The Brave New World of Roxy Music

Fresh sounds from across the Atlantic were just what I needed.

That beat-up silver transistor radio with the broken antenna was resting on the top corner of the workbench in the Child World warehouse, tuned to Boston’s WBCN, the greatest American underground radio station. I was putting training wheels on a bicycle when this eerie, haunting, mysterious music crept out of the little speaker. Ominous, surging, you had to stop and listen…

“All your cares, now they seem oh so far away,” the silky voice sang over this hypnotic music. “All your fears I feared I once shared. Now I know there’s a future for all of us. Not so long ago, I was so scared.”

The song was by a group I’d never heard of - Roxy Music, DJ Maxanne told us when the mesmerizing, swirling tune rose to a dramatic finish. “That’s from their new album, “Country Life.”

That’s all I had to hear. I immediately scooted over to the Paperback Booksmith and bought the record, took it home and couldn’t stop playing it. Roxy Music launched me in a new direction.

Right around the middle of the 1970’s, American rock music - to me, at least, was blah. Bob Dylan had sort of stalled, his former backing group, The Band had done some great stuff but they sure weren’t moving in a forward direction, they were circling back to traditional, classic music, recapturing the honesty of homespun country sounds. Bruce Springsteen really hadn’t broken through yet, the stuff on AM radio didn’t do much for me.

But Roxy Music, a British band with definitely a European stamp on them, with exotic instrumentation, wild innovative themes, songs that, well, like the song of theirs that hooked me, came “Out Of The Blue.” I quickly went out and got the three albums that preceded “Country Life” - “Roxy Music” and “For Your Pleasure” with its fold-out record jacket and “Stranded” with that distressed female model lying on her back in the jungle. These guys had a direction - you could see it. Would you sign on?

Their music was fresh, definitely NOT blues-based like so much of rock and roll seemed to be at the time, new instruments, different ideas - a song about a plastic love doll? (“In Every Dream Home A Heartache”) A song for Europe? Amazona? Featuring some of wildest, most innovative guitar you’d hear. A fascinating song about religion “Psalm” - there wasn’t any subject, it seemed that lead singer/songwriter Bryan Ferry wouldn’t tackle.

They were classy, highly intelligent - a look at the lyrics for “Street Life” or “Mother Of Pearl” showed all sorts of cultural references and nods and on rockers like “Editions Of You” or “The Thrill Of It All” they were such a step in a different musical direction for me, it sort of opened this long, brightly lit hallway to a whole other world for me to scour through record stores and cut-out bins and bootleg record outlets.

What? Guitarist Phil Manzanera did a solo record? Saxophonist Andy Mackay did, too? And Bryan Ferry did solo albums? He did a Bob Dylan cover? And it was a hit in England? What song? “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall?” REALLY?

Ferry’s vision for his Roxy Music and for his solo records was fascinating. He took one of Dylan’s most solemn, apocalyptic folk songs - “Oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son…I stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains” and camped it up. Playing it faster, adding playful sound effects “heard one person starve, many people laughing” and you hear laughter! It was wild. It was funny. And instead of cheapening Dylan’s end-of-the-world lyrics, you loved Ferry’s version for its humor at the same time admiring the depth of ambition behind Dylan’s somber lyric. A neat trick.

That album, “These Foolish Things” had a bunch of Ferry’s re-interpretations of rock classics from Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party” to the Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” and on his next solo disc - the guy had so much to say - a stone-killer version of “The In Crowd.” He wasn’t afraid to take on any song, any “classic” and re-work it, HIS way. He heard things differently and made us hear it that way, too.

So you had Roxy Music albums, you had Bryan Ferry albums and you even had a slew of records from one of the founding members of Roxy Music, Brian Eno, who stuck it out for just the first two before launching his own solo career as a recording artist and much-in-demand record producer (U2, David Bowie, Coldplay, Talking Heads).

There was so much to dig into, such different, innovative music to enjoy, it expanded your musical palette and, if you really think about it, gave you a more global view of things, since Ferry’s flair for fashion and style - wearing tuxedos in concert or even a uniform for one tour - was distinctly NOT American - T-shirts, blue jeans, always dressing down. Roxy Music HAD to look right, too. And it fit with their music.

As Ferry’s solo career took off - more on him and his music another time - Roxy Music continued to make albums every few years, finally wrapping it all up with the magnificent “Avalon" which might well be one of the finest, most listenable records of the last 50 years. It was a fabulous way to wind up their run.

Happily, Roxy Music was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple years ago, and they reunited - Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay - for six songs that gave the audience a reminder of the distance they took their music. From “In Every Dream Home A Heartache” to “Out Of The Blue” to “Love Is The Drug” (their big hit) to two songs from “Avalon,” closing with that stomping rocker “Editions Of You.”

Oddly enough, what made me think about writing about Roxy Music was an Andy Mackay solo album I haven’t played in years that popped up on YouTube when I was playing some other music. It was called “In Search of Eddie Riff” and I bought it in a Boston record store years ago because it was supposed to have a rip-roaring version of “Wild Weekend” a sax-led beach party song that Mackay roared through in concert once in a while.

Except when I got the record home, it listed the song on the sleeve but it wasn’t on the record. Now it’s a collector’s item, I guess. Oh, and I finally got to hear the song after 40-some years. Good cut!

Somewhere in my pile of cassettes, I have a Roxy Music concert at Boston’s Opheum Theater that I went to in 1975, supporting their “Siren” album. It was a fabulous show with “Hard Rain” as the encore. And Ferry, ever the gentleman, did the right thing at the end of the show.

“Thanks to Maxanne and everyone at WBCN,” he said.

Yeah, thanks, Maxanne. For Roxy Music and for opening my world.