Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

The Tech MARCH 4, 1975 - by Neal Vitale

ROXY MUSIC, ENO & BRYAN FERRY: STATE-OF-THE-ART ROCK

The appellation Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno represents something of an unknown quantity here in America; likewise, the names Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay, Eddie Jobson, Paul Thompson, and John Wetton are not exactly what one would call "household words" on this side of the Atlantic. Yet, known simply and respectively as Eno and Roxy Music, these seven artists represent the vanguard of rock music today, dealing, to differing degrees, in a progressive/experimental context that is at once both musically and lyrically avant-garde and pop-ishly formatted and stylized.

The origins of this bizarre amalgam can be traced back, as can so much else considered revolutionary in the popular music of the past decade, to British art schools - in this case, at Newcastle and Reading during the late '60s. The nucleus of the first Roxy Music was vocalist/writer Ferry and long-since vanished bass-player Graham Simpson; rounding out the group were Eno on keyboards and electronics, drummer Thompson, Mackay on saxes, and onetime Nice guitarist David O'List. By the time Roxy Music was released in 1972, erstwhile sound mixer Manzanera had replaced O'List, and Rik Kenton had taken over playing bass.

With then-King Crimson cohort Pete Sinfield doing the production honors, Roxy Music's premiere record was an oddly dry, cryptic, and generally difficult effort, with songs ranging from the catatonic rock of Re-Make/Re-Model (with its quotes from The Beatles' Day Tripper and Wagner's Walküre) through the great single Virginia Plain to the sparse Sea Breezes.

The second Roxy Music album, For Your Pleasure, was released in early 1973, and continued to fashion the Ferry-spurred portrait of pop culture - blending '50s rock 'n' roll, chic decadence, the musical influences of Duchamp and Warhol, and a European aloof and impersonal romanticism with a distinctly self-conscious humor. For Your Pleasure, besides ushering in yet another bassist (in the person of John Porter), opened up wider musical avenues for the group to pursue. Without dabbling in the almost Zappa-esque comedy of For Your Pleasure's In Every Dream Home A Heartache (an insufferable narrative and stinging comment on the modern middle class), numbers like The Bogus Man gave Manzanera room to display his hiccupping guitar style and Mackay an opportunity to play more extended sax runs.

But that summer, as directional and personal conflicts with Ferry became more evident, Eno departed, to be replaced by keyboardsman/violinist Eddie Jobson from Curved Air; somewhat matter-of-factly, at the same time Johnny Gustafson became Roxy bassist Number 4.

Stranded's 1973 release heralded Roxy Music's move to Atlantic Records, and with it, the advent of a more finished and polished sound - leaving much of Eno's electronic processing in favor of a leaner, slightly more conventional (and thereby more accessible) approach. Ferry's lyric/poetic style proved more caustic and cutting; with the exception of the rather dreary Psalm, the music and the writing were amazingly equal. The English hit Street Life and the devastating Mother Of Pearl highlighted one of last year's best records.

The first two months of 1975 have not only seen the release of the fourth Roxy Music album, Country Life (in at least three different packages of varying female exposure), but also the band's first performance in Boston. The off-again, on-again poorly promoted show at the Orpheum caught Roxy moving farther and farther from the rough '50s presentation of their earlier Continental tours.

Bryan Ferry - moving rigidly in black tuxedo; singing in his unmistakable quaver; looking to be an out-of-place thirtyish gigolo; creating a puzzling mix of arrogance, ennui, and sexual ambivalence - was nonetheless not the central point of the Roxy Music stage show. The act was curiously unfocused visually - the splendid pyrotechnics of Eddie Jobson in purple satin tails on framework violin, of Andy Mackay in his outlandish chartreuse spacesuit on a variety of absurd-looking saxes, of new and musically tumultuous bass-player John Wetton (late of the final, now disbanded, King Crimson), of nondescript and nearly hidden drummer Paul Thompson, and of sizzling South America-raised guitarist Phil Targett-Adams Manzanera nevertheless did not provide a strong, central visual focus.

The set, though, was indeed marvellous. Though the opening numbers, like Prairie Rose and Out Of The Blue suffered from a lack of cohesive energy - as well as at the hands of a most barbarous and muddled sound system - the show's climax was truly astounding. Ending with a breathtaking barrage of Virginia Plain, Editions Of You, Do The Strand and The Thrill Of It All, and drawing energy from the underflow crowd's wild enthusiasm, Roxy Music reiterated and reinforced the notion that it indeed is "state of the art" rock; performances of Ferry's more indulgent slow-paced songs like Song For Europe and Bitters End added another dimension to his world-weary/fashion-conscious vision of cabaret-couched romance.

Brian Eno has been approaching it all from a very different vantage point. He is a confessed non-musician, so his stance is one raised several layers of experimentalism past the melodic invention and rich imagery and prose of Roxy Music. In the course of his two solo albums recorded after leaving Roxy, as well as in his work with Robert Fripp and the Portsmouth Sinfonia, Eno has dealt mainly with processing other musicians' playing. His genius, though, extends past the realm of mere manipulation - by reducing compositions to one or two chords (or even one or two notes) and by writing lyrics from phonetic scat-singing, Eno has essentially created a totally new environment for writing pop music.

Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) are the unique products of just such a remarkable environment. Tunes like the frenetic Baby's On Fire (which features what is possibly Robert Fripp's best recorded guitar work), the thick and tense Driving Me Backwards, the sinister The Fat Lady Of Limbourg, and the bouncy The True Wheel are irrefutably great pop songs, yet there exists a danger of taking Eno too seriously - much of what he creates parodies through its very simplicity. Through their attention to subtleties and small-scale variations, Eno's tunes are intriguing on one level, while catchy and excitingly rhythmic thanks to their repetitiveness. By dealing, in 1975, with the concept of simplicity vs. complexity; the approximate vs. the exact; incompetence vs. technical excellence, Eno may well be the most imaginative and innovative writer in all of rock.

Both Ferry and Eno are delving into mostly uncharted regions of modern pop, but the dichotomy is clear. Eno, who drew much of his original interest and enjoyment from Roxy Music's sheer chaos and undisciplined nature, is heading into a total redefinition of the pop music sphere, and the ultimate creation of unique and quirky snatches of a rock of unknown and accidental make-up. Ferry, as evidenced particularly by his two solo albums of cover versions of old pop hits, draws much more from the cultural past of rock 'n' roll. With or without Roxy Music, he mixes a dizzying array of styles and posings from the last several decades into a melange that somehow is more brilliant than the collection of sources. Operating under distinctly different constraints and considerations, Eno and Roxy Music create what is essentially the future of rock music, plying two divergent routes, each to its own fascinating and unequivocally interesting end.

DISCOGRAPHY

Roxy Music - Roxy Music / For Your Pleasure / Stranded / Country Life
Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets / Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) / No Pussyfooting (w/Robert Fripp)
Bryan Ferry - These Foolish Things / Another Time, Another Place
Andy Mackay - In Search Of Eddie Riff
Singles - Roxy Music: Virginia Plain b/w The Numberer / Pyjamarama b/w The Pride And The Pain; Eno: Seven Deadly Finns b/w Later On