Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Rolling Stone JUNE 28, 2024 - by Daniel Kreps

ROBYN HITCHCOCK RECALLS FIRST ENCOUNTERING BRIAN ENO IN MEMOIR EXCERPT

Prolific singer-songwriter focuses on instrumental year in his life in new book 1967, where the thirteen-year-old Hitchcock journeys into the Winchester arts scene frequented by the future ambient music pioneer

Robyn Hitchcock, the prolific British singer-songwriter and frontman of The Soft Boys, is releasing a new memoir that focuses on an instrumental year in his life, 1967.

1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, out Friday via Akashic Books, finds Hitchcock reminiscing about the Summer of Love-defining year as a thirteen-year-old student in the U.K., a time that "redefined the shape of everything to come and left an indelible mark on his own work as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist," as the memoir's synopsis notes.

The book covers Hitchcock's discovery of Pink Floyd and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which in part inspire his earliest attempts at songwriting and guitar playing, as well as his personal struggles as an adolescent within a rigid boarding school structure.

In this exclusive excerpt, Hitchcock writes about throwing himself into the artistic community while attending Winchester College, which - despite its name - is a private high school of sorts southwest of London. The town was also home to the Winchester School of Art, where a college-aged Brian Eno would lead a group of fellow "Scholars" on a journey into experimental music.

As Hitchcock recounts in the memoir, Eno - still years away from Roxy Music and his forays into ambient music - is "the high priest" at the musical "Happenings" in Winchester, playing Bob Dylan's music backwards at one moment and Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane simultaneously over two speakers in the next.

• • •

DOINNNNGGGG! It's late May and I'm back in the college. Jimi Hendrix has reached the House Gramophone. The groovers among my fellow inmates are trying to grow their hair long, out over their ears, over their collars, over their eyes, up toward the heavens - in every direction. There are mechanisms in place to thwart this tendency (that sentence is pure Winchester - every penny my parents paid of my fees went into writing it) - namely the housemasters:

"Hoh!" says Blotto, intercepting me sliding out of lunch one day. "I think a trim is called for here." I'm learning that the barber is the natural enemy of freedom. Soon I will learn the same thing about the police force.

The part of Winchester College where hair is at its most liberated is the original College itself, centered on the medieval courtyard - there the Scholars dwell. The College, of course, has the highest percentage of groovers; their parents, being academics and denizens of the mind in general, are less hung up on keeping their sons in short-back-and-sides than the dads and mums of inmates of the redbrick buildings such as Blotto's. I've started wandering into the Scholars' hive of late, where the sound of Jimi Hendrix is already fine-tuning the ambience via his Marshall amplifiers on shiny vinyl. Marshall stacks have yet to arrive in the Scholars' toad-kindling underworld, but they're on their way, just as they first reached me in ant form in the pigsties.

I walk into one of the Scholars' chambers. The sun shines through the cobwebs and dust in the windows. Although we're aboveground, the spores of history below our feet are wafting up to enfold us. The room extends in many directions, past rafters and beams and bookcases laden with LPs and faded Faber poetry hardbacks. The customary varnished timber mixes with bare plaster, which makes the room feel both unfinished and long past its best. The Scholars potter from desk to fireplace, burning old manuscripts to keep warm. Emblazoned in toothpaste around the central arch that keeps the Regency ceiling from crumbling on to the fourteenth-century floor is an adapted Jimi Hendrix quote:

THIS WALL WILL TURN BLUE TOMORROW
THIS WALL TURNED PINK YESTERDAY

The Scholars are self-aware enough to send themselves up even as they absorb a new fad: "Too much!" squeaks an omniscient figure in a black gown, waving his arms about. The Scholars all have to wear black gowns, in theory, but the advanced ones have learned the trick of making their gowns invisible. Incense caresses the air, while John Coltrane's saxophone plays from one speaker, and Hendrix's guitar from another.

"What's happening, man?" A group of Scholars have levitated and are sitting cross-legged below the ceiling: Galen, Simon, Jansch (who has renamed himself after Bert but is no relation), and the Ugly Pullover. Next to Bob Dylan, I feel like these people are most likely to know the meaning of life. They are a year or so older than me. I genuflect before them, in the damp straw:

"Hendrix is happening, my lieges - as ye may know. Across the plains and meads of Winchester, he..."

"Yeah, right, man," says the Ugly Pullover. "What are you doing on Sunday after chapel?"

"Er... I might see James Robertson Justice giving a lecture on tadpoles in Drainage Club, or..."

"No, man, you've gotta come here."

"Here? You mean to this precise spot?"

Up below the ceiling, they giggle, gently:

"Yeah - no, yeah, seriously, Robyn - there'll be an actual Happening, right below the floor."

"Er... below these very flagstones?" I try to nail things down as precisely as I can.

"Uh-huh, yeah: this floor you're standing on. It's Brian, you know?"

Then they float down to their positions around the fireplace, as if they'd been there all along. I so wish I had passed the Scholarship exam.

Next Sunday comes around, and back in Blotto's house after chapel I climb out of my straw hat and black suit, then don my jeans and newly acquired denim jacket. Should I wear my melon-pip beads, lovingly hand-threaded by my sister? No, I opt for a button-down orange shirt. I stomp back the way I have but lately come, through narrow streets and cloisters, past the chapel and into a small door across the courtyard from it. Down I slither into a cellar that's been there since 1382, a mere 585 years ago.

A few steep steps take my feet down to these ancient flagstones. No sunlight has fallen on them for six centuries. I smell incense: a joss stick is taking the edge off the spores, and a blue lightbulb hanging from the ceiling gives the room a submarine tranquility.

The chamber itself isn't crowded. Twenty or so seats are ranged facing the master of ceremonies. To one side of them is a reel-to-reel tape recorder: its red light chimes with the glowing tip of the incense stick. Two wires run out of the tape machine: one leads to a microphone that is draped over the back of an empty chair. I sit down in the chair behind it, in the back row. The microphone dangles above my knees. The other wire leads to an electric violin, which is cradled by the Ugly Pullover.

The master of ceremonies is definitely a groover. I've seen him before around Winchester as he's at the local art school. He has thin shoulder-length hair and a pair of blue circular sunglasses. He's the logical extension of the Scholars; being slightly older than them, he has the aura of a sage. His name is Brian Eno and he seems to know something. Eno has the authority of a teacher, yet he's subversive like a rebel. I can't take my eyes off him, and nor can the other young inmates. I recognize Galen, and Simon, and Jansch: in fact, everyone in this underground chamber is a groover - there's not a meathead in sight. At the extreme left of the front row sits the hip young teacher, Mr. Felix - he's come along to keep an eye on us. Nobody is actually breaking any rules; nonetheless the whole event feels transgressive. A telepathic murmur is underway.

Eno nods to the Ugly Pullover and the murmur fades. Then he strides across to the tape recorder and starts it up. Quietly it begins to play what I think is Bob Dylan singing Ballad Of Hollis Brown, backward. That voice is as hypnotic as ever, even in reverse. On cue, the Ugly Pullover starts running a bow over the open strings of the violin. It's a discord that mostly fights with the backward Dylan tape, but occasionally synchronizes with it.

The four elements are in place: blue lightbulb, incense, backward tape, and droning violin. The key to the event, however, is the reverence of the audience: the faith that we could not supply for the Church of England service in the chapel only an hour ago is conjured up in us and unleashed by Brian Eno. For fifteen minutes, or however long that reel of tape takes to unspool, we are absorbed by the Happening. We are witnessing a ceremony: it's uncertain what exactly the ceremony means, but Eno is definitely its high priest.

At one point, I tap the microphone, though no sound comes out of it. There are already two sonic narratives to compete with in this cellar. I look furtively around but nobody seems concerned so I lower my head and hum into the mic: again, nothing. I sit upright and resume what I imagine is a meditation posture. Part of me is most impressed to be involved in this event that has such a high groover content: I've obviously stumbled across something of enormous significance here. Part of me thinks it's a pretentious charade - probably the part of me that comes from the Forest of Dean.

"Any questions?" asks Brian, switching off the tape machine. The Ugly Pullover has lowered his violin and is sitting back down on a kitchen stool. The joss stick burns low.

Mr. Felix raises his hand:

"Yes, man?" says Brian.

"Well," says Mr. Felix, clearing his throat from the spore-and-incense fug that's beginning to coat it: "Er, how would you define this event: is this kind of thing still music - or is there a new term for it now?"

"Oh, it's all music, man: when you sneeze it's music, you know?"

Mr. Felix strokes his chin and nods his head politely. A few groovers titter at Eno's observation. He continues:

"But we must ask ourselves, do definitions help... or are they just another hang-up, you know?"

Mr. Felix looks at the floor and nods. Brian Eno looks around expectantly, awaiting the next contestant.

Nobody else volunteers, so I put up my hand. Brian nods his blue sunglasses my way:

"Was that Ballad Of Hollis Brown on the tape you were playing?"

"Aha," replies the high priest, lowering his sunglasses briefly and twinkling his eyes in the dim light.

"Would you like it to be? If you would, then it is..."

The groovers are delighted with this response and titter some more. Obstinately, I persist:

"What was this microphone for?"

"So you could do something in it, man: you know - participate."

"I tried but it was switched off."

"Next question?" says Eno firmly, looking at the other end of the audience . . .

I wonder, on my way back to Blotto's house, if witnessing this event is anything like getting stoned.