Brian Eno Quotes
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I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.
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Sometimes something intrigues me about particular sounds, how they work together, and I think "Okay, I've found something here; I'm going to take it somewhere." And sometimes just to find a name for that sound, whatever it is, ends up becoming a title of the piece or becoming part of the title.
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Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.
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Some people are very good at being 'stars' and it suits them. I'm grudging about it and I find it annoying.
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For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.
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You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I'm obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
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What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest - the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
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The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can't afford to own it. So it isn't really part of their life in the way that music can be.
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I often say to people that producing is the best-paid form of cowardice. When you produce things, you almost always get credit if it's a good record, but you hardly ever get the blame if it's not! You don't really take responsibility for your work.
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People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
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I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.
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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.
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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.
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The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.
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I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.
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Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
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In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.
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Attention is what creates value. Artworks are made as well by how people interact with them - and therefore by what quality of interaction they can inspire.
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If you've spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.
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I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
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If there is a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks; it will come from people who eat granola and think they know how the world should be.
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Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer.
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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.
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I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them "Our exercise today is not to use 'undo' at all. So, there's no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take. There's no sort of drop in, change that little bit". The session broke down in, I'd say, 40 minutes. It was impossible for people to work in that restriction any longer.