Not enough credit is given to Andy Mackay in the video. Eno even said if he had not met Andy at the train station that day then he might not have done what he had done. It was Andy's VCS 3 that Eno noodled on at the Roxy practices. Andy asked Eno to come by and record them.
I scanned the wiki but it does not have the reason why Eno got the job.
Yes. I foolishly bought Boy and that was the last U2 album I ever touched. One of the few albums that I ever bought and never listened to because the lyrics were so bad.
The day I bought it - the choice was Boy or Adam and The Ants Kings of The Wild Frontier. AA was far more interesting.
Here is a hint. It has something to do with someone I arguably rate higher than Eno. No not Bowie - I don't rate him higher. Not Ferry either.
Not the wolds biggest U2 fan either, but loved Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby for the production and sounds. Songs good too. Lyrics are horrible, agreed.
"in my dreams I drowned in sorrow but my sorrows they learned to swim" LOL
Not Yeats that's for sure. But one of my fav's I forgive bad lyrics and just listen to Rush and yeah.
I know Flood was involved in one of the albums. Other than that I have no idea! You got me.
I have read that The Edge was an Eno fan and asked for him. Eno wasn't sure and agreed to do it as long as Daniel Lanois could work with him.
The story I heard was Eno took U-2 to Conny Plank to have Conny produce them. After a fairly short time, Conny Plank said he could not work with the singer.
I almost rate Conny higher than Eno because of all the great people he produced and his influence on Eno. Conny produced one of my favorite albums in Ultravox's Systems of Romance.
Some parts are better than others, and some parts are simply long passages of Eno's music. But there's a lot of interesting stuff there, especially because you can see what he was thinking all those years ago (first two parts are from 1980, the rest is "present" day 1988).
Whats essential is people stop thinking so much when creating.
Start flowing , uncontrived.
Eno ? Generative.....theres a clue....music that makes itself to some degree and which uses time and space and ' chaos ' or ' chance ' to assist in the choices or even make these.
Think less when making art works , it works !!!!!!
I work with loads of people in music collabs over the years and 99% of them are just lost on wanting everything a specific way and cant allow time and space to make choices .Its like there are 2 modes of artist / Those who create what they anally obsess over being right down to the most minute pointless detail and lost in genre , fitting in , pleasing , fashion , retailability etc and those who create what happens by chance alot and through semi random action and via inspiration which they somehow dont think about but which comes through them and who really are FREE.
Eno is the second , the majority are the first.
Think less .Eno is not the genius , his soul is.......as are all our souls.Step aside, let the souol do the work and time and space play its part , be less obsessive , think less and see what happens.
Whats essential is people stop thinking so much when creating.
Start flowing , uncontrived.
Eno ? Generative.....theres a clue....music that makes itself to some degree and which uses time and space and ' chaos ' or ' chance ' to assist in the choices or even make these.
Think less when making art works , it works !!!!!!
I work with loads of people in music collabs over the years and 99% of them are just lost on wanting everything a specific way and cant allow time and space to make choices .Its like there are 2 modes of artist / Those who create what they anally obsess over being right down to the most minute pointless detail and lost in genre , fitting in , pleasing , fashion , retailability etc and those who create what happens by chance alot and through semi random action and via inspiration which they somehow dont think about but which comes through them and who really are FREE.
Eno is the second , the majority are the first.
Think less .Eno is not the genius , his soul is.......as are all our souls.Step aside, let the souol do the work and time and space play its part , be less obsessive , think less and see what happens.
It's things like this that make me feel inspired, something that doesn't often happen on this board. I go away wanting new gear instead.
Eno is a huge influence, may watch this again this afternoon.
Whats essential is people stop thinking so much when creating.
Start flowing , uncontrived.
Eno ? Generative.....theres a clue....music that makes itself to some degree and which uses time and space and ' chaos ' or ' chance ' to assist in the choices or even make these.
It seems to me that Eno puts quite a lot of thought into his systems (he has endless notebooks of ideas), *then* he lets them go. He has also pointed out the importance of choosing the right inputs if you want to produce something worth listening to. An example he has given in the past is Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain" - this tape phase piece is interesting in part because of the source material. If Reich had input a couple of sine waves into this same system it wouldn't have had the same impact.
I think Eno considers all of this reasonably carefully. In some respects he is the exact opposite of someone who just sits at an instrument and intuits a piece of music.
I think Eno considers all of this reasonably carefully. In some respects he is the exact opposite of someone who just sits at an instrument and intuits a piece of music.[/QUOTE]
i get your point i dont think he is that carefull myself but then whats 'reasonably carefull ' ? i suggest he intuits the system design before he randomly makes spontaneous actions in the creative moment.
We percieve this as him ' thinking ' about what he will do but Intuition is unthinking thought ' and in some sense another form of thought only ' thoughtless ' or less attached to ' result ' .
So he thinks' # i will het a 3 kaos pads , a guy on guitar and one on keys and we will just make it up as we go along .Or did he intuitively feel this was the best action ?
The point is what you see as him thinking could be him feeling ? and acting ? intuit........
I believe the key to all great art is in thinking less , thats the bottom line.Being more intuitive and feeling .
The mind yes is essential but in its role as a prism , not as a projector.
Thinking more at any stage leads to more predictability in the end i think
So he thinks' # i will het a 3 kaos pads , a guy on guitar and one on keys and we will just make it up as we go along .Or did he intuitively feel this was the best action ?
From what I've read I'd say he does set up a lot of situations like this (e.g. the recording of Another Green World, or indeed Small Craft). So in those cases, yes, the thought part is in the set up and the rest predominantly improvisation.
However, I think a lot of his solo ambient work is more procedural in nature: the system is designed, fed inputs and allowed to play out.
In either case, we can argue about whether it was "thought" or "intuition" that went into the design of the situation or the system. When I see pictures of pages from his note books or in liner notes that appear to show intricately designed systems, it seems more like "thought" to me, but I can agree to disagree.
I don't agree that "more thought at any stage leads to more predictability". Thinking can sometimes allow us to escape from dead ends, rather than reaching for easy (and therefore probably "predictable") solutions - although I guess you might label such thought "intuition"
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