Legendary musician, composer and producer Brian Eno speaks to In The Studio about his creative process and the innovative ways music can be used for the good of the planet.
In the Studio is the BBC World Service programme which takes you into the minds of the world's most creative people, with unprecedented access. A rare honour, we are welcomed inside the hallowed soundproofed walls of his London studio, up close and personal to one of the most important artists and producers of the 20th and 21st century.
In 2021 Brian Eno founded the ground-breaking organisation EarthPercent, a charity which aims to raise $100m by 2030. The money - from royalties of partner artists - is being used to reduce the environmental impact of the music industry. Among the musicians with whom he is currently collaborating are Coldplay, CHVRCHES, Nile Rogers, Anna Calvi, Louis VI and Michael Stipe.
This documentary follows Brian Eno into the studio as he works in collaborative partnerships on new material that list 'Earth' as co-writer.
Quotes
On his creative journey, Brian Eno says: “Like many art students, I left college and joined a band. Unusual sort of person to be in a band, because I didn't really play any instruments. I used electronics and made soundscapes, if you like. I thought of myself as a kind of sonic painter, really.”
“At the same time, I didn't give up my visual art. So that's my parallel career. The third thing is, I work as a producer. That means I help other people make their records. And I guess the fourth thing now, more and more, is that I'm an activist. I am actively involved in trying to work on social change.”
Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent: You've said at various points that the process for you is more important than the outcome.
Brian Eno: “Yeah, I'm not really interested in making things by boring processes. So quite often, the way I start on something is by designing the process so thinking of what would be a kind of interesting procedure, and then going ahead and making it and then waiting to see if anything like this happens.”
Brian Eno: “I think when you're an artist, what you're doing is experimenting with making other worlds. So you're creating a kind of world, and it can be a great big world, like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or it can be a tiny little world, like an earring, but what you're doing is saying, how do you feel about these values? Artists are basically feelings merchants. They're ways of making you have feelings. And that seems at first sight, a little bit trivial, but actually, feelings are the first, our first responses to things. And we really make most of our difficult and important decisions on the basis of our feelings. Things like, what am I going to do with my life? Who do I want to be with? Who do I want to vote for? Those things are not generally rational decisions. They're decisions made on the basis of feelings. And I think feelings are the beginning of thinking. Feelings happen before thinking happens, and thinking happens before action happens. So feelings are at the root of things and I think that's the material that artists work in.”
In recent years, Eno's feelings about nature and the state of the environment have become central to his artistic output.
On climate change, Brian says: “I notice that hardly any of our politicians are talking about the most important problem. The most important problem isn't a few immigrants coming into the country on boats. The most important problem isn't China developing AI. The most important problem is that the ship is sinking, and it's happening quite fast, and a lot of my friends and people I knew were also concerned about this issue. What can we do about it? Those people in government aren't doing anything about it. How can the rest of us do anything, well, we have to somehow take it into our own hands.”
Speaking about EarthPercent, Brian says: “This idea of tapping into the very many income streams that there are in music and saying to people, would you give us 1% of that? Would you give us 1% of your tour income? Would you give us 1% of an album income? So we want to sort of insert a little tap to that huge flow and siphon some off and put it into these good people who are doing great work all over the world, people working in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, local people who look after the forest. It's where they live.”
“Those are the people we should be giving money to. They know how it works there, and they have every reason. So we wanted EarthPercent to be a place that sort of sucks in a little bit of all this vast amount of money that goes through the music business and feeds it back out to these people who are, in fact, the people protecting our future. It's a very simple idea, and it's starting to work.”
In The Studio: Brian Eno is presented by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent. It is a 2 Degrees West Production by Louise Orchard for the BBC World Service.
Available to stream now on BBC Sounds.
