Someone please tell me what the deal was with Roxy Music's cover art aesthetic

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Was true, undiluted sexiness the intention? Or was it all arched eyebrows and camp? Some specifically anglo cultural allusion that I am missing? A complicated admixture of the above? Was being posh the most subversive thing a pop band could do in the immediate aftermath of the hippie era? (Yes, I am probably in need of a good primer on the philosphical underpinnings of glam.)

― erik, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The only Roxy Music album I own is 'For your pleasure;' the fact that Mojo told me I should own it (this was in the era that I listened to Mojo) was enough for me to overcome my aversion to the cheesy black- velvet-cum-venus-in-fur art. (My revulsion to the overall aesthetic notwithstanding, that panther walking woman does invoke in me an ambivalent frisson.) The band shot inside is ace, which goes some way toward compensation. I like the music but can never overcome the feeling that I'm not totally getting it.

― erik, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"In every dream home a heartache"

― earlnash, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is that a tranny on the first album or is that just an urban legend?

― dave q, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Someone please tell me what the deal was with Roxy Music's cover art aesthetic
"Naked chicks is always a wonderfully incisive art statement."
Or at least thats my philosophy.

― Lord Custos III, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Urban legend. I heard once it was FERRY in drag.

― rw, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My revulsion to the overall aesthetic notwithstanding

Erik, Erik, you disappoint me. Sure it's glamour; especially on the first few it's a pretty twisted form of glamour, and I live for it. "For Your Pleasure" cover star Amanda Lear was also rumoured to be a drag queen at one time. And of course there's the band shot in the gatefold... beyond classic.

― Sean, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's simple: they were horny bastards. And if you think they're bad, check out the Ohio Players' cover art. Yowza!

― Alex in NYC, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A girl I knew once seduced me to "more than this" and I could of cared less what the cover art looked like. Her cover art looked pretty damn good though.

― Chris, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

erik, I find their covers to be unpleasant, and definitely more disturbing than erotically appealing. (I imagine I have a more wholesome slant on these things than many of you, though my wholesomeness embraces some things which are considered kinky.)

― DeRayMi, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My view of Roxy Music is that they combine the high class with the trashy. This may be my own made up idea, but the songs are very nostalgic. For me, Avalon evokes a Polynesian cruise. Many of the lyrics, too, seem to be about a wealthy lifestyle, where the characters have nothing to do but have parties and reflect. A lot of it is in Ferry's voice too. It's like the victorian life but with a modern street twist.

― A Nairn, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

and definitely more disturbing than erotically appealing

Yes. Glamorous and disturbing. "Avalon" is the odd cover out, not featuring a woman.

― Sean, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm sorry Sean, maybe I'm glamophobic... I suppose I should confess here that Velvet Goldmine left me more or less cold (though the opening scene, the kids running down the street to 'Needle in the Camel's Eye' was exhilirating; maybe I was just let down that the rest didn't maintain the same thrilling pitch...)

A couple weeks ago at karaoke I had a go at 'Virginia Plain.' When I got onstage, I was alarmed to realized that the only bits I knew were the first couple lines ('Make me a deeeeeaaal / Make it straight!') and that great 'we are flying down to Riooo-ooh-ooh' part.' This, combined with my egregious Brian Ferry impression (which sounded fine to me when processed through the echo chamber of my sinuses and cranium but which was, by all accounts, quite ridiculous broadcast over the PA), led to a rather wincemaking perfomance. I did hop around a bit at the keyboard break following the aforementioned Rio line, however, which had to count for something.

― erik, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ferry as readymade tabloid cause celeb -- just like the models -- his "is he or isn't he" life in public as "star"/public tit. angle as commentary etc..

obvious lyrical allusions to this pop music celeb conceit "Street Life" and "She Sells" -- both concessions/sales as self-mythologising tabloid "post-tabloid" get-there-first

the very public Jerry Hall spat -- see "Cassanova" and "Praire Rose" almost next to each other on the anonymous/"we're not telling this time" "country life" album+cover exploits Hall just as Jagger predictably exploits Ferry/Hall later and Hall in turn exploits Ferry and Jagger in the mean time

much better than "Prince Charles Exploits Media" don't you think ? ferry as warhol-on-fly trash/glam UK scene ? except more subtle and yet much more in the action ? did Ferry's predictions or manipulations come back as self fulfilling prophecies to haunt him ?

― George Gosset, Saturday, 22 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

Roxy Music made the posh and sophisticatted look cheap and urban. I think that was their whole deal.

― Ian Riese-Moraine (Eastern Mantra), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

and yeesh I cannot spell.

― Ian Riese-Moraine (Eastern Mantra), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

It was pretty innovative how Roxy Music thought of having hot chicks on their album covers.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

An old thread but now at last Spencer can post on it.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 18:56 (twenty-one years ago)

"For Your Pleasure" cover star Amanda Lear was also rumoured to be a drag queen at one time.

i think the general consensus is that lear is male ("a man to leer"?), but s/he has never confirmed or denied it.

― stockholm cindy's secret childhood (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Whoah! Hold up there! Amanda Lear is a tranny? Shit, I had no idea. I'm getting out those records and taking another look. If she's a tranny, I am impressed at her abilities as a pass queen.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Hey, consider the lyrics:

For your pleasure
In our present state
Part false part true
Like anything
We present ourselves

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Lear's background remains a mystery. She has variously let it be known that her mother was English or French or Vietnamese or Chinese, and that her father was English, Russian, French or Indonesian. She may have been born in Hanoi in 1939, or Hong Kong in either 1941 or 1946. Once she said she was from Transylvania. And to this day, it is a matter of conjecture as to whether she was born a boy or a girl.
Lear came to notice in Britain shortly after she moved here from France in the mid-Sixties, when she hitched up with the Chelsea girl set that kept company with fashionable hangers-on. 'The sort of people,' says writer Jonathan Meades, 'who once shared a line with someone who once shared a line with a Rolling Stone.'
Lear went one better and developed a friendship with the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. It was through Jones, according to Lear, that she met [Salvador] Dali in 1965. He told her she had a 'beautiful skull'. Yet the story that Meades heard, and which followed Lear around London, is that two years earlier Dali had paid for her sex-change operation, which was carried out in Casablanca by Dr Bourou, who was at the cutting edge of transgender surgery.
Lear has never confirmed these details, although she was happy to trade on the notoriety they generated. 'It makes me mysterious and interesting,' she said. 'There is nothing the pop world loves more than a way-out freak.'
Later, however, she denied she was ever a man, insisting it was never anything more than a myth to gain publicity, a PR campaign whose architect, she said, was Dali. Or David Bowie. Or herself.

April Ashley, the transsexual who had once been George Jamieson, a Liverpudlian seaman, has long claimed she worked with Lear in the Fifties at Le Carrousel, a transvestite revue in Paris. In her book, April Ashley's Odyssey , she recalls a man named Alain Tapp, whose stage-name was Peki d'Oslo, later to become Amanda Lear. According to Ashley, Dali met Peki at Le Carrousel in 1959.

http://www.ntac.org/news/01/01/02uk.html

― stockholm cindy's secret childhood (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, what a great story, thanks Cindy. I have to try "you have a beautiful skull, shall I fund your surgeries?" as a pick up line now.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there's a thread of ambivalence running through Roxy Music and BF (maybe more BF than the rest?) over attraction to the glamorous.

― RS, Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

she's the sweetest queen i've ever seen!

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Once she said she was from Transylvania.

― stockholm cindy's secret childhood (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

The deal is that Ferry and Eno know more about beauty in cheap Eurotrash glamour shots than the rest of us mere mortals ever will.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes. Glamorous and disturbing. "Avalon" is the odd cover out, not featuring a woman.

Incorrect. The cover model on Avalon is Lucy Helmore who eventually became Mrs. Ferry. (only they divorced a couple years ago)

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 20:55 (twenty-one years ago)

In the booklet with the Thrill of It All box-set, There's an outtake from the Avalon cover photoshoot where it's very clear that it's a woman. That cover and Flesh+Blood were both designed by Peter Saville.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 21:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Beautiful skull is my new compliment

― Jimmy Mod always makes friends with women before bedding them down (ModJ), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 21:38 (twenty-one years ago)

...and apparently one of the two Country Life cover models was the sister of Can's Michael Karoli.

(Maybe not "Fuck my hat! I didn't know that!"-worthy but still fairly notable.)

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 21:57 (twenty-one years ago)

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