Brian Eno alluded to his love of heavy metal* and cited the Velvet Underground, a band that „wouldn’t have passed a single audition,“ as one of his biggest influences. He contrasted rock’s anarchic character with classical music’s hierarchical structure. „This music doesn’t come from above, it comes from below, it comes out of the ground,“ he said. „It’s not an accident that a whole revolution in how we think about gender and sexuality has happened in the last 50 years, because there has been a whole lot of art about it as well, David Bowie not least. There’s been a whole conversation, really, about who people could be, about what you were allowed to be.“ He pointed to Anohni, a Sonar headliner this year, as „a very good example of someone who has held this conversation.“
* I doubt Brian has a big heavy metal collection, but he loves some of those bands, maybe – btw, it would be strange to call the Velvet Underground a metal band, in spite of Lou’s solo Metal Machine Music. Speaking of Metal traditions, Brian actually loves the quality of immersion in sound, some of the walls of sound of Metal’s darker genres have been striving for a long time. And successfully so, at least if they didn’t wrap it around reactionary politics, satanism and similarly fucking mess … And, yes, the anarchy element of rock has been sabotaged (at least in parts) from the beginning, from all sides, but there have been those people, too, and smaller companies, communities who simply followed their vision, gave a shit on expectations, loved resistance, and banned nostalgia. And, thanks to people not trapped in the hierarchcal structure of classical music, even this music from the days of old can get rid of its ridiculous „peak of the mountain“-views.“ For example, you play „Misty“, you play „For Alina“, you play „Skeleton Tree“, alone at home. And of course you stop thinking in higher and lower arts. First lesson for musicians who don’t want to turn into complete idiots or Scientologists. Not to be misunderstood, the impact of rock music on our lives within the last 50 years has been far superior to the world of classic music lovers and Bayreuth pilgrims. And fir all the good reasons. You remember old fashioned music teachers who bored us to death with fucking Freischütz?! (m.e.)