Snatching Victory from the jaws of defeat! and getting to work with Eno

Working with Brian Eno was fantastic, but I very nearly didn't get the chance because of an awful experience-- I suppose this is the time I'll have to lay it all out there--> I almost seriously F'd it up!!!

And in the end I snatched victory from the very jaws of defeat to get that gig… This is what happened…

You see, years ago in about 1998 I was already working as a programmer for Bryan Ferry after he heard my single ‘Spikey Message’ on BBC Radio One. He said he liked my weird vibey programming, and he asked his management to track me down and invite me to his studio… It was the same single that received viral interest with my Alien Stunt (but that’s another story for another day!)

While I was there, Brain Eno was invited to come and do a session, and that’s how we met.

In fact, when Brian Eno came to the studio he had with him a Yamaha DX7 keyboard replete with the sought after Grey Matter ‘E’ expansion card… I must admit I was quite starstruck, Brian Eno was my idol after all, an ambient music guru and all-round cool ethical person…

He arrived, and I plugged the DX7 into my midi interface, as I did with every other keyboard… but to our mutual horror the keyboard just went completely absolutely nuts!!!! All the keys seemed to be playing weird crazy notes at completely odd pitches, and the user programmable sound patches (all of his presets) bank 7 and 8 were gone!

Brian was… understandably more than a little concerned! Of course, I was totally crestfallen… I had somehow broken his favourite DX7!! I was terrified that from now on I’d be known as the professional idiot who destroyed Brian Eno’s celebrated DX7 and lost all of his sounds!! I was absolutely beside myself. I just wanted to dig a little hole, pull leaves and a bush over myself and tell people to ‘go away I’m hiding!’

Bryan Ferry made me feel even worse by saying in a whispered voice… “Erm James this is really bad…embarrassing… you’ve let the studio down…”

…and my hero Brian Eno was well, quite rightly a bit p*ssed off! He kept pressing - hitting, really - the keys of the DX7 saying“Oh My God, all my sounds… 20 years of work gone! I can’t believe it!”

I couldn’t even get on it to try and help sort it out…

Anyhow, it was a Friday and the whole afternoon session I fretted around in a sort of nightmarish frenzy… I was frantic (actually ‘Frantic’ was the name Bryan Ferry ended up giving to the album!.. but that’s another story)

5 o’clock approached, and it seemed like nothing would get done.. Brian Eno had tried everything he could to sort out the keyboard, but to all intents and purposes it was f*cked!!! …and I felt exactly the same as the DX7!… my future as a rising star programmer looked very faint, well, diminished…

So, at 5.30-ish we called it a day and I pleaded to Brain…”I am really sorry about this, please please let me take the keyboard away for the weekend, and I will do everything I can to get it working for you over the weekend, and I’ll have it back for you at your studio Monday morning… would that be ok?”

To which Brian Eno replied, a bit snarkily… “Well I suppose so, you can’t mess it up any more than it is…” and off he went…

I drove back to my studio unit in Whitechapel with Brian’s Yamaha DX7 propped up in the passenger seat, and as soon as I got back I set about learning everything I could about the Yamaha DX7 and the Grey Matter E expansion board inside it…

In those days there was no WWW internet… It was just a dial up message board! I remember scrolling for hours and hours online with the keyboard beside me, brainstorming to the maximum capacity of my stressed and fearful mind…. even now it makes me all anxious and sweaty just thinking about it…

And then BAM! Somewhere on an obscure Yamaha DX7 ‘BBS’ or bulletin board there was a post about ‘midi feedback loops and how they can disable the Gray Matter expansion board’. I then frantically set about finding the correct parameter, clicked it, and VOILA, hey presto, it worked!!

At about 3 or 4 in the morning, I let out a big yelp of excitement and joy, and hopped around biting my hand ‘YES YES YESSSSSSS YEESSSSSSS!!! YIPPEEEEE!!!!’

So Sunday I had a cheeky listen to Brian’s famous patches in Bank 7 and 8… And if you’re a music programmer like me, you’d appreciate how interesting that Sunday was… I found out how to send and recall banks of sounds, so you could back them up in case they ever really got lost, and I played around with Brian’s sounds… They were golden! -- I backed up all the sounds just in case! :)

On a bright and breezy early Monday morning, I found myself in London, waiting outside Brian Eno’s studio with a big Yamaha DX7 sized cardboard box… (In fact Brian’s Studio was next door to someone who had 24 hour armed police protection... the policeman was quite interested to know what was in my cardboard box… I thought perhaps I’d have to open it up for him to check, but happily not.)

Brian Eno arrived, and with a little trepidation I recited my little spiel about how sorry I was and handed him the DX7 with a letter that I had prepared. I turned to leave, but he motioned for me to wait…

…I got the feeling again that I was in trouble, waiting for the teacher to read my chit for being off Rugby practice….

But in the letter I explained that ‘a random midi feedback loop had occurred, how I’d clicked the box to turn on the E card again, and explained how to do it again in the future should the same thing happen…’

After he finished the letter he just said “Wow… That’s so impressive, I thought I knew all there was to know about the DX7 and Gray Matter E board but you’ve cracked it in one weekend… Wow… How would you like to work for me in my studio and assist me here?”

So… that is how I plucked victory from the jaws of defeat, and how I ended up working as Brian Eno’s programmer and studio assistant… How I met lots of other well known musicians, and got a chance to work with and learn from one of my idols in music!

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