Roxy Music part 1

The Glam Rock movement had three kinds of acts: those pre-exisiting in different genres of Pop/Rock, which used the Glam look/sound to stay relevant or return to relevance. Those that blossomed along with the movement and imploded/faded away in its aftermath. And those that used Glam Rock as a springboard to bigger and greater things. In the latter group, we certainly find Bowie, along with today's honorees, Roxy Music.

You would be excused in thinking that Brian Eno was gay - we all did at the time - but it seems that he isn't. Many also thought Bryan Ferry was gay, and a handful thought that the whole band were gay. They probably weren't, but they certainly looked fabulous. And man, did they make great music!

Old friend Rayban is a big fan of Roxy Music: Rayban, I hope that you'll enjoy this story!

In November 1970, Bryan Ferry, who had recently lost his job teaching ceramics at a girls' school for holding impromptu record listening sessions, advertised for a keyboard player to collaborate with him and Graham Simpson, a bass player he knew from his Newcastle art college band, the Gas Board.

Andy MacKay replied to Ferry's advertisement, not as a keyboard player but a saxophonist and oboist, though he did have a VCS3 synthesizer. Mackay had already met Brian Eno during university days, as both were interested in avant-garde and electronic music. Although Eno was a non-musician, he could operate a synthesizer and owned a Revox reel-to-reel tape machine, so MacKay convinced him to join the band as a technical adviser. Before long Eno was an official member of the group. When founding drummer Dexter Lloyd, a classically trained timpanist, left the band, an advertisement was placed in Melody Maker saying "wonder drummer wanted for an Avant Rock group".Paul Thompson responded to the advertisement and joined the band in June 1971. The group's name was partly an homage to the titles of old cinemas and dance halls, and partly a pun on the word Rock. Ferry had named the band Roxy originally, but after learning of an American band with the same name he changed the name to Roxy Music.

Another ad was placed in 1971, in Melody Maker: "'The Perfect Guitarist' for Avant Rock Group. Original, creative, adaptable,

melodic, fast, slow, elegant, witty, scary, stable, tricky… "Roxy" 223 0296." About twenty players auditioned. Phil Manzanera eventually got the job. (He wasn't their first choice though, and was originally hired as a roadie.) Manzanera, the son of an English father and a Colombian mother, had spent a considerable amount of time in South America and Cuba as a child, and although he did not have the same art school background as Ferry, MacKay and Eno, he was perhaps the most proficient member of the band, with an interest in a wide variety of music. Manzanera also knew other well-known musicians, such as David Gilmour, who was a friend of his older brother, and Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt.

Speaking of musical connections, in early 1970 Ferry had auditioned as lead singer for King Crimson, who were seeking a replacement for Greg Lake. Although Robert Fripp and Pete Sinfield decided that Ferry's voice was unsuitable for King Crimson's material, they were impressed with his talent and helped the fledgling Roxy Music to obtain a contract with E.G. Records. Pete Sinfield would also go on to produce their eponymous first album.

Released in June 1972, the album got great reviews and peaked at #10 in the UK, eventually getting a gold certification. In 2003, Rolling Stone picked the album as #62 in its list of the best debut albums of all time, stating "In England in the early 70s, there was nerdy Art-Rock and sexy Glam-Rock and rarely did the twain meet. Until this record, that is."

Re-Make/Re-Model is a song written by Bryan Ferry that appears as the opening track. The recording starts with a musique concrète introduction, a short collage of cocktail party noise, before launching into the song. Whilst the basic backing track of guitar, acoustic piano, bass guitar, tenor saxophone and drums is relatively straightforward and traditional in form, other elements of the arrangement are quite bizarre and futuristic: Eno plays continual squalls of atonal oscillator noise using Andy MacKay's VCS3 synthesizer, whilst Ferry's lead vocal style is strikingly distraught and anguished in tone. The lead guitar and saxophone solos in the middle of the song also tend to cacophony. In the song, each instrument is allowed a short solo break in turn; the sax mimics the trumpets from Richard Wagner's opera The Valkyrie and the bass guitar solo mimics the riff from the Beatles song Day Tripper. Phil Manzanera's guitar part reverses the usual guitar pattern: he plays single-note lead guitar all through the song, with no chords, but his solo break consists only of chords.

The lyrics describe a man that likes the look of a woman, but is afraid to approach her. Ferry explained in an interview that Eno and MacKay's backing vocal chorus of "CPL 593H" was the number plate of the car in which the woman is riding. Ferry took inspiration from a personal experience - the number plate CPL 593H belonged to a car he previously owned, a blue 1970 Mini Clubman. After it had left his ownership he saw it parked in a street, and on going to look at it observed an attractive young woman get into the car and drive away. Thus, in true Ferry style, the song was indirectly about 'the girl'.

If There Is Something begins in a rather light-hearted, jaunty fashion, a slight pastiche of Country music, with honky tonk style piano and twangy guitar. Ferry's singing is nonchalant and jocular.  However the mood of the song builds with a repeated instrumental motif played between guitar and saxophone, Ferry's vocals re-entering to provide a fraught vocal climax. The instrumental motifs then return, finally giving way to an emotional end section where Ferry's impassioned and melancholy vocals are set on top of a lush blend of backing vocals and the mellotron "three violins" tape set.  It has been said that the first part of the song is a youth wondering about love, the second part adults in the heat of passion and the third part the singer in old age thinking about their past love.

The song appears in the 2008 film Flashbacks of a Fool starring Daniel Craig; it features centrally in a scene where the main protagonist's younger self dances to the song with his girlfriend while made up as Bryan Ferry.

2HB is a dedication to Humphrey Bogart ("2HB" = "To Humphrey Bogart"). In particular, the song references the Bogart classic Casablanca.

The instrumentation on the Roxy Music recording is dominated by Ferry's electric piano and features an Andy MacKay sax solo - based on the melody of As Time Goes By, a song featured prominently in Casablanca - that is treated with tape echo effects by Brian Eno.

Would You Believe? has slow, moody verses that are a cross between John Lennon and Chet Baker and a lively angsty chorus, in which they go full Roxy Music.

Sea Breezes has the singer musing over a recent separation, "Hoping help would come from above". "But even angels there make the same mistakes in love."

During the first half of 1972 bassist Graham Simpson became increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative, which led to his leaving the band almost immediately after the recording of the debut album. He was replaced by Rik Kenton.

Then, in August 1972, the band released their first single, Virginia Plain. The song was a love letter to the mythology of America, as seen through the eyes of a European. From "Last picture shows down the drive-in" to "Midnight blue casino floors", from Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer to a ride in a Studebaker, the song offers a bombardment of different images, set to electronic sounds that were definitely not what Pop audiences and critics were used to. Yet they loved the song; it peaked at #4 in the UK, then it was re-released in 1977, peaking this time at #11. The song is also one of my favorite songs of all-time, one of my desert island songs. It was included in later pressings of the album Roxy Music.

Pyjamarama was released as a single in March 1973, to promote their second album, For Your Pleasure, though it was excluded from the album itself. It peaked at #10 in the UK.

Before we discuss the album itself, let's take a moment to talk about their famous (or infamous) album covers; the celebrated covers of the first five albums, with their lingerie-clad models, may look cheesy and chauvinist these days (apart from the still-edgy sleeve of For Your Pleasure, a perversely stylised shot of Amanda Lear walking a panther), but they certainly gave some very pleasurable moments to most straight boys in the 70s.

For Your Pleasure, released in March 1973 was one of their two (along with the even better followup) masterpieces. It made #4 in UK charts in 1973. In 2000 Q magazine placed it at number 33 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2003, the album was ranked number 394 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It placed at 87 on Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. The citation notes that Morrissey told the British press that "he could 'only think of one truly great British album: For Your Pleasure."

As would often be the case with their albums, it opened in spectacular fashion with Do The Strand.

In the mode of early 1960's "dance craze" songs such as The Twist, the song tries to convince the listener to dance The Strand, which takes its name from a Film noir advertisement for Strand cigarettes. The lyrics include, as is typical for early Roxy Music, references to notable art, including The Sphinx, the Mona Lisa, Lolita and Picasso's Guernica. Bryan Ferry described his idea for The Strand as "the ‘dance of life’ – thus bringing to mind earlier dance phenomena, such as the avant garde passion and exuberance of both The Ballets Russes and the controversial Jazz Age dance craze, ‘The Charleston’."

The song's exuberance and style are really infectuous; listening to it always makes me get up and dance - my version of The Strand.

Beauty Queen begins with some chilly distortion work courtesy of Eno, before its odd floating melody starts swaying along with Ferry’s exaggerated croon, stopping briefly at intervals for just a second before restoring the tune, in time for Manzanera’s guitar to pick up, in all its buzzing, reverberated glory.

Editions Of You is stellar, even if its one of the (relatively) simpler compositions on the album - with pounding drums and vigorous guitar, sax interplay, and the line "And boys will be boys, will be boys".

A definite highlight is In Every Dream Home A Heartache. Lyrically, the song is a sinister monologue, part critique of the emptiness of opulence, partly a love song to an inflatable doll. Musically this is complemented by a cycling four-bar chord progression,(D# F# F G#) led by a 'cinema organ' style Farfisa part. After the lyrical conclusion "I blew up your body/but you blew my mind!", the song climaxes with an extended instrumental section, with the lead taken by guitarist Phil Manzanera.

Grey Lagoons is a song that starts off as piano-driven Pop as a bedrock for Ferry’s warbling croon before it transmutes into a glam sax breakdown courtesy of MacKay, followed by some excellent use of harmonica - the competing solos that Ferry strings together are simply amazing - and then we are treated to some Glam Rock, with a shedding guitar over a rootsy, Rockabilly piano work out before the song drops back into the rollicking Pop groove.

The title track is a place where funereal drums slowly rap upon tom-toms as Ferry reappears for the last time, singing the opening words and sounding weary in all the vain pursuits of love that only ended in disappointment. A slightly surf guitar twang riff floats by the ghostly arrangement and once Ferry’s last “tara” is sung, razor-sharp riffing and perfect tom-tom fills enter gently. Soon, a mellotronic choir emerges, and the entire track is haunted with disembodied voices, seeming to mock in slow motion with each step. All descends into another world where everything starts to shift and slid into the unknowable territory. Is this death? “You didn’t ask why...” is the final communiqué, whispered gently over the lurching electronics and otherworldly choral. A few hand-held cymbals and a final whammy-barred wail from Manzanera, and it’s over.

Soon after the release of For Your Pleasure, the tensions between Eno and Ferry had come to a head; Eno embarked on his increasingly avant-garde solo career while Ferry guided Roxy Music ever closer to the mainstream with a series of fascinating albums, each less arty than the last.

Eddie Jobson (formerly of Curved Air) replaced Eno and John Gustafson replaced the bass player (the least stable job position in the Roxy Music lineup). Their third album, Stranded, was released in late 1973 and was their first studio album to reach #1 on the UK album chart. It is also my favorite one.

With Stranded. Roxy had constructed the modern English equivalent of the wall-of-sound. One instrument, either the guitar or a keyboard, will sustain or repeat a note, and the other instruments will build on top of it. Added to the thick mix is the unique voice of Bryan Ferry, who sounds alternately tormented (Psalm), frantic (Street Life), or about to sink his teeth into your neck (Mother Of Pearl). He delivers his consistently clever lyrics in the most disquieting baritone in Pop. Everywhere there is menace.

As was customary by now, the album opens with a dynamite track; Street Life was released as a single in the UK in November 1973 and reached #9 on the charts. A highly enjoyable song, it opens with what sounds like a UFO coming in for a landing and ends with fading finger-snapping. Ferry spits out his literate lyrics to chaotic uptempo support. The reference to "pointless passing through Harvard or Yale" as "only window shopping ... strictly no sale" may draw a few Ivy League smiles.

Its non-LP B-side Hula Kula, an Hawaiian-like instrumental composed by Phil Manzanera, is dedicated to our great Hawaiian friend, the Record Man.

Just Like You is a theatrical ballad that contains lovely falsetto singing from Ferry, and a razor-lyrical guitar solo from Manzanera.

Amazona is split apart by an indescribably strange guitar solo midway between a fire storm and a gigantic bubble machine. It sounds like the work of several guitarists but it's just Manzanera playing through a complex relay of distortion, repeat echoes and vari-pitch, using a specially built contraption that worked just once. That first and only take is what you hear on the album.

Serenade has Ferry once again being in turns seductive and menacing, quite like a modern-day count Dracula. Manzanera works wonders with his guitar. Again.

Another highlight is A Song for Europe, an awesome example of self-disciplined dynamic Rock. Instead of flailing frantically away, the musicians, including Ferry on piano, limit themselves to maintaining musical tension. Here is emotion without lack of control. Ferry's tortured recitation is supported by an eerie, pained musical backing. MacKay's sax is mournful, Manzanera's guitar lines are expressive, and the drumming of Paul Thompson is dramatic.

The melody was written by Andy MacKay and the world-weary nostalgia lyrics, which contain the phrase "nothing is there for us to share but yesterday", were written, as usual by Ferry. The last part of the song is sung in French.

The centerpiece, Mother Of Pearl, might be Roxy's finest seven minutes. Charging in with blazing guitars, the music suddenly gives way to a stately piano ballad - the effect is startling. Ferry soliloquizes on the elusiveness of true love, rhyming odd metaphors like "serpentine sleekness/was always my weakness", summing it all up with the so-true phrase, "If you're looking for love in a looking glass world, it's pretty hard to do."

... and the album closes with the wonderful piano ballad Sunset. Best listened to when watching, well, a sunset. The effect is amazing. And when Ferry sings the final verse:

Post-script you trace colours the sky
Red-letter light fades, is filed away
Sunburst fingers you raise
One last sigh of farewell - goodbye

You feel a satisfaction that can not be expressed in words.

We took our sweet time with the first three albums, so I have to stop here for today. Tomorrow we'll have our statistics and the Dylan countdown, and the story following that will be Roxy Music part 2, in which we'll present their five other studio albums, and if we have the time, we'll take a quick look at their respective solo careers, as well as at Eno's interesting views... on pornography.