Roxy Music

The story of "Avalon" is the story of a great album born through subtraction, both the culmination and the epilogue of a journey that for Bryan Ferry coincided with the birth of Roxy Music, and which gradually took shape over the course of the '70s, spent more or less knowingly devouring his own creation until its extinction. The legacy of this unsettling trajectory consists of eight studio albums, together forming one of the most "elevated" discographies ever released by a band in the history of rock.

"It was a classic clash between the egos of two young men. [...] This happened because my outlandish look was drawing a lot of attention from the press. I took some good photographs, but that distracted from where the band's real creative leadership actually lay. And it was certainly Bryan's band!": so said Brian Eno about his brief but decisive stint in Roxy. Indirectly, it's a remark that says a great deal about Ferry's ambivalence, torn between the vital need to have incredibly innovative musicians by his side - co-responsible for a sound that shaped the course of art-rock and effectively anticipated new wave - and the need not to lose control of "his" creation.

Without dwelling on it further, the subsequent musical paths of those involved tell us plenty about why Eno left after just two albums, while Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera (and Paul Thompson) stayed on much longer. Eno would go on to release a string of visionary solo albums and productions destined to endure, while the other two would confirm themselves as remarkable, innovative instrumentalists, but only modest songwriters on the rare occasions they stepped into that role themselves.

Roxy Music was Ferry's band, then, and the weight of this thinly veiled truth became increasingly apparent over time; the polite objections of the other members counted for nothing, rewarded with the occasional credit here and there, but relegated more and more to the cramped role of supporting players, so ill-suited to their artistic stature.

This inexorable arc exploded in all its unsustainability precisely during the recording of "Avalon". The resentment of Manzanera and Mackay - kept in check during the early years thanks in part to their substantial instrumental contributions (not to mention the first two celebrated albums, think of "Stranded" or "Country Life", where their names appear as co-writers on several tracks, naturally alongside Ferry) - reached its peak when they finally realized they had effectively become session players. Top-shelf session players, but session players nonetheless (and in the meantime, tellingly, both Eno's replacement, the talented Eddie Jobson, and drummer Paul Thompson had quietly stepped away, after "Siren" and "Manifesto" respectively).

Indeed, because if we look at the albums that followed "Siren" - the record that also marks the end of Roxy 1.0 - Ferry's favourite pastimes seem to have been, on one hand, filling the studio with ever more accomplished performers (and sound engineers), and on the other, shrinking and/or fragmenting each of their contributions. All of it in service of an increasingly ethereal, rarefied and sophisticated sound. Hence the process of subtraction mentioned earlier, in which every single sound seems designed to thwart the personal ambitions of whoever is playing it: an exercise that reaches its point of no return on "Avalon", one which Ferry himself seems in no hurry to escape. Because if it's true that here there's no longer any trace of the thundering horns and guitar heroics of the early days, replaced by discreet touches that serve the whole, gone too are the man's theatrical, declamatory vibratos, replaced instead by languid, hazy, even whispered vocalizations. Not to mention the lyrics, which from sprawling narrative epics ("Mother Of Pearl", "If There Is Something", just two of many examples from the Roxy Music of old) shrink down drastically, reverberating and repeating like amorous entreaties within every single song.

Anyone familiar with the band's discography knows that some of these traits were already present on the predecessor "Flesh And Blood" (and, we'd argue, even on "Manifesto", if we think of tracks like "Dance Away" or "Spin Me Round"), but it's with "Avalon" that the listener can no longer avoid the formal perfection pervading the narcotic continuum of the ten tracks that make it up.

Don't fall, however, into the trap of accepting the cliché that form must necessarily lack substance, or of confusing stylistic pursuit with empty referentiality, or of thinking of the glossy sheen as a shell devoid of content, because this album too (perhaps especially this one) confirms the natural gift that has set Roxy Music apart since the beginning: knowing how to write truly great songs.

Not content with having branded the '70s with anthems as monumental as "Love Is The Drug" and "Virginia Plain", and having run a dress rehearsal at the dawn of the new decade with the emblematic "Same Old Scene" ("Flesh and Blood", 1980: a track that lays down the coordinates of eighties pop), Roxy also stamped their mark indelibly on the '80s with the two singles "More Than This" and "Avalon".

"More Than This", the first single, which also opens the album, is the peak of an emotional ecstasy that brooks no argument, bolstered by a vocal performance in which rivers of disenchanted melancholy flow over a falsetto that stands as Ferry's one-off expressive feat. So inimitable that, aside from a tentative attempt at the opening date of the '82 tour, it would never be performed live again until much later, on the 2001 reunion tour, and even then rearranged and - not a minor detail - reverently whispered by the man two tones lower.

The track that, by contrast, has never once been missing from the setlist of virtually every subsequent show is the second single, "Avalon". The song comes with an iconic video shot by the duo of Ridley Scott and Howard Guard at a sumptuous Victorian villa in Buckinghamshire. One of those clips where the images speak as loudly as the music they accompany, with the band decked out in classic tuxedos - Andy and Phil in black, Bryan in white - dusting off the maître d'hôtel look already flaunted on the cover of his 1974 solo album "Another Time Another Place", an open nod to Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca".

The video's atmosphere conveys a chiaroscuro decadence, amid flower petals, richly laid tables, static poses and a tango step that a femme fatale sketches out with Bryan, who, between shadows and knowing close-ups, eventually slips into the improbable role of falconer, bird of prey in tow. All of it adorning the delicate languor set to the rhythm of a bossa nova sui generis: "Now the party's over, I'm so tired... then a samba takes you by surprise, and the background's fading out of focus... the picture's changing, you don't know where to go..." are the frames of a lovesick daze sealed by Mackay's drowsy sax and the backing vocals of Yanick Étienne, a girl from Haiti who didn't speak a word of English but who was lucky enough to have her talent reach the band's ears from a rehearsal room next to the one where Roxy were recording, in New York: what you hear on the record is the performer's only take, a legendary one-and-done, which would earn her other spots on Bryan Ferry's subsequent solo albums, as well as on many accompanying live shows.

The rest, though, is every bit as strong, if not more so. The funky-soul sound the British crooner has long courted throughout his solo career (think, above all, of the Al Green totem revisited via "Take Me To The River" on 1978's "The Bride Stripped Bare" - but keep Green firmly in mind when tracing the DNA of "Avalon" too) finds its definitive realization in "The Space Between", which, with Neil Jason's pulsing, plastic bass and Manzanera's masterful picking, can only lament being sandwiched, in the tracklist, between the two mega-singles mentioned above. "India" is the dreamlike instrumental exoticism the group used to open their '82-'83 tour, and here it serves as a long prelude to the percussive interlocking of the loping "While My Heart Is Still Beating", which Andy Mackay rightly considers one of the finest tracks he co-wrote with Ferry, with its "shifting chord changes, and the sparse percussion that lets a voice as transparent as glass float above it all".

Side B of the vinyl opens with "The Main Thing", a hypnotic, circular groove that finds Neil Jason's rubbery, syncopated bass still in the driving seat, propped up by a drum-and-percussion combo with an afro flavour that makes it decidedly danceable, foreshadowing the solo Ferry to come – albeit a more electronic one – while a dark, dreamlike build-up ushers in the glittering romanticism of "Take A Chance With Me", a lush ballad that was also the album's third and final single, co-written with Phil Manzanera.

"To Turn You On", originally released in 1981 as the b-side of the successful instant-tribute single to John Lennon, "Jealous Guy", and remixed for the occasion, is a track boasting one of the most heart-wrenching lyrics from Ferry's already generous pen on the subject, portraying the lonely, unrequited lover against the backdrop of a rain-soaked, twilit New York. "True To Life" is a graceful exercise in vocal interplay set to soft tones, a midtempo of caressing textures embroidering high-class melodic flourishes: pure rarefaction in musical form, its incipit to be lifted almost verbatim in 2010 for "You Can Dance", from the album "Olympia".

It closes with "Tara", an idyllic instrumental of under two minutes, born from a Mackay sax improvisation caught in the studio by the sharp-eared Bryan and completed by the latter with a synth arrangement. The title echoes another noble album closer by Roxy Music, that of "For Your Pleasure" and its title track, whose coda evokes the mythical hill of Tara – a genuine obsession for Ferry, so much so that he later gave the name to his third son, today a fine drummer who has occasionally joined him on stage.

Speaking of obsessions, it's impossible to discuss the storied swan song of Roxy Music without mentioning the extraordinary work carried out in the studio by producer Rhett Davies, and at the mixing desk by Bob Clearmountain. The former, British and Brian Eno's loyal right-hand man on albums like "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)" and "Another Green World"; the latter, an American sound engineer revered within Atlantic's r'n'b universe (Chic chief among them) – both embody a working method that grants the studio and the mixing desk an importance equal to, if not greater than, that of the instruments, or even the musicians themselves. Davies's contribution proved decisive in the songwriting process, built around improvisation aimed at capturing the right mood to shape the songs around; equally crucial was Clearmountain's role at New York's Power Station, especially in replacing the drum machine tracks the songs had been built on with drum parts re-recorded from scratch by Andy Newmark. It's the inspired move that restores the soul feel the American session man masters like no other, thanks to his 70s collaborations with the likes of – among others – Sly & the Family Stone, George Benson, and – not by chance – the "black" Bowie of "Young Americans".

Despite peaking at just number 53 on the Billboard charts, "Avalon" would go on to sell a million copies in the US, while immediately shooting to number 1 back home and staying there for three weeks, also surpassing a million copies there after spending over a year on the UK Chart, thus cementing itself as the band's greatest commercial success.

It's for all these reasons that, from 1982 onward, Avalon would no longer be just the island that never was, where – as legend has it – King Arthur was laid to rest, but also a masterpiece in which even the notes left unplayed, every silence, every single pause, weigh just as much as what actually reaches our ears. The quintessence of the most languid and romantic elegance, celebrated by the cover art conceived by Ferry himself together with Peter Saville, depicting the singer's future wife Lucy Helmore from behind, clad in a medieval helmet, a hawk perched on her gloved hand, gazing out at a mysterious land lost on the horizon. The land of King Arthur's final, poignant journey, and of his knights, Roxy Music.

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16/09/2018