Chart entered : 19 August 1972
Chart peak : 4
Number of hits : 16
From one groundbreaking single to another and these guys really did bring something new to the party.
I think it helped that only one of them had made a record before. There's no trail back into the sixties ; this was music by and for the new decade. And it caught people out ; "Whispering" Bob Harris never recovered his reputation after sniffily dismissing their Whistle Test appearance and now inhabits the netherworld of small hours radio where he has to bloody whisper because everyone's gone to bed.
The group was the brainchild of ex-pottery teacher ( sacked for playing records in the classroom ) Bryan Ferry who was not , as usually reported, a miner's son from Newcastle. His father was a farmer who looked after some pit ponies. He went to Newcastle University to study fine art under Richard Hamilton in the mid-sixties. His other passion was soul music and he formed covers bands to gig in the evenings including The Banshees ( not to be confused with a Belfast band who put a handful of singles out ) and The Gas Board with housemate Graham Simpson on bass. After graduating in 1968 he moved to London to pursue his musical ambitions.
In February 1970 he auditioned to replace Greg Lake as vocalist in King Crimson. Robert Fripp and Pete Sinfield felt his angst-ridden style wasn't a good fit for the band but encouraged him to start his own band. He brought Simpson down from Newcastle and advertised in Melody Maker for a keyboard player. Andy Mackay responded although he was actually a saxophonist and oboe player. He'd been at Reading University studying music and literature. He was classically trained but interested in the avant garde and had recently bought a synthesiser. He brought along a friend Brian Eno, another art student from Winchester College who experimented with tape recorders. He had no musical training but was willing to have a go on the synthesiser.
The original drummer Dexter Lloyd left after a few rehearsals so another ad was placed which brought in Paul Thompson , fresh from a building site where he had been working as a hod carrier. Paul was a working class lad from Newcastle and had been drumming in local bands since he was 15 and one, The Influence, also featuring John Miles, had got to make a single in 1969. It was called "I Want To Live" and I haven't heard it. A final ad for a guitarist brought in former Nice man David O ' List and another candidate from the auditions, a young well-connected Anglo-Columbian, Phil Manzanera, was invited to become their roadie.
The band named themselves Roxy Music partly in homage to 1930s cinema and part as a subversive pun on rock. Sinfield arranged an audition for EG Management which saw O' List quit after a row with Paul. Phil was promoted into the band and a deal was signed. EG signed them and financed the recording of their first eponymous album with Sinfield producing. I can't do justice here to such an epochal record; each track deserves a considerable appraisal with each member getting a chance to shine. I can't even pick out a highlight ; it's all great.
Chris Blackwell's Island snapped them up and released the album in June 1972. By that time the band had had to change the line up once more. Graham Simpson's mother died almost immediately after the album was completed and he fell into depression. In his own words "I was not compos mentis. I couldn't concentrate or appreciate anything they were doing". Bryan reluctantly let him leave and all subsequent Roxy bassists were temporary in the hope that he'd return but it never happened. Once fit again he travelled the world as a perma-stoned cultural tourist and at one point criminal - he did time in Morocco for safe cracking - before returning to London and living a quiet life from the royalties ( which must have dwindled in the download era). He died a couple of years ago. After a brief try out with some guy called Peter Paul the new bassist was Rik Kenton. He was a young pretty boy who had been playing with eccentric songwriter G F Fitzgerald.
The album was selling respectably through their appearance on Whistle Test and support from Peel but really needed a hit single to boost its fortunes. None of the existing tracks fitted the bill so the band returned to the studio to cut "Virginia Plain". Bryan was influenced by ideas of collage, slinging together disparate musical and lyrical ideas into a coherent new whole. In 1964 Bryan had produced a Warhol-influenced painting of a packet of Virginia cigarettes with one of the American's muses Baby Jane Holzer on the front who is referenced. Also mentioned is EG's lawyer Robert Lee but Bryan makes a playful connection with the American Civil War general Robert E Lee who operated out of Virginia. Much of the song is an escapist fantasy about a jet-setting lifestyle although delivered in a mocking tone. Musically it sounds like nothing that had gone before with Paul's sledgehammer drumming the rock on which all the diversions such as Andy's atonal sax break and Phil's improvised guitar solo are hung. Despite the now-primitive sound of the VCS-3 synthesiser the highlight is still the second instrumental break after the telling line "Gotta search for something new" where the hard slamming guitar chords are repeatedly answered by Brian's simple synth phrase, each time played a little louder than the last. Once they got on Top of the Pops and people checked out their retro-futurist look and the lead singer's cheekbones the deal was sealed.
My mam, who would have been 20 at the time, was very taken with Mr Ferry. Cut forward 30 years and it caused a bit of a barney in the house when she stated she'd preferred Roxy/Ferry to the music of Elvis Presley (my dad's favourite). I didn't help matters by taking her side.
ReplyDeleteGreat single, and the seeds of numerous acts from the early 80s are sown here, I would have thought.