Trivia / Roxy Music

• Breakup Breakout: Brian Eno is the best known former member apart from Bryan Ferry, eking out a name for himself as both a pioneering ambient artist and a prolific Record Producer.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Phil Manzanera auditioned for the band, but former Nice guitarist David O'List was chosen. Manzanera became the group's roadie, and was promoted to guitarist when O'List left.
• Channel Hop: Roxy Music was signed to EG Records, which at the start was less a label and more a rights-holding company owned by the band's managers. EG licensed its roster (which also included King Crimson and Roxy alum Brian Eno) to various labels over the years.
  • In the UK, EG licensed the band's catalog to Island Records. During the hiatus between Viva! Roxy Music and Manifesto, EG formed their own label and changed distributors from Island to Polydor Records, who reissued the Island albums.
  • In the US, distribution was handled by Reprise Records (the first album), then Reprise's parent label Warner (Bros.) Records (For Your Pleasure), then Atco Records (Stranded through Flesh + Blood, along with reissues of the first two albums), then back to Warner Bros. again (Avalon). After Roxy broke up, their entire catalog was reissued by Reprise when the label relaunched in 1987.
  • Finally, around the Turn of the Millennium EG switched distributors from Polydor to Virgin Records throughout the world. Roxy Music's catalog has remained with Virgin ever since.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Ferry has mentioned his dislike of first album track "Would You Believe?" in interviews on several occasions. He felt it would make people think the band were some kind of rock and roll revival band.
  • Several band members have said they thought "Pyjamarama" was rushed and a bad choice of single. They liked the song, just thought that the recording and arrangement was not up to scratch due to being tired from touring. They didn't include it on For Your Pleasure for this reason either. This is why, when it came to their first singles collection, they opted to do a remix of it with new sax parts and different stereo effects, and this has appeared on most Greatest Hits compilations since. The original didn't appear on CD until the Boxed Set The Thrill Of It All, and later on The Complete Studio Recordings. Despite the band's criticisms, "Pyjamarama" is a favourite song of many fans, although many like the remix more than the original.
  • The rest of the group despised Bryan Ferry's electronic instrumentals "Sultanesque" and "South Downs" that he insisted on using as B-sides.
  • Generally speaking the band felt that "Trash" was a bad choice of single as it tried too hard to appeal to a new wave audience, and sold mainly to hardcore fans, who didn't think much of it either. "Trash" is almost never included on hits compilations. Fortunately, the follow ups "Dance Away" and "Angel Eyes" became disco hits and renewed the band's popularity.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Brian Eno cited Stranded as his personal favorite Roxy Music album, which is somewhat amusing considering that it was the band's first album made without his involvement.
• He Also Did: Eddie Jobson, the keyboardist and electric violinist who replaced Brian Eno in the lineup, has also scored movies and TV. He was the composer and music director for Nash Bridges throughout its run.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: 2012's The Complete Studio Recordings, released to celebrate the band's 40th Anniversary. The release compiles everything the band recorded bar the Live Album Viva!. This includes a 2 disc set of non-album tracks which has several tracks that had never appeared on CD. In addition to featuring superb packaging (replicating the original vinyl releases almost exactly), the tracks themselves are musically identical to the original vinyl releases as well, as they are flat transfers from the original tapes (ie not tampered with.) Aside from a strangely muted sounding mix of "Virginia Plain", this set might be one of these Deluxe Box Set releases to actually fulfill their potential.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Critically, Avalon is the favorite. Among fans, it is usually For Your Pleasure. For Brian Eno, it's Stranded.
• The Pete Best: The band's first guitarist was David O'List, formerly of The Nice. When O'List left the band, he was replaced with roadie Phil Manzanera. This ended up working out for the best, as Manzanera happened to know David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, which opened up a lot of doors in the music industry to them.
• Recursive Import: The first album was released a few months late in the US, which enabled them to add the then newly recorded non-album single "Virginia Plain" to the album. For CD releases, this tracklisting was made standard worldwide; with the only exception being The Complete Studio Recordings where it appears on the Singles and B-Sides disc.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Bryan Ferry wrote "The Right Stuff" around The Smiths' instrumental "Money Changes Everything" and then hired Johnny Marr to play on and rework the track properly with him. This is often said to be one factor in the split of The Smiths, though Morrissey had actually stated For Your Pleasure as one of his favourite albums.
• Referenced by...:
  • The slide guitar part on Talking Heads' "The Big Country" was inspired by "Prairie Rose"; the Talking Heads song also derives its title from a line in the Roxy Music song.
  • The Smiths' practice of crediting "cover stars" was inspired by Roxy Music doing the same.
  • The black shrink wrap over the cover of the first pressing of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was inspired by the band's American label doing the same for Country Life.
  • "Take a Chance with Me" is sampled in the outro of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" from their album The Downward Spiral.
  • Grace Jones covered "Love Is the Drug" on Warm Leatherette.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Both Roxy and U2 have had songs called "All I Want Is You".
  • Not only that, but Roxy Music's "Angel Eyes" and Abba's "Angeleyes" were in the charts at the same time. Humorously, the band would later release a single called "Take a Chance With Me", reminding people of "Take a Chance on Me" by Abba. Ferry later released a yet again different solo track called "The Name of the Game".
  • There's also a song called "The Space Between" on Avalon, unrelated to the song of the same name by Dave Matthews Band.
  • "More Than This" shares its name with a song by Peter Gabriel.
• What Could Have Been: A few examples.
  • Bryan Ferry auditioned for the lead vocalist spot in King Crimson, but failed. Both bands ended up under the management of EG Records, and King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield produced Roxy Music's debut album.
  • Ferry's solo album The Bride Stripped Bare was originally going to be a double album that would have had one disc original tracks and the other covers. Due primarily to poor sales of his preceding solo albums, it was trimmed down to a 10 track single album that was a mixture of both. 8 of the outtakes did surface in various forms later, these being "Four Letter Love", "Dance Away" (rerecorded by Roxy Music), "Flesh + Blood", "To Turn You On", "Broken Wings" (originals) as well as "Crazy Love", "Feel The Need" and "He'll Have To Go" (covers). Fans however speculate what Ferry's original plan for the album was. He had, for example, said at the time of recording John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" that he wanted to record it for a few years. He more or less revisited the idea with his later albums Taxi (covers) and Mamouna (originals), which although recorded in the same sessions, were released as separate albums.
  • Ferry had plans for a solo album in 1981, but aside from a few remixes of older tracks, it never got completed.
  • By his own admission, Ferry later felt guilty that his massively successful Boys and Girls wasn't recorded as a Roxy Music album as it built on the success of Avalon and the other members weren't around to enjoy it. However, they also had their own projects.
  • Ferry's much later solo album Olympia was supposed to be the Roxy Music comeback album, but ultimately the only track that retains the original plan was "BF Bass (Ode To Olympia)". According to Phil Manzanera, the band made another attempt at a reunion album shortly after, but ultimately shelved it due to their dissatisfaction with the results.

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