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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

I suppose I am reluctant about being any sort of ‘star’ and I didn’t particularly want to be portrayed as one.

Brian Eno

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  People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.

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  Cultural objects have no notable identity outside of that which we confer upon them. Their value is entirely a product of the interaction that we have with them.

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  It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.

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  At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

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  When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.

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  The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.

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  It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

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  With all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world.

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  My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

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  I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

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• 

  If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

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  I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being a bit like something that was a success on a previous record, they’re inclined to encourage that.

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• 

  I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence , heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

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  Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I’m struggling all the way through to think, “What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I’m hearing that I like so much?”

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  I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

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• 

  We’re going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It’s the result of machines that were designed as word processors being used for making music.

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• 

  I wanted to use the studio like a microscope for sound, which is what good engineers do.

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• 

  The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.

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• 

  What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn’t necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended.

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• 

  The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That’s like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.

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• 

  A big ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.

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• 

  Look closely at the most embarrassing details, and amplify them.

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• 

  The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.

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• 

  I think the other thing that’s important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time.

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• 

  Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

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• 

  For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

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• 

  Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.

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