Sitting in my upstairs bedroom in 1982, dutifully watching MTV videos, as was my after-school routine in those late elementary school years, I loved watching the quirky, often lush, and always unique videos that populated the cable station in its most formative period. MTVs’ programming in those days was largely dominated by the explosion of new wave’s British Invasion arising in the early 80s. With the wealth of “New Romantic” British acts dominating MTV’s rotation including the likes of Duran Duran, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, and countless others, nothing was more intoxicating for me than watching the Roxy Music video for “Avalon.” The tune evoked a silky-smooth vibe, while its video conjured images that struck my young mind as colorful and quaint, even retrospective of an earlier era of leisure, relaxation, and sophistication (featuring Brian Ferry gracefully pulling off a white tux). The music and video for “Avalon” somehow represented a comfortable, intimate space for a tall, awkward 80s kid, struggling to accommodate the strain of early puberty.
This memory of my attraction to the mood and stylishness of both the musicality and highly designed imagery of the “Avalon” video resonates even stronger in my mind thanks to a sixth-grade conversation I had with a friend about our favorite bands. No one had ever asked my opinion of music before, and adolescent conversations about the topic occasionally introduced uncomfortable debates about the “queerness” of artists like Boy George and the heavily make-uped and apparelled Adam Ant. Parallel conversations also arose around the heavy (for the time), guitar-driven music of bands like AC/DC and Iron Maiden, or laughing over Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat during a live set (yup, that happened in the winter of ‘82).
After a classmate had written (with highly stylistic script) AC/DC, KISS, Ozzy, and Sabbath on the chalkboard during recess one afternoon, my friend, Rob, asked me, “what is your favorite band?” My immediate response to Rob’s query was, “Roxy Music, of course.” Not consuming MTV to the extent I did thanks to my solitary afternoons, Rob had never heard of Roxy or Brian Ferry. Thankfully, he had cable, so I emphatically directed him to a binge MTV listen, in which I was sure “Avalon” would appear on the video rotation at some point. Whether or not Rob ever listened to “Avalon” or any other Roxy Music song, the memory of that conversation elevated the band to iconic status in my mind – where it has remained with fascination ever since. So much so that during my period of full-time fatherhood coupled with graduate study in New York in the early 2000’s, I became obsessed with bands and the exercise of consuming individual albums within an artist’s entire music catalogue. That process of music consumption eventually led me into a sophisticated deep dive of the Roxy Music catalogue in 2003.
While reflecting upon this obsession with Roxy Music, particularly after Ferry and his crew were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, I believe that my intense interest in the band might have arisen from a curiosity into the various musical, physical, literary, and visual (meaning film) platforms of pop culture, especially from the recent decades before the 1980s. In other words a passion for nostalgia. Nostalgic leanings were dangerous interests for a kid struggling to be cool while preparing for the terrors of middle school. My family had the full cable package (which not everyone had in the early 1980s), so I had much to consume. My interests ranged from classic movies (my primary resourced was the station AMC when it stood for American Movie Classics and had no ambition to produce hit contemporary series like the Walking Dead and Mad Men, which would startlingly appear on the station nearly 25 years later), to a fascination with Bruce Lee movies that played nearly on repeat on HBO, to a further passion for horror flicks (thanks mostly to my sister dragging me to The Shining when I was 9 years old). I look back on my 70s and 80s childhood as a confluence of Steven Spielberg references and sheer geekdom – such as playing Dungeon and Dragons (I was the Dungeon Master and had all of the guidebooks!) – endlessly riding around the neighborhood with my bicycle and a posse of nerd friends, and devouring a consistent diet of fantasy and science fiction novels.
I see my devoted interest in pop culture from a young age as a parallel to the masterminds of Roxy Music’s (Brian Ferry and Brian Eno) nostalgic intent to incorporate numerous expressions of pop culture from the 1930s to the raucous completion of the 60s. Roxy Music incorporated the practice of inviting cultural styles and motifs of decades past into their public image, as Brian Ferry and his colleagues mixed high fashion from the 1930s, 50s, and 60s, contemporary art, and even retro hairstyles into their musical vibes, live performances, and marketing. In Paul Stump’s book, Unknown Pleasure: A Cultural Biography of Roxy Music (58), the author records Ferry referencing how the song lyrics from the band’s first album represented a reflection on the early 20th-century actor Humphrey Bogart. This thoughtful rumination on a classic performer from decades past and representing that personality within lyrics succinctly locates the stylistical heart and soul of Roxy Music’s early years. While watching Ferry’s performance in the “Avalon” music video, wearing a white tuxedo, sitting at a piano, and basking upon the decadence of 1920s elegance present around him, physically showcased to me the mixed up-retro images that Roxy Music attempted to evoke.
Animating a Pose
Almost 40 years since my initial impressions with Roxy Music, I still maintain a fascination with the band and Brian Ferry. Sort of surprisingly, there exists a vast literature engaging Roxy Music, some it from a journalistic lens, others more academic in nature. Having looked at some of these publications, I have discovered that Roxy Music was more of a cultural phenomenon (at least in the UK and Western Europe) than a band, especially at its origins. Roxy Music, more than any other quality, was about glamour, curating a style, and striking a “pose” that implied music, art, fashion, literature, and just about any other cultural phenomenon that Ferry could throw into the mix. According to Micheal Bracewell’s excellent documentary book entitled Re-Make/Remodel: Becoming Roxy Music, for Ferry, music, and art could animate a pose – i.e. “the fantasy lifestyles of the romantic imagination, as embodied through particularly suave, intense forms of creative activity.” This approach to music-making and performance evoked a certain theatricality and showmanship that was carnivalesque and sometimes even vulgar in nature, borne from the English and American forms of pop culture of the early 1970s, but never unleashed into the throws of popular music.
Bracewell further writes that with the 1960s giving way to the 1970s a “rearrangement of energy” occurred that was unnoticeable by many given its initial subtlety (280). Yet, several musical artists managed to capture these aesthetic transitions happening within the highbrow worlds of fine art and fashion in their musical compositions and the production of live performances. With figures such as David Bowie and Lou Reed/The Velvet Underground, feasting upon the energies of these changes, Brian Ferry exploited them as well, translating the cultural vibes visually and physically into the conceptual project that became Roxy Music (the artistically influenced physical form of their live performances and promotion often took precedence over the actual tunes they were to compose). Brian Ferry was able to enlist several contemporary artists and fashion designers to assist Roxy Music, creating a visual style for the band members and their performance design. These included clothes designer Antony Price, art director Nick DeVille, and even hairstylist Keith Mainwaring (Stump; 45).
Art and style notwithstanding, the sound of Roxy Music, at least initially, was primarily the creation of Ferry (lyrics and composition) and Brian Eno (song structure, texture, and sheer randomness), both of whom would go on to become musical icons, albeit within completely different genres. Both of these artists seemed to have varying yet parallel proclivities regarding what exactly Roxy Music should become both musically and stylistically. For Ferry, forming the band was about establishing a rock band as “concept,” and hence capturing the collision of fine art and the avant-garde with pop culture and fashion. With that concept in mind, Ferry began to assemble a cohort of musicians who shared his artistic and stylistic mindset. Brian Eno, although he certainly adhered to Ferry’s cultural imaginings for the band, possessed interests that expanded much further in terms of the technical aspects of Roxy’s musical palette. As Paul Stump remarked in his book Unknown Pleasures: A Cultural History of Roxy Music, Eno created the framework for the bands musical compositions that were then filled in with subsequent music, particularly with structure and the “textural center” (rather than arrangement) of the songs. In the initial recording of the band’s debut album (Roxy Music), Eno’s textures offer the rhythm section (featuring bassist Graham Simposn and drummer Paul Thompson) a great deal of authority to connect texture with song structure, and the space for improvisation for guitarist Phil Manzanera and multi-instrumentalist Andy Mackay (56). Eno set the blueprints for these early Roxy Music songs, while Ferry orchestrated the songwriting, style, and image of the band.
Since the recording of Roxy Music, the band experienced a veritable whirlwind of musicians, especially at the position of keyboards and bass. Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera, and Thompson composed the mainstays throughout Roxy’s history (up to the 80s). With the departure of Brian Eno after the band’s second album, the complexity of Roxy’s sound changed wildly, with the band taking on more of a streamlined pop mantle compared to the experimental vibe reminiscent of Eno’s sensibilities and compositions. In 1982, with the band consisting of Ferry, Mackay, and Manzanera, the sound of the band settled upon a brand of romantic soft rock, largely vis-a-vis Ferry’s influence. Along with a host of studio musicians, the group recorded their masterpiece, Avalon. Avalon would prove to be Roxy Music’s final album, as Ferry dissolved the band after completing the album’s tour in 1983. The album was a wild success in the States for Roxy (and for many Americans like me, Avalon was the first introduction to Roxy Music), and is packed with amazing singles including “More Than This,” “The Main Thing“, “The Space Between“, “True to Life“, and “To Turn You On.” Ferry would replicate the sound of Avalon in his next few solo recordings as he put the legacy of Roxy Music to rest. Given that Roxy’s last album was the first exposure to the band for most Americans, Ferry and company silently drifted into irrelevance in North America (aside from decent enthusiasm in the U.S. for Ferry’s solo career). However, for Roxy Music’s British audience, the band is often cited as one of the greatest rock bands in UK history (taking only second to the Beatles and often third when compared to David Bowie).
My intent in producing this examination of Roxy Music’s career is as an initiation to yet another consideration of the band’s catalogue. In addition to the music though, I am just as intrigued with Roxy Music in its cultural context, especially the impact the band had with the gloriousness of 1970s London pop culture (and the influence of that culture on the band and its musical and stylistic output during the era). This initial discussion serves as a point of departure for a series of album reviews that I will publish on Bearded Gentlemen Music of Roxy Music’s eight albums, incorporating a conversation about the impact of the various “poses” the band animated for public consumption (and their impacts musically, socially, and culturally) of the era. I believe this exercise in musical and cultural analysis is a significant effort – not only to finally relieve my geekiness about the band, but also to generate an awareness for a classic, influential rock band that never generated much attention in the States.
Reflecting again upon my childhood fascination with Roxy Music, I love to think about Brian Ferry’s passion for highly stylized performers of the past, such as Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, or even Trevor Howard, who starred in the 1945 film Brief Encounter. This nostalgic yearning for artists, movements, and icons of past decades is what led to my youthful connection to Ferry and Roxy Music in the first place. Certainly, a sense of nostalgia for several decades past is pasted all over the music video for “Avalon.” Consuming and appreciating all of this as a teen probably made me more sensitive to the horrors of my age, while crafting me, much like Ferry, into an old romantic in a moment of new romanticism.