Overlooked Albums #15: Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets

One could write volumes on Brian Eno: Roxy Music’s flamboyant synth player, ambient music pioneer, brilliant collaborator with Robert Fripp and David Byrne, and über-producer for the likes of David Bowie, U2, and Coldplay. For the sake of brevity and sanity, I will concentrate on Eno’s first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, as harbinger of things to come.

In July 1973, Eno was sacked from Roxy Music for upstaging Bryan Ferry; not an easy task, unless you’re dressed like a transsexual in ostrich feathers and eyeliner. In September of that year, the ever-resourceful Eno recorded his first album with a remarkable group of musician friends. The humble credits describe his keyboards playing as “simplistic”, failing to mention that his vocals were, at best, adequate. At face value, there shouldn’t be much here to raise an eyebrow, yet there’s a wealth of musical ideas that make this album a classic.

It starts with Needle In The Camel’s Eye, which sounds like the last gasp of glam before the party was over for good. Written by Eno and Phil Manzanera, the track could have easily fitted on Roxy’s first album, with a jangly guitar riff, camp lyrics, and a twangy Duane Eddy-style solo. The Roxy vibe continues with squiggly synths on The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch, one of the best song titles of all time.

Baby’s On Fire is new terrain. There’s no chorus or middle eight here, just verse, a persistent bass by John Wetton, and telegraphic percussion. What makes the song is Robert Fripp’s breathtaking guitar solo. Treated by Eno, the guitar rises, spirals, and roars, and you’ll feel the burning embers.

Cindy Tells Me reveals a Velvets influence, and Manzanera adds fluid, elegant guitar lines to a song that is both retro and futuristic. That approach is also followed on Driving Me Backwards, whose rhythm is a pounding cabaret piano. Fripp’s flanging guitar cuts in midway, swimming from left to right speaker like a contented whale.

Blank Frank is a dance track of funk gone astray, with clattering percussion and a guitar solo by Fripp that adds a layer of noise predating future No Wave rhythms. Paul Thompson’s martial drums carry Dead Finks Don’t Talk, but far from being another experiment in rhythm, the emphasis is on vocal arrangements, and Eno has a surprisingly good ear for them. Another example of this is Some Of Them Are Old, a sound collage blending barbershop quartet harmony and mournful balladry, capped by a slide guitar solo.

The album’s most accomplished soundscape is On Some Faraway Beach, with a beautiful piano phrase played throughout by Roxy’s Andy Mackay, a a celestial chorus, and whimsical lyrics. There is a sadness here that is heartbreaking.

The album ends with the title song, which is put together before us as guitar, bass, percussion, and vocals are faded in one after the other. When the mix is finally complete, the song fades out.

The album’s a success because it has its own logic; its rules have been built at the studio, fresh at the start of each track. It helps that Eno was not schooled as a musician, learning his instruments and his music through tinkering and experimentation, so his mind was freed from rigid musical frames. Yet his visual arts background has a significant influence here, with each musician adding to the musical palette, to be blended in at whim.

Eno never toured as a solo performer, concentrating his efforts on recording. It could have hurt him as an artist, but he had the sheer gumption of building a career for himself as a man of ideas. His strategies may be oblique, his approaches unusual, but there’s always a mark of genius in every project that leave us wondering what’s next.