Roxy Music: There Is Nothing More Than This

Bryan Ferry, one of the most sophisticated dudes in the history of rock & roll, was the son of a man who tended pit ponies, the small horses that worked in the coal mines of County Durham, in far northeastern England. He went to art school at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, then began teaching ceramics at a girls school in London. I found this description (from, I believe, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera) of what happened next: “Bryan's association with both the girls and their school is unceremoniously terminated when it appears he is more interested in broadening their musical minds than expounding on the finer points of pottery.” “Broadening their musical minds,” heh heh.

By this time he had begun associating with members of what would become Roxy Music. Ferry initially auditioned for King Crimson, who turned him down but helped him get a record deal for his fledgling band. Saxman Andy Mackay signed on, bringing with him a fellow named Brian Eno, who described himself as a “non-musician.” That is of course a very coy self-assessment, although bands have had other non-musicians in them, from Fred Schneider to Flavor Flav.

What Eno really was, from the beginning, was a producer; on the first Roxy Music album, he treated Andy Mackay’s sax solo from “2HB” with tape effects, creating an ethereal sound like no other around at that time. He also played the synthesizer. Roxy’s first single, “Virginia Plain,” from 1972, is clearly a song written by Ferry, but produced by Eno – it would fit perfectly on Eno’s subsequent solo album Here Come the Warm Jets, with atonal squiggles crammed in every corner.

I’m getting ahead of the story a bit here, but Eno left Roxy Music after their second album, For Your Pleasure, and embarked on one of the most innovative and strange careers in music. He composed the startup sound for Windows 95, which is the kind of thing that if you were Bill Gates, Eno would be your only choice to do that. He’s also known as the inventor of ambient music, but his more pop-oriented stuff is just astonishingly good. If you haven’t listened to Here Come the Warm Jets, you owe it to yourself.

After Eno left Roxy Music, their sound become sleeker, more streamlined, almost appallingly sophisticated. I don’t quite understand why songs like “Dance Away” and “Over You” didn’t become U.S. hits, but their only chart success in America was “Love Is the Drug,” which went to Number 20 in 1975. They put many more singles on the charts in the U.K., where a cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” from 1981, was the only Number One hit.

By the time of their eighth and final studio album, 1982’s Avalon, they were starting to get some notice on MTV, particularly with the gorgeous title track. Despite an oft-rumored reunion album, that would be the end of their output, and really, it’s just as well. They had pushed their brand of lush black-tie pop about as far as it was going to go, while going out on a high note: “Avalon” and “More Than This” were as good as anything they had recorded, and that was quite good indeed.

The Matched Set Joy Division/New Order landed a series of singles near the top of the British charts while remaining more or less a rumor in the United States, but for the American kids whose lives they permeated, they were the real deal. New Order also had a lone Top Forty American hit, “True Faith” from 1987 – I don’t want to live in a world where “Bizarre Love Triangle” isn’t a hit, but here we bloody well are.

Neither New Order nor Joy Division has ever been nominated.

The Verdict Roxy Music was, I believe, the last act I cut from my ballot of five. This stuff holds up really well; it’s diverse, distinctive and debonair. “More Than This” should have been a huge hit in the U.S., but it wasn’t, and we have to deal with that. (It made the Top Forty for the post-Natalie Merchant 10,000 Maniacs, bizarrely enough.) Reluctantly, I vote No for Roxy Music.