Michael Cretu is the man behind Enigma, no doubt about that. But looking back at this music project’s very beginning, the making of the Enigma sound, who participated on the “MCMXC a.D” album? In the book “Stars of the ’90s Dance Pop” Frank Peterson tells about his small but incredibly important part in this project.
It is no secret that Enigma had a quite chaotic birth. It was impossible to predict Enigma’s success, and Michael was not the sole creator of its sound. Also producer Frank Peterson (credited as “F. Gregorian” on the cover) had a role to play.
Not a one-man show
Here’s Frank Peterson’s story:
Read the complete interview here (sorry that the borders in Google Books may contain Norwegian text, don’t mind that):
This is truly a fascinating piece of New Age music history. We may ask; would Michael Cretu had «discovered» the Enigma sound all by himself? Perhaps. If you listen carefully on Cretu’s early works, as presented in our Mixcloud broadcast, there’s plenty of “Enigma sounding” pieces here. But given Cretu’s earlier successes, he would need a smash hit for him to pursue the project 100 % in the years that followed – and it was Frank Peterson’s input that helped create this unique, somewhat controversial sound.
So yes, the Enigma we know would not have been possible without Frank Peterson. But Michael Cretu is the melodic genious behind it all, let’s agree on that.