In 2010 the BBC show Arena did an hour-long program about Brian Eno. They called the show “Another Green World” but it does not focus on Eno’s third album at all, it’s just a nice title.
In the typical Arena style, the show is almost more of a loose essay than a straightforward documentary. Time is spent with the composer, then there’s footage of Eno playing with Roxy Music, then a clip of Eno on stage with Richard Dawkins, none of it sequenced with any rhyme or reason. It can be a very effective method of getting an impression across. Eno is so charming and interesting that it’s no trouble hanging out with him for a bit
Some wonderful moments…. Eno admits to an unseen interviewer that yes, he did get more women than Bryan Ferry but he can’t say how much that bothered Ferry. (It almost certainly did.) Eno enthusing about Donna Summer’s “State of Independence,” produced by Giorgio Moroder, praising its unlikely mix of Kraftwerk-y rhythms and gospel. He also admires the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” most saliently because it was so obviously composed in the studio, which was Eno’s signature method as well. He actually plays a faltering rendition of it on an acoustic guitar, which is just odd.
For some reason it charms me that Eno is into John Conway’s game of life, which he calls “one of the great experiments of the twentieth century.”
A wonderful way to kill an hour.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s ‘Oblique Strategies,’ the original handwritten cards
That time Brian Eno posed nude for Bob Guccione