Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure...

I blame Bryan Ferry. Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, too. And you, a bit.

You had that book The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll by Burchill and Parsons, and I only ever read the first few pages of it, but in those pages it bemoaned the state of the early '70s music scene, and the only shining beacons in the darkness were the first two Roxy Music albums, which encapsulated everything that rock'n'roll could and should be — of some such hyperbole. You backed this up, when I tried to defend late Roxy by saying that the early albums had many more ideas and and a stronger spirit of experiment.

Then I heard Bryan Ferry being interviewed on the radio — let's situate this story in 1985, so it would have been part of the promotional round for his Boys and Girls album — and he was asked what his favourite Roxy album was. "I though the second one was pretty good," he said.

So that's why, when I had to choose one of the early albums to sample and check out for myself, I chose this one. But I was never completely taken with it. I shrugged it off and just concluded that Burchill and Parsons were off the mark. No big surprise about that. It didn't occur to me that the first album might be in a different class. So that's why this record and the people who led me to it have to take the blame for postponing my discovery of one of my favourite albums.

Damn, I just checked what I said about that album, and I see that I'm just repeating an old story, only at greater length. Next time it may be even longer. Think of this as the gatefold sleeve version.

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