My wife just called me on the way to work. It’s often to rant about something she heard on the news, an interview with a stupid politician or the like. I tend to agree with her, because, believe it or not, I agree with her. Or tenderly trying to bring the conversation to an end and get on with what I was doing before the phone rang.
Anyway, this morning it was about a song. Those are the calls I like. She sang “There’s a band playing on the radio …”. I said, "Oh yeah!" and she said “You know the song. It’s by Roxy Music”. It sounds patronising but I was very proud of her. Firstly, she identified the performer, and secondly, the song’s a gem. Yes, I repeated the name of the song is "Oh Yeah!”. She couldn’t really understand why the song was called “Oh Yeah!” when the nearest Bryan Ferry gets to singing Oh Yeah is “Oh, oh, oh” at the end of the chorus. It was like my kids’ reaction when I told them that the famous song that begins with the lyrics, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” is called “Bohemian Rhapsody” and not something like, “Nothing Really Matters”. I get it. It’s annoying. Can you imagine a life before Shazam? Yes, you actually had to go into a record shop (yes, they did exist) and sing the chorus of a song because you couldn’t remember the name or the song title, especially if it had nothing to do with the lyrics of the song. Just imagine someone trying to sing “Immigrant Song” to a bemused shop assistant: “Ah Ah Ah …”. I once went to a shop to buy one of my siblings “The Frog Chorus” by Paul McCartney and proceeded to croak the introduction. If you are still disbelievers, check out the great Al Bundy here.
Let’s get back to the phone call. After agreeing with my wife that Roxy Music’s “Oh Yeah!” is a classic and they don’t write them like that anymore (you'll hear that expression plenty from me), I started my mini monologue about how artists spend many years honing their craft as songwriters until they cement their reputation. There are also those who burn bright and fade away. The ones with the brilliant debut album who fail to deliver on the difficult second album. Anyway, let’s get back to Roxy Music. This was a band I was introduced to through their 1979 single “Dance Away” (taken from the album “Manifesto”). I was a young kid, watching some variety show on TV on a Saturday night. The suave image cut by the lead singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry didn’t really match the tone or image of the show with its old-fashioned and ultra-mainstream lineup. To be fair, those shows had something for everyone. Can you imagine having to create a TV show these days to cater to everyone in your household? Now everyone’s in their room with their AirPods on, watching something different.
I know there’s a lot written about Roxy Music especially when they started and their lineup included Brian Eno, the godfather of Ambient Music. Yes, he released albums with titles such as “Music for Airports”. Their music was groundbreaking, experimental, hugely influential on many bands, along with many other superlatives and plaudits. I won’t dismiss their early work with great singles such as “Do the Strand” and “Love is the Drug”. I can also admit that “In Every Dream Home a Heartache”, a song dedicated to a man’s relationship with a blow-up doll, still packs a punch. But my overall impression with some of the material is that it tries too hard. If any Roxy Music fans are reading this, they just might stop here, mutter some obscenities about my complete ignorance and inability to appreciate their genius, and never read anything I write again. (I’d love it if you wrote in the comments why I’m so wide of the mark, which I may well be). I even invested time to listen to “The Thrill of It All”, a 4 CD compilation of Roxy Music including B-sides and remixes. I found it extremely hard going, but I felt I needed to give the band the respect they really deserve. But then I go back to the first ever Roxy Music album I bought, which was “The Atlantic Years 1973–1980”, a compilation album. It kicks off with “Dance Away” and ends with “Do The Strand”. The only average track on that album is the band’s uninspired cover of Wilson Pickett’s “The Midnight Hour”, which I still don’t get. The song which began this article “Oh Yeah!” is taken from the album “Flesh and Blood” and also contains two other singles, “Same Old Scene” and “Over You”. The album was a commercial success and paved the way for "Avalon", Roxy Music's eighth and final studio album. For me, this is the best Roxy Music album and the only one I can listen to from start to finish. It feels like an artist at the peak of his maturity. The controlled craziness and experimentation have gone (and from what I read, the drugs too). This was a creative process that took ten years since the band’s debut in 1972. It was a fitting finale to Roxy Music and saw the band leaving on a high.
Check out the albums - “More than This: The Best of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music” and “Avalon”