With ice-cool singer Bryan Ferry, a string of unforgettable hits and a ground-breaking style all of their own, Roxy Music were one of the most influential bands of the Seventies and early Eighties.
Thirty years on, and their instantly recognisable tracks such as Love Is The Drug and Angel Eyes are lauded as modern classics.
Today The Mail on Sunday salutes one of Britain’s all-time greatest groups – by giving away a fantastic 12-track CD of the their essential hits FREE inside every paper.
The CD is a superb collector’s item that will appeal to music lovers of all ages, offering a unique anthology of the band’s ten years at the top of the charts.
Each song – from the hypnotic Virginia Plain (the single released after the success of their first album in 1972) to the sensual Avalon (from the 1982 album of the same name) – sounds as fresh and slick today as when it was first released.
Roxy Music attracted legions of fans due to their fascination with fashion, cinema, pop art and the avant-garde, which separated them from their contemporaries. Dressed in bizarre yet stylish costumes, the group offered a defiantly experimental type of rock.
They were one of the first bands to create and maintain a carefully crafted style that encapsulated their stage presentation, videos and record sleeves.
And they were a significant influence on new wave music and the experimental electronic groups of the early 1980s.
Bands such as Duran Duran, The Smiths and U2 have all admitted to being influenced by them.
Over the years, their popularity and reputation have remained strikingly consistent. Rolling Stone magazine recently ranked Roxy Music in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Ferry, the son of a North-East coal miner, wrote most of the songs. But the band’s sound was also hugely influenced by co-founder Brian Eno, who went on to become one of the most significant record producers of the late 20th Century, working with bands such as Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay.
Other members include saxophonist Andrew Mackay, drummer Paul Thompson and guitarist Phil Manzanera. Below, group members provide a commentary on the tracks featured on today’s CD.
Your track-by-track guide - in their own words:
Virginia Plain
Bryan Ferry: We had just released the first Roxy Music album and our record company, Island, seemed as surprised as we were by its instant success. But there was no obvious single #so they asked me if I had any other songs knocking about. I did have an unfinished song called Virginia Plain, which we quickly recorded. I vividly remember our roadie driving up and down outside the studio as we tried to record the sound of his motorbike.
Do The Strand
Bryan Ferry: I had long been a fan of Cole Porter and other songwriters from his era. Do The Strand was an attempt to emulate that style of writing, with a lot of cultural references that I found interesting.
Amazona
Phil Manzanera: This was on the Stranded album. Brian Eno had just left the band and the opportunity arose for me to contribute some music for the first time. It turned out to be my first recorded track on an album and I was very proud of it. When I finished recording the guitar part, everyone cheered in the control room.
Love is the Drug
Andy Mackay: Bryan used to work endlessly on lyrics and then deliver them as a live take in the studio, like a conjurer pulling rabbits out of a hat. The most thrilling of these was Love Is The Drug. It’s probably been our best-selling single and the most covered.
Out Of The Blue
Phil Manzanera: This became one of our most thrilling live tracks, and we still love to play it. The tape phasing used on the intro probably came from one of our producer Chris Thomas’s experiments with The Beatles.
Both Ends Burning
Bryan Ferry: We were on a punishing world tour schedule in 1975 and there were a lot of late nights to get the Siren album finished on time. I guess this was the inspiration behind this song.
Angel Eyes
Bryan Ferry: After a short early career as an album track on our 1978 album Manifesto, Angel Eyes was reborn as a brilliant dance re-mix, anticipating a whole new world of music. It became a big hit as a single and in clubs. It was also the first record we made a specific promo video for.
Over You
Phil Manzanera: In 1979, I had just built my first recording studio and I rang up Bryan and asked if he’d like to check it out. We decided to have a jam together, Bryan on bass and me on guitar with a rhythm box. Within five minutes we had written this track and it reached number three in the charts.
Oh Yeah
Bryan Ferry: In this song I was trying to create a picture of Americana, and long hot summer evenings at drive-in movies. It is wistful and nostalgic, rather like a country record.
More Than This
Bryan Ferry: This is from the album Avalon, which was the breakthrough record for Roxy Music in America. I started writing the songs while on the west coast of Ireland, and I like to think that some of the dark melancholy of the album comes from that place.
While My Heart Is Still Beating
Andy Mackay: The later Roxy recordings had a particular polish and precision. Heart Still Beating turned out to be one of the most beautiful of the songs Bryan and I wrote together, the uncertain shifting chords and sparse percussion letting his voice float as cool as glass.
Avalon
Bryan Ferry: I was in a studio in New York when I heard the most haunting voice coming down the corridor. It was Yanick Etienne, a singer from Haiti, who was doing a demo next door. I asked her to sing on our record, which she did in one take, and a piece of recording history was made.