25
listening. More than that, he wanted to distance himself from pop philosophically: "Pop music
isn't by any means the central issue of my life, it's hardly a peripheral one."
3
Eno has always had paradoxical views on the subject of rock music, and even with his solo
progressive rock albums of the early 1970s, he was in a sense not so much making rock music
as he was making music about rock music. As we noted in Chapter One, critic John Rockwell
has singled out such a self-conscious attitude as the unifying factor behind the genre of art
rock, and if Stravinsky was right in saying that the real criticism of a piece of music lies in
other pieces that are "about" that piece, then we should expect to find Eno's real critical voice
in his music itself. However committed to his art he has been and continues to be, Eno is si-
multaneously curiously aloof, removed from everyday pop realities. In 1974, early in his ca-
reer, he was interested in somehow uniting the two kinds of music that interested him most,
the "fiercely intellectual, fiercely anti-physical" quality of avant-garde music and the "fiercely
physical, fiercely anti-intellectual" quality of rock. "I wanted to try to find a meeting of the
two which would actually not be frightened of either force. Rock musicians are frightened of
any kind of discussion of what they do ... I do think that rock music is the most important art
form right now."
4
The key concept here is his reference to rock as an art form. It was a concept that was idealis-
tically shared by many musicians, critics, and fans in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For Eno,
rock held out this possibility that music could be mentally stimulating as well as sensuously
accessible, intellectual as well as physical, conceptual as well as popular. That this was more
often an ideal than a reality was one of the main lessons of his experiences with Roxy Music.
In 1975 he discussed their early and subsequent music:
If I listen to the first album now, I still find it a bold statement. But
what happened is what happens to most bands: they become successful
...
Unfortunately, if you want to make a lot of money in rock music you
have one good idea and then you do it again and again. You don't even
have to have a good, original idea if you conform to the existing pat-
tern.
5
Clearly, if Eno had once proclaimed rock the most important contemporary art form, he
stopped far short of embracing all rock music as being equally valuable, and was only too
aware of the homogenizing pressures of the music industry. In a 1980 interview he argued
strongly for risk-taking and experimentation, criticizing rock musicians for being too nar-
rowly goal-oriented, unwilling to "dabble and play." "Any music worth anything is born in
clumsiness and chaos ... Rock isn't dangerous any more." Eno thought that rock was losing
one of its greatest strengths, its ability to incorporate ideas from a variety of musical tradi-
tions. Rock was becoming "a progressively more insular form."
6
3
Steven Grant, "Brian Eno Against Interpretation," Trouser Press 9 (Aug. 1982), 28.
4
Cynthia Dagnal, "Eno and the Jets: Controlled Chaos," Rolling Stone 169 (12 Sept. 1974),
16.
5
Allan Jones, "Eno Class of `75," Melody Maker 50 (29 Nov. 1975), 14.
6
Bruce Dancis, "Studio Plays Big Role in Music Composition, Says Brian Eno," Billboard 92
(22 March 1980), 29.