The Battle for Memory: Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jetsat 50

Fifty years ago, the release of Brian Eno’s debut album, Here Come the Warm Jets, changed pop music forever. Eno would later become known for his groundbreaking work with David Bowie and Talking Heads, as well as his pioneering ambient music. In early 1974, however, he was still known first and foremost as the flamboyantly-attired, prematurely balding synth wizard of the glam rock band Roxy Music. After splitting with Roxy Music due to disputes over creative control with frontman Bryan Ferry (proof that having two Brians is too many), Eno set out to make a name for himself as an experimental artist. This change began with No Pussyfooting (1973), a collaboration with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, and then with Eno’s own debut, 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets. 

Here Come the Warm Jets establishes Eno’s idiosyncratic approach to songwriting. Notably, Eno wrote his lyrics by first singing random syllables, and then adding in words to match the sounds. Although Eno has stated his lyrics have no deeper meaning, countless connecting threads between the tracks appear when listening to the album all the way through.

The anthemic chorus of Side A’s opener, “Needles in the Camel’s Eye,” serves to preempt questioning of Eno’s eclectic songwriting choices, proclaiming “Why ask why?” Indeed, the title phrase is a mangled and seemingly nonsensical reversal of a Bible verse. In lieu of philosophical significance, however, the track delivers an infectious burst of glam energy. After a brief low point with the grating “The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch,” Eno returns to form with “Baby’s On Fire,” which manages to pull off the verbose cattiness that “Blowtorch” fumbles. The track also features a legendary 3-minute guitar solo by Robert Fripp. “Baby” is an instant classic with a dark, voyeuristic undercurrent beneath its noisy rock overtones. 

After the chaos of “Baby’s On Fire,” the upbeat “Cindy Tells Me” provides a sonic contrast while continuing the sinister themes. As the song incorporates elements of ‘50s bubblegum pop, Eno expresses conservative critiques of second-wave feminism, prompting a modern listener to wonder with unease at his sincerity. Fittingly, the next track, “Driving Me Backwards,” hints at a dangerous regression into the past, shown by a narrator who “[tries] to think about nothing,” and a woman who listens only to “hysterical voices.” The song itself devolves into wordless vocalizations, seemingly the end result of being “driven backwards.” Next to the dated misogyny of the previous track, “Driving Me Backwards” seems to show the detrimental effects of the forced social regression Eno’s narrator aims to impose on the modern woman. 

Side B begins slowly with “On Some Faraway Beach,” as a calm instrumental builds up like the crest of a wave over the course of the song. Its lyrics deal with dying and fading into obscurity as something serene and even desirable. Interestingly enough, Eno sings, “I’ll die like a baby,” a possible connection to the mental regression hinted at in “Driving Me Backwards.” The serenity is broken with “Blank Frank,” a straight rockin’ song about the nefarious titular character, who, like Eno himself, speaks in “incomprehensible proverbs.” This starts to get repetitive, making the disjointed opening of “Dead Finks Don’t Talk” a welcome respite. If “Blank Frank” is Eno himself, former bandmate Bryan Ferry has long been thought to be the titular dead fink, upon whom Eno heaps passive aggressive scorn for trying to get ahead in a cruel world with nothing but charm. For both the fink and the listener, everything descends into a distorted cacophony of noise by the song’s end.

The penultimate song, “Some of Them are Old,” marks a return to the otherworldly serenity of “On Some Faraway Beach” with its stripped-down instrumentation. This time, Eno cries out against the tide of forgetting, “Remember me.” People may be “crooked” and “careless,” he warns, but this is all to be taken in stride alongside a droning beat and the repeated call to remember. The final track, “Here Come the Warm Jets,” ends on a somber, but no less sonically dense note. Where before the choice of emptiness and forgetting was a release, here it becomes tragic subjection. “We're down on our knees and we've nothing to say,” laments Eno, seeming to speak for the forgotten masses who have no choice in their nonexistence. Gone is the crooning sarcasm of “Baby’s on Fire” or “Dead Finks,” as an almost nostalgic-sounding instrumental builds up to overpower Eno’s hollow words. Is this a triumph or a defeat in the album’s battle for memory? Fifty years on, Here Come the Warm Jets has certainly not been lost to time. It may be cliché to call the avant-garde of the past “ahead of their time,” but this album seems instead to exist in a place outside of time. Setting aside its badly-aged moments, the album remains distinct from the glam rock and MOR pop of the mid-’70s, yet not exactly like anything being made today, either. Here Come the Warm Jets is a glimpse into an alternate world, which exists so long as it is remembered.