Far beyond the pale horizon
A love letter to the lyrics of Virginia Plain by Roxy Music.
Virginia Plain isn’t rock ’n’ roll.
It is romp ’n’ stomp.
It is romp, stomp and full of pomp.
It’s a riot. It is a kaleidoscopic imagery assault.
It is a joyous musical and lyrical free-for-all. It is the soft rock equivalent of children jumping in puddles in brightly coloured wellies.
Take me on a rollercoaster
Take me on an airplane ride
Take me for a six days wonder
But don’t you
Don’t you throw my pride aside, besides
What’s real and make believe?
Baby Jane’s in Acapulco
We are flying down to Rio
What’s real and make believe indeed? Virginia Plain exists in the overlap area where Through The Looking Glass meets Over The Rainbow in a Venn diagram of expanded consciousness.
And yet it more or less makes sense.
Virginia Plain was Roxy Music’s first single. And it plays like a 45RPM mission statement. They wrote and recorded the dream before they got to live it.
Make me a deal
And make it straight
All signed and sealed, I’ll take it
To Robert E. Lee I’ll show it
I hope and pray he won’t blow it, ‘cause
We’ve been around a long time
Just try, try, try, tryin’
To make the big time
Robert E. Lee was Roxy Music’s lawyer, the guy who cut their deal with Island Records.
So the song opens with a straightforward statement of intent. Bryan Ferry is the song writer equivalent of the pushy dad on the touchline, ignoring the parental code of conduct and vociferously brow beating the little lawyer man on the pitch to be more aggressive, to make the score.
Thereafter the song gradually descends or, let’s be honest, ascends into allegory, symbolism and fantasy. It starts with a thematic ripple dissolve two thirds of the way through the second stanza.
Throw me a line
I’m sinking fast
Clutching at straws
Can’t make it
Havana sounds, we’re trying
Hard edge, the hipster jiving
Last picture show down the drive-in
You’re so sheer, you’re so chic
Teenage rebel of the week
From deal-making mission statement to musical strategy. The band is in a hurry. It craves the big time, it craves the breaks. And it is exploring different styles in a quest for the x-factor. They are failing fast in 1972, before failing fast became fashionable, with Cuban sounds and hipster jazz styles.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, we’re at an open air movie. We are in glamorous company. And there is an early indication of Bryan Ferry’s handy knack of coining a catchy phrase.
You’re so sheer, you’re so chic, teenage rebel of the week.
The whimsical language, the infectious meter, and the rhyme. He knows it is a stand out lyric because he stops playing and speaks rather than sings the line to put it on the pedestal it deserves.
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It is a harbinger of gems like “a rhythm of rhyming guitars” from Oh Yeah, or any one of half a dozen couplets from the brilliantly written Love Is The Drug:
Lumber up, limbo down
The locked embrace, the stumble round
I say go, she say yes
Dim the lights, you can guess the rest
I prefer the irony and the lyrical chimera of of Ferry’s early work to the cuckolded insecurity of the teary-eyed jilt-pop anthems that defined Roxy Music’s later years.
In Virginia Plain you can feel Ferry reveling in knowingness and self-consciously eclectic references.
For instance, “teenage rebel of the week” is most likely a film reference. These lyrics are peppered with them. Teenage Rebel is a 1956 film starring Ginger Rogers. Flying Down To Rio (1933) also starred Ginger Rogers alongside Fred Astaire. And Whatever Happened To Baby Jane is a 1962 film whose leading roles are played by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
However, it is more likely that the Baby Jane who is actually in Acapulco is Andy Warhol starlet and later film producer Baby Jane Holzer, whose mane of hair is definitely referenced in the third from last line of the song.
Pictures of the mountain streamline
Midnight blue casino floors
Dance the cha-cha through till sunrise
Opens up exclusive doors, oh wow!
Just like flamingos look the same
So me and you
Just we two
Got to search for something newFar beyond the pale horizon
Some place near the desert strand
Where my Studebaker takes me
That’s where I’ll make my stand, but wait
Can’t you see her Holzer mane?
What’s her name?
Virginia Plain.
Whatever plot there ever was is gloriously lost and forgotten. The band’s career path has morphed into a Nevada road trip. Classic cars, boas, high-kick dancing and desert sunsets. Everything is wide and vivid.
It’s a cliché but Ferry is painting with words, which is highly apt given that the song takes its title from a painting, by Ferry, which is based on a play on words. Virginia Plain is the subject or, more precisely, are the subjects, of the painting. The painting apparently features a packet of Virginia plain cigarettes, whose logo is a girl, with a desert plain as the backdrop. They, she and it are all Virginia Plain.
The song’s title appears only once and it is the song’s last line. Virginia Plain has this in common with Up The Junction by Squeeze, One More Try by George Michael, Running To Stand Still by U2 and Private Investigations by Dire Straits, among others.
Song title as lyrical terminus. The career path and the road trip converge on Virginia Plain. You have reached the song’s south pole only to discover that it is an art school in-joke.
Ferry himself describes it thus in a glorious time capsule of an interview published in the 29th July 1972 issue of Melody Maker. I urge you to read the whole article (when you’ve finished this one.)
Bryan Ferry threw everything and the kitchen sink into the lyrics of Virginia Plain. And Roxy Music did much the same with the instrumentation. This live performance from 1972 is a better demonstration of that than the studio recording. You can see and hear the oboe — the oboe! And there is Brian Eno (just ‘plain’ ENO back then) playing on his toy set. They were a very good live band.
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