Brian Eno Quotes
"Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music, Attention, Listening, Musicians, Sense, Tension)
"Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music, Words)
"Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Trying)
"It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Change)
"If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones."
- Brian Eno
"If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Quality, Echo, Effect, Trees)
"If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Body)
"If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Act, Emotion, Listening, Surrender, Want)
"My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Writing)
"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Experience, Music, Thought, Composers)
"In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter."
- Brian Eno
(Related: People, Song, Trying)
"Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Being, Building, Fun, Merit)
"One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Knowledge, Results)
"People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words."
- Brian Eno
(Related: People, Meaning, Song, Songs, Words)
"Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!"
- Brian Eno
(Related: First, Will)
"Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach."
- Brian Eno
"The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Work, Idea, Computer, Decisions)
"The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music)
"The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Play, Reason)
"When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Idea, Rest)
"When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Country, England, Tradition, Weight)
"I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Speech)
"For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards."
- Brian Eno
(Related: First, Sound)
"The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Idea, Brothers, World)
"Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music, Research, Want)
"I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Guitar, Years)
"Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music)
"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Art, Music, Ambition, Beginning)
"Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Time, Collaboration, Quick)
"I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Technology, People, Amusement, Fun, Machines)
"For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Time, World)
"A part of me has become immortal, out of my control."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Control)
"I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Forget, Mind, Past, Trying)
"I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich."
- Brian Eno
"I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Freedom)
"I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Learning, Trouble)
"I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Work, Idea, Personality)
"I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Art, Thought, Magic, School)
"I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Voice)
"As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Sound)
"I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Song)
"I take sounds and change them into words."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Change, Words)
"I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium."
- Brian Eno
"I often work by avoidance."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Work)
"I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy."
- Brian Eno
(Related: People, Countries, Energy, Ireland)
"I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman. When I'm on form, I can sell anything."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Talent, People)
"I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!"
- Brian Eno
(Related: Music, Hate, Tradition)
"I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years."
- Brian Eno
(Related: Thought, Magic, Play, Years)