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Given the four-year hiatus since ‘Siren’, expectation ran high for the release of ‘Manifesto’ in the early spring of 1979. Roxy Music had amassed one of the most impressive back catalogues of recordings in the history of pop and rock music, including cocktail hour chanson, classic love songs, retro-futurist rock and roll, Pop art collageread more
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Interviewed by Richard Williams in 1972, the creator of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, had claimed the group’s ability to surprise, creatively and artistically, to be one of their greatest strengths. The varieties of this stylistic agility were soon to be demonstrated, not least on Roxy Music’s second LP, released in 1973: the icily poised yetread more
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As ‘Roxy Music’ had been described by critic Richard Williams as a record which doubled as a musical manifesto, proposing an alternative to the blues-derived, guitar driven rock music of the early 1970s, so ‘Flesh + Blood’, released eight years later, would seem to complete the circuitry of Roxy Music’s artistic journey. If ‘Roxy Music’read more
Read MoreReleased in 1974, ‘Country Life’ defined Roxy Music as an imperial force within both mainstream pop culture and the then heavy rock dominated album charts. From the mannered urgency of its opening piano chords, giving way to a three way crescendo of Manzanera’s screaming guitar, Thomson’s avalanche-like drumming, and the method actor crie de coeurread more
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In the career-long tradition of Roxy Music, ‘Avalon’ refines a host of musical and thematic inspirations into its own unique and instantly iconic style. From the beguiling charisma of Andy Mackay’s exquisitely deft avant-cocktail sax, through the folds and swerves of lustrous sound summoned up by Phil Manzanera’s mesmeric lead guitar, it is a recordread more
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October 1973 is not a stop along the Great Rock Myth highway, but its import should at least be recognised with a plaque: “Here lies the deathbed of the tyranny of originality”. Despite its modest appearance and unheralded reputation, Bryan Ferry’s first solo outing, These Foolish Things, remains as much of a revolution in theread more
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There’s no winning over some people. Criticised in many quarters of the rock press during the reign of sincere Californian troubadours for the aloof, detached persona he had cultivated with Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry delivered his most emotionally unfettered album only to find himself derided by the same faces, now in thrall to safety pinsread more
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Six years elapsed between the release of Taxi, Bryan Ferry’s eighth solo album, and his previous release, Bête Noire. It was the most protracted artistic silence of his career, and in the intervening time he had become a father again, twice over, experienced the sad passing of his mother Mary Ann (to whom the recordread more
Read MoreOlympia includes a stellar cast of session musicians and frontmen; from Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Brian Eno, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ex-Stone Roses and current Primal Scream bassist Mani – not to mention Miles Davis acolyte Marcus Miller and Michael Jackson’s trusted rhythmread more
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Clearly reinvigorated by the swift creation of the previous year’s Taxi album, Bryan Ferry returned to his protracted Horoscope project with a fresh ear and a new sense of purpose. After nearly eight years’ toil the album had become bogged-down by its own complexity, a maddeningly maximal endeavour that even Alan Turing would struggle toread more
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