In February of 1981, Roxy Music released "Jealous Guy", a cover of the John Lennon song from Imagine. At the time Lennon had three songs in the UK Top 40 ("Woman" at #1, "Imagine" at #4 and "Give Peace A Chance at #33) and two albums in the Top 10 ( Double Fantasy at #1 and Imagine at #5). On March 14, it would top the UK charts, becoming the first and only UK#1 hit for Roxy Music.
The first time Roxy Music performed ‘Jealous Guy’ was 20 December 1980 at Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany.
“We were due to play a show in Germany at a big arena,’ Bryan Ferry told Noise 11. “We thought we should do something special because we were all John Lennon fans. His version is beautiful, very poignant. Donny Hathaway also did a very good version”.
“Jealous Guy” was a perfect fit for Ferry’s persona of the world-weary roué and for Roxy Music’s adult rock, which they had by that stage in their career buffed to an icy, immaculate sheen," writes the Financial Times. "Their 1981 cover remains definitive."
“Our version caught the public’s imagination. It was a big record in Europe for us. It has become a standard for me and Roxy Music,” Bryan said.
The B side is an early version of "To Turn You On", which would appear on Avalon.
On May 23, 1980 Roxy Music released Flesh + Blood, another collection of stylish dance songs and trance-inducing grooves that give Ferry room to croon about a lost love as tears drip down his cheeks and drop-PLIP!-into his champagne glass.
At the start of the tour for the preceding album, Manifesto, drummer Paul Thompson broke his thumb in a motorcycle accident and, just like that, he was out of the band. Only the trio of Ferry, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay remained. Here they are supplemented by session men for an album that would be Roxy's second to top the UK charts. ( Siren was the first.)
The chart success happened despite critics who found Flesh + Blood, and its two covers, a bit thin on substance.
"Flesh + Blood is such a shockingly bad Roxy Music record that it provokes a certain fascination," wrote Rolling Stone's Ken Tucker, who saved his most biting criticism for the singer:
Perhaps he’s just being defensive, because if the rest of Roxy Music is as bored as they seem, Bryan Ferry sounds positively bound and gagged. The best he can do is add a little tension by muttering the lyrics through clenched teeth and a constricted throat. He seems to be trying to get his messages out to us without the other musicians hearing him.
From Smash Hits:
And from the Dean, who gave the album a grade of B:
Except maybe on "My Only Love"--imagine a song of that title written for (no, rejected by) Perry Como--this never sinks to their Liebschmerz-drenched nadir. But the secondhand funk is getting too easy to take. Much as I enjoy the languorous "Midnight Hour" and above-it-all "Eight Miles High," I always get suspicious when covers overwhelm originals.
On May 19, 1980 Roxy Music's new single "Over You" made its UK chart debut at #18, on its way to peaking at UK#5. The song, from the forthcoming Flesh and Blood, emerged from a two man jam, according to guitarist Phil Manzanera:
In 1979, I had just built my first recording studio and I rang up Bryan and asked if he’d like to check it out. We decided to have a jam together, Bryan on bass and me on guitar with a rhythm box. Within five minutes we had written this track and it reached number three in the charts.
The song begins a bit like something by The Cars, with a bass and handclaps, but then becomes another of Ferry's songs of lost romance. Ferry admitted to Smash Hits that it was a favorite theme of his:
It's always a great theme, that, but I have written a lot of non-love songs compared with many people, so I don't feel guilty about it, as long as they're not too corny or banal.
Ever since I was a kid I listened to a lot of blues. If that's my role in life, to be a singer of sad songs, I don't really mind, because most of the things I write are emotional pieces of music that require emotional themes.
On August 25, 1979 Cliff Richard's "We Don't Talk Anymore" spent its second week in a row at the top of the U.K. charts. The single, which seems to owe a big a debt to Hall and Oates, sold 4 million copies worldwide and was Richard's tenth #1 hit.
On May 20, 1979 New Wave artists finally overtook Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" as Blondie, Roxy Music and M's "Pop Muzik" topped the U.K. charts at 1, 2 and 3. David Bowie, The Police, The Undertones, Sparks, The Dickies and The Damned also made the Top 20.
1 SUNDAY GIRL BLONDIE
2 DANCE AWAY ROXY MUSIC
3 POP MUZIK
M
4 DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW ABBA
5
REUNITED PEACHES AND HERB
6 BRIGHT EYES
ART GARFUNKEL
7 HOORAY HOORAY, IT'S A HOLI-HOLIDAY BONEY M
8 BOOGIE WONDERLAND EARTH WIND AND FIRE WITH THE EMOTIONS
9 BOYS KEEP SWINGING DAVID BOWIE
10 ONE WAY TICKET ERUPTION
11 KNOCK ON WOOD AMII STEWART
12 PARISIENNE WALKWAYS
GARY MOORE
13 ROXANNE THE POLICE
14 SHINE A LITTLE LOVE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA
15 BANANA SPLITS THE DICKIES
16 JIMMY JIMMY THE UNDERTONES
17 THE LOGICAL SONG SUPERTRAMP
18 THE NUMBER ONE SONG IN HEAVEN SPARKS
19 NICE LEGS SHAME ABOUT HER FACE MONKS
20 LOVE SONG THE DAMNED
On March 16, 1979 Roxy Music released Manifesto, the band's return after a three year hiatus. A lot happened since the release of 1975's Siren. Punk music challenged all the rules of progressive rock. Disco proclaimed a danceable beat was the key to chart success and some of the kids were embracing new bands inspired by old Roxy Music ( Ultravox! and Japan, to name just two).
With its dreamy wash of keyboards and Ferry's crooning vocals, Manifesto would offer a blueprint for all of the sophisticates involved in New Romantic era. Even the otherwise bland "My Little Girl" starts off sounding like Kick era INXS.
"Ain't That So" is a deep cut that I would play on my college radio show after playing something by The Meters or the Neville Brothers. You'd have a hard time placing the funky band until Andy Mackay's sax kicks in.
Manifesto finds Bryan Ferry, fresh off of several hit solo albums, still in the role of the heartbroken but suave James Bond of rock n roll. Guitarist Phil Manzanera also recorded some solo albums and worked with Brian Eno. The sides are divided into an East Side and a West Side.
The title track is one of the most successful songs on the album. Its lyrics are inspired by a Claes Oldenberg poem called 'I Am For An Art' which begins with the stanza :
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical,
that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
Although the album would rank 30th in the Village Voice's Pazz + Jop critics poll of the best albums of 1979 and receive four stars in one of the Rolling Stone record guides, early critical reaction to Manifesto was not warm.
Comparing Manifesto to a disappointing reunion album by The Byrds, Rolling Stone critic Greil Marcus wrote "The new record is a lovely footnote, but it can lead nowhere. "
Mark Bell of NME was also not taken by the album, writing
Ultimately, I found it hard to work up much enthusiasm for Manifesto and a replay of "Would You Believe" and "Sea Breezes" indicates why. In many ways the band have come full circle without evolving anything dramatically new – at least -not according to those initial standards
But The Village Voice's Robert Christgau grades Manifesto an A- (This isn't Roxy at its most innovative, just its most listenable--the entire "West Side" sustains the relaxed, pleasantly funky groove it intends, and the difficulties of the "East Side" are hardly prohibitive. )
Melody Maker's reviewer is also a fan ("Certainly it pulls some punches. But, reservations aside, this may be the first such return bout ever attempted with any degree of genuine success: a technical knockout against the odd").
A U.K. #2 hit, "Dance Away" would tie "Love Is The Drug" as Roxy Music's highest charting single until their cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" topped the charts in 1981. More on that song in April.
On February 25, 1979 Roxy Music returned to the U.K. charts for the first time in three years with "Trash", the first single from the forthcoming reunion album Manifesto. The new 'zine Smash Hits reviewer wrote the new single "doesn't match the brilliance of the best of their old stuff. The competition has improved dramatically since they've been away".
Entering the charts at U.K. #43, it would only peak at #40. By Roxy standards that would be a flop but The Guardian's Tom de Lisle suggested the song greatly inspired the young men in make up who frequented the London club Blitz and called themselves New Romantics:
The scene produced Ultravox, Visage and Spandau ballet, who all doffed a beret to Roxy.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg, best known for helming The Beatles Let It Be documentary and Rolling Stones videos dating back to "She's A Rainbow" directed the video, which featured a few mannequins, a leather jacketed Bryan Ferry catching a tossed microphone with two hands, and what Lindsay-Hogg seems to do best, catch a band having a good time performing their new song.
On the B side was another, slower version of "Trash", that has kind of an Avalon feel to it.
Neil Young handpicked the songs on this three disc classic, which begins with Buffalo Springfield's "Down to the Wire" and goes up to the minor Stills Young hit "Long May You Run". Best of all are some previously unreleased tracks like the Tonight's The Night era "Winterlong", "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Campaigner" which has the memorable line "Even Richard Nixon has got soul".
This is how I--and many fabs--first discovered Roxy Music. The greatest hits collection, released during the band's hiatus, gives short shrift to Siren but adds the For Your Pleasure era single "Pyjamarama". Not available on CD
A collection of indisputable classic country hits by George Jones, aka The Greatest Country Music Singer. Jones considered "The Window Up Above" the best song he ever wrote. He hit #2 in 1960 with the song. Mickey Gilley knocked John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" out of the top spot with his 1975 cover.
Flight Log came with a 12 page booklet and a few bizarre choices of songs by and related to Jefferson Airplane. The Worst of Jefferson Airplane is where I discovered most of my faves.
On January 30, 1977 Bryan Ferry's new single "This Is Tomorrow" entered the UK charts at #50, forty nine places below David Soul's "Don't Give Up On Us". Ferry wrote all the songs on the forthcoming album In Your Mind, casting himself yet again as a romantic wastrel. "This Is Tomorrow" is the best of the songs on the album and peaked at #9 in the UK. And yes, the tasteful guitar licks come via Chris Spedding.
Following the release of Siren, Roxy Music took what was described as an "indefinite rest" so Bryan Ferry could pursue his solo career. Ferry had both a single, "Let's Stick Together", and an EP in the UK charts when, in August of 1976, Roxy Music released Viva!, a live album culled from three separate concerts.
Live albums don't usually excite me but there is something very intriguing about Viva! The appearance of ex-King Crimson bassist John Wetton, whose band had just broken up. Wetton would never appear on a studio album but on this live album, he plays some beefy bass on all five tracks recorded at Newcastle City Hall in October of 1974, including an epic version of the debut album track "If There Is Something". Rather than join Roxy Music, where he'd likely have little input, Wetton went on to form U.K. with Bill Bruford and then Asia with Steve Howe.
On October 24, 1975 Roxy Music released their fifth album, the critically acclaimed Siren. The album kicks off with the hit single "Love Is The Drug"; Bryan Ferry playing up his role as the suave statesman of the over-sexed 70's. But the tunes that follow seem to dismantle his playboy myth to reveal a "sentimental fool" , "mystified and blue" ; "an average man" "shattered by dreams" who "couldn't bear to be alone."
If you haven't already, play Siren with an ear towards John Gustafson's bass which, thankfully, is mixed up front. He propels every song forwards and does some digitus gymnastics along the way. This would be his last of three studio albums with Roxy Music which would disband for four years filled in by the record company with a live album and a greatest hits collection.
My deep track pick is "Sentimental Fool" which begins in an Another Green World haze of Manzanera-tronics and ends with 90 seconds of post punk funk, Ferry crooning in falsetto "Oh once she gets in /Through thick and through thin /She'll show you what living's for". The playboy has been played.
No discussion of Country Life can be complete without talking about the cover of Roxy Music's fourth album, released November 15, 1974. So, let's just begin there. Depicted are two German fans, Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald, wearing little in the way of clothes and placing their hands and fingers in suggestive places. Bryan Ferry met them in Portugal and even got their help with some German lyrics for "Bitter-Sweet". They were happy to pose topless.
"I knew that pictures of pretty girls had been used to sell cars, soap and just about everything else," says Bryan Ferry. "So why not rock music?"
The album cover probably helped Roxy Music break into the US Top 40, but it presented the Atco label with a headache. Many retailers refuted to stock the album. In response, Atco took out this full page ad in Billboard Magazine:
As the copy says :
The album cover was banned in Spain and South Africa. Trades refused to reproduce it in ads. Rack jobbers refused to rack it. Stores refused to stock it. Mark Fenwick, Roxy Music's manager, was perplexed. "I don't understand it," he was heard to say, "They love it at home. Why, it's even won a graphics award!"
The label's first "cop-out" was to offer Country Life with an opaque green shrink wrap. But customers were peeling off the wrap to see what was causing all the fuss. So Atco followed up with the most innocuous cover possible: a shot of some branches.
The ad describes the tunes on Roxy Music's album as "experimental, far-reaching, progressive. madcap rock'n'roll". The three singles ("Out of the Blue", "All I Want Is You" and "The Thrill of It All" ) all expand on the erotic themes and art rock sounds of Stranded, leading Rolling Stone to refer to both albums as marking "the zenith of contemporary British art rock".
Yes, this is one of the essential albums to own from 1974, even if Side Two is a bit of a letdown. It would finish #9 in the NME poll of the year's best albums while the Village Voice's critic's poll of 1975 would rank the album #7.
America's largest record retailer, Sears, refused to stock Buffy Saint-Marie's MCA debut Buffy because she exposes a breast on the album cover. Buffy said the photo " is a good-natured protest against gloom, as well as support for any woman's right to take off her own shirt". In that spirit here are a few more of 1974's sexiest album covers.
So scandalous a cover that future American printings only showed the evergreen trees.
Is that hose supposed to represent something?
Hard rockin' Slavs.
Mood music from popular -tho cheesy- Italian sax player
Chaka Khan is one of the decade's sexiest frontwomen
Robert Palmer's debut, backed by the Meters
The single, "Le Sud", sold a million copies.
Jimmy Cliff may have been a breast man in the mid 70's
Cannonball Adderly's horoscope influenced horror
When they weren't playing with George Harrison and Joni Mitchell, they were laying down a groove for future hip hop stars.
German prog
Hard rocking Brits
One of soul's sexiest singers of the decade
Italian singer's debut featured a memorable gatefold
On January 23, 1974 Roxy Music performed on the West German music program Musikladen. Brian Eno was gone, replaced by multi-instrumentalist Eddie Jobson. An American named Sal Maida played bass on the touring version of Roxy Music. With Ferry dressed for a cocktail party and Phil Manzanera seated on a bar stool, they band played four songs from their latest album, Stranded, and the 1973 Top 10 single "Pyjamarama".
On November 1 , 1973 Roxy Music released their third album, the future UK #1 , Stranded, featuring Ferry squeeze Marilyn Cole, 1973's Playmate of the Year, on the steamy cover.
This is the first Roxy Music album without Brian Eno and yet Eno himself called Stranded his favorite Roxy Music album. By now Ferry had mastered his bored, broad-shouldered tuxedo'd playboy persona and the dramatic vibrato that quivered through tales of one night stands ( what exactly is a"G-Plan gymnastics by an everglow fire" ?) and party time wasting .
If there's one serious hitch to loving Roxy Music, it's how Bryan Ferry has taken far too much songwriting credit ( and thus the major portion of the royalties) for tunes developed by the entire band. Phil Manzanera says the band would record "the music first – all the music, including the solos. Then Bryan would listen to it and try to write a top-line tune and words. When it worked, it was absolutely brilliant. Because none of us knew what the song was going to be about until he recorded the vocal."
Manzanera would share credit on the Stranded cut "Amazona", my second favorite cut on the album. I love how the surging solo falls apart at the end and tumbles back into Manzanera's funky groove.
It turned out to be my first recorded track on an album and I was very proud of it. When I finished recording the guitar part, everyone cheered in the control room."
Andy Mackay shares credit on " A Song for Europe" otherwise all the credit goes to Ferry.
"Street Life", the first single off Stranded, became a Top 10 hit in the UK. It features a solo by Roxy's newest member , 19-year old Curved Air violinist/ keyboard player Eddie Jobson, whose fiddling away beneath the "Street Life " chant halfway through the song.
You can tell by the number of clips I'm posting that I'm a big fan of this album. It's probably sacrilegious to prefer this to the two albums with Eno but I've been called worse. The cut that truly knocks me out is the epic bipolar "Mother of Pearl". The lyrics sounds like overheard snatches of conversation at one of the parties Ferry attended with fashion models:
Divine intervention Always my intention So I take my time I've been looking for something
I've always wanted But was never mine But now I've seen that something Just out of reach - glowing -
Very Holy grail Oh mother of pearl Lustrous lady Of a sacred world
Roxy Music is on a roll that would propel the band through the next two years, through Country Life and Stranded. And then the band would , strangely, sit out the punk rock years while Brian Eno can be found manning the boards for Talking Heads, Devo and David Bowie.
Is it unfair to wonder what would have happened had Eno stayed with Roxy Music? Would Ferry have deigned to sing "Baby's On Fire"?
And yes, "A Song for Europe" has to be a parody of Eurovision. What else could it be? Right?
Originally called "Beat Club", the West German TV series Musikladen was one of the best music programs of its day because it kept things simple. There was no overbearing host. Bands were filmed in club settings. And Lip Syncing was not welcome. Here are just some of the performances I believe were televised in May of 1973.As the 70's fell victim to the disco craze, Musikladen hired go go dancers. Supringingly , not all of the boys complained about the girls
Morrissey claims he can only think of one truly great British album and that (Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure) is it.
-The Observer, June 20,2004
Roxy Music's second album is thought by many to be their crowning creative achievement--though my pop sensibilities lead me to favor Siren and Country Life. For Your Pleasure is the last to feature Brian Eno whose artsy sonic explorations offered an avant garde counterpoint to Bryan Ferry's ironic romantic poses.
This line-up would not last. Ferry would not let Roxy Music record Eno's songs, and he hated Eno's approach to recording which was more about experimenting with random ideas in the moment. The front man never leaves the band until he wants to and Eno left, complaining to Melody Maker's Geoff Brown "What Roxy Music lacks for me is one of the most important elements of my musical life, which is insanity." To which Ferry said "Two non-muscians in a band is one too many".
Our deep cut choice is the nine minute response to Krautrock, "The Bogus Man" which has - over the years- become a favorite. Sorry to say we almost always skip past the other epic "In Every Dream Home A Heartache". In the UK the album peaked at #4 but in the US, it barely dented the Billboard 200. In a mixed review, Rolling Stone's Paul Gambaccini called the album "remarkably inaccessible". The US would need another decade to catch on to Roxy Music's appeal.
