There was a radio interview with Bryan Ferry when this came out: all I remember was him talking about writing songs while in a boat on an Irish lake. Then I heard, or read, another interview a decade or two later and Bryan was saying how sick he was of people coming up to him to tell him about how they'd conceived their child, or, more frequently perhaps, pulled off some devastating seduction, with Avalon playing on the hi-fi.
I once lured a woman back to my Shoreditch loft space, late at night, on the pretext of a cup of tea and perhaps a listen to my William Burroughs boxed set. She's still living with me now, in fact.
The production on this album epitomised the coming of the CD era, even though, in 1982, CDs were still several years and several price-drops away from coming into range for me. It's the drum sound and the general cleanliness of everything. There's a hint of Chic in the sound, as well. Although neither Nile Rodgers or Bernard Edwards are mentioned on the credits, the album was partly recorded at the Power House in New York, which was Chic's home, and Fonzi Thornton, a Chic regular, sings backing vocals on most songs. (Did Nile produce the Bryan Ferry solo album that followed Avalon? I think he might have done.)
In another way, the album is defiantly not of the CD era. It's clearly composed of two sides, each with four songs and an instrumental, and it clocks in at 37½ minutes. It's more 'human scale', shall we say.
I bought this the same day as I bought E.L.O.'s Out of the Blue, again for a fiver from Fopp. And that's not all these two albums have in common, for Avalon is also on Stephin Merritt's list of the great recordings of the 20th century. That's what gave me the excuse to buy it.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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