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Authors: Geeta Dayal
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explained to interviewers a few years later, rather cryptically, that
Another Green World
was meant to be a “sky record,” while
Before and After Science
was an “ocean record.”)
“He’s got this great production technique—I think it naturally comes to him, I don’t think it’s a deliberate thing—but he kind of plants these little seeds of ideas, like when you were saying he was just playing that little rhythm on the piano,” commented Abrahams. “It might not obviously have been a fully fledged composition, but there was obviously something in it that he liked. And I think instead of doing what a conventional composer would do, which would be to workwith these very small elements and then extrapolate them deliberately, he kind of plants these little seeds in people’s minds and lets the musicians kind of go free with them, and then it ends up sounding like Brian Eno nonetheless, because it’s his seeds.”
The final version of “Sky Saw’’ incorporates Jones’ fretless bass and Phil Collins’ drumming, a searing viola solo by John Cale, additional bass guitar by Paul Rudolph, and various effects by Eno. “It wasn’t ’til the record came out that I heard what he’d done to it,” marveled Jones. “He’d taken that rhythm track and put all this stuff on top of it, and made it into a really strong piece of music. It was really interesting how he initiated the tune; he could have gone a million different ways with an introduction like that. I always came out of those sessions thinking, ‘I did something cool today.’ It was fun, it was innovative—he broke some ground in a way.” “Sky Saw’’ would go on to live another life as the track “M386’’ on
Music for Films
, and an early Ultravox tune, and in many other guises.
Jones and Collins also put down the rhythm track for “Over Fire Island,” the second track on
Another Green World
. Much to Eno’s chagrin, a similar bassline appeared on the Brand X album, released in 1976. “We did a tune on the first Brand X album called ‘Unorthodox Behaviour’; it’s pretty much thesame bassline,” said Jones. “Phil and I pretty much just took that, and recorded it for Eno, and I think at that point the Brand X record had been recorded and hadn’t come out. Brian actually got a bit miffed when the Brand X record came out and he heard the same bassline. I can’t remember exactly what he said; he looked a bit miffed: ‘How come you’ve got the same thing on the Brand X record?’ Phil and I just looked kind of vague and I think the subject got dropped; it wasn’t mentioned again. Despite it being the same sort of rhythm section thing, the two tunes were very different. What Eno did with it is radically different from what Brand X did with it, but that’s where that bassline came from.”
The spare drum and bass workout of “Over Fire Island’’ ends in buzzing, alien electronic noise—what sounds like a UFO landing—laying the groundwork for the blinding effulgence of the unearthly next track. “St. Elmo’s Fire” is the album’s grand statement, its crowning achievement. It features some of Eno’s most imagistic, rapturous lyrics:
Brown Eyes and I were tired
We had walked and we had scrambled
Through the moors and through the briars
Through the endless blue meanders
In the blue August moon
In the cool August moon
The most enthralling part of the song, though, was the sonic backdrop for these lyrics. The subtle clicking noise at the beginning of the song is a treated “rhythm generator,” a precursor to the modern drum machine, and the textures are spare—a minimal piano motif that darts between octaves, a smattering of organ and “desert guitars,” and Eno’s lean voice—all combining to make an understated setting for Robert Fripp’s transcendent “Wimshurst guitar” solo.
A Wimshurst machine is an electrostatic generator that was invented in the 1880s, an ancestor of the better-known
Another Green World
was meant to be a “sky record,” while
Before and After Science
was an “ocean record.”)
“He’s got this great production technique—I think it naturally comes to him, I don’t think it’s a deliberate thing—but he kind of plants these little seeds of ideas, like when you were saying he was just playing that little rhythm on the piano,” commented Abrahams. “It might not obviously have been a fully fledged composition, but there was obviously something in it that he liked. And I think instead of doing what a conventional composer would do, which would be to workwith these very small elements and then extrapolate them deliberately, he kind of plants these little seeds in people’s minds and lets the musicians kind of go free with them, and then it ends up sounding like Brian Eno nonetheless, because it’s his seeds.”
The final version of “Sky Saw’’ incorporates Jones’ fretless bass and Phil Collins’ drumming, a searing viola solo by John Cale, additional bass guitar by Paul Rudolph, and various effects by Eno. “It wasn’t ’til the record came out that I heard what he’d done to it,” marveled Jones. “He’d taken that rhythm track and put all this stuff on top of it, and made it into a really strong piece of music. It was really interesting how he initiated the tune; he could have gone a million different ways with an introduction like that. I always came out of those sessions thinking, ‘I did something cool today.’ It was fun, it was innovative—he broke some ground in a way.” “Sky Saw’’ would go on to live another life as the track “M386’’ on
Music for Films
, and an early Ultravox tune, and in many other guises.
Jones and Collins also put down the rhythm track for “Over Fire Island,” the second track on
Another Green World
. Much to Eno’s chagrin, a similar bassline appeared on the Brand X album, released in 1976. “We did a tune on the first Brand X album called ‘Unorthodox Behaviour’; it’s pretty much thesame bassline,” said Jones. “Phil and I pretty much just took that, and recorded it for Eno, and I think at that point the Brand X record had been recorded and hadn’t come out. Brian actually got a bit miffed when the Brand X record came out and he heard the same bassline. I can’t remember exactly what he said; he looked a bit miffed: ‘How come you’ve got the same thing on the Brand X record?’ Phil and I just looked kind of vague and I think the subject got dropped; it wasn’t mentioned again. Despite it being the same sort of rhythm section thing, the two tunes were very different. What Eno did with it is radically different from what Brand X did with it, but that’s where that bassline came from.”
The spare drum and bass workout of “Over Fire Island’’ ends in buzzing, alien electronic noise—what sounds like a UFO landing—laying the groundwork for the blinding effulgence of the unearthly next track. “St. Elmo’s Fire” is the album’s grand statement, its crowning achievement. It features some of Eno’s most imagistic, rapturous lyrics:
Brown Eyes and I were tired
We had walked and we had scrambled
Through the moors and through the briars
Through the endless blue meanders
In the blue August moon
In the cool August moon
The most enthralling part of the song, though, was the sonic backdrop for these lyrics. The subtle clicking noise at the beginning of the song is a treated “rhythm generator,” a precursor to the modern drum machine, and the textures are spare—a minimal piano motif that darts between octaves, a smattering of organ and “desert guitars,” and Eno’s lean voice—all combining to make an understated setting for Robert Fripp’s transcendent “Wimshurst guitar” solo.
A Wimshurst machine is an electrostatic generator that was invented in the 1880s, an ancestor of the better-known
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