page_title: Brian Eno
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Brian Eno / Career / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: Brian Eno in AVRO's TopPop (Dutch television show) in 1974
context_page_description: Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI is an English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop and electronica. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures.
  Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid 1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesizer player in 1971, recording two albums with the group but departing in 1973 amidst tensions with Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry. Eno went on to record a number of solo albums beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets. In the mid-1970s, he began exploring a minimalist direction on releases such as Discreet Music and Ambient 1: Music for Airports, coining the term "ambient music" with the latter.
context_section_description: Eno's professional music career began in London when he became a founder member (1971–1973) of the glam/art rock band Roxy Music. Initially Eno did not appear on stage at their live shows, but operated the mixing desk, processing the band's sound with a VCS3 synthesiser and tape recorders, and singing backing vocals. He did, however, eventually appear on stage as a performing member of the group, usually flamboyantly costumed. He quit the band on completing the promotional tour for the band's second album, For Your Pleasure, because of disagreements with lead singer Bryan Ferry and boredom with the rock star life.
  In 1992, he described his Roxy Music tenure as important to his career: "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting [saxophonist Andy Mackay], I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now". During his period with Roxy Music, and for his first three solo albums, he was credited on records only as 'Eno'.
  Eno embarked on a solo career almost immediately. Between 1973 and 1977, he created four albums of electronically inflected art pop: Here Come the Warm Jets (1973), Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974), Another Green World (1975), and Before and After Science (1977). Tiger Mountain contains the galloping "Third Uncle", one of Eno's best-known songs, owing in part to its later being covered by Bauhaus and 801. Critic Dave Thompson writes that the song is "a near punk attack of riffing guitars and clattering percussion, 'Third Uncle' could, in other hands, be a heavy metal anthem, albeit one whose lyrical content would tongue-tie the most slavish air guitarist."
  These four albums were remastered and reissued in 2004 by Virgin's Astralwerks label. Due to Eno's decision not to add any extra tracks of the original material, a handful of tracks originally issued as singles have not been reissued, including the single mix of "King's Lead Hat", the title of which is an anagram of "Talking Heads", whilst "Seven Deadly Finns" and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" were included on the deleted Eno Box II: Vocal.
  During this period, Eno also played three dates with Phil Manzanera in the band 801, a "supergroup" that performed more or less reworked selections from albums by Eno, Manzanera, and Quiet Sun, as well as covers of songs by The Beatles ("Tomorrow Never Knows") and The Kinks ("You Really Got Me").
  In 1967, Eno developed a tape delay system. The technique involved two Revox tape recorders set up side by side, with the tape unspooling from the first deck being carried over to the second deck to be spooled.  This enabled sound recorded on the first deck to be played back by the second deck at a time delay that varied with the distance between the two decks and the speed of the tape (typically a few seconds). Working with Robert Fripp (from King Crimson) the pair used this system in their collaboration (No Pussyfooting) (1973). Subsequently, Fripp referred to this method as "Frippertronics". In 1975, Fripp and Eno released a second album, Evening Star, and played several live shows in Europe.
  Eno was a prominent member of the performance art-classical orchestra the Portsmouth Sinfonia – having started playing clarinet with them in 1972. In 1973, he produced the orchestra's first album The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics (released in March 1974) and in 1974, he produced the live album Hallelujah! The Portsmouth Sinfonia Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a recording of their infamous May 1974 concert (released in October 1974). In addition to producing both albums, Eno performed in the orchestra on both recordings playing the clarinet. Eno also deployed the orchestra's famously dissonant string section on his second solo album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). The orchestra at this time included other musicians whose solo work he would subsequently release on his Obscure label including Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman. That year
caption: Eno appearing on Dutch television (1974)
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