The musician Brian Eno compared to Jackson Pollock
British composer Brian Eno is perhaps the biggest name in ambient music. Having started his career with Roxy Music in the early 1970s before venturing into solo pop and ambient music, Eno quickly became known for his collages of sound, as well as his collaborations with the likes of David Byrne and David Bowie. With a glittering CV, Eno also produced a number of albums by Talking Heads and U2.
With a career spanning over half a century, Eno has made a name for himself as a musical icon to this day. Retaining cultural relevance, he most recently put out an album with long-time mentee and rising electronic producer Fred Again.
His name has commanded a cultural recognition not unlike Jackson Pollock, the American abstract impressionist who made a similar impact on the art world as Eno has in music. Coining the “drip technique”, Pollock’s work influenced the art movements that followed and have been referenced throughout pop culture.
In 2016, Brian Eno shared his favourite records with William Doyle during a feature with The Quietus, comparing Sly and The Family Stone’s 1973 album Fresh to a Jackson Pollock painting.
He spoke about his intro to the band, stating: “I didn’t know much about Sly, and I’d only heard the two hits that he’d had, which were ‘Everyday People’, which I loved because of that bass line which goes all the way through without changing once, and ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’, and I loved them, but I didn’t think that much of them.”
He continues to describe an evening in London in 1971 surrounded by jazz-influenced musos who smoked a lot. He said: “They were all talking about this album and how it set the scene for something totally new, and I was interested because they were very serious people who were into Coltrane and Charlie Parker, yet this was a pop record.”
Eno compares the composition to that of a Jackson Pollock work. He called the album “so sketchy, the whole thing, it hardly holds together. It’s like little flicks of paint. Instead of an organised composition, it’s just people throwing in these little touches, and somehow, it coheres. It’s like the first time I saw a Jackson Pollock or something.”
He also notes how the record solidified his own techniques. “Another interesting thing about this is I had just started experimenting with rhythm boxes, which were considered beyond the pale by most musicians… Then I heard this (first track, ‘In Time’), where one is playing alongside Andy Newmark, one of the great drummers of all time. But there’s nothing really holding it together except the rhythm box.”
Sly and The Family Stone’s methods seem to align with some of Eno’s – many of his lengthy ambient works seem to piece together different elements that somehow come together.
