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Eno felt he had indirectly contributed to this ferment by having steadily maintained, over the
previous several years,

that it was possible to go in there [the recording studio] with a child-
like enthusiasm and dabble about and come out with something that
was interesting, and my own work, as far as I was concerned, was a
proof of that ... And I think that this was one of the many currents that
flowed into what became new wave, because as you know, many of
the new wave groups are in much the same musical position as me.
They have enthusiasm and good ideas, but no or little technical skill,
and they don't worry about that. You design your music to accomodate
the level of skill you have available to you, rather than sitting at home
and thinking, "boy, I wish I could play like Eric Clapton," which is
what people were doing when I started making records.

Finally, new wave music symbolized for Eno a healthy turning away from the overblown,
grandiose, crowded synthetic perfection of 24-track rock, as many writers have pointed out,
the means of making music once more appeared to be in the hands of the people, rather than
limited to those few who could afford the ever-increasing costs of studio time, professional
producers, and the latest electronic equipment:

One of the great liberating things about new wave was the idea that
people could once again release demos and things done in garages and
very crude acoustic situations, and one didn't regard these things as
"Oh, it's a great song ... what a pity it's so badly recorded", one said,
"Isn't that an interesting recording quality."

It is possible to view the history of black music and white music since the mid-1950s as sepa-
rate, and indeed the surgical categorization of the charts in Billboard and similar trade maga-
zines encourages one to do so. But in fact, at least since the middle of the nineteenth century,
interaction between white and black popular music styles has been a chief feature of both of
their developments. And particularly since the rise of the phonograph and the radio, the audi-
ences for music made by blacks and whites have overlapped to a considerable degree. Since
the rise of rock'n'roll, many if not most of the greatest white stars have paid homage to the
black musicians whose records showed them new musical possibilities. John Lennon, Bob
Dylan, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and Paul Simon are but a few of the white rock musicians
who have cited black musicians at least as frequently as whites when called upon to discuss
their influences. Although much of Eno's music appears on the surface to owe little directly to
black sources, he has frequently expressed admiration for a range of black popular music. Part
of the attraction of Afro-American music for him lies in what he has called its sensual proper-
ties, but characteristically, another large part of his admiration lies in the production values
that have informed specific records by specific musicians the way they have approached the
studio situation. For instance, in a 1980 interview he pointed to developments in studio tech-
nique in the mid-1960s:

Amirkhanian, "Eno at KPFA," 8.

Amirkhanian, "Eno at KPFA," 9.