The eighth and final studio album by Roxy Music, Avalon was released on May 28,1982. It was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and has long been regarded as the definitive Roxy Music album, if not the definitive 80s album. It is also the band's most successful album.
Bryan Ferry, who was Roxy Music's de-facto leader, started writing Avalon while staying at Crumlin Lodge on the west coast of Ireland. Ferry was there with his girlfriend, Lucy Helmore (who would later become his wife) and the album's cover artwork features the lake that can be seen from the lodge they were staying in. Guitarist Phil Manzanera said, "that album was a product of completely changing our working methods. For the last three albums, quite frankly, there were a lot more drugs around. It created a lot of paranoia and a lot of spaced-out stuff."
Maybe that's why it sounds so different from every other Roxy Music album.
Ferry tells how he always wanted to record an album "where the songs are all bound together in the style of West Side Story, but it's always seemed like too much bother to work that way. So instead, I have these 10 poems, or short stories, that could, with a bit more work, be fashioned into a novel. Avalon is part of the King Arthur legend and is a very romantic thing. When King Arthur dies the Queens ferry (no pun intended) him off to Avalon, which is sort of an enchanted island. It's the ultimate romantic fantasy place."
If you hear a slight reggae influence on this record it may have something to do with the fact that while it was being recorded, Bob Marley was in another studio downstairs recording one of his albums.
The song, Avalon, features a female Haitian singer named Yanick Étienne. Her contribution turned a good song into a stunningly beautiful song, and it was only by random circumstance that she appears at all. The studio engineer for these sessions was Rhett Davies, who recounts how it happened. "Ferry had stayed up that Saturday night and composed what would be the lyrics to Avalon," Davies said. "Sunday was usually a down day, so the studio would let local Haitian bands come in to do demos when there wasn't much else happening." But Davies and Ferry were in the studio that particular Sunday - probably laying down some vocal tracks - and at some point they decided to take a coffee break. They went out into the hall. and that's when they heard Etienne singing in another studio. Davies said he and Ferry, hearing this unknown girl from the Haitian band next door singing, thought, 'Wow! What a voice! We've got to get her singing some backing vocals on Avalon.'"
Étienne didn't speak a word of English, but her boyfriend and manager, who was there with her, did. They told him what they had in mind, he told her and she ended up adding her voice to the choruses. She also sang the word, "Avalon." Then Davies and Ferry asked her if she would do something free-form at the end of the song, and she seemed to understand what they meant. "But when we ran the end of the track she did absolutely nothing," Davies said. He told her boyfriend/manager, "We want her to sing anything that she would want to sing, totally free.' So the second time we ran the tape, she sang exactly what you hear on the record at the end. Bryan then went straight out and re-sang his vocal properly, because he was so inspired by Yanick's singing. I remember Bryan's manager walked in the room as Bryan was finishing his vocal. He went, 'Jesus fucking Christ! That is incredible!'
Like so many other almost unbelievable chance encounters in music history, this one made all the difference. "It was one of those turnaround things," Davies said, "where the original track was just about to be thrown in the can. And then suddenly, we did a completely different version of the song that just made the record for me. I remember we had dinner a couple nights later, and I asked Bryan, 'What are you going to call the album?' and he said, 'I'm going to call it Avalon,' and I thought, 'Yeah. Of course.'"
And really, what choice did he have? Imagine if they hadn't been in the studio that Sunday, as was the normal way of things. That song is pure magic. Étienne, who died of cancer in 2022 at age 64, also appeared on several of Ferry's solo recordings.
But a great album isn't just one great song, and Avalon is only one of several excellent songs on this LP. Probably the most recognizable is the opening track, More Than This, which was released before the album appeared and immediately shot to number 10 in Britain. Talk about a tease! Bryan Ferry is a velvet-voiced singer who had been working up to this sound for years. He'd done a lot of experimenting previously - some results better than others - and this is where he ended up with Roxy Music, which turned out to be as far as that was meant to go. He subsequently embarked on a successful solo career, but most people were expecting Avalon Part Two, something that was never going to happen because Ferry was not interested in standing still or rehashing old ideas. Interestingly, there's a box set called The First Seven Albums, that features every Roxy Music Recording except this one. I don't know if that means anything, but it might. It certainly serves to set Avalon apart from everything that came before it, even if not intentionally.
Other stand out tracks include The Main thing, The Space Between, To Turn You On and While My Heart Is Still Beating. That's not to say the other tracks not mentioned here aren't also exceptional, because they are. These are simply the ones I'm choosing today. Tomorrow it might be different.
Peter Saville designed the cover artwork and Helmore (Ferry's aforementioned girlfriend) appeared on the album cover. The photo was captured by Neil Kirk at dawn, looking out over Lough Ugga Beag, Connemara. In 1982 Ferry would say he thought Avalon was the most romantic album he'd ever made. I don't disagree!
It was also pretty much universally praised by critics. In The Village Voice's 1982 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, it was voted the 11th-best album of the year. In 1989 it was ranked No. 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s. In 1993, Entertainment Weekly included it as No. 25 in their 100 Greatest CDs, and in 2000 it was voted number 187 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. Then, in 2003, it appeared on another Rolling Stone magazine list ranking it at number 307 on The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
It truly is an exceptional LP. Somehow, decades ago, the first copy I owned disappeared and I only recently re-purchased it. I could have bought a new, half-speed-mastered version of it but I opted instead for a near-mint original pressing because - really - what was there to improve upon? And it only cost five bucks! But what an album! In a lousy mood? Put this on.
I hadn't listened to Avalon in years and it sounds even better now than I remember it then. I had it cranked loud enough that my neighbour heard it. She came knocking on my door and asked me to turn it up! "That's one of my favourite records!" she said.
It really is an absolute joy to listen to, especially after so long, and also especially because of the breathy contribution of Yanick Étienne, who only appeared here by chance and helps make this record …
The eighth and final studio album by Roxy Music, Avalon was released on May 28,1982. It was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and has long been regarded as the definitive Roxy Music album, if not the definitive 80s album. It is also the band's most successful album.
Bryan Ferry, who was Roxy Music's de-facto leader, started writing Avalon while staying at Crumlin Lodge on the west coast of Ireland. Ferry was there with his girlfriend, Lucy Helmore (who would later become his wife) and the album's cover artwork features the lake that can be seen from the lodge they were staying in. Guitarist Phil Manzanera said, "that album was a product of completely changing our working methods. For the last three albums, quite frankly, there were a lot more drugs around. It created a lot of paranoia and a lot of spaced-out stuff."
Maybe that's why it sounds so different from every other Roxy Music album.
Ferry tells how he always wanted to record an album "where the songs are all bound together in the style of West Side Story, but it's always seemed like too much bother to work that way. So instead, I have these 10 poems, or short stories, that could, with a bit more work, be fashioned into a novel. Avalon is part of the King Arthur legend and is a very romantic thing. When King Arthur dies the Queens ferry (no pun intended) him off to Avalon, which is sort of an enchanted island. It's the ultimate romantic fantasy place."
If you hear a slight reggae influence on this record it may have something to do with the fact that while it was being recorded, Bob Marley was in another studio downstairs recording one of his albums.
The song, Avalon, features a female Haitian singer named Yanick Étienne. Her contribution turned a good song into a stunningly beautiful song, and it was only by random circumstance that she appears at all. The studio engineer for these sessions was Rhett Davies, who recounts how it happened. "Ferry had stayed up that Saturday night and composed what would be the lyrics to Avalon," Davies said. "Sunday was usually a down day, so the studio would let local Haitian bands come in to do demos when there wasn't much else happening." But Davies and Ferry were in the studio that particular Sunday - probably laying down some vocal tracks - and at some point they decided to take a coffee break. They went out into the hall. and that's when they heard Etienne singing in another studio. Davies said he and Ferry, hearing this unknown girl from the Haitian band next door singing, thought, 'Wow! What a voice! We've got to get her singing some backing vocals on Avalon.'"
Étienne didn't speak a word of English, but her boyfriend and manager, who was there with her, did. They told him what they had in mind, he told her and she ended up adding her voice to the choruses. She also sang the word, "Avalon." Then Davies and Ferry asked her if she would do something free-form at the end of the song, and she seemed to understand what they meant. "But when we ran the end of the track she did absolutely nothing," Davies said. He told her boyfriend/manager, "We want her to sing anything that she would want to sing, totally free.' So the second time we ran the tape, she sang exactly what you hear on the record at the end. Bryan then went straight out and re-sang his vocal properly, because he was so inspired by Yanick's singing. I remember Bryan's manager walked in the room as Bryan was finishing his vocal. He went, 'Jesus fucking Christ! That is incredible!'
Like so many other almost unbelievable chance encounters in music history, this one made all the difference. "It was one of those turnaround things," Davies said, "where the original track was just about to be thrown in the can. And then suddenly, we did a completely different version of the song that just made the record for me. I remember we had dinner a couple nights later, and I asked Bryan, 'What are you going to call the album?' and he said, 'I'm going to call it Avalon,' and I thought, 'Yeah. Of course.'"
And really, what choice did he have? Imagine if they hadn't been in the studio that Sunday, as was the normal way of things. That song is pure magic. Étienne, who died of cancer in 2022 at age 64, also appeared on several of Ferry's solo recordings.
But a great album isn't just one great song, and Avalon is only one of several excellent songs on this LP. Probably the most recognizable is the opening track, More Than This, which was released before the album appeared and immediately shot to number 10 in Britain. Talk about a tease! Bryan Ferry is a velvet-voiced singer who had been working up to this sound for years. He'd done a lot of experimenting previously - some results better than others - and this is where he ended up with Roxy Music, which turned out to be as far as that was meant to go. He subsequently embarked on a successful solo career, but most people were expecting Avalon Part Two, something that was never going to happen because Ferry was not interested in standing still or rehashing old ideas. Interestingly, there's a box set called The First Seven Albums, that features every Roxy Music Recording except this one. I don't know if that means anything, but it might. It certainly serves to set Avalon apart from everything that came before it, even if not intentionally.
Other stand out tracks include The Main thing, The Space Between, To Turn You On and While My Heart Is Still Beating. That's not to say the other tracks not mentioned here aren't also exceptional, because they are. These are simply the ones I'm choosing today. Tomorrow it might be different.
Peter Saville designed the cover artwork and Helmore (Ferry's aforementioned girlfriend) appeared on the album cover. The photo was captured by Neil Kirk at dawn, looking out over Lough Ugga Beag, Connemara. In 1982 Ferry would say he thought Avalon was the most romantic album he'd ever made. I don't disagree!
It was also pretty much universally praised by critics. In The Village Voice's 1982 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, it was voted the 11th-best album of the year. In 1989 it was ranked No. 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s. In 1993, Entertainment Weekly included it as No. 25 in their 100 Greatest CDs, and in 2000 it was voted number 187 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. Then, in 2003, it appeared on another Rolling Stone magazine list ranking it at number 307 on The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
It truly is an exceptional LP. Somehow, decades ago, the first copy I owned disappeared and I only recently re-purchased it. I could have bought a new, half-speed-mastered version of it but I opted instead for a near-mint original pressing because - really - what was there to improve upon? And it only cost five bucks! But what an album! In a lousy mood? Put this on.
I hadn't listened to Avalon in years and it sounds even better now than I remember it then. I had it cranked loud enough that my neighbour heard it. She came knocking on my door and asked me to turn it up! "That's one of my favourite records!" she said.
It really is an absolute joy to listen to, especially after so long, and also especially because of the breathy contribution of Yanick Étienne, who only appeared here by chance and helps make this record …
BONUS TRACK
Roxy Music was pieced together in 1970 by singer Bryan Ferry and bassist Graham Simpson. Ferry had just lost his job teaching ceramics at a girls' school because he would hold impromptu record-listening sessions, which had nothing at all to do with ceramics. Upon getting canned, he decided he wanted to start a band and advertised for a keyboardist to collaborate with him and Graham Simpson, a bassist he knew from his Newcastle University band called the Gas Board. Andy Mackay answered the ad, and brought with him a guy named Brian Eno. Eno was not a musician but could operate a synthesizer and owned a Revox reel-to-reel tape machine, so Mackay convinced him to join the band as a technical adviser. Also on board was guitarist Phil Manzanera and drummer Paul Thompson. The band's sound evolved and it wasn't long before Eno was a full-time member of the group. He's certainly considered to be a musician now!
Ferry and Mackay, looking for a name for the group, decided to make a list of old cinemas names, Roxy being one of them. Ferry liked it, and so for a while that was the name of the band. But after learning of an American band also named Roxy, Ferry changed the name to Roxy Music. Success was initially evasive, and at some point during late 1970 or early 1971 Ferry auditioned to be lead vocalist for King Crimson, who were seeking a replacement for Gordon Haskell. Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield decided Ferry's voice was not suitable for King Crimson, but they were impressed enough with his talent that they decided to help the fledgling Roxy Music obtain a recording contract. Their first self-titled album, released in 1972, was more musically sophisticated than what was typical of the time, and that, along with their slick fashion sense, help get them noticed. The support of broadcaster John Peel and Melody Maker journalist Richard Williams also didn't hurt. A single was released called Virginia Plain, which made it to number 4 on the UK singles chart. They were on their way.
On the first two albums - the second, For Your Pleasure, was released inn 1973 - all the songs were written by Bryan Ferry. Beginning with the Stranded LP, also released in 1973, Mackay and Manzanera began to co-write some of the material, which expanded the band's sound. The fourth album, Country Life, released in 1974, was the first Roxy Music album to enter the US Top 40 and was met with widespread critical acclaim. Rolling Stone referred to it "as if Ferry ran a cabaret for psychotics, featuring chanteurs in a state of shock". Whatever that means.
Siren, released in 1975, contained their only US Top 40 hit, Love Is the Drug. After the 1976 tour in support of Siren, Roxy Music disbanded. In 1978 a reshuffled cast of characters - featuring Paul Carrack (Squeeze, Mike + The Mechanics, Ringo Starr) and with Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson at the core - reunited to record Manifesto. Another tour followed, after which Thompson broke his thumb in a motorcycle accident, meaning the next album, Flesh + Blood, was completed using a bunch of session drummers filling in for Thompson while he recuperated. He would rejoin the band in 1980, but not long after left for good, supposedly due to musical differences with Ferry.
Roxy Music then became a trio of Ferry, Mackay and Manzanera, augmented by various guest musicians. In 1981, Roxy recorded and released a non-album single, a cover of John Lennon's Jealous Guy, as a tribute to Lennon after his murder. It topped the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in March of that year, becoming the band's only number 1 single.
Then came this record - Avalon - which was a massive commercial and critical success. A tour followed and then the band again disbanded.
Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson re-formed Roxy Music in 2001 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band with a tour, after which everybody went their separate ways to embark on solo careers. There would be several starts and stops over the following years, including a seven date tour in the UK to celebrate the band's 40th anniversary, and they also reformed once more for a 50th anniversary in 2022, touring the UK and the US.
Maybe they'll do something for the 60th, too.
