Eno Books

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Stupid search won't accept "Eno" cuz it's three letters, so screw it. I was wondering if there was a biography or autobio of Brian Eno. I want to know how he went from Roxy Music to collaborating with prog kingpin Robert Fripp in the same year. What brought him to Cluster. What was he thinking about during that time?

The closest might be A Year With Swollen Appendices : The Diary of Brian Eno (1996), but I can't tell from reviews whether it covered the early 70s time period at all.

Eric Tamm, Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound (1995)
This was a dissertation, and might be pretty good. Anyone read it?

Susanne Titz, Lucy Mckenzie: Brian Eno (2003, German)
I know nothing about this, other than it might not be translated into English.

John Hutchinson, Brian Eno (1998, Out of print)
I never heard of this one either.

― Fastnbulbous (Fastnbulbous), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:57 (twenty years ago)

the diary covers 1995, as the title indicates. it's terrific, absolutely worth getting if you're a fan. the Eric Tamm book is interesting from what I've read of it but I've never been able to take the buying-it plunge. dunno the other two.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:01 (twenty years ago)

Swollen appendices = proto-blog!

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:02 (twenty years ago)

the Tamm book is good, but it didn't tell me anything that the interviews hadn't.

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/

the most biographical information appears in the bangs article: http://www.furious.com/perfect/bangseno.html (still online, even though PSF has taken down the index for their older stories)

― milton parker (Jon L), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:10 (twenty years ago)

omg I take that back! PSF IS BACK! cursed age-of-ott is over!

http://www.furious.com/perfect/articles.html

― milton parker (Jon L), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:11 (twenty years ago)

i like the tamm book, it's pretty detailed in a lot of ways and it's a nice succint way to find out some of this information. swollen appendicies is interesting but only covers one year of his life while making Bowie's Outside; he has a lot of interesting ideas about art and the artistic process though.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:34 (twenty years ago)

I'm sure Tamm made his text available as a download somewhere, same with his book about Fripp, try Enoweb.

FWIW Tamm's book is interesting if a little dry and the studio/tech talk is rather antiquated and quaint.

Swollen Appendices is very entertaining reading especially as it's an unusual task for Eno, not a natural diarist, not naturally self referential about his daily life.

― mzui (mzui), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:49 (twenty years ago)

the Fripp book is way out of print, so that might be why it's available for download (where?)

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:51 (twenty years ago)

the appendices (essays) are fantastic. someone should really put together a book of Eno interviews/profiles. a lot of the ones I've read have been terrific.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:52 (twenty years ago)

swollen appendicies is interesting but only covers one year of his life while making Bowie's Outside

You're selling him a little short as it also covers his collaboration with Jah Wobble (Spinner), Passengers (Original Soundtracks (?)) and the first Warchild album.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 3 October 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

omg I take that back! PSF IS BACK! cursed age-of-ott is over!

thats great, i didn't like their revamped site design at all

― amon (eman), Monday, 3 October 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

I liked the Tamm book enough to have read it a few times over. You can buy it cheap on Half.com, usually. I payed $4.00 for mine.

Appendices is enjoyable reading for the most part.

Anyone know who's carrying the new 33 1/3 "Low" book in NYC? St. Marks has it on order (I checked today) and I'm dying to read it.

― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Monday, 3 October 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

it's one of the best 33 1/3s, easily.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 3 October 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

I would go for the diary, as part of Eno's charm is that he's an extremely clever and funny guy. The one thing that gets annoying is that he describes working on installations you've never seen, and you have no idea what he's up to. But it's worth it when you get to a day in which he's done nothing but enlarge women's asses in Photoshop.

I second the idea of the collected interviews, if it was edited down to get rid of the anecdotes you tell over and over again to journalists while you're promoting your new record.

― Brakhage (brakhage), Monday, 3 October 2005 23:27 (twenty years ago)

as for the fripp and eno meeting, i think it goes like this: eno was asked to play on matching mole's 'little red record' (probably introduced via bill maccormick who was in quiet sun with phil manzanera) and fripp was the producer of the record. this may have been in paul stump's fairly unreadable roxy book "unknown pleasures" but i could just be imagining that.

― phil turnbull (philT), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 04:46 (twenty years ago)

as mzui says, you can download the tamm book from his homepage.

― haitch (haitch), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 05:11 (twenty years ago)

Fripp/Eno meeting: Roxy and Crimson were both on the EG label, and Pete Sinfield produced the first Roxy Album. Also, Brian Ferry tried out for Crimson around the time of Lizard. So numerous opportunites for Fripp and Eno to meet.

― Spence Carnivore, Tuesday, 4 October 2005 07:27 (twenty years ago)

This is excellent, thanks. I read the first three Bangs intereviews, and they did cover most of what I wanted to know. Interesting that both Eno and Bangs seem to favor Tiger Mountain, which seems to have received a pummelling around the time of the reissue.

― Fastnbulbous (Fastnbulbous), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 11:02 (twenty years ago)

Having just downloaded the Tamm book to read later, it looks interesting but I wonder how factually accurate it is. Just skimming the shortish section on his collaboration with Bowie I see errors (he has "Low" recorded at Conny Plank's studio in Cologne: it wasn't).

― jz, Tuesday, 4 October 2005 11:43 (twenty years ago)

The Tamm book reads like a dissertation: fairly dry, and rather humorless. "Appendices" is essential. I've used his lecture on culture in my class!

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

The Tamm book reads like a dissertation: fairly dry, and rather humorless.

Ding Ding Ding! He was working on a Ph.D. dissertation on Fripp, who discouraged him from doing it. He regrouped and wrote about Eno instead, and went back to the Fripp book later. (This is detailed in the Fripp book itself.)

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 12:08 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

X-post. Still reading this, but am loving it.

On Some Faraway Beach: The Life And Times of Brian Eno - David Sheppard

It's a beautiful hardcover, over 450 pages. Here's a passage from the first chapter:

"...I was encouraged by Colin Newman, lead singer of the veteran post-punk band Wire and an acquaintance and long-term adherent of Eno's, whose pithy views on all things Brian resonated like a Greek chorus as I wrote the book. Possibly fearing I was another fixated, sanctimonious Enophile, Newman gave me some salutary words of advice: 'I think we need to reclaim Eno from the Eno nerds. There's a lot of nasty train-spotting involved with the Eno fanbase. Brian needs to have his place, sure, but he's not a saint, nor is he a professor. He's a bunch of things, one of which -- and I say this in the most friendly and supportive way -- is an incredibly adept bullshitter. He's a brilliant opportunist.'"

http://www.fastnbulbous.com/eno_on.jpg

This review is a decent encapsulation.

― Fastnbulbous, Monday, 21 July 2008 21:50 (seventeen years ago)

I was just wondering if the Sheppard book was any good. I'm not sure it's actually out in the U.S., though.

― DLee, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 16:54 (seventeen years ago)

David is a great writer, I'm sure that book is good

― akm, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 17:04 (seventeen years ago)

It is pretty good a decent balance between the academic and the straight up eno-as-sex-addict lore.

However, it kinda skips though his life pretty quickly once it gets to about 1982-ish, up until then it's quite detailed.

― MaresNest, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 17:04 (seventeen years ago)

"swollen appendicies is interesting but only covers one year of his life while making Bowie's Outside"
"You're selling him a little short as it also covers his collaboration with Jah Wobble (Spinner), Passengers (Original Soundtracks (?)) and the first Warchild album."

and (yawn) a james album. and he takes a call from paul simon re:surprise

lol at "enlarging womens asses in photoshop" there were more than a few days gone to that iirc

― messiahwannabe, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 18:23 (seventeen years ago)

actually, it was around the time of The Capeman, but, yeah, the seed for a collaboration was sewn.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 18:40 (seventeen years ago)

"I was just wondering if the Sheppard book was any good. I'm not sure it's actually out in the U.S., though."

It's not out in the U.S. but I paid only $26.63 + $3.99 shipping in U.S. at The Book Depository via Amazon, and it's well worth it.

The writing was a bit precious and flowery in the beginning, but soon gets down to business, and does a great job of covering his life in narrative detail without getting boring (at least for your average music geek). Who knew that the dorky, balding skinny bloke with the feathers would be scoring twenty times more ass than Ferry? Sounds like it was 95% because of his gift of gab, while Ferry was more awkward and took a few years to grow into his suave dracula-lounge-lizard phase.

I'm re-listening to everything as I go along. It's illuminating, knowing the story behind the Fripp collaborations, his first solo album, The Winkies, Manzanera's album, etc.

― Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, 22 July 2008 23:12 (seventeen years ago)

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