Roger Eno

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. We were supposed to be home, the slippery fish of our newborn wriggling its first moments between us, in the room that would be his. We were supposed to get through it together, with the gentle coaching and guidance of a midwife, and have our baby at home. But that’s not how it worked out.

Instead, we were abandoned at the critical moment by two trusted midwives and left to the pathetic, mean-spirited curse of a third, who deserted us after casting her evil spell. After 30 hours of labor with my beautiful wife G and our unborn locked in a death-struggle, we rushed off to the hospital where they doped her up, cut her open, pulled Owen out, and, ultimately, saved both their lives.

Because it wasn’t what we were expecting, we weren’t really prepared. So once the trauma was over and everybody was safe in our hospital room recovering, I went out and bought a portable CD player so we’d have some tunes. I was planning on playing all of my music for our young son Owen once we got back home (the genesis of this project), but I needed something soothing until then. Something simple and sweet and gentle to welcome our beautiful boy into the world. After mulling it over a bit, I settled on Roger Eno’s first album, Voices, a collection of ambient solo piano pieces. I got back to the room, turned the lights down, and introduced our son to the beautiful, rich, magical world of music. Roger is the other Eno, overshadowed by his brother Brian’s giant reputation. I don’t remember when I first discovered that Brian even had a brother; perhaps it was his contributions to the For All Mankind soundtrack that first caught my ear. The idea behind the For All Mankind film is that the experience of the US space program, which culminated in Neal Armstrong’s giant steps for mankind, was seen by us, and the world, on television. Television – especially the small, grainy, black and white televisions most of us had at the time – was a poor medium to capture the vastness of space. Producer Al Reinert decided to wade through the 6,000,000 feet of footage shot on those missions and assemble a film for theatrical release only that consisted solely of images shot during the missions and the voices of the astronauts – both the transmissions to Houston and their remembrances of the experience after it was over. By insisting that the film only be shown theatrically, Reinert hoped to give back to the missions some of the wonder and grandeur that had been stolen by those mediated television broadcasts. He enlisted Brian Eno to provide some ambience for the film. Brian eagerly agreed, and, with the help of his brother, Roger and Daniel Lanois, another musician/producer whom he was fond of working with, produced the soundtrack for this film. I’ve never seen the film, but the album is wonderful. It’s split into two sides – side one is “Atmospheres”, which are extremely ambient soundscapes, devoid of any traditional musicality, and side two is “Soundtracks”, more traditionally musical pieces treated with Eno’s patented ambience. And it is on side two that I first noticed the contributions of Brian’s brother, Roger.

It was on the strength of this soundtrack that I bought Roger’s first solo album, Voices, produced by Daniel Lanois with “treatments” by Brian Eno. One could be mistaken into thinking that Roger is following closely in brother Brian’s steps from listening to this album, but there are some important differences in the two. Roger is a piano player, and Voices is largely an album of solo piano pieces. The “treatments” are so familiar as to sway the listener into thinking that there’s more Brian than Roger, but Brian just frosted the cake that Roger baked. The piano pieces are lovely, and extremely reminiscent of Eric Satie’s wonderfully evocative mood poems. (There are many who would, justifiably, point to Satie and fellow countryman Claude Debussy’s explorations and experiments into the beauty of impressionistic musical tones at the turn of the 20th century as being the true birth of ambient music.) As Roger’s career progressed, the difference between the two became more pronounced. Roger is more interested in piano and chamber music than his brother, and once he got out from under those treatments, his true course became clear.

For my money, the peak of his musical arc was his 1992 collaboration with vocalist and woodwind player Kate St. John, called The Familiar. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful album and one that, when I first bought it, I could not stop listening to. Her angelic singing and playing perfectly match his refined British musical sensibilities and the album is a magical, mystical collaboration – much better than what either of them have been able to produce on their own.

Roger Eno also produced an album of the recently “discovered” music of a number of obscure British composers which, at closer look, reveals itself to be entirely a work of fiction, Eno hiding behind a number of whimsical nom-de-plumes. He also fell prey to the idea that he could sing and has released a few terrible tracks of his vocal stylings, but they are, fortunately, mostly confined to one album and relatively easy to avoid.

But when he hits it, he hits it right on the head. And there is little that is more simple, more sweet, more melancholy and sparsely beautiful than any of the tracks on Voices, my son Owen’s introduction to the vast, beautiful, frightening, exhilarating, supremely satisfying world of music.