27
Britain and the United States buy few rock records, and are inclined to tune in to radio sta-
tions that offer "adult contemporary" music as well as a significant proportion of oldies.
11
To some extent, Eno can be said to be following the pattern of his generation in rejecting or at
least abandoning rock music on growing into full adulthood. For most people over the age of
thirty the social context for rock music diminishes, and for musicians, particularly creative
ones of Eno's talents, the sounds of ordinary rock are almost bound to start sounding repeti-
tive and worn. Yet it ought also to be acknowledged that in the late 1960s, when Eno was ab-
sorbing rock music at a great rate, a peculiar conjunction of the popular and avant-garde mu-
sical worlds was taking place a conjunction not exactly without historical parallels (think of
the fascination jazz held for traditional composers in the 1930s, the cool jazz and third stream
music of the 1950s, and the new wave music and performance art of the late 1970s and early
1980s), but a conjunction that provided an ideal cultural backdrop for Eno's own developing
ideas. The late 1960s were the age of happenings, of pop art, of the Beatles' most progressive
period, of rock music appearing to matter in spheres musical, political, and intellectual. It was
also the era of pysychedelic music, which Eno singled out as a phenomenon whose ideal
value and purpose the production of an expanded awareness he has found lacking in the
run of more recent rock.
If the pop/art cultural interaction of the late 1960s provided the twenty-year-old Eno with
broad-ranging stimulation and plenty of raw material for his own theories, and if the Eno of
the 1980s has abandoned rock after having repeatedly criticized it broadly and incisively, in
the 1970s he would still leap to its defense when he felt it was being treated pompously by the
wrong people for the wrong reasons. In 1978 he reportedly let loose the following diatribe:
One of the things I'm finding quite infuriating at the moment is the
continuous attempt by middle-class critics to validate rock music.
They're saying to people, "You can't fucking hear anything because
you're dumb, but this or that is terribly important." That's no basis for
liking something. If you approach something on that basis, "God, this
is important," then it doesn't give you any real information.
Rock music is such a liberated form, and will remain that way as long
as the middle-class critics stay off it. It doesn't have any snobbishness
about its development. People aren't afraid of just playing old Chuck
Berry riffs still, twenty years later. There aren't all those petty restric-
tions about how you've got to innovate, it's got to be new.
12
11
The demographics of record consumption is actually a complex subject, with hard data not
always easy to come by or interpret. A 1985 joint market survey by the Recording Industry
Association of America and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers found that
"the demographic breakdown showed the staying power of the Big Chill generation and its
elders the 35-plus demographic accounted for 26% of prerecorded music purchased, with
young people age 30-34 buying 11%. Younger listeners, however, held sway, with a total of
63% the 25-29 group, 14%, 20-24, 15%, 15-19, 25%, and 10-14, 9%." Bill Holland, "Cas-
settes Take 2-1 Lead Over Vinyl in Survey," Billboard 98:50 (13 Dec. 1986), 73.
12
Lee Moore, "Eno = MC Squared," Creem 10 (Nov. 1978), 68.