Roxy Music were an English rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry — who became the band’s lead singer and main songwriter—and bass guitarist Graham Simpson. The other longtime members were Phil Manzanera (guitar), Andy Mackay (saxophone and oboe), and Paul Thompson (drums and percussion). Other members included Brian Eno (synthesizer and ‘treatments’), Eddie Jobson (synthesizer and violin), and John Gustafson (bass).
They recorded the tracks for their first album, Roxy Music, in March–April 1972 and produced by King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield. Both the album and its famous cover artwork by photographer Karl Stoecker were apparently completed before the group signed with Island Records. To bring more attention to their album, Roxy Music decided to record and release a single. Their debut single was “Virginia Plain”, which scored No. 4 in the British charts.
The next album, For Your Pleasure, was released in March 1973. It marked the beginning of the band’s long, successful collaboration with producer Chris Thomas, who worked on all of the group’s classic albums and singles in the 1970s. The album was promoted with the non-album single “Pyjamarama”; no album track was released as a single. On the first two Roxy albums, all songs were written solely by Bryan Ferry. Beginning with Stranded, Mackay and Manzanera began to co-write some material. Gradually, their songwriting and musicianship became more integrated into the band’s sound, although Ferry remained the dominant songwriter; throughout their career, all but one of Roxy’s singles were written either wholly or jointly by Ferry (Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson did individually write a few of the band’s B-sides). Stranded was released in November 1973, and produced the top-10 single “Street Life”.
The fourth album, Country Life, was released in 1974, and was the first Roxy Music album to enter the US Top 40, albeit at No. 37. Country Life was met with widespread critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone referring to it “as if Ferry ran a cabaret for psychotics, featuring chanteurs in a state of shock”. Their fifth album, Siren, contained their only US top 40 hit, “Love is the Drug”. (Ferry said the song came to him while kicking the leaves during a walk through Hyde Park.) After the concert tours in support of Siren in 1976, Roxy Music disbanded.
Roxy Music reunited during 1978 to record a new album, Manifesto, but with a reshuffled cast. Jobson was not present, and was reportedly not contacted for the reunion. The sleeve of Manifesto indicated that the revived Roxy Music line-up consisted of Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay, and Thompson, along with Paul Carrack (keyboards), Alan Spenner (bass), and Gary Tibbs (ex Vibrators) (bass); despite this all other media pointed to Roxy Music being a quartet (and a trio following the 1980 departure of Thompson), with the latter three musicians being regular collaborators of the band. Three singles were spun off from Manifesto, including the major UK hits “Angel Eyes” (UK No. 4), and “Dance Away” (UK No. 2). Both these tracks are significantly different from the album versions, as “Dance Away” was remixed for single release, and “Angel Eyes” was entirely re-recorded.
After the tour and before the recording of the next album, Flesh + Blood (1980), Thompson broke his thumb in a motorcycle mishap and took a leave from the band. Soon afterward he left permanently, due to musical differences with Ferry. At this point, Ferry, Mackay and Manzanera became the only permanent members of Roxy Music, and were supplemented by a variety of session players over the next few years including Tibbs, Spenner, Carrack, Andy Newmark and Neil Hubbard. The trio’s 1980 album Flesh + Blood became a huge commercial success in their homeland, as the album went to No. 1 on the UK charts, and spun off three UK hits: “Oh Yeah” (UK No. 5), “Over You” (UK No. 5), and “Same Old Scene” (UK No. 12).
In 1981, Roxy Music recorded the non-album single “Jealous Guy”. A cover of a song written and originally recorded by John Lennon, Roxy Music recorded “Jealous Guy” as a tribute to Lennon after his 1980 death. The song topped the UK charts for two weeks in March 1981, becoming the band’s only No. 1 single.
Later, with more sombre and carefully sculpted soundscapes, the band’s eighth—and final—studio album, Avalon (1982), was a major commercial success and restored the group’s critical reputation and contained the successful single “More Than This”. The album also included several Roxy Music classics, such as “Avalon”, “The Main Thing”, “The Space Between”, “True to Life”, and “To Turn You On”. The trio (augmented by session players) toured extensively until 1983, when Bryan Ferry dissolved the band, and band members devoted themselves full-time to solo careers.
