Few record collections remain untouched by Brian Eno’s aesthetic DNA: from ambient soundscapes and world-music hybrids to cut ’n’ paste vocal samples and amniotic chill-out rooms, Eno is all around us. A sonic alchemist to the stars, his address book is a veritable who’s who of rock and his credit adorns an outrageous number of albums. Tellingly, Eno’s work with Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, U2, and Coldplay has coincided with those artists producing their most critically revered work.  On Some Faraway Beach is the first serious, critical examination of the life and times of Brian Eno. David Sheppard has interviewed key collaborators like David Byrne, Robert Wyatt, John Cale, Bryan Ferry, and Gavin Bryars. But more importantly, Sheppard has had considerable assistance and input from Brian and Anthea Eno themselves, while retaining an edge and independence in keeping with his subject. Musical Renaissance man and self-described "sonic landscaper" Brian Eno has been a band member (Roxy Music), producer (David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay), writer, and prolific solo artist, but his most famous piece of music may be the six-second start-up sound for the Windows 95 operating system. Sheppard ( Elvis Costello; Leonard Cohen ) has written a detailed study of this restless, innovative artist. Although Sheppard had access to Eno and relies heavily on interviews with the subject and his wife, this is not a fawning biography, and the author doesn't hesitate to examine Eno's musical and personal successes and failures. Sheppard is particularly good at placing Eno's work in the appropriate cultural context. Although the author's wordiness gets a bit exasperating, Sheppard makes up for it in attention to detail. Recommended.—Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. "A valuable document of one of late-20th-century pop music’s key influencers."  —Publishers Weekly "[An] honourable, authorized attempt to do justice to a mind-bogglingly restless and prolific subject. . . . With his uninhibited fondness for sex and intriguing cultural hypotheses, Eno comes across in On a Faraway Beach as an archetypal man of the 1970s."  — The Sunday Times "An authoritative bible for Enophiles everywhere, On Some Faraway Beach will also intrigue more casual fans curious to investigate the creative inner workings of such a cryptic artist."  —Under the Radar "An extraordinary tale of how rock's most infamous non-musician became pop's most articulate spokesman and in-demand producer."  — Mojo "Interesting . . . passionate."  — Buzzine "Sheppard has corralled the many strands of Eno's hectic creative life into a coherent and highly readable account. . . . The book . . . sends you scurrying back to the actual records."  — Total Music "An authoritative bible for Enophiles everywhere, On Some Faraway Beach will also intrigue more casual fans curious to investigate the creative inner workings of such a cryptic artist."  —Under the Radar "That it’s essential reading for Enophiles should go without saying, but it should also be on the bookshelf of anybody curious about how the avant-garde infiltrated popular culture over the past three decades."  —JamsBio Magazine David Sheppard is a practicing musician and a writer on music and culture in the UK and the author of Elvis Costello and Leonard Cohen . On Some Faraway Beach The Life and Times of Brian Eno By David Sheppard Chicago Review Press Incorporated Copyright © 2008 David Sheppard All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-55652-942-9 Contents 1. Events in Dense Fog, 2. Backwater, 3. Here He Comes, 4. Spirits Drifting, 5. The Heavenly Music Corporation, 6. Baby's on Fire, 7. The Great Pretender, 8. Broken Head, 9. Energy Fools the Magician, 10. Distributed Being, 11. America is Waiting, 12. Moonlight in Glory, 13. Blissed, 14. What Actually Happened?, 15. Spinning Away, 16. Epilogue (Always Returning), Sources and References, Additional Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 Events in Dense Fog 'It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all.' (Edward de Bono) 'Rock stars; is there anything they don't know?' (Homer Simpson) You couldn't make him up. Or at least if you did no one would quite believe you. The polymorphous Brian Eno has been so many things over forty years of creative endeavour that it's sometimes difficult to reconcile this inimitable sexagenarian's disparate enthusiasms and achievements; harder still, these days, to succinctly define exactly what it is he does. Indeed, Eno himself long ago gave up trying to do that. Bored with having to reel off the world's most bafflingly convoluted job description 'record-producer-cum-experimental-musician-cum-visualartist-cum-epistemologist-cum-belle-lettrist-cum-one-man-think-tank-cum-parfumeur', and so on ...),