Roxy Music
More than this / You know there's nothing
Roxy Music’s legacy is easy to sum up: they were the best glam rock band. Glam rock was rock music’s shift away from the rock band and back towards the individual, exemplified best by Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Roxy Music’s vocalist Bryan Ferry often played a lustful character in their songs, but he sang with a memorable croon and delightful theatricality, pulling women into his irresistible orbit—all of their album covers are of women; sometimes multiple, sometimes naked—and I’d sooner trust my daughter with Bowie than Ferry. And yet, what made them the best band was behind Ferry, Roxy Music was essentially a prog band in pop clothes, which is why their so many of their early songs were whirlwinds of instrumental solos. As a guitarist, Phil Manzanera provided a foil to Ferry that bettered that of Bowie-Mick Ronson, while the rhythm section of their first two albums is basically ground zero for post-punk, with additional textural splendor from saxophonist Andy Mackay and synth-player Brian Eno.
It’s with Roxy Music that ambient founder and all-around production wizard Brian Eno also got his breakthrough, having met saxophonist Andy Mackay in a chance encounter at a train station; he would later remark that “as a result of [meeting Andy] I have a career in music I wouldn’t have had otherwise. If I’d walked ten yards further on the platform or missed that train or been in the next carriage I probably would have been an art teacher now.” It’s because of Eno’s avant-garde background that gave Roxy Music’s first two albums an experimental spirit and tone colour—lots of treatment effects to make instruments not sound like themselves; lots of songs that felt like huge masses of movement—that further distinguished them, whereas early Bowie and T. Rex were basically folk rock with more sexual flair. In that regard, I equate Roxy Music with Genesis most of all: another physically exhilarating band during the post-Beatles, early-70s era that were gone way too soon when a key member left and the rest of the band soldiered on and slowly forgot what made them special in the first place.
There’s also another prog connection early on, which is that their debut album Roxy Music was produced by King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield. It’s very weird for a debut album. Opener “Re-Make/Re-Model” lists out a love interest’s license plate in the chorus—a privacy breach and general faux-pas all-around—but by doing so, it raises the question if it’s a love song to the woman that’s driving it, or to the car given the title — by contrast, there’s zero ambiguity in that Queen song. And they follow up with “Ladytron,” almost pure texture and oboe for the first full minute as if it were a modern classical experiment. “If There Is Something” brings in gorgeous slide guitar and sounds like an upbeat rocker in the first minute or so, upended by the solos which turn it into a strange dirge. And “2 H.B.” is the side closer that isn’t talked about nearly enough: the last 30 seconds remain some of Eno’s prettiest work, even with all that he would go onto do. Unfortunately, the second side is a drop. The textures are no longer placed into smartly-crafted songs, but instead hanging out to dry. With the exception of “Would You Believe?”—still trivial compared to the first side—the band barely rock out. The only song on the second half that works ‘all the way through’ is the doo-wop closer, shortest and sweetest of the bunch. Realizing that there was no hit potential here, they quickly went back into the studio after the album’s release to record “Virginia Plain,” which would hit #4 on the UK charts without a single chorus, just colour-as-hook instead. And what colour! It really does feel like the rollercoaster-airplane ride that Ferry sings about.
For Your Pleasure is their masterpiece. For one thing, all of their album covers (all of women) look like they craved your attention, but this one is the only one that commanded it. For another thing, there’s no filler; only “The Bogus Man” comes close, but that’s an interesting case of a band outside of Germany doing krautrock that early (notably, Eno would later venture to Germany and collaborate with Harmonia). But it’s also an album stacked to the brim of electrifying moments: Andy Mackay’s shriek at the 3:28 mark of “Do the Strand” forecasts John Zorn; Brian Eno adding some ocean wave magic to sell the line “Your swimming pool eyes / In sea breezes, they flutter” on “The Beauty Queen” at the 1:48 mark; the all-male band pretending to be sirens to Bryan Ferry’s “I heard those slinky sirens wail” in “Editions of You” at the 2:30 mark, or Ferry having more fun on that song than he’ll ever have again (“Boys will be boys will be boy-ee-oy-oys”); Paul Thompson and Phil Manzanera’s climax on “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” with its playful fade-out and re-climax, fuck a refractory period (it’s a deeply creepy song that flicks a switch and suddenly becomes badass); Andy Mackay’s solo on “Grey Lagoons.” And yet, despite all of these individual moments that I love, it’s an album with a tangible atmosphere that’s sorely lacking from their albums afterwards. Eno left after the For Your Pleasure tour, which makes the title track closer a swan song for this short-lived era of Roxy Music, as it’s the one where he has the most fingerprints on.
“Do the Strand” and “Editions of You” had more than enough hit potential, but the album was preceded by yet another non-album single, “Pyjamarama,” which starts with ringing chords and thunderous drums like a mix of Kinks and Who, and then takes turns that neither of those bands would have thought of. Ferry’s vocals are tired but not lazy (“How could I apologi-i-i-ize”), and Mackay’s solo is one for the history books. It didn’t chart as high as “Virginia Plain” but it’s just as good.
They regrouped in the studio immediately after Eno left to release Stranded that same year. Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay both take up the role of treatments, and the band bring in newcomer Eddie Jobson—from Curved Air—to play synths and electric violin, so it doesn’t quite sound like Roxy Music without Eno yet. “Amazona” is the best song here, with its guitar funk that’s eventually processed into sounding into neither guitar nor funk. Meanwhile, closer “Sunset”’s piano section sounds like something that Eno would have come up with, repeating itself like a pop take on the New York avant-garde at this time. But Bryan Ferry, no longer having to “compete” with Brian Eno, does some of his most dramatic singing, growling his way through “The sidewalk papers gutter-press you down” on “Street Life,” or putting on a tender air so that the poetry of “Just Like You” never gets too overwrought, and then selling the drama on “Song for Europe.” Eno considers this his favourite Roxy Music album, but I chalk that up to modesty. It’s good, not great.
It’s true that Roxy Music became more “focused” after he departed, but focused into what? From art rock to regular rock? That’s what happened on Country Life, the sonic experiments that peppered Stranded now completely disregarded. As good as the album is, ultimately, I can’t help but regard the album with the other relative failures in glam rock from the same year: David Bowie got boring on Diamond Dogs, and his next move would be to abandon glam entirely, while T. Rex slid (pun intended) on Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow. “The Thrill of It All” is their last great rocker, but there’s something deeply uncerebral about it compared to their older rockers; Ferry’s harmonica brings out “Three and Nine” and makes it one of their best ballads. The only experiment is a failure with “Triptych” mixing up the Beatles, proto-goth rock, and an insufferable prog vocal lead to clanging results. Fun fact: one of the two models on the cover is Can’s Michael Karoli’s sister, Constanze Karoli, more of that krautrock connection. Another fact: the cover sucks unless you’re a sixteen year old teenage boy.
Many of Bryan Ferry’s lyrics up until this point expressed a certain exhaustion from constantly chasing satisfaction—“Morning sickness on Friday nights”—but it always felt like the thrill was worth it in the end. By 1975, he just sounded tired of the parties; they all did. The song titles on Siren are indicative: “End of the Line,” “Both Ends Burning,” and “Just Another High,” so no surprise they went on hiatus afterwards. Even “Love is the Drug,” their biggest hit at that point, about “a young guy getting into his car and zooming off into town, looking for action at a club”—despite having a disco bounce in the rhythm—sounds like a completely different band than the one that cut Country Life. They perk up in the middle of the album, particularly on “Whirlwind” (peep the synthesizer; Eddie Jobson channeling his inner Eno there), and then Andy Mackay’s and Phil Manzanera’s solos on “She Sells” and “Could It Happen to Me?” respectively.
They regrouped just two years later to record Manifesto; only the Byrds had a shorter retirement and flatter comeback. The title track is the only salvageable cut here, the night atmosphere of For Your Pleasure transported into the disco age, and session player Alan Spenner lays down a great bass part with John Gustafson no longer here. That’s immediately followed by “Trash,” their worst single at this point that feels like a “Virginia Plain” rewrite but without a tune or meaning: just Mackay and Manzanera doing their best. I should say I don’t mind that it’s disco, I mind that it’s bloodless, but I find it frustrating either way that a band with so much post-punk and love for Velvet Underground pumping in their veins never once tried their hands at a punk or post-punk record; even Ferry recently remarked on The Guardian that “I’d done The Bride Stripped Bare with American musicians and was disappointed with how it was received. Punk had happened and I felt out of step, so I wanted to come back more in tune with what was happening.”
Flesh + Blood topped the UK charts immediately upon its release thanks to the success of lead single “Over You” (#5 on the UK charts, and even breaching the US charts at #80), and it’s the only Roxy Music album I see in used vinyl bins. Drummer Paul Thompson is no longer with the band at this point, replaced by session drummer Allan Schwartzberg but not that it mattered: Roxy Music was no longer interested, or simply not capable, of making music with any sort of physical weight. The covers are all limp-wristed, and “Eight Miles High” doesn’t get off the ground, let alone soar. (Another band would cover the Byrds song later that decade and knock it out the park.) Second single “Oh Yeah” has an infectious sweep in the chorus (“There’s a band playing on the radio”) and Manzanera’s guitar pings high notes like a starry twinkle. But it’s nowhere near as good as Fleetwood Mac’s contemporaneous “Gypsy,” which does the same thing but ends up being one of the greatest songs ever. Or, to put it another way, neither “Over You” nor “Oh Yeah” would place in a top 25 Roxy Music songs list, and if it makes it in after that, well, they had a short career.
So it’s nothing short of a miracle that Avalon is as good as it is. The lush production—the title “The Space Between” is very fitting for this album—makes sure that even the lesser songs are, at least, lush, although my personal recommendation is to swap out “While My Heart is Still Beating” with their cover of “Jealous Guy,” released the year before (their only #1 on the UK charts). I will say this: it does feel like a Bryan Ferry album, and the only times the original members really declare themselves as more than just a supporting texture are Phil Manzanera’s doomy introduction on “Take a Chance With Me”—the highlight on the second side—and Andy Mackay’s closer, referencing For Your Pleasure almost a decade earlier in its title. “More Than This” is the clear winner, with Ferry’s melody absolutely soaring during the verses, but “The Space Between” is an incredible groover for the introverts thanks to the bright chime of the guitar chords, while “Avalon” has those memorable backing vocals from Yanick Étienne, invited to join in when Ferry met her at the recording studio, and I adore the choruses of “Take a Chance With Me” because you’d think a hook that goes “I was blind…” would surely go “…now I see” but Ferry goes “…can’t you see?” instead, elevating it from standard pap fare. All told, Avalon is the rare instance of a band mastering a new genre—new romantic—in a new decade. Rather than flail about in the 1980s like so many of their contemporaries, they called it quits on a high note instead, letting their last words on record be, “Arm in arm / With my seaside diamond / I’ll soon be home.”
Roxy Music - A- For Your Pleasure - A+ Stranded - A- Country Life - B+ Siren - B+ Manifesto - C+ Flesh + Blood - C+ Avalon - A-