The 1980 Listening Post - Roxy Music - Flesh + Blood

Roxy Music - Flesh + Blood

#198

May 23 1980

Roxy Music

Flesh + Blood

Genre: New Romantic

Allen’s Rating: 2 out of 5

Anthony’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5 

Flesh and Blood is the midpoint album of the Bryan Ferry evolution to the smooth international Lothario image that would see him all the way to the current century. By this point in his career, Ferry was becoming kind of the Male version of Sade. He started cranking out one smooth martini of a song after another. Avalon, the ultimate Smooth Operator album would follow Flesh and Blood and be the final Roxy Music album and I am sure it was in the top 4-5 make out records of my youth and the youths of so many other black-dyed hair, army surplus, eyeliner-wearing New Wavers. Flesh and Blood could easily have been part 1 of a double album with Avalon. The formula that we see in both is the formula that landed his songs in 80s advertising and soundtracks (check out his Soundtrack credits on IMDB). It also gave rise to a generation of Alternative emulators, in particular Duran Duran and Adam Ant. It’s a far cry from where Roxy Music started. In the beginning, Roxy Music didn’t just push the envelope., they were heavily involved with creating the envelope. They were leaders in the early 70s Art Rock movement. There were new electronic musical toys, new looks, new sounds, new attitudes, and new ways of putting it all together. Few bands were better at making it up as they went along. They had early hits like Virginia Plain and The Strand and Ferry sounded more like he was aping Lou Reed, with ironic up talk at the end of every line like a perpetually questioning millennial dressed as Dracula. Flesh and Blood is not that. It’s clear that by this time - really by the previous album, Manifesto - Roxy Music was Bryan Ferry’s band. Brian Eno had left years and albums ago and he likely took his electronic experimentation with him into the Bush of Ghosts with a successful stop on the U2 World Domination tour. There wasn’t a counterpoint to Ferry’s influence and he just got smoother and smoother. Which brings us to the Album First, Don’t pay any attention to the lyrics about boy losing girl, boy tripping, boy wanting girl, boy driving around with girl, blah blah blah. They’re not good.  But that’s not the point. The lyrical hooks and incoherent choruses are just the right amount of woozy confusing wistfulness to support one 80s gem after another. It’s mood over substance. 

The songs: 

I don’t know why you lead off with a Wilson Pickett cover. But if you were going to put that song through an 80s New Wave prism you could do worse than this. I want to hate it but it works for me. There’s no balls to it. I imagine Pickett would have hated it but it gets the Ferry treatment - he gives it 100% and I can tolerate it. I give it a 3.5.

 Oh Yeah - this is another song about the same schmuck who cried and danced away his heartache in Dance Away on the last album. Nobody does 80s heartbreak montage better than this. I can see Kevin Bacon driving a pickup across the prairie with just. one. tear. kissing his cheek. 4.5 

 Same Old Scene - Starts out with the Casio drum track from Blondie’s Heart of Glass and Discos its way through synth strings, sax, reverb guitar, jittery bass and falsetto. Delicious piece of New Wave disco pop. An ancestor of Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf. 4.5 

 Flesh And Blood - As close to a Bad Company tune as Ferry gets. 4 

 My Only Love - precursor of later Ferry, like Windswept. More mood. More keys. More lonely guitar. More formula. It works for me. 4 

Over You - Hand claps, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Marshall Crenshaw. All with the Ferry gloss. He’s hurt but it’s all good because he’s got a keyboard he can make quavery wah wah noises with. Sax solo aaaaaand we love it. 4.5 

Eight Miles High - Duran stole they keyboard licks around 3:45 for Save A Prayer. This song is fine. Meh. 2.5 

Rain Rain Rain - Vince Clark did this better with Alison Moyet - Ode To Boy. But then there’s a Dub section. What? I’m reminded of the comment in Bring On The Night when Sting tries to do blues (Down So Long) and I think Branford Marsalis corrects Mr. Sumner’s notion that he has any such soul. Don’t do it, Bryan. 2 

No Strange Delight - I’d say this was formulaic Ferry but it’s the beginning of songs like Slave To Love, Windswept, the Taxi album, Mamouna, etc. 3.5 

Running Wild - starts out like it’s a Scorpions tune - Still Loving You - but ends up like the acoustic tune the lead singer does while the rest of the band rests before coming out to do the big crowd pleasing hit for the final encore. 2 

You can see on this album with a dose of hindsight where Mr. Ferry is going. So much of this record sets the stage for the next 10-15 years of butter-smooth New Wave hit after hit. He covers a lot of ground and musical styles but they all end up sounding very Bryan Ferry. This is a near classic of the genre. 4.5

https://open.spotify.com/album/1qPdwK9Ew939DdtkACLMvD?si=ZPx_AfNpQ7eHCR5w9YJ0YQ