [Germany], 1977)
; Eno’s first collaboration with the German duo.

Music for Films
(Antilles, 1978; EG, 1982)
; a collection of instrumental works created for use in films.

Ambient 1 / Music for Airports
(EG, 1978; 1982)
; the first full-fledged ambient work.

(w/ Moebius and Roedelius)
After the Heat
(Sky [Germany], 1978)
; another collaboration with the duo otherwise known as Cluster.

(w/ Harold Budd)
Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirror
(EG, 1980)
.

(w/ John Hassell)
Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics
(EG, 1980)
; an attempted meshing of western and non-Western music, with composer/trumpeter Hassell.

(w/ David Byrne)
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
(Sire, 1981)
; an acclaimed synthesis of non-Western music with techno beats.

Ambient 4 / On Land
(EG, 1982)
.

(w/ Roger Eno, Daniel Lanois)
Apollo Atmospheres and Soundtracks
(EG, 1983)
; ambient music for a film about space travel to the moon.

Working Backwards 1983-1973
(EG, 1984)
; an 11-disc box set containing all Eno albums in his first 10 years, plus one disc of rarities.

(w/ Harold Budd)
The Pearl
(EG, 1984)
.

Thursday Afternoon
(EG, 1985)
; the soundtrack for Eno’s video piece of the same name.

(w/ Cluster)
Old Land
(Relativity, 1985)
; a compilation of Eno’s work with Cluster.

(w/ John Hassell)
Power Spot
(ECM [Germany], 1986)
.

More Blank than Frank
(EG, 1986)
; a collection of essential tracks from Eno’s early albums.

Desert Island Selection
(EG, 1989)
; a single-CD collection of Eno’s own favorites from his early vocal albums.

(w/ John Cale)
Wrong Way up
(Opal / Warner Bros., 1990)
; a strong return to vocal music after over a decade away.

The Shufov Assembly
(Opal / Warner Bros., 1992)
; an ambient album.

Nerve Net
(Opal / Warner Bros., 1992)
; like many of his successors, Eno takes ambient into the world of dance music here.

Neroli
(All Saints / Gyroscope, 1993)
; another ambient release.

Brian Eno II / Vocal
(EG / Virgin, 1994)
; a box set collection of Eno’s more pop-oriented vocal works.

Brian Eno I / Instrumental
(EG / Virgin, 1994)
; a box set collection of Eno’s ambient and experimental works.

(w/ Robert Fripp)
The Essential Fripp & Eno
(EG / Virgin / Caroline, 1994)
; a collection from the two Fripp/Eno collaborations, including unreleased music.

(Passengers)
Original Soundtracks 1
(Island, 1995)
; best known as a U2 side project, this features the band and many guests, with Eno taking a larger role than his normal production duties.

(w/ Jah Wobble)
Spinner
(All Saints / Gyroscope, 1995)
; collaboration with the former
Public Image Limited
bassist.

The Drop
(Thirsty Ear, 1997)
.

(Harmonia 76)
Tracks & Traces
(Rykodisc, 1997)
; a recently uncovered batch of recordings featuring
Neu!
’s Michael Rother and Cluster with Eno.

ADRIAN SHERWOOD

Johnny Temple, Girls against Boys:

Producing the most whacked-out and unpredictable recordings in reggae, Sherwood has always driven the point home that musical boundaries are fluid. Sherwood’s dissecting of songs is so over-the-top it baffles the mind and stomach to figure out how the ideas were ever generated. The haphazard sounds emanating from his records are a gold mine of inspiration for anyone seeking to deconstruct their music.

A white kid who grew up in England during the punk rock explosion of the ‘70s, Adrian Sherwood hardly fit the profile of someone destined to be a master producer of dub reggae. But in becoming just that, he brought the worlds of dub and rock closer together. With his On-U Sound label serving as the meeting ground, Sherwood applied dub’s studio techniques to post-punk styles and used post-punk’s wide-ranging sound palette to modernize and expand the possibilities of dub.

While he doesn’t play a traditional instrument, Sherwood has done as much as anyone to define the studio itself as an instrument for creating and shaping sound. As such, Sherwood is an important reference point – particularly in the U.K. – for makers of electronic music in all genres, from techno to trip-hop to drum ‘n’ bass. In addition to countless projects at On-U, Sherwood has remixed some of the biggest acts of the ‘80s and ‘90s, including Depeche Mode, the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Garbage, to name only a few.

DJ Spooky (Paul Miller):

Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound stuff had a big impact compositionally. There’s a more stark edge to the music, it sounds harder and iller [than other dub]. I grew up around the punk scene, so I have distorted guitars and bass as some of my earlier memories of social music. There’s certain seminal people, and Adrian Sherwood realty hit this core resonance of what music is about.

Adrian Sherwood first became obsessed by reggae as a teen in the early ‘70s. In particular, he loved the eccentric studio effects of dub producers like
King Tubby
and
Lee Perry
. By 17, Sherwood was already importing and distributing Jamaican music to the U.K. through his company, Carib Gems. Though he’d soon go bankrupt, the experience provided Sherwood with contacts in reggae that he soon developed as an artist as well as a businessman.

In 1977, as punk rock ruled London’s music scene, Sherwood started his own live dub reggae collective called Creation Rebel, whose debut album
Dub from Creation
he released on his new label Hit Run. Along with a second outfit called Prince Far I & the Arabs – which featured many of the same personnel – Sherwood formulated a core group of musicians and associates that would be behind most of the music throughout Sherwood’s career. This included drummer Lincoln “Style” Scott, saxophonist Deadley Headley, bassists “Lizard” Logan and “Crucial” Tony Phillips, percussionist Bonjo Lyabinghi, keyboardist Dr. Pablo, and singers Bim Sherman and Prince Far I.

Early on, punk rock bands had voiced solidarity with the politically conscious reggae subculture in the U.K. (as in Jamaica) and were drawing inspiration from the music. Though Creation Rebel practiced a fairly traditional brand of dub reggae, Sherwood’s posse was never very far from the punk scene, and the Clash invited the group to open for them on tour. By the early ‘80s, connections had been made with members of post-punk bands such as the
Slits
, the
Raincoats
, and
Public Image Limited
, and Sherwood’s circle of collaborators had widened considerably.