Pete Atkin, erstwhile partner of Clive James, lamented the demise of ‘listening to music’;
It's hard to remember now, but in those days the album was only just beginning to be thought of as something in its own right, something more than a collection of singles and fillers - thanks mainly to Dylan, even more than the Beatles.
Nothing could be more true of Abbey Road and Roxy’s eponymous contribution. These are two records that are designed to be listened to. That’s it; sit down, put side A on, listen, then get up and put side B on. Sounds easy?
Abbey Road entered my consciousness by the back door, but at concert volume. I was footling about backstage at an amateur drama rehearsal - it was October or November of 1969 - and someone in the sound gallery put the record on the turntable and played it.
Shum dum, bupety bum..bupety bupety bupety shum dum bupety bum etc…Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly..
To use an archaic colloquialism, it blew my mind. I asked somebody, “Who is that?” I said. Now that might sound strange, but Beatles songs did that. They came from somewhere else, and it took time to assimilate them, unlike your typical three minute pop song of the time. Beatles music is like, like chairs, or tables or door handles or fluffy cushions. The songs are there as part of the fabric. At least they are if you were a sentient being in 1969. It’s the difference between IKEA and Thomas Chippendale, but it is furniture, sturdy, built to last, and an object of wonder.
So to stop waxing lyrical, and by accident waxing the mahogany, let’s just say that, if you visit Harewood House, or Sledmere House or Normanton Hall, You don’t just go up to a Chippendale piece and spend three minutes staring at a chair leg. You marvel at the whole. You see the pinnacle of art; the work of a master craftsman. Sure, just the leg might give you an idea, but you would have missed something, I think.
Lennon of course was scathing about McCartney’s contribution, saying it was just bits of songs thrown together. What, John? Like a Van Gogh is just bits of paint, thrown together? Or like the unique recording hardware, with its distinctive mellowness, was just a piece of junk that Geoff Emerick used? Poor John. He was so insecure. He needed Help with that.
And in the End, but not quite.
It doesn’t work if you don’t listen to it on vinyl. The putative last track is entitled, appropriately enough, ‘The End’. But of course, there is a gap of 14 seconds and up pops ‘Her Majesty’.
Time to be critical now! There always had to be a song for Ringo, and this time it is Octopus’sGarden. It ranks with ‘Yellow Submarine’ which I liken to an empty, crumpled packet of Quavers; Brash, circus clown fodder, oleaginous and incapable being usefully recycled. If there was a way of skipping it on the LP I would do it. Of all the Beatles songs that are endlessly covered by other artists, I would bet that Octopus’s Garden is the least of them (along with Why Don’t We do it in the Road?) That is unless Roy Chubby Brown did one.
Titus Hypocritus. Yes, I know. I have just deconstructed the core tenet of my libellus. And at my age, try getting that done on the NHS.
We turn, ahem, quickly to Roxy Music.
A contemporary critic opined that the model on the front of Roxy’s first album, one Kari-Ann Moller, looked a little constipated. The critics hated it. Don’t believe Wikipedia, I was there. The live shows were panned too.
At the time I was confused. Roxy was recorded less than three years after Abbey Road.
I had long hair, wore flares, a floral t-shirt and a grubby desert rat jacket from Millets. The London Underground smelled of Patchouli and Balkan ciggies. These people were from outer space!
Roxy was a semioticians wet dream. It referenced everything we knew - all the cliches together at a cocktail party, as Umberto would have said.
It was glued together with ethereal riffs and the astonishing vocal proclivities of Bryan Ferry; he does not so much sing out of tune, but bends the tunes like a mermaid or water nymph soliciting you from below. Somehow, he comes out on the right side of melody, but it is coming from light years away. It was produced by a King Crimson alumnus and you can tell. In fact, it was a lot better than the vastly overrated In the Court of the Crimson King, to which Roxy does give an over-the-shoulder look - in particular with Andy Mackay’s sax.
Some of them were Geordies. You couldn’t make it up!!! But they did, and that is why Roxy Music is was a futuristic construct that has become timeless. Ferry’s dad was a farm labourer. Phil on the other hand was born Phillip Geoffrey Targett-Adams. You could make it up, but Paramount would not be taking an option on it.
I think Roxy was one of those phenomena when God smiled on a desultory bunch of hopefuls. He gave them talent. He gave them ideas and he gave them vision. And then, Chris Blackwell saw a picture of them; “They just looked like stars,” he said, and signed them to Island Records on the strength of it.
Roxy Music glues me to the chair, even today, and it now rightly sits high in the important lists of great albums.
I was chatting with a one-time touring member and friend of Roxy and said, like a sixteen year-old, “oh, Bryan is so cool.” “Bryan would be very amused to hear that” he said. In fact, Bryan is monosyllabic, which is different. And modest too. As for Eno…
Abbey Road was released in September 1969.
Roxy Music was recorded in a week at Command Studios in March, 1972, and released in June of that year.
A vivid read. I note only that In the Court of the Crimson King is awesome 😊😊