Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Gibson NOVEMBER 27, 2010 - by Ellen Barnes

THE BASS-IS FOR BRIAN ENO'S LOVE OF TALKING HEADS AND U2

Brian Eno spoke with a German radio station this week about his famous work with U2 and the Talking Heads, for whom he produced iconic albums like Remain In Light, Achtung Baby, The Joshua Tree, and more. Eno released his own album, Small Craft On A Milk Sea, earlier this month.

"I appreciate minimalists," explained Eno. "So, I always like people who get big results without very much action. I've always liked minimalists actually; when I was a kid the first painter I really liked was Mondrian. It struck me as magic that someone could do something so simple as those, you know, those typical Mondrian pictures with three primary colours, that something so simple could have such an effect on me. And I was always much more impressed by that kind of magic than the people who used every trick in the book and every color, and that didn't seem like magic to me."

Talking specifically about Talking Heads, Eno singled out bassist Tina Weymouth, calling her "one of the great bass players." When discussing U2, Eno said, "You can't imagine U2 without Adam [Clayton]; you simply couldn't imagine that band. But he's not in the sort-of typical sense 'a good bass player.' He's just exactly the right bass player for that band."

When it comes to potential collaborators, Eno said he looks for a specific kind of person.

"Now, I think anything good comes either out of excitement or out of obsession: you don't have to be excited to be obsessed and you don't have to be obsessed to be excited," said Eno. "But you've got to be one or the other, or some mixture of the two, to do anything."