"We have Nobel prizes for that end." His idea is that control is what we generally believe the greats – Shakespeare, Picasso, Einstein, Wagner – were about. "We've tended to dignify the controlling end of the spectrum," he says. On one side of Eno's scale diagram, he writes "control" on the other "surrender". Over the course of a couple of hours, he will threaten me with violence, teach me about shipbuilding, chat about surfing, and explain why religion is similar to sex and drugs. This, it transpires, isn't so much an interview as a gentle lecture by a widely read, reflective gent. Admittedly, if he was an ordinary mortal, you wouldn't give two hoots, but Eno is one of the most consistently diverting creative presences in Britain: godfather of ambient music, visual artist, Prospect magazine columnist, one-time bemulletted techno-whizz at Roxy Music's keyboards, and the record producer who made U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie and even Coldplay sound so compelling.Įno moves his mug and draws me a diagram. In an age in which we venerate the idea of the lonely artist toiling in a garret before coming down to present the Great Work, Eno wants to suggest alternative visions of how art is made, how it works, and why we need it. The artist christened Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in Suffolk 61 years ago is, fingers crossed, wrong.
Why don't they die, these people?'" Eno takes a rueful sip of his Flor de Jamaica hibiscus tea – a choice of beverage that might seem to confirm his point.
"This article is going to come out and people are going to say, 'Another fucking hippie. 'I know this is all going to sound terrible," says Brian Eno over tea at his Notting Hill studio.
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