When Brian Eno left Roxy Music In July 1973, he told the music press that he was planning to form a new ensemble called Luana And The Lizard Girls, a provocative undertaking that, as Eno’s biographer David Sheppard recounts, would only perform “in unlikely places like laundries and massages.” Luana And The Lizard Girls did not happen, but Eno’s stated goal (»to get a bunch of strange people together«) came true when sessions began two months later for her first solo album, Here Come The Warm Chorros.
Listen to Here Come The Warm Jets on Apple Music and Spotify.
Not that the musicians Eno gathered around him could, or should, be described as ‘strange’, exactly: rather than their disparate and contrasting styles they represented a particular (and career-long) desire on Eno’s part to foster ways fresh and intuitive thinking. , eradicate borders, and launch the mixture into the air and build an enduring art from the fragments that fall.
Among those who entered London’s Majestic Studios in September 1973 were guitarists Robert Fripp (King Crimson), Chris Spedding and Paul Rudolph (Pink Fairies), bassists John Wetton, Busta Jones and Bill MacCormick (Matching Mole), drummer Simon King (Hawkwind), and a group of former Roxy Music bandmates from Eno. An assemblage of stars, but the results were thankfully free of the protracted interference one might have hoped for, adhering instead to Eno’s cutting-edge subversive tendencies. Here was a bold sonic statement that, in part, almost qualifies as a glamorous curtain call, but also hinted at tantalizing new avenues of expression.
If he Velvet Underground-Indebted “Needles In The Camel’s Eye” and the malformed Bo Diddley The shudder of “Blank Frank” suggested an esthete’s fascination with a particularly tough arm in rock history, the suffocating and tormented “Driving Me Backwards” stoically advancing into an all-consuming darkness. (It’s also tempting to imagine that the atonal, delusional synth manipulation of “The Paw Paw Black Blowtorch” and the decadent arc and tease of “Dead Finks Don’t Talk” referenced Eno’s recent past at Roxy Music.)
Throughout, Eno’s enigmatic handwriting painted images of amusingly surreal words (“Juanita and Juan, very smart with maracas” in “Baby’s On Fire”), or touched a vein of wasp venom (“Oh, headless hen, Can those poor teeth take so much kicking? ”On“ Dead Finks Don’t Talk ”).
Released by Island Records in January 1974, Here Come The Warm Jets rose to number 26 in the UK. If Eno’s solo albums would never hit the charts in the same way again, it goes without saying that, with more releases, plus a historic milestone. Bowie collaboration on the wings, his sphere of influence was ready to go through the roof.
Here Come The Warm Jets can be purchased here.
Hear the best of Brian Eno on Apple Music and Spotify.
–
