Brian Eno Song Quotations

At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly.

Songs that don't depend on composition depend instead on performance - so the fire has to be there in the playing.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'

I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

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.

I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn't what they wanted. So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people "Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work." And of course I'm very pleased if people like all of them, but I don't want them to feel deceived at any point.

I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.