There’s a wonderful documentary on Sky Arts about Roxy Music. The band. Bryan Ferry. That lot. Wonderful if you loved them, as I did, load’a shit if you didn’t. Which many didn’t. Like my brother. Hard rocker that he was, heavy metal to his very core, he poo-pooed anyone who wore anything other than black on stage. Hated ‘dress up’, unless it involved big crosses (normally upside down ones), maybe swords, a hat or two. He liked it ‘raw’. He, basically, loved Black Sabbath almost to the exclusion of all else. Whereas I had a more ‘pop’ side. Maybe because I was younger. I either liked a song or didn’t. Regardless of the pigeonhole the music slotted into. The tribe.

And then, in 1970, onto the Top of the Pops stage came Roxy Music. And they were dressed up. And they performed Virginia Plain. Which immediately grabbed me by various parts, including my testicles, and left me aghast. It was so different. The band, the song, the music. In 1970 you could actually invent a sound, a look, a paradigm, that wasn’t derivative. And Roxy were definitely ‘individual’. The song had no chorus. It didn’t move in the same way as other songs. But that’s something I learned later. It didn’t enter my consciousness at the time. And it included the immortal line: “where my Studebaker takes me, that’s where I’ll make my stand”. You just can’t fail with such a line.

As soon as the eponymous album came out, we used our weekly, whip-round budget at Mr Byrite, where I worked on Saturdays, to buy it. The album was sensational. But the cover was something else. We had to take turns on staring at it. An hour each. And even though subsequent had covers more sexual, more sexy, more semi-naked, more smutty, this one had that incredible vulnerability.

The band, as they are now, speak extensively in the rockumentary. And the first thing that strikes you is how posh, educated and eloquent these art-school poseurs were and still are. None of the toothless, drug-addled, post-rehab (until next time) grunting from these dudes. Just super-intelligent wit and observation.

The first two Roxy Music albums ‘changed my life’. I saw them in about 1972 at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. Bryan Ferry had apparently been promoted to a 5-star general by then, but they were simply amazing on stage. I still play those two albums a lot. And now, following the documentary, I need the third one too.

Happy nostalgic Saturday

A xxxx