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Back to the Future: Bryan Ferry live in concert, Japan 1977
05.22.2019
09:17 am
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In 1983, Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ frontman Kevin Rowland managed to get his band booted off their prestigious support gig on David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour. Dexy’s were riding high as a ragamuffin band of “Celtic soul rebels” who had scored big with their single “Come on Eileen.” Despite the plum role on Bowie’s show-bill, Rowland was no fan of the Thin White Duke. Unfortunately, he made his antipathy public during one gig at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil, Paris, when he told the audience David Bowie was “full of shit,” before adding:

“I don’t know why you are so fussed about Bowie. Bryan Ferry has much more style.”

To be fair, Rowland had a point—well, half a point. Bryan Ferry has always been stylish, while Bowie often latched onto trends, characters, and talented collaborators (like Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, and Brian Eno) to find his style and further his career. Ferry always seemed to know exactly who he was, what he was about, and where he was going.

A baby boomer born into a working class family in Washington, County Durham in 1945, Ferry inherited his obsession for music from his mother. Music was just noise to his father, but for his mother it was a passion. From the age of ten, Ferry was obsessed with rock and jazz. He preferred American artists like Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Charlie Parker, rather than the homegrown sounds of ‘50s skiffle. He got a Saturday job delivering newspapers and magazines so he could read up on all the new record releases and any reviews or interviews with his favorite artists.

Ferry said he never quite fit in at school and always felt a bit of “an oddity.” While his classmates argued about the differences between Bill Haley and Chuck Berry or Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, he chose to follow the artists on the Stax and Tamla Motown labels. It wasn’t just the music he liked but how these artists presented themselves—synchronized dance routines, sharps suits, and beautifully coiffed hair styles. It was show business where the image was as important as the sound.

The confirmation that he was on the right track came when he started studying fine art at Newcastle University. Under the guidance of noted British pop artist Richard Hamilton, Ferry became more confident in his own nascent talents and began writing songs. These were at first influenced by Hamilton’s pop aesthetic, best heard in songs like “Virginia Plain” which was inspired by a painting Ferry had made of a packet of cigarettes (Virginia Plain was then a brand of cigarette).

His musical ambitions were brought into sharper focus after he hitch-hiked to London to see Otis Redding perform in concert in 1967. It was then that Ferry knew he had to become a singer.
 
Watch stylish Bryan Ferry in concert, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.22.2019
09:17 am
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‘Manifesto’ or new sounds for a new decade: Roxy Music live in concert, 1979
11.05.2018
12:56 pm
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1979: After a four-year break between studio albums, Roxy Music regrouped and recorded their sixth LP Manifesto. The question was not whether it would be any good, but whether Roxy Music was still relevant in a post-punk world? A week may be a long time in politics, but four years is one helluva career in pop.

Not that Roxy’s key members Bryan Ferry, Andy MacKay, Phil Manzanera, and drummer “the great” Paul Thompson were slouches during the band’s downtime. Ferry had established himself as a highly successful solo artist. MacKay had worked on two seasons of the ground-breaking TV series Rock Follies for which he had co-written 49 songs. Manzanera had recorded and released two solo albums Diamond Head (1975) and K-Scope (1978), the first being correctly described by Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone as “one of the great British rock albums of the mid-Seventies.” Thompson gave his talents to his bandmates’ solo projects and played with other bands.

That’s the backstory to 1979.
 
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As a band, Roxy Music was the sound of the future filtered through the past. Just their name alone suggested a 1930s dance band with some Brylcreemed lead singer crooning love songs into a silver microphone. The music, starting with the debut single “Virginia Plain” in 1972, was unique, utterly original, and influenced a host of bands from the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees (who apparently met at a Roxy concert) to Madness and Duran Duran. During their first decade, Roxy Music produced a body of work—eight classic studio albums—which sounds as new today as when they were first released.
 
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Which brings us to Manifesto. Though the album was eagerly anticipated there were questions as to what exactly a group of thirtysomethings could offer the music world after the seismic shift caused by punk, new wave, disco, synth, and the early hints of New Romantics. Though the album could be described as a mix, it was still an exceptional A-.

In some respects, it was a kind of work-in-progress that tapped into the early, “futuristic sound” of Roxy and the new, mature, soulful, sophisticated rock that would reach its zenith with Roxy’s eighth studio album Avalon. Ferry was always a crooner. Listen to him on the second-half of “Mother of Pearl” or the beautiful and haunting “Chance Meeting.” He was once (aptly) described by writer Michael Bracewell as “Jay Gatsby meets Marcello Mastroianni.” He had always been a crooner, a soulful singer, who gave his very own distinctive vocal-sound to Roxy’s artpop.  Now he was creating a new sophisticated sound which was best indicated by his song “Dance Away” and those co-written with MacKay (“Angel Eyes”) and Manzanera (“Trash,” “Still Falls the Rain,” and “Manifesto”). The opening lyrics to “Trash” (“Are you customized or ready-made?”) suggest Ferry’s own ambiguous role of being both an artpop-provocateur and a traditional singer. He was moving away from the youthful “rock” to more plaintive ballads. This switch can be heard in the startling difference between the album version of “Angel Eyes,” which was more rock ‘n’ roll than the lush and superior sounding single version. Roxy Music was now on the verge of their greatest success, as Manifesto saw the band score big in the US market and become a staple of FM radio. 

More, plus Roxy Music in concert, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.05.2018
12:56 pm
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Bizarre vintage ads for life-sized inflatable sex dolls

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Let’s imagine it’s 1973. I have my bachelor pad, my 28” color TV, swivel chair, hi-fi stereo gear, fondue set and my corduroy bellbottoms. I live in a Space Age world. I have everything I ever wanted. But somehow I feel empty. I feel I’ve mortgaged my happiness on things I don’t really need. I have a lifestyle but no life. There’s something missing. I’m lonely. I’m missing that certain someone special to share all this luxury with.

But relationships are messy. They’re downright difficult. And I don’t know if I’m ready to commit, you know what I mean? I really need someone who is always ready to please, always ready for me and what I want. When I want it. But where can I find such a person? Do they even exist? 

I flick thru the latest issue of Man’s World where I find an ad for a life-size inflatable doll…

Just add air…Life-like in every detail…Snuggle up to your own Love Maid.

Eight dollars ninety-five. It all seems too good to be true. But I know nothing about “Love Maids.” I know nothing about inflatable love dolls…but maybe I might know a man who does. Bryan Ferry. He sang about inflatable dolls. He’s the man to ask. Maybe I should call him up?

Bryan, I live in this perfect world, all mod cons, everything I need, but why, why do I have this utter sense of loneliness?

Bryan (for it is he….): In every dream home a heartache… And every step I take. Takes me from heaven.

What do you mean by “heaven,” Bryan?

Bryan: The perfect companion. Deluxe and delightful.

You seem to know a lot about this, brah. Way too much…

Looking for a playmate? Well, here I am. I’m Lori, the latest, wildest, party-time sensation and I’m ready for action…

Bryan: Inflatable doll. Disposable darling… My breath is inside you… I dress you up daily. I blew up your body… But you blew my mind.

Ew. Too much information, man…

The earliest sex doll is credited to Dutch sailors in the 17th century, who used a dame de voyage—a masturbatory doll made of cloth for relieving sexual stress on long voyages. In 1908, the first recorded “manufactured” sex doll made its appearance in psychiatrist Iwan Bloch‘s The Sexual Life of Our Time. Bloch described this doll as “Vaucansons” intended for fornicatory purposes. These were made from:

...rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin’s glans is imitated, by means of a “pneumatic tube” filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of “Parisian rubber articles.”

During the Second World War, it was long rumored but never actually proven that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered sex dolls to be supplied to German troops fighting on the front line. The real change in sex dolls took place in the 1960s with the development of the vinyl inflatable doll with realistic “openings.” These became very popular in the 1970s, as can be seen by the following selection of bizarre adverts. Click on image for a closer look.
 
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More ads for inflatable bachelor companions, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.08.2017
01:54 pm
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Try to imagine how insane this TV footage of Roxy Music (with Brian Eno) looked in the early 1970s

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Roxy Music: Not just another guitar band.
 
The great Roy Wood said on some late-nite radio show that for a long time he thought Ike and Tina Turner were a cool-sounding R&B band called I Can Turn A Corner. Easy mistake. For a long time, I thought Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music was singing about “wee-wees up the walls, and mashed-potato smalls…” when he sang “weary of the waltz, and mashed-potato schmaltz” on “Do the Strand.”

That I thought Roxy Music could sing about urination as decoration or squidgy y-fronts and not consider it at all out of place in their repertoire gives but some small idea as to how radical, how shocking, how breathtakingly original Roxy Music seemed when they first landed. Their debut single was named after a packet of cigarettes (“Virginia Plain”—actually a painting of a packet of cigarettes). They sang about blow-up dolls (“In Every Dream Home a Heartache”), and a kind of Ballardian love interest contained/hidden in a car’s license plate—the CPL 593H on “Re-make/Re-model.” So why not edible undergarments? It seemed all too feasible in an era of instant mash, Angel Delight, moon landings, Teflon frying pans, group sex, safari suits, and silver hot pants.

Roxy Music sounded as if they had just beamed down from outer space and brought along the music of the spheres. In fact, they had. Roxy Music was the sound of the future—but we just didn’t realize it then. Roxy was so overwhelmingly new. No one knew what to think. The group was originally comprised of Bryan Ferry (vocals, keys, and chief songwriter), Graham Simpson (bass), Phil Manzanera (guitar), Andy Mackay (saxophone and oboe), Paul Thompson (drums and percussion), and last but not least, Brian Eno (VCS3 synthesizer, tape effects, backing vocals and “treatments”). Ferry had started the band alongside Graham Simpson. The cool suave vocalist came from a poor working class background. His grandfather had courted his grandmother on a horse and plow for ten years before getting married. Times were tough. Ferry later claimed his parents lived “vicariously” though they were always better dressed than everyone else. It was via his mother that Ferry got his introduction to rock ‘n’ roll—she took him a Bill Haley concert in the 1950s. But Ferry preferred jazz and soul and his ambition was for a career in art and possibly teaching if that didn’t work out.

This all changed after Ferry hitchhiked to London to catch an Otis Redding concert. Redding was one of the greatest soul singers/performers of all time. It was a life-changing experience. Ferry knew he had to be a singer.
 
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Roxy model for the IKEA catalog.
 
Most of his life Ferry had felt out-of-step with his contemporaries. He felt like “an oddity.” It wasn’t until he started studying Fine Art under the tutelage of pop artist Richard Hamilton at Newcastle University that he found the confidence to push forward with his own ideas and believe in his own talents. Inspired by Redding and by Hamilton’s pop art aesthetic, Ferry started writing songs. He also started singing and performing. Graduating in 1968, Ferry moved to London. After a couple of false starts with the bands the Banshees and Gasboard, Ferry formed Roxy Music with Simpson in 1970. Andy MacKay and Eno soon joined, then Thompson and finally Phil Manzanera.

As Manzanera later recalled, the rich diversity of those early sessions together created Roxy sound:

“We’d start off with ‘Memphis Soul’ Stew, and then we’d go into ‘The Bob (Medley)’, this heavy bizarre thing about the Battle Of Britain with synths and sirens. We had everything in there from King Curtis to The Velvet Underground to systems music to ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll. At the time we said this was ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s rock’n'roll. Eno would respond to something that sounded like it came off the first Velvets album, then Ferry would play something ‘50s and I’d play my version of ‘50s. I was always a terrible session player. I could never learn a solo and I stuck that ‘not quite right’ approach onto Roxy. Six people in a band created this hybrid.”

More early Roxy Music, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.26.2017
11:41 am
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A bearded (!) Bryan Ferry covers the Velvet Underground after Jerry Hall dumps him for Mick Jagger
05.17.2017
10:03 am
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As 1977 began, Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry and model Jerry Hall were engaged. By the end of the year, they were finished, with Ferry relocating to Switzerland and Hall off jet setting with her new boyfriend, Mick Jagger.

Hall and Ferry first started dating in the summer of 1975. During their time together, Hall would famously pose for the cover of Roxy Music’s fifth album, Siren, and make an appearance in the video for Ferry’s 1976 single, “Let’s Stick Together”. After Hall ended their relationship to be with Jagger (the two had been having an affair), Ferry would soon begin work on his next solo record, which would become The Bride Stripped Bare. The title, which directly references Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even was assumed to be a subtle dig at his ex-fiancé.

In the book, Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music, Ferry talks about how Duchamp influenced his approach to cover songs.

I like the idea of Duchamp taking something like a bicycle wheel and just placing it in a different context and putting his signature on it, really. And I guess I was thinking that when I took a song that was by someone else, and did my version of it; that I was adding my stamp to it, my signature.

 
The Bride Stripped Bare
 
The album, a mix of covers and originals, has been analyzed over the years—perhaps excessively so—as it came about so soon after his split with Hall. Though heartbreak is addressed in the Ferry-penned songs “Can’t Let Go” and “When She Walks in The Room” it’s not like the “Don Juan in Hell” subject matter (as Greil Marcus termed it) is foreign to Ferry, nor does he sound especially tortured or vindictive on the LP. It’s certainly no Here, My Dear

Having said that, there is a moment during one of the tracks that makes me wonder if certain of the numbers weren’t selected with Hall in mind for Ferry to “sign,” although though that didn’t occur until after I had checked out the accompanying promo film for Ferry’s cover of Lou Reed’s “What Goes On.”
 
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“What Goes On” was originally found on the Velvet Underground’s self-titled third album, and was also issued to radio to promote the LP. One of Lou Reed’s finest three-chord rockers, during live performances it would stretch to epic, transcendent lengths. The narrator of this tune is discombobulated. One minute he’s up, one minute he’s down, then he’s going from side to side, and he’s also upside down. He may feel like he’s losing his mind, but knows that, ultimately, it’s going to be alright. Everyone who’s been through a bad breakup knows this particular mental state.

Ferry’s version of “What Goes On” is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Even though Ferry’s always been a hip guy, Velvet Underground covers were far from commonplace in 1978. It was also released as single and is kind of two covers for the price of one, with Ferry seamlessly incorporating lines from another Reed song from the third VU album, “Beginning to See the Light.”
 
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The music video produced for “What Goes On” is noteworthy first and foremost for the fact that Bryan Ferry is sporting a full beard(!)

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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05.17.2017
10:03 am
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The Greatness of Brian Eno
03.14.2016
04:50 pm
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The term “genius” has been so devalued by its inanely ubiquitous overuse by the media one can no longer be certain what it means. Read any music review, film critique or general piece of hagiography typed by some blogger and you’ll stumble over the word “genius” as frequently as a drunk stubs a toe against furniture in the dark.

For example, Kim Kardashian apparently has “a genius” for clothes. Her husband Kanye West is, of course, a self-confessed genius. What the word genius means in these two examples I’m not really sure. Unless, of course, it means “tasteless” and “delusional.”

Genius once meant something exceptional. It was the laurel crowned on the head of only the greatest talents. A friend once suggested there was greatness and then there was genius. His example went something like this:

Genius pervades all aspects of an individual’s life. The talent, the taste, the originality of thought. For example, David Bowie was once asked by Coldplay to collaborate on a song. He declined claiming the song on offer wasn’t very good. David Bowie had genius.

Brian Eno produced Coldplay’s fourth album. Brian Eno has greatness.

Whether this is a fair or even correct assumption to make—docking Eno for deigning to associate with that lot—who am I to say?
 

 
When I first heard of the multi-talented polymath Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno—the man with a name for every day of the working week—he was being hailed as “the genius” behind Roxy Music. I demurred. It was always Bryan Ferry the chief singer and songwriter who I thought of as “the genius” of that band. When Eno left Roxy—the cry went up that they were not the same without their impish knob twiddler. I couldn’t see it and wondered what the fuss was all about. Then came Eno’s first solo album Here Comes the Warm Jets and I began to appreciate what some of that fuss had been about.

By the end of the seventies as Roxy became less pop art and more soulful tunesmiths, Eno was still seeking out new projects—moving on, discovering, producing, creating, testing the parameters of music. He seemed unstoppable.

In all respects, Eno is more than the sum of his parts. He sets an example as a creator, an artist, a musician—of what it means to be alive and to do as much as possible. As he suggested in the profile of his life and career Another Green World:

All of the encouragement from modern life is to tell you to pay attention to yourself and take control of things.

Whether Eno’s merely great or a genius is immaterial. He’s a concept, an exemplar to do things better, to try them differently, to learn more, to do more.

Keep reading after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.14.2016
04:50 pm
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Amanda Lear: 70s disco diva, fashion model, TV star and Salvador Dali’s transsexual muse
11.24.2015
02:19 pm
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Model, painter, disco diva, TV personality and the absolute fiercest of the pioneering transsexuals (along with Candy Darling), Amanda Lear was born Alain Maurice Louis René Tap in Saigon, 1939. Or it could have been Paris. Or Hong Kong. The year might have been 1941, 1945 or as she now claims 1950. There is much competing information about her parents, none of it conclusive. In general, not much is known for sure about the early life of Amanda Lear and she would very much like to keep it that way. She claims to have been educated in Switzerland and she eventually made her way to Paris in 1959, taking the stage name “Peki d’Oslo,” performing as a stripper at the notorious drag bar, Le Carrousel.
 

Amanda Lear’s mid-60s model card.
 
The story goes that the gangly, yet exotic Eurasian beauty Peki had a nose job and sex change in Casablanca paid for by none other than the Surrealist master Salvador Dali, who frequented Le Carrousel, in 1963. Amanda, as she is now known, then makes her way to London to become a part of the swinging Chelsea set where she is rumored to have had a relationship with Rolling Stone Brian Jones. She models for Yves St. Laurent and Paco Rabanne and is a constant muse for the Divine Dali, but her career is held back by rumors that she was born a man or was a hermaphrodite.
 

‘For Your Pleasure’ cover
 
Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry saw Lear on the runway during an Ossie Clark fashion show and invited her to be the model for Roxy’s For Your Pleasure album cover, walking a black panther on a leash. They were briefly engaged and that image has become iconic. Lear also had a yearlong affair with David Bowie who serenaded her with “Sorrow” in his “1980 Floor Show” (broadcast on The Midnight Special in 1974). Bowie helped Lear launch her musical career and by the late 1970s she had become a bestselling disco singer and television personality in Europe with hits like “Follow Me,” “Queen of Chinatown” and “I Am a Photograph.”
 

The David Bailey photograph of Lear that appeared in the infamous 1971 Dali-edited issue of French Vogue
 
Amanda Lear’s autobiography, My Life With Dali came out in 1985 and it begins when she would have been approximately 24 or 25 years of age. Almost no mention whatsoever is made of her life before arriving in London in 1965. When Dali biographer Ian Gibson confronted her on camera about the gender of her birth in his The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dali TV documentary, Lear angrily—and not at all convincingly—stonewalled him. She has always vehemently denied that she was a transsexual despite it being a well-established fact. She even posed nude for Playboy and several other men’s magazines and often sunbathed naked on beaches to dispel the rumors. All this really proved was that she had a kickin’ bod, but if you ask me, I think it’s sad that she choses to keep up this pretense. She should be rightfully celebrated for her biggest accomplishment in life—ironically, being true to herself—but apparently Amanda Lear just doesn’t see it that way.
 

Amanda Lear vehemently denies having had a sex change on German television 1977.
 
Today Amanda Lear still looks amazing—she’s practically ageless no matter what her real biological age might be—and continues to perform all over Europe. She’s sold somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen million albums and 25 million singles. She also has a thriving career as a painter and an original painting of hers can sell for $10,000 or more. She’s done stage acting and was the voice of Edna ‘E’ Mode in the Italian-dubbed version of The Incredibles. Lear was a judge on the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars.
 
“The Stud” from 1979’s ‘Sweet Revenge’ album

 
Much more of Amanda Lear, after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.24.2015
02:19 pm
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‘Hey Good Looking Boy’: Roxy Music in the 1970s
06.13.2014
11:51 am
Topics:
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Even after all these years, listening to those early albums produced by Roxy Music is like hearing music from an as yet to be imagined future. The shocking originality of their debut single “Virginia Plain” through to “Pyjamarama,” “Street Life,” “Do the Strand,” “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” and “Mother of Pearl” are fresher and better than nearly everything pumped out today.

At the heart of Roxy Music is Bryan Ferry, the chief song-writer and lead singer, a working class lad, born in Washington, Tyne and Wear in the north of England. His father was from a farm and his mother from the town, and as he once explained in an interview with the Nottingham Post, his father:

“...used to court [his mother] on a plough horse for ten years before they got married. It was very old-fashioned.”

Music was just a noise to his father, but to his mother it was a passion. She had her favorites and a liking for some rock ‘n’ roll, even taking her young son to see Bill Haley and The Comets in the 1950s. But Ferry preferred jazz and soul, and after hitch-hiking from his home town in 1967 to see Otis Redding perform in London, he decided that he had to become a singer.

At school Ferry had felt that he was “an oddity” but wasn’t until he started studying Fine Art at Newcastle University that his creative ambitions came into focus. Under the tutelage of noted British Pop artist Richard Hamilton, Ferry became more confident in his own talents and began writing songs. These were at first influenced by Hamilton’s pop aesthetic, best heard in songs like “Virginia Plain” which was inspired by a painting Ferry had made of a packet of cigarettes (Virginia Plain was a brand of cigarette).

After a few false starts with The Banshees and then Gasboard, Ferry formed Roxy Music with friend Graham Simpson in 1970, being quickly joined by saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay and Brian Eno on tapes and synthesiser. By the summer of 1972, Roxy Music had their first top five single, and Ferry’s teenage hopes of pop success were sealed,

This compilation of concerts from German TV’s Beat Club and Musicladen captures Roxy Music at their height of their powers in the mid-1970s, with the suave tuxedoed Bryan Ferry leading the band through hits like “Street Life,” “Virginia Plain” and “Mother of Pearl.” Close you eyes and you’ll think this is tomorrow calling…
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.13.2014
11:51 am
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‘Stay cool is still the main rule’: Bryan Ferry 1983 interview on Japanese TV
05.24.2013
04:49 pm
Topics:
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007, the glam years.
 
This 1983 interview with Bryan Ferry from Japanese TV is rather beguiling, in a weird way, for several reasons: the placid cluelessness of the interviewer (Tokyo’s Andy Warhol?), Ferry’s ability to keep the conversation moving, despite talking to a blank stare, and his ultra-cool movie star style. Ferry would have made a terrific James Bond.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.24.2013
04:49 pm
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Bryan Ferry has something he wants to sell you: Japanese commercials from the ‘80s
01.29.2013
03:36 pm
Topics:
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Seems like a good choice to have Bryan Ferry shilling for Japanese clothing line Jun.

These commercials were directed by the renowned Japanese photographer Kazumi Kurigami.
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.29.2013
03:36 pm
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Roxy Music: Live in Concert, Stockholm 1976

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Packaged highlights of Roxy Music in concert at Konserthuset, Stockholm, as recorded by Swedish Television on January 27th, 1976.

Track Listing:

01. “The Thrill Of It All”
02 “Mother Of Pearl”
03. “Nightingale”
04. “Out Of The Blue”
05. “Street Life”
06. “Diamond Head”
07. “Wild Weekend”
08. Band Introduction
09. “The In Crowd”
10. “Virginia Plain”
11. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

This concert was available as a bootleg within days of its performance, and has been a staple of the unauthorized Roxy catalog ever since. The concert was considered solid and workman-like at the time, but now it looks bloody marvelous.
 

 
Bonus…Bryan Ferry on his latest album ‘The Jazz Age’, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.26.2012
05:06 pm
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Happy Birthday Bryan Ferry

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Happy Birthday to Bryan Ferry, who was born today in 1945.

Ferry may have looked the epitome of the suave, sophisticated nightclub singer, sipping cocktails in evening suit and slick-backed hair, but he was one of the most revolutionary and original musicians and song-writers of past 4 decades.

Take a look at his song book and you will realize Ferry has written some of the most breath-taking, beautiful and exciting songs of the seventies and eighties, both with Roxy Music and as a solo artist.

Add to this Ferry’s uncanny ability to produce seemingly timeless tracks that are as startling today as when first heard. You can hear this in songs as diverse as “Virginia Plain”, “The Thrill of It All”, “All I Want”, “Out of the Blue” “Mother of Pearl”, “A Song for Europe”, and “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”, through to the series of solo albums he produced, in particular In Your Mind and The Bride Stripped Bare.

Here is Mr Ferry at his best on a Japanese TV show, The Young Music Show, recorded at NHK 101 Studio in June 9th, 1977.

The band consisted of Paul Thompson (Drums ); John Wetton (Bass); Chris Mercer, Martin Drover, Mel Collins (Horn Section ); Ann Odell (Keyboards); Chris Spedding, Phil Manzanera (Guitars); and Bryan Ferry.

Track Listing

01. “Let’s Stick Together”
02. “Shame, Shame, Shame”
03. “In Your Mind”
04. “Casanova”
05. “Love Me Madly Again”
06. “Love is the Drug”
07. “Tokyo Joe”
08. “This Is Tomorrow”
09. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
10. “The Price of Love”

Happy Birthday Bryan Ferry!
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.26.2012
04:39 pm
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Roxy Music own ‘Musikladen’: 20 minutes of pure exhilaration from 1973

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Roxy Music own the stage at the Musikladen studios, as they showcase 3 songs from For Your Pleasure, and one from their self-titled first album.

There is a book to be written on how Roxy Music are a key component to so many teenage evolutions (my own included), and the touchstone for so many bands, from Chic to Siouxsie and the Banshees. There’s also a major tome to be written on Bryan Ferry, that suave, sophisticated, cool-as-fuck genius who progressed through so many musical styles yet always maintained essentially true to his own vision.

Add to that the fact Roxy’s music is a fresh and as vital today, as it was forty years ago.

Track listing:

01. “Do the Strand”
02. “Editions of You”
03. “In Every Dream Home A Heartache”
04. “Re-Make/Re-Model”
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘The Thrill of It All’: The Roxy Music Story


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.02.2012
06:29 pm
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The Thrill of It All: The Roxy Music Story

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Hard to believe but it’s forty years since Roxy Music released their debut single “Virginia Plain” and made an unforgettable appearance on Top of the Pops. It was a moment that influenced a generation, the same way David Bowie had earlier the same year, when he seductively draped his arm over Mick Ronson’s shoulder as they sang “Starman” together. It was a moment of initiation, when millions of British youth had shared a seminal cultural experience by watching television.

Of all the programs on air in 1972, by far the most influential was Top of the Pops., and Roxy Music’s arrival on the show was like time travelers bringing us the future sound of music. 

Listening to “Virginia Plain” today, it hard to believe that it wasn’t record last week and has just been released.

This documentary on Roxy Music has all the band members (Ferry, Manzanera, MacKay, Eno, etc) and a who’s who of musicians (Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Jones, and Roxy biographer, Michael Bracewell), who explain the band’s importance and cultural relevance. Roxy Music have just released The Complete Studio Recordings 1972-1982 available here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Roxy Music live in 1972, the full radio broadcast


 
Bonus clip of ‘Virginia Plain’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.02.2012
08:44 pm
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Brian Eno Frisbee vs. Bryan Ferry kite

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Last night we (finally) watched the seventh episode of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. Some of the trippiest television I’ve seen in some time. I mean, a Brian Eno Frisbee!? A Bryan Ferry kite!? How creative! Just watch.
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.29.2012
04:50 pm
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