Never one to turn down the opportunity of a pun, I’m starting my blog with Roxy Music’s Flesh and Blood album, because Bryan Ferry studied at Newcastle (Fine Art, 1968). If you’ve recently studied at Newcastle, you’ll have walked past his picture near the Student Union loads of times.
Roxy Music were also a big influence on Peter Saville; he stated he learned more from Roxy Music than he did from college and that Roxy covers were where he first became interested in fashion. For the 18 year-old Saville, Ferry represented glamour that was accessible – you could have it if you wanted it – and it didn’t require an Aston Martin, unlike Connery’s James Bond!1
In terms of the music, Roxy Music had become a three-piece band featuring Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera after the departure of the drummer Paul Thompson. Other musicians were drafted in when necessary and included Paul Carrick, who later replaced Jools Holland in Squeeze and was one of the vocalists in Mike + the Mechanics, and Andy Newmark, former drummer with Sly and the Family Stone and drummer on Lennon’s Double Fantasy.2
The album received mixed reviews, with Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone panning it. However, the audience clearly loved the album as it was certified platinum in the UK and the US.2 Even if you don’t know much Roxy Music, if you’ve listened to a radio station playing 80s music, you’ll probably be familiar with at least one of the singles.
The sleeve design for Flesh and Blood, Roxy Music’s 7th studio album and their penultimate before splitting, was conceived by Saville with photography from Neil Kirk. It featured javelin-wielding women Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Mann on the front, and Roslyn Bolton on the back. It was created with no input from the band but was very much in the vein of their previous albums with women featured on the cover.3 The album spent a total of 4 weeks at number one in the UK album chart and spent 60 weeks on the chart in total.
The first single from the album, was Over You, co-written by Ferry and Manzanera and released in May 1980. The single peaked at number 5 in the UK charts and helped send the album to number on for a week in June – not bad for a song written in 5 minutes!4 A cover of the Byrds’ 8 Miles High was included on the promo 12″ single and also featured on the album, but the 7″ was backed with a re-recording of 1979’s Manifesto single.
The second single, Oh Yeah was written by Ferry to evoke Americana: nostalgia filled summer evenings at the drive-in.5 It certainly reminds me of summer days in the 80s before life got complicated in the way it inevitably does when you grow up! Fittingly, it was released in July and it also peaked at number 5 in the UK singles chart. On the back of this release, Flesh and Blood headed back to the top of the album charts for another three weeks in August. The single sleeve featured Peter Saville’s design; “OH YEAH” in a Palatino family font printed on textured white paper to resemble white leather – is it the leather of a Corvette seat? Or is it a wedding chapel bible? For Saville, you didn’t need to see the car – and this was a important facet of Roxy Music’s sleeves – the image on the cover was the key to the subtext beneath.1
Same Old Scene was released in October 1980 and climbed to number 12 in the UK charts. The song was used on the soundtrack to the film Times Square, released in 1980 and (much!) later, in 2008 played over the closing credits for the pilot of Ashes to Ashes, (the sequel to Life on Mars which finally explains what happened to Sam Tyler – both series are well worth a watch if you’ve not seen them).
The album is an accessible route into earlier Roxy Music, so if you’ve not heard them before, why not start with Flesh and Blood? And if one of your favourite tracks appears on this album or Avalon, please use the link on the homepage to tell me why it’s special to you.
1 Wilson, C. (2003) ‘Interview with Peter Saville’, in Designed by Peter Saville. London: Frieze