U2 Interviews
- Brian Eno about Passengers
- © Knight-Ridder News Service, 1995.
BY TOM MOON
It started with a producer's simple ''Why don't we try ...''
The members of U2 and their producer, Brian Eno, were
finishing up 1993's ''Zooropa'' album. The work had progressed
more quickly than most U2 projects, but near the end, Eno says,
the band hit ''a stone wall.''
''In the studio, it's easy to get to the screwdriver level,
where you're debating about the slightest things and getting
obsessive,'' Eno said last week from his New York hotel,
recalling the genesis of ''Original Soundtracks I,'' on which he
and U2 perform as the collective Passengers. ''Soundtracks''
arrives in stores Tuesday.
''I suggested we do some improvising sessions, just turn the
tape on and play, so we were working with a broad brush rather
than the one-hair brushes we'd been using. It was designed to
open us up a little, and it proved to be a good way of
originating music.''
The recordings were so fruitful that Eno proposed more. After
the ''Zoo TV'' tour, the band returned to the studio -- without
an agenda, he said, or a specific project in mind. From the
sessions' 25 hours of taped experimentation came ''Soundtracks,''
which reflects both the band's pop instincts and Eno's
predilection for ethereal, ''ambient'' music that moves slowly
and doesn't demand conscious attention.
As always, Eno's touch is evident throughout. The 47-year-old
pop visionary, who has midwifed important works by David Bowie,
Talking Heads and others, is a master of moods. Where other
producers work to capture unusual instrumentation, Eno develops
textures, a nearly tangible sonic world that suggests whole ways
of being. He electrifies otherwise mundane material by limiting
the range of sounds. His austere productions create
heart-pounding drama from the wispiest sources. ''I completely
admire economy,'' explains Eno, in what could be his mantra.
In order to guide U2 toward a more exploratory way of making
music, Eno devoted considerable time to preproduction. He
generated a number of sequences and rhythm patterns, which were
ready to use at a moment's notice. He decorated the walls with
rare cloths from Africa, India and the Arab world. He installed a
huge monitor and stockpiled a wide range of videos. ''When things
started getting dull, you'd just pop in a different tape,'' he
said.
One cut on the 14-song ''Soundtracks'' -- ''Miss Sarajevo,'' a
song that features Bono and Luciano Pavarotti -- was inspired by
a TV documentary of the same name. Other pieces on the album,
which was finished in less than two months, were commissioned for
films or suggested by existing films.
''News footage from 1953. Animations from students at the
Royal College of Art. Films from the Orient. Everything. The idea
was to have enough different types of things to suit whatever
musical situation.''
''More and more of my energy goes into preparation, because
then the act of actually making the music is relatively fast,''
Eno said. ''This is in opposition to the way most people
generally work -- they're inside the music all the time. What I
tried to do was think about what eventualities to expect. I
needed to have things in reserve.''
Eno, who has produced U2 landmarks including ''The Joshua
Tree,'' says that vocalist Bono, guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam
Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. have always taken an
improvisatory approach to songwriting.
''A lot of their material would come from them standing around
playing. What they would do then is say, 'OK, let's get (the
fragments) properly structured.' ... They were generating the
seeds that became songs.
''I love that sense of discovery. So I told them on this
project, we'd just work with whatever we got. What we'd generate
was not a map of the material, but the material itself.''
Eno -- who said he wouldn't be surprised if other passages
from these sessions turn up on the ''rock and roll'' record U2
plans to release next summer -- played synthesizer and acted as
the archivist, notating particularly inspired moments in a log.
He devised various ''games'' to keep the musicians on their toes,
such as requiring everyone to switch instruments for a
segment.
Though it sounds like the inclusion of Pavarotti was another
game, Eno says the legendary tenor suggested the duet.
''He was really easy to work with -- he (recorded) the high
notes first. People always assume that classical music is
earnestly correct in the way it works, but those guys really know
how to cheat. We've got nothing on them.''
When the nightly sessions ended, Eno would retrieve the
important moments, then mix them. His mission was to capture the
development of certain episodes or ideas, but to keep things at a
manageable length.
''Listening to the original improvisations as they came off
the floor, you feel the excitement of the process. The dynamic
between things falling apart slightly and coming back together
again is an important aspect of improvisation. You have to be
careful not to disturb the organic flow of the thing.''
As Eno talks about the editing process, it's clear that he's
not satisfied with all the cuts. Like many multimedia and
electronic-music artists in the years before the computer boom,
Eno feels limited by the current technology. His goal is to offer
listeners more options, different ways of experiencing the same
music.
''Like 'Always Forever Now,''' he said, citing another
''Soundtracks'' cut. ''The full-length (version) of that is
really fabulous. What you would really like to be able to do is
have records or movies or whatever where you could offer choices.
The listener could get radio length, a slightly more expanded
'standard' length, and a 'train-spotter' length for people who
want all the gory details and the whole sweep of the thing.''
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