Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

The Wire JUNE 1996 - by John L. Walters

BRIAN ENO: A YEAR WITH SWOLLEN APPENDICES

May 3, 1996. Catch up on phone calls. Agree to review Eno's diary. Watch terrible 'comedy thriller' on TV, full of guns and violent death.

May 4. R's birthday. Cards and presents in mail. And big jiffy bag with Eno book. Start reading from the pink pages, the 'swollen appendices' at the back of the book. Riveting stuff: essays about 'Pretension' (view word as a compliment), 'Celebrities and aid-giving', 'Axis thinking' (this is how I think, I think). Hide the book before | get too hooked. Party with seventeen children.

May 5. Start reading Eno's diary entries for 1995, which make up the bulk of the book. I like the way he drops obscure names alongside the famous ones, plugging Nicholas Albery's Compendium Of Social Innovations as well as Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte. The Bosnian thread that runs through book adds a serious dimension - in April he visits Mostar in preparation for the War Child project: "Drove... past those front-line East Mostar buildings so ruthlessly, hatefully hacked by shell holes." At a radio station he sees "the face of fascism close up". Later in the same entry he cautions: "Must be careful not to become indignant on someone else's behalf." That's the great thing about the diary format - you can have it all ways.

May 6. Buy Being Digital. Second sentence begins: "As a child I read train timetables instead of the classics..." Listen to Eno's Desert Island Selection, a bargain buy from Leather Lane shop. Find myself humming Rhinestone Cowboy.

May 7. J off school with cold. Revises maths papers while I work.

I'm half way through Eno's year. Is the appeal in a famous person's diary that of reading the details of subject's life that are just as mundane as ours, or of vicariously sharing the extraordinary bits: death-defying car rides with Bono, jetting off to New York and Egypt: persuading Wired to pay him $1000 for an interview? Is it only appealing to happily married record producers who live in inner London with two small daughters?

Take part in BBC Radio 3 discussion. Best bits after tape stops

May 8. Tons of mail. Listen to Michael Parsons tape. A thought: if MP were as rich and famous as BE (and vice versa), would we all be saying: "You must check out Brian's work, he's incredibly underrated"?

Whenever I read something particularly quotable in a review book, I fold down the top corner a little way. Eno's book is now a great concertina of folds.

Party at building site for new South Bank club run by Blast First/Disobey's Paul Smith. Meet someone who has just started reading Eno's diary - he's taken with the bits about enlarging female bottoms in Photoshop. Home late, but read more. I can't believe it: Eno loses £20 betting that 519 is a prime number! A lot of money to gamble on such an easy calculation.

More problems for the next century: innumeracy and deafness.

May 9. School trip to local museum with R's class by public transport. Nice letter from Jan Steele. Long day.

Reach October in Eno's diary, where he grumbles about the "cynical sniping", "clever-clever sarcasm" and "whingeing columnists" of the English press. A week later he's awarding an OBN to Sue Lawley for her Desert Island Discs with Alan Yentob. Is our press the way it is because we privately think that way?

Trial opening paragraph for book review: "This is a godsend for wives and girlfriends who fret about what to give that special man who has everything Buy him Eno's book. Better than a novel or a CD, Eno's A Year With Swollen Appendices is a great nosy browse of an arty, farty book to dip into, quote from, argue with, make fun of and thoroughly enjoy."

Very little detail in the entries describing days in the studio. Sort of: "got up, made record with David Bowie went to sleep" stuff.

May 10. Impossible day. Piles of work; deadlines; computer crashes while trying to e-mail The Wire. C calls to say there's a big piece about Eno in The Guardian.

Collect children from school, boiled eggs for tea. How does Eno remember to keep saving computer work (on new 'generative music' software)? He balances a book on his head. When it falls off, he saves. Good for posture, too.

E-mail from R re Eno: "I wish he'd bottle some of what he's got, I'd camp out all night to buy some." I tell a journalist friend about A Year and he asks: "Does he write well?" "Yes, he does," I reply. "Bastard!"

Eno quotes a guy who says: "Most women I know think you're very fanciable."

On October 11 Eno turns down a request (and $30,000) for a piece of his to be used in "the fifteenth movie this year basically about shooting", saying: "The shooting scenes occupy progressively more time and attention and special effects - like endless come-shots."

May 11. At Cannes, Dustin Hoffman and Francis Ford Coppola attack culture of violence in present-day Hollywood.

Eno writes admiringly of someone: "1 can see how someone like her is a real catalyst... [with] no inhibitions at all to try and make things happen - even when there is a chance she'll come out of it badly. She's a real chancer." Does he see himself like this? Chancer was the word used to describe Eno in a mixed Guardian profile last year.

Mixed reviews for the Passengers album (a collaboration with U2) prompt Eno to muse that "it would be useful to know where the reviewers were actually coming from: every review should have, below the name of the critic, their ten favourite works in the medium".

OK then: Money Into Light (John Boorman), The Mezzanine (Nicholson Baker), The Diary Of A Nobody (George and Weedon Grossmith), What A Carve-Up (Jonathan Coe), Hal Willner's Short Cuts diary in Projections 3, The Real Frank Zappa Book, Sing The Body Electric (Adam Lively), Silence (John Cage), File Under Popular (Chris Cutler), Ocean Of Sound (David Toop)... Is there room for all this?

When Princess Di appears on Panorama, Eno tries to speak over the TV, prompting his wife to say "Sh!" very forcefully, which is exactly what my wite did that night. Eno is shaping up well as a sort of 'slice of life' columnist, like William Leith, or Richard Ingrams.

Bosnia comes back into view as the War Child Mostar centre starts construction and the US steps in: "We're starting to hear more of what actually happened. the level of atavistic brutality (particularly against the Muslims) was really sickening."

Back home, he coins a slogan: "CHANGE THE CONVERSATION - LEAVE OUT THE TORIES."

May 12. Finished! Some of the appendices are very stimulating - Eno's essays about fair credits for collaborative processes and the way pop music works should be required reading for anybody who gets too depressed (or triumphalist) about the 'market value' of music. And then he writes about his family with complete naturalness: very few theories or digressions but a lot of warmth. He's been a father for twenty-eight years!

He understands (or struggles to comprehend) many of the things that hover around the edges of our thoughts about culture, life and music. A jumble of Bosnia and backing vocals and bottoms. And he gets things done. He meets his deadlines. How does do it all? He gets up early. He married his manager.

Some personal confessions put you off the writer, but A Year makes me like Eno more. Maybe print is the best medium yet for his restless mind. One of the broadsheet newspapers should snap him up immediately.