Released - June 1972
Genre - Art Rock
Producer - Peter Sinfield
Selected Personnel - Bryan Ferry (Vocals/Piano/Mellotron); Brian Eno (Synthesiser/Tape Effects); Andy Mackay (Saxophone/Oboe); Phil Manzanera (Guitar); Graham Simpson (Bass); Paul Thompson (Drums)
Standout Track - Chance Meeting
These days, Bowie is probably thought of as the great art rock innovator of the seventies having devoted himself wholeheartedly to avant-garde weirdness once he'd outgrown the wham-bam simplicity of glam rock (and his subsequent flirtation with blue-eyed soul). But it's fair to say that, when Bowie was busy taking the world by storm with simple, world-shaking theatrical pop, the artist really pushing the envelope of what could be achieved in mainstream pop/rock music was a little band called Roxy Music. The whole "art rock" thing is a curious little subgenre, and one that stands wholly separate from prog. While both had at their hearts a desire to inject intelligence and craft into rock music, to render it strange and unusual in order to challenge the listener, art rock generally avoided going completely off-piste. The weird sonic experiments and off-kilter weirdness of Roxy Music was always bolted onto fairly conventional song structures rather than the time signature-shifting, multi-part instrumentals of prog. Art rock was therefore able to tap into a far wider market than prog could ever have hoped to, and managed to survive into the modern day far better. And in the early 70s, nobody was approaching conventional songwriting with such a kitsch sense of theatricality and avant-garde innovativeness than Roxy Music - not even Bowie. When I came to Roxy Music, I was familiar with their 80s hit "More Than This" from their final album Avalon, which I loved, and was unprepared for just how weird and strange their earlier work was considering the fact that by the 80s they had morphed into a (remarkably capable) straightforward New Romantic synthpop outfit. As my burgeoning love of weird, off-kilter and avant-garde music was driving me forward at the time, Roxy Music were an easy fit for my musical sensibilities, and the fact that they were also enormously accomplished at making brilliant undemanding pop music appealed equally to the teenage pop fan within me. They're one of the few artists who've been able to master the mainstream as well as indulging their artistic flair and their creative imagination, and as such are one of my all-time favourite bands.
Roxy Music came to form around the creative nucleus of lead singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry, a man whose carefully cultivated image of some sort of glamourous, dandyish throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood, perpetually draped in monogrammed dressing-gowns and tuxedos, was reportedly already in place even before Roxy Music existed. One of the most charismatically odd and offbeat frontmen in music history, Ferry has always been the spirit that drove Roxy Music forwards, and initially the band came to respond to his adverts for collaborators merely because he needed some outlet to showcase his own talent as a singer-songwriter. One gets a sense that, at heart, Ferry had a desire to just write and record great, retro-sounding pop music and that the sonic weirdness and kitsch sound of Roxy Music was something that came courtesy of his sidemen - certainly, his later work with Roxy Music and his own solo career would go in a far more mainstream direction than the songs evidenced on Roxy Music. Undoubtedly the most significant figure pushing things in this direction was Brian Eno, whose tenure with Roxy Music was short-lived but enormously significant. A self-avowed "non-musician" Eno, a friend of saxophonist Andy Mackay, was there to simply use his beaten up old synthesiser and experiments with tape effects to lend a distinctive "voice" to the band's music. Eno would record sounds on tape and then distort them in playback and generally apply his unique brain to a musical problem in order to create a sound or an idea that was totally alien and new. After leaving Roxy Music he would go on to have a brief solo career in rock music, making some of the most imaginative and brilliantly weird rock music in history before effectively inventing ambient music and becoming one of the most influential record producers of the century. Roxy Music kept a lot of their avant-garde style even after Eno's departure, but one does get the sense that if it weren't for his unique presence here the band might have ended up sounding a lot less interesting. Alongside Ferry, Eno and Mackay was bassist Graham Simpson (an old friend of Ferry's and the first to initiate the band project along with him), drummer Paul Thompson and maestro guitarist Phil Manzanera (actually drafted into the sessions for the debut album at the last minute after original guitarist David O'List of The Nice dropped out).
Roxy Music was recorded under the watchful eyes of King Crimson's former lyricist Pete Sinfield of all people before the band even had a record deal, and were tentatively signing with Island Records. Ultimately, it was the album's proposed, retro-styled cover shot of a 50s starlet that sealed the deal for them and won them the contract. As a primer to everything the band were capable of doing, it's unbeatable, and still one of their finest albums. It serves not only as a showcase for Ferry's masterful songwriting, but also for the glamourous sense of adventure and daring that the band could inject into their music like nobody else. Of course, Ferry is the most prominent presence, his bizarre warbling, crooning vocals standing apart from pretty much every other figure on the musical landscape at the time, but Manzanera, for a last-minute addition, more than acquits himself via some incendiary guitar work, from the frenzied, tuneless, distorted solos of "Sea Breezes" to the more melodic riffing of "Re-Make/Re-Model." Mackay, Thompson and Simpson are given less opportunity to shine here, but the latter two make for a fine understated rhythm section, and Mackay offers some great flourishes via saxophones and woodwinds, most notably on "Re-Make/Re-Model." And, though he doesn't really play any instruments and therefore never really makes his presence felt, Eno's influence is everywhere. The distortions and delays that lend every song its sense of being just slightly off are all courtesy of his careful hand, while songs like "Ladytron" give him an opportunity to really assemble a collage of scraps of sound as he attempts to recreate, at Ferry's instruction, the sound of a lunar landing.
The songs themselves are uniformly excellent - album opener "Re-Make/Re-Model" is a Roxy Music classic, from the nonsense chanting of the licence plate number "CPL5938" to Manzanera's frenzied, infectious riff and Ferry's delirious, almost-in-tune vocals. As a declaration of intent introducing Roxy Music to the world, it's peerless. "If There Is Something" is almost the best song here, starting out almost as a sarcastic piss-take of country music with its lazy twang but eventually developing into a funereal, menacing second half that gives Mackay a chance to really stretch his muscles on the sax. "If There Is Something" is narrowly pipped to the post of album standout by the miraculous "Chance Meeting," which is perhaps the simplest song here. There are no solos, no jams, just a short and simple song that finds Ferry at his piano singing forlornly of running into a former lover unexpectedly while Manzanera's tortured guitar wails, distorted into a truly alien sound by Eno, lend a sense of menacing weirdness that make it one of the most heartbreaking, and at the same time one of the most frightening songs, in the band's back catalogue. The wonderful "Sea Breezes" moves in the opposite direction to "If There Is Something," starting out as a melancholic dirge over Eno's maritime sound collage, and then shifting, courtesy of one of Simpson's few standout moments on the record, into a playful groove for the final minutes. And, of course, there's the delightfully retro and silly "Bitters End," which sees Ferry in full-on croon and a full host of Monty-Python-esque backing vocals over playful percussive sounds. It's a song so gloriously silly that it ably demonstrates that Roxy Music weren't a band that felt the urge to take themselves seriously - they could write music that was exciting and new and affecting but they were also aware of the need to have fun with what they were doing.
It's difficult to say which of Roxy Music's brief discography is their finest, but Roxy Music is a strong contender - it's so bold and colourful a debut and nails its colours to the mast with far more conviction than any of their other albums. For Your Pleasure is perhaps a more nuanced and inventive work, but Roxy Music will always be one of their truly great achievements. It's tough to say just how pleased Bryan Ferry was with it - over the following year, he and Eno would engage in a bitter popularity contest (not driven by any desire of Eno's to control the band, merely down to the clash of their own personalities) that would eventually see him depart, at which point Ferry would slowly begin steering the band back towards a focus on simple songwriting rather than sonic experimentation. Still, at this stage Ferry had no cause to worry - Roxy Music won them a fair amount of critical acclaim and the subsequent success of the non-album single "Virginia Plain" would see them lauded even further as one of the most exciting new bands on the scene, and rightly so.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Bryan Ferry.
1. Re-Make/Re-Model
2. Ladytron
3. If There Is Something
4. 2 H.B.
5. The Bob (Medley)
6. Chance Meeting
7. Would You Believe?
8. Sea Breezes
9. Bitters End
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