Out of the Blue — Roxy Music
#365Songs: March 5
By my last count I’ve been through three separate “Roxy Music phases.”
Phase 1: The Avalon Love is the Drug
This is the Go space in Monopoly, the Roxy Music on the radio. For anyone born after 1975, this is the foundation of any Roxy Music opinion. They know Avalon is the big Roxy Music album and while we’re on the subject of Avalon, why isn’t Love is the Drug on here?
Phase 2: The Holy Shit Brian Eno Was In Roxy Music
During this period of Roxy Music appreciation (somewhere in my late teens), I finally listened beyond Avalon, recognizing that Roxy Music did indeed exist for ten years beforehand. Knowing that the band was started by Bryan Ferry and bassist Graham Simpson, I glanced at the history of the band and came away with the single, mind-blowing fact that Brian Eno joined Roxy Music only because he knew how to operate a synthesizer. He was not a musician and legend suggests he had no musical talent whatsoever. The image of Ross Gellar and his keyboard punctuates that image, and if I’m being honest I don’t want that not to be the Brian Eno origin story. Waiting for the bio-pic. I still don’t know where to find “Love is the Drug.”
Phase 3: The I Thought I Understood Roxy Music
Wandering through crates at record stores triggered Phase 3. I finally saw the album cover for Country Life. This album cover must have totally rearranged teenage boy brain matter when it was released in 1974 and surely this record cannot contain songs that sound like “More Than This” or anything resembling a Brian Eno-backed soundscape. So do the math. Brian Eno left Roxy Music in 1973 after For Your Pleasure. The band dropped Avalon in 1982. That’s almost ten years of music between them.
And when did “Love is the Drug” come out again?
The revelation for this fated trip to the record store, left me with the sense that for as much as I’d listened to Roxy Music on my cute little record player with my cute little copy of Avalon and the self-titled debut, I didn’t understand what made Roxy Music tick. I didn’t understand how they got from Point A to Point B. And I still don’t — and that’s part of the wonderful mystery of the evolution of that band.
Get James David Patrick’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The opposite ends mostly make sense, but what happened in between them challenges my capacity for linearity. The Roxy Music career path isn’t logical; it’s a mobius strip with Country Life representing the criss-cross, stuck in the middle, doomed to a lesser-known status by the polar popularities. An odd cultural status for one of the band’s most critically successful records.
And in recognizing that I only thought I understood Roxy Music, I consciously surrendered to the hard-rocking, guitar-heavy, funkified, Frank-N-Furtized Ferry vocals that defined the music made in between the poles. Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music — but not Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. But definitely Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. You get what I’m saying.
And it’s not that the self-titled album wasn’t a “weird” record. It’s eccentric and evasive — but also slyly catchy. Ferry’s singular warble has a knack for bridging the illogical gaps in their earliest music, just as he turned sultry, soothing and radio-friendly in the later years to make everything go down like honey. All too easy, actually.
Country Life must be considered a glam record because it’s otherwise uncategorizable. The popular 70’s creep in from all directions, meeting in the middle. If you start playing popular bingo, mark off squares for Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Rush, Billy Joel, Dr. John — if they were the house band in a Rocky Horror themed cabaret. Plus harpsichord, chimes, blues guitar riffs, and multiple saxophones (you know how I feel about pop-music saxophones).
The highlight of the record takes place as “All I Want Is You” fades out and the loping bass riff from “Out of the Blue” gradually rises. The piano doubles as the rhythm guitar until it, too, joins the party, and the song takes on a rock-god anthemic quality. The bass spars with a face-melter for supremacy and wins the belt. TKO.
I am both Roxy Musics. I am all Roxy Musics. I can love both ends and the twisty, warped, leather-clad, bedazzled middle. We want our band to be our band, to play the music we love, but there’s something magical about the band that is also our bands. When I think about listening to Roxy Music, I first have to consider which Roxy Music I need in that moment.
Am I “Kiss away the heartarche / Kiss away the pain” or am I “Nein, das ist nicht / Das ende der welt”?
I may never know — because Phase 3, The I Thought I Understood Roxy Music Phase is forever.
P.S. I also now know where to find “Love is the Drug.”
~
Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!
