3. Roxy MusicFor Your Pleasure
My friend John Floyd got me into Roxy Music. He was a huge Bryan Ferry fan. It’s funny really because OMD rejected some of the things we completely understood a few years earlier about image, and Roxy were very much about their image, and I can remember seeing them on the Old Grey Whistle Test and thinking, “what the fuck is this?” I was so bored of American blues rock bands coming over with long straggly hair and beards and guitars, and all of a sudden there was these quiffs and feather boas and sparkly sunglasses. And yet of course when we first started to do our own music, we completely abandoned any idea of dressing up as part of the art form. We were just so purely focused on the music and it’s funny really because Roxy Music were so brilliant in the way the sleeves looked, and the way they looked was part of the art package. For Your Pleasure is just so sleek. ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’ has a big long intro and then a big noisy bit at the end. I actually heard him play it in Ireland in the nineties and I couldn’t believe I was ever going to hear that song live. And then of course by complete contrast ‘The Bogus Man’ – just the drums and bass! Those two songs alone are worth the price of the record.
