Chart entered : 25 September 1982
Chart peak : 26
Roxy Music cast a long shadow so it's something of a shock to realise their last new single was in the charts thirty-three years ago.
Roxy had seen some personnel changes since their chart debut with "Virginia Plain". Bassist Rik Kenton was ejected from the band almost immediately afterwards. John Porter a friend of Bryan Ferry's from The Gas Board filled in on the next single "Pyjamarama" and album "For Your Pleasure" but was replaced for the tour by Merseybeat veteran John Gustafson who stayed for the next three albums. In mid-1973 the band's wild card Brian Eno quit after a number of differences with Bryan; both men acknowledge it was a clash of young male egos. It was the first great rock split I remember. Brian was my favourite and I received the news with dismay; it coloured my response to the band's music for some years afterwards. He was replaced by the classically trained teenage prodigy Eddie Jobson who had been in the recent line up of Curved Air. In 1975 this line up scored their only US hit "Love Is The Drug" which directly inspired Chic. It came from the LP "Siren" . After the tour supporting it Bryan put the band on hiatus while he concentrated on his solo career ; drummer Paul Thompson and guitarist Phil Manzanera played on both his albums during this period. In 1978 they reconvened without Eddie who was playing in the band UK at the time and with ex-Vibrator Gary Tibbs on bass. The "comeback" album "Manifesto" yielded the number 2 hit "Dance Away". After the tour Paul broke his thumb in a motorcycle accident and decided to quit the band while convalescing. From that point the band became essentially a trio of Bryan, Phil and sax player Andy Mackay; although Gary appeared in the videos for the three singles from 1980's "Flesh and Blood" he didn't actually play on any of them. He was no longer involved by the time they scored their number one with the Lennon tribute "Jealous Guy". The trio recorded the last album "Avalon" with a host of session players.
"Take A Chance With Me" was the third single from "Avalon". Like the bulk of their material since reconvening it's elegant mood music rather than anything very experimental . a direction that reached its apogee on "Avalon". After a heart-stopping intro of melodic guitar, percussion tumbles and Oriental synth swirls that suggests anything is possible, it then settles into a slick mid-tempo love song with Bryan's croon gliding over Phil's guitar. The lyrics are sparse and simple , undemanding of any real attention. The chorus is vaguely reminiscent of "Oh Yeah" from the previous album and that's it really. An elegant send-off but not an especially memorable one.
At the end of the "Avalon" tour Bryan decided to dissolve the band for good.
Now I could be talking about the Roxy diaspora until Christmas if I'm not careful so what follows is necessarily truncated and may be expanded at a later date.
We haven't said goodbye to Bryan as a solo artist yet and we already know about Gary's subsequent adventures so that's those two covered.
Phil and Andy decided to continue together and formed a new group The Explorers with a new singer James Wraith who didn't sound unlike Mr Ferry. They got a deal with Virgin and released four singles and a self-titled album. Unfortunately they were pants , producing the sort of tuneless, directionless techno-pop so prevalent in the mid-eighties. It was a shocking comedown to the level of Limahl, Wang Chung and Re-flex, Despite an appearance on Wogan doing one of the singles they bombed completely.
Re-branding themselves as Manzanera and Mackay they released two albums in the late eighties "Crack The Whip" and "Manzanera and Mackay" with a considerably heavier sound and Wraith sounding more like Andy Bell than Ferry. These are actually worth a listen - "Another Fool on the Run" from "Crack The Whip" is particularly good but they were now forgotten men and the records were largely ignored.
Andy then left the music business for a while to take a Bachelor of Divinity course at King's College London. Shortly after graduating his wife died so he was preoccupied with raising his children while composing ecclesiastical music at home. Phil became a guitar player for hire and record producer working mainly in South America.
Paul's next playing gig was with punk band Angelic Upstarts playing on and co-writing a couple of tracks on their fifth album in 1983 "Reason Why" bringing a greater musicality to their sound. By that time they were no longer on a major and no longer making the charts. Paul moved on to playing with Gary Moore.
In 1990 he joined American college rock band Concrete Blonde while their regular drummer was in rehab and played on their third album "Bloodletting" which is excellent, one of the "finds" of doing this blog so far. It spawned their only US hit "Joey" a touching message of reconciliation from singer Johnette Napolitano to wayward ex Marc Moreland of Wall of Voodoo. The original drummer returned for the next album as Paul was finding it difficult to get a green card but he was back for the 1993 album "Mexican Moon". This saw the band adopt a heavier sound in the wake of grunge and isn't quite as appealing. It didn't do much business and the band broke up. Paul returned to Newcastle and just played in local bands for a few years.
Eddie joined Frank Zappa's band for a couple of years but didn't play on any studio recording. He then joined with two ex-King Crimson members in a supergroup UK . Eddie's keyboards were very prominent in their unreconstructed prog rock sound. UK released two albums into a very hostile musical climate , "U.K." ( 1978 ) and "Danger Money" ( 1979 ). The first reached 43 in the charts while the second didn't chart although it did spawn a minor hit single in "Nothing To Lose". UK split in 1980 because Eddie wanted to stick in the prog rock genre while singer John Wetton wanted to pursue a more commercial direction which he did successfully with Asia.
Eddie moved on to help Ian Anderson on his solo project "A" which became a Jethro Tull album although Eddie was credited as a special guest rather than a member. Nevertheless he did the subsequent world tour with them. He briefly joined Yes in 1983 during Tony Kaye's temporary departure and his first solo album "Zinc- The Green Album" sounds exactly like them. Even Eddie's vocals sound like Jon Anderson but the album is relatively accessible.
After that Eddie switched tack and released an album of New Age instrumental music, "Theme of Secrets" in 1985. He then moved into TV , film and ad scoring working on Nash Bridges, a couple of Disney releases and an Amtrak ad which won him a Clio Award in 1988 . In 2000 he launched his own label Globe Music Media Arts releasing world music albums, some of which he produced or featured on. In 2010 he launched the Zealots Lounge , an online music community to support his work..
In 2007 he announced a new group UKZ playing a sort of prog / industrial hybrid music. They released one EP "Radiation" in 2009 which is for the converted only. Since 2011 he has been touring with a reconstituted UK line up.
So what of the man he replaced ? Well we've already covered some of Brian's activities in the Ultravox and Talking Heads posts. I would nominate him as the single most influential person in pop music over the past four decades. He expanded the notions of where rock music could go in his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2 where his input was way beyond the normal idea of a producer. He is recognised as the founder of ambient music but is also a pioneer of sampling, world music and the trance/ chill-out genres.
Besides all that he has a long string of releases in his own name which shows no signs of slowing up. He started with a string of conventional art rock LPs, the first of which "Here Come The Warm Jets " was a sizeable hit and showcased an unexpectedly decent singing voice. After that they didn't chart and after the fifth "Before and After Science" he switched to making LPs of ambient music often in tandem with like-minded collaborators such as pianist Harold Budd. He eventually returned to vocals , albeit heavily treated , with "Another Day On Earth" in 2005 . His last album was "High Life", a collaboration with Karl Hyde of Underworld released last year.
Finally we come to all those bassists. John G joined the Ian Gillan Band playing on all three of their albums between 1976 and 1977. Gillan had had an extended break since quiting Deep Purple and their jazz fusion sound only attracted a fraction of the Purple audience. Only the first album "Child In Time" made the charts in the UK although the band was popular in Japan. When Gillan re-cast them as Gillan in 1978 with a more conventional blues rock sound John was replaced by bald leviathan John McCoy. He went on to play in Gordon Giltrap's band for a couple of years . He wrote Status Quo's 1982 hit "Dear John ". He then spent a few years with Mick Green in a new line up of The Pirates where he did the vocals. In 1997 his 1975 solo album "Goose Grease" was finally released but I've no idea what it sounded like. He continued in session work and guitar teaching until his death from cancer last year.
John P moved into record production, most famously with the debut album from The Smiths. His latest work was with the Yorkshire group The Dunwells.
Rik popped up a couple of years later on Island with the chugging reggae pop of "Bungalow Love" which is pretty poor as Rik couldn't really sing. Two years later he made another single "The Libertine" which sounds like Cockney Rebel. Johnny Walker got behind it but couldn't make it a hit. In 1982 he got together with some younger musicians to form Savage Progress who released three singles and an album "Celebration" on Virgin subsidiary 10 Records in 1984. They also supported Tina Turner and The Thompson Twins on tour. Rik was the main songwriter . I vaguely remember the first single "Burning Bush" which is a half -decent synth-pop tune but the rest of the album is a tedious mish-mash of over-production trying to disguise the lack of any real talent in the band. Tuneless third single "Heart Begin To Beat" is particularly laughable. When hopeless singer Glynis Thomas quit the band later that year Rik decided to call time on it and retreated into session work appearing on records by Bass-o-matic and Anne Clark.
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