Roxy Music - Roxy Music (Vinyl)

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Roxy Music is the debut studio album by the English rock band Roxy Music. It was released on 16 June 1972.

It was generally well received by contemporary critics and made it to number 10 in the UK Albums Chart.

The opening track, "Re-Make/Re-Model", has been labelled a postmodernist pastiche, featuring solos by each member of the band echoing various touchstones of Western music, including The Beatles' "Day Tripper", Duane Eddy's version of "Peter Gunn", and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"; the esoteric "CPL 593H" was supposedly the license number of a car spotted by Bryan Ferry that was driven by a beautiful woman. Brian Eno produced some self-styled "lunacy" when Ferry asked him for a sound "like the moon" for the track "Ladytron". "If There Is Something" was covered by David Bowie's Tin Machine, and was later featured quite extensively, almost as a central figure, in the British film Flashbacks of a Fool.

Several of the album's songs were thematically linked to movies. "2HB", with its punning title, was Ferry's tribute to Humphrey Bogart and quoted the line "Here's looking at you, kid" made famous by the 1942 film Casablanca; "Chance Meeting" was inspired by David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945). "The Bob" took its title from Battle of Britain (1968) and included a passage simulating the sound of gunfire.

Discussing the music, Andy Mackay later said "we certainly didn't invent eclecticism but we did say and prove that rock 'n' roll could accommodate – well, anything really".

The band had been rehearsing and re-working the songs for a couple of months before they finally found a recording place, after which the entire album was recorded in the space of a single week. This was necessary because there was no record deal as yet, and their managers at EG were financing the sessions themselves, paying £5,000 in recording fees. The album was produced by King Crimson's lyricist Peter Sinfield, who had recently left that band. In May 1972, a few weeks after the recording sessions, a contract was signed with Island Records and in June the album was released.

The band's penchant for glamour was showcased both in the lyrics and in the 1950s-style album cover. The photographer Karl Stoecker shot the cover, featuring model Kari-Ann Muller, who later married Chris Jagger, brother of Mick Jagger (a stylised portrait of Kari-Ann Muller also graces the cover of Mott the Hoople's 1974 album The Hoople). The album was dedicated to Susie, a drummer who auditioned for Roxy Music in the early days.




Very few albums in rock music, let alone debut albums, are as bursting with original ideas as Roxy Music's first release. 'Roxy Music' is so far ahead of its time, it makes 'Ziggy Stardust', released the same year, sound like the work of a quaint folk singer (as, in a sense, Bowie still was). The album practically invents a new aesthetic, blending fifties nostalgia with futurism, pop art with literary sensibilities, and, musically, Bryan Ferry's ironic crooner persona with Brian Eno's electronic experimentalism. The songs swing eccentrically from one style to another: the cod-country stylings of 'If There is Something'; the lovely, wistful, old Hollywood glamour of '2.H.B'; the mock-lounge music of 'Bitters End'. Even the songs themselves restlessly dart from one sound to another: 'Ladytron' is a sci-fi soundscape, then a retro, crooner-era standard, then a stomping glam rocker. The second side is perhaps less melodic and memorable than the first, and some tracks work better in theory than in practice ('The Bob', just an ungodly mess). But, although they would go on to make better albums than this, no other album in their history is as invigoratingly full of fresh ideas as this one.

By: Morningside.


1. "Re-Make/Re-Model" 5:10
2. "Ladytron" 4:21
3. "If There Is Something" 6:33
4. "2HB" 4:34


Side two
No. Title Length
1. "The Bob (Medley)" 5:48
2. "Chance Meeting" 3:00
3. "Would You Believe?" 3:47
4. "Sea Breezes" 7:00
5. "Bitters End"


 

Gatefold sleeve with poly-lined die-cut black paper inner and lyric inner sleeve.

Original shrink-wrap features a rectangular hype sticker to the front which reads "180g heavy weight vinyl Remastered and cut Half-Speed from the original 1/4" tapes at Abbey Road Studios, London", and a rectangular barcode sticker to the rear, which reads “180g heavy weight vinyl mastered and cut Half-Speed at Abbey Road Studios, London”.

Catalogue number appears as RMLP 1 on spine of sleeve and barcode sticker but RMLP1 elsewhere.

Made in the EU.

Barcode (Sticker): 6 02507 46021 1
Rights Society: BIEM/SDRM
Label Code: LC03098
Matrix / Runout (Side A, etched): BK14288-01 A1 MILES. ABBEY ROAD 1/2 SPEED. ROOM 30 0746021
Matrix / Runout (Side B, etched): BK14288-01 B1 0746021 MILES. ABBEY ROAD 1/2 SPEED. ROOM 30