Just how big were Roxy?
Hi,
Watching 'The Roxy Music Story' you would think that Roxy were huge back in the 70's. I know they were highly succesful, but were certainly not stadium fillers and other acts were selling more albums and having more & bigger hit singles. In fact Roxy were like Marmite - it seemed you either loved them, or hated them. None of my friends liked them - Bryan's voice particularly was an acquired taste.
I did notice that many non-Roxy/Ferry fans liked 'Love is the Drug and especially 'Let's Stick Together' and their 'sound' became more and more accessible from Manifesto onwards. I would imagine the last 2 studio albums, (both platinum), outsold the others considerably.
Any thoughts, especially from those who can remember back that far!
PS - One thing that Roxy did have was success over a long period. Most groups were sucessful, even huge, for maybe a couple of albums and then faded away.
Watching 'The Roxy Music Story' you would think that Roxy were huge back in the 70's. I know they were highly succesful, but were certainly not stadium fillers and other acts were selling more albums and having more & bigger hit singles. In fact Roxy were like Marmite - it seemed you either loved them, or hated them. None of my friends liked them - Bryan's voice particularly was an acquired taste.
I did notice that many non-Roxy/Ferry fans liked 'Love is the Drug and especially 'Let's Stick Together' and their 'sound' became more and more accessible from Manifesto onwards. I would imagine the last 2 studio albums, (both platinum), outsold the others considerably.
Any thoughts, especially from those who can remember back that far!
PS - One thing that Roxy did have was success over a long period. Most groups were sucessful, even huge, for maybe a couple of albums and then faded away.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Robinson on -
I was lucky enough to be a Roxy fan from the very beginning - or at least, when their debut came out in 1972. Forgive my Jack Hargreaves moment, but there was very little music on TV back then, basically Top of The Pops, Old Grey Whistle Test and (sometimes) Lift Off With Ayeshea. I first saw Roxy on their debut Old Grey Whistle Test performance. I've got two older brothers, who liked Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, ELP and Ten Years After, and being younger than them, I sought out things that I liked. So, David Bowie, The Move (!) and Roxy became my favourites. When they first did TOTP in 1972, they looked different to the rest - even Alice Cooper, who were number one at the time with 'School's Out' - and Ferry and the band just looked so confident, so assured - you got the impression that they just knew they were better than the other hopeless plodders surrounding them. They may have had the trappings of Glam, but they were light years ahead of chancers like Gary Glitter and The Sweet. Bowie was great, but very rooted in the hard rock stylings of the early seventies (back in '72, that is), and Roxy offered an originality that was palpably different. I never had a problem with Ferry's vocal bleat - a mate of mine bought the debut album, and from the sleeve inwards it was just so unusual - and when 'Remake' / 'Remodel' kicked in, I just realised that my listening experience was never going to be the same again. Roxy were big, and biographers have pointed out that their following in Northern British industrial towns was unusually large, given the sexual ambiguity of their dress code. They did, however, divide opinion hugely. Their musicianship was always called into question (odd, that), and beardie rock journos always decried their lack of conventional rock and roll 'dues paying', seemingly having beamed in from nowhere, without playing the Fiesta Club in Scunthorpe. None of which put me off. I was disappointed at the time of their '79 reformation - Ferry seemed to have sunk into a very one-themed mood of romantic befuddlement - however, I have since grown to love those three albums. I, like many others, was also bemused to hear Ferry state that there won't be another Roxy studio album - if my Euro millions lottery number comes up, I'll gladly sink a chunk of it into getting them back to the studio!
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Permalink Reply by sharon on -
me to Alan,me to ...although every week I tear up the Euro- not -millions ticket and chuck it in the bin...one day, one day!
I like the vivid description of 'hopeless plodders' and 'beardie rock journo's!'... you are right ,they were huge in the 'Northern industrial' towns/cities of Wakefield and Leeds...and I loved every magical minute of it...takes me right back ..when we were young.
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Permalink Reply by PM on
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Bowies songwriting was more straight forward than Ferry’s (though his influences may have been similar) and he used session musicians from the beginning so his records were always more straight ahead. Ferry’s songwriting did become more straight forward after he covered other peoples songs on his first two solo albums and getting Eddie Jobson in was maybe a way of realising those songs more fully.
My first encounter with Roxy was TOTP Aug 72 (same edition as my first encounter with Mott The Hoople). They were very different from anything else on 72 but they were not a band out of time either. Eno’s VCS3 doodlings have dated more than any other aspect of their sound. A band can be unique by their musical limitations pushing them into unknown areas. Bands rarely get more inspired as their playing becomes more polished and they stick to rules they might once have had no idea about.
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Permalink Reply by annie Knight on -
They were very big with me and my friends ( have you seen the alternatives ?) . After Eno left and as I got sick of the almost exclusively romantic lyrics I sold all my records . I am a fan of political singers like Billy Bragg so Bryan put me off . I still remember the first album ,it was amazing but the posing got ridiculous.It seemed all image no depth.
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Permalink Reply by sharon on
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Gosh !...my L.Ps are lovingly stashed and occasionally scanned in an attempt to revive some past nostalgia... political singers leave me cold, It's probably me , but I don't like being lectured at though music or art /comedy ( Ben Elton -yawn) ...I always feel annoyed and patronised, as if some how it's assumed Joe Public has no independent political knowledge and needs guidance...but I don't like politics as I think to make a political impact requires corruption to succeed, be it left,,right ,liberal or whatever...oh dear ! I think I was taught never to discuss religion or politics....whoops, ten 'Hail Mary's ' for me !..it's true that most lyrics seemed romantic, but I thought their image went hand in hand with depth, sometimes discreet but definately present.
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Permalink Reply by Cor Broersen on -
Bryan might like Billie too annie!.
Roxy Music wás about ridiculious posing in a cool way, A live movie A theatre, a painters canvas painting with sound, image, imaginairy and exclusively romantic lyrics. There was nothing that could beat that package of total entertainment. I remember Jerney Kaagman from Earth and Fire a dutch prog band from that time saying "We looked up to Roxy Music cause they where the best band there was at the time" on a pedestal in relevance to influence, coolness, -and knowing Jerney Kaagman's context to the interview- Musicianswise. They where the best in the bizz...
Earth and Fire did doublebills with Roxy way back then.
I do like -the surealistic- Gong tho, but discovered them later, so Roxy was first love ;-)
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Permalink Reply by newromantic on -
Question is, just how big ARE Roxy? A thread at the Stones board "iorr.org" presently, doesn`t create much interest.
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Permalink Reply by kleinhond on
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Bowie only took the Thin White Duke to Wembley in 1976 - is that what you mean?
There were some big rock bands like the Who and Led Zep (and maybe the Stones) who played huge outdoor gigs in the 70s but there were very few and far between.
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