I’ll never forget seeing Roxy Music appear for the first time on Top of the Pops, the U.K’s weekly chart TV show. Like Bowie, here was a band who didn’t fit into any category. From the way Brian Ferry delivered the opening lines in that strange leaping up and down vocal technique, it was clear that this was no ordinary singer, and it was no ordinary band either. If Andy McKay’s screeching saxophon/clarinet hoots and stabs and Phil Manzaneera’s phasered rock and roll licks weren’t wacky enough, Roxy Music also offered you Brian Eno tweaking knobs on a computer to produce space age synthesiser swirls of sound. With this mish-mash of styles and so many types of music going on in one song it shouldn’t work - yet somehow it does!
On top of this the look of the band managed to be as eccentric as the music – here was Brian Ferry’s eye slitted, teeth baring crooner with a Rock’n’Roll quiff and glam rock glitter eyeliner, Brian Eno with the domed head of a professor but with long hair at the back, wearing blue eyeliner and peacock feathers - it makes today’s musical acts seem very boring. (O.K I suppose we have Lady Ga Ga to fill the crazy slot). The odd thing with Roxy Music is that they outlasted the Seventies and Eighties but the longer they went on, the more smooth, bland and less eccentric they became. Here is a fantastic record of the eccentric brilliance that was Roxy Music at their peak.
Desert Island Discs
1 - Midnight At The Oasis
'Heaven’s Holding
a Half Moon’
2 - Drive-In Saturday
‘Jung the Foreman
Prayed at Work...’
3 - Virginia Plain
Make Me a Deal,
and Make it Straight!’
4 - Au Fond du Temple Saint
‘At the Back of
the Holy Temple’
5 - Kid
‘Angry Tears Are Too Dear,
You Won’t Let Them Go’
6 - Burning Down The House
‘Watch Out! You Might
Get What You’re After'
7 - Riders on the Storm
‘There’s a Killer on the Road’
8 - Across the Universe
'Words are Flowing Out
Like Endless Rain
into a Paper Cup'