The song Brian Eno called “one of the great records”
Brian Eno has an impeccable ear; after all, it only took one meeting with the Talking Heads before they began their monumentous musical collaboration, one that would result in three albums produced by the man over three years.
But it wasn’t a Talking Heads tune that Eno described as “one of the great records”, despite their close camaraderie and incredible teamwork. Instead, he picked a single showcasing the best of world music, which blended indigenous and Australian folk themes, and felt at once universal and oddly specific, eerie in its prehistoric worldliness, and it was a song written and played by Rolf Harris.
Eno had a lot of love for the Australian musician, television personality, painter, and actor, where in an interview with Uncut from 2005, he was asked, rather specifically, if he believed that Harris’ influence had been underestimated, and he responded, “I see Rolf not so much as the missing link in the history of electronic music, more as the weak link”.
He continued, “I think, if Rolf is going to be remembered, it won’t be for his Stylophone but for ‘Sun Arise’. That’s one of the great records. I recorded a cover of that which I’ve never released. It’s very good, actually. But I’m not convinced that Rolf was more of an influence on the development of electronic music than, say, Kraftwerk.”
There’s a lot to unpack here: First, fans might do the greater music industry a service and write to Eno, asking him to release the cover. Second, ‘Sun Arise’ is such a left-field pick for one of the greatest tunes of all time, it could only ever come from Eno.
In fact, Harris wrote the piece in collaboration with the naturalist Harry Butler, endeavouring to capture the thrumming repetition of much Aboriginal music, and the lyrics paint the story of Aboriginal oral history in which the sun is a goddess. The work was an unlikely smash hit, reaching number three in the UK charts in 1962, after it had been released over a year earlier in Australia.
The musician used an array of unusual instruments, including the didgeridoo, the sound of which in this track was imitated by four double basses. Beyond the didgeridoo, Harris even created his own instrument, the wobble board, but unfortunately, did not live up to Eno’s estimations.
No, he won’t be remembered for this beautiful exploration of the importance of repetition, oratorial myth-building, and community in ‘Sun Arise’, and instead his darker legacy, where in 2014, he was jailed for five years and nine months for being found guilty of indecently assaulting four girls and young women, including the best friend of his daughter, who was 13.
On the other hand, Eno has proven himself an admirable hero of our current age, and we need only look at his fundraiser, Together for Palestine, which took place at Wembley Arena on September 17th. The likes of Damon Albarn, King Krule, Bastille, Rina Sawayama, Jamie XX, Hot Chip, and Paloma Faith joined the visionary man for a night of resistance against the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza.
