Label: Virgin Records (Japan), VJCP-98143
Style: Pop Rock, Art Pop
Country: Newcastle upon Tyne, London, England
Time: 42:01
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 289 Mb
Charts:
UK #1, AUS #10, AUT #15, CAN #12, GER #6, NL #8, NOR #6, NZ #1, SWE #7,
US #35. AUS & GER: Gold; UK & NZ: Platinum.
Flesh + Blood is
the last Roxy studio album where Andy Mackay (sax) and Phil Manzanera
(guitar) were major players if not songwriters (all tracks were written
by Ferry apart from the covers, though Manzanera had a hand in ‘Over
You’, ‘No Strange Delight’ and ‘Running Wild’). Both add memorable solos
and nice ensemble work throughout.
It’s also a classic early-’80s
bass album: reliably excellent Alan Spenner and Neil Jason joined new
boy Gary Tibbs, fresh from his acting role in Hazel O’Connor’s ‘Breaking
Glass’ movie and about to become one of Adam’s Ants.
The great Andy
Newmark piled in on drums, having just completed work on Lennon/Ono’s
Double Fantasy, alongside fellow NYC sessionman Allan Schwartzberg (who
plays a blinder on ‘Same Old Scene’).
Londoner Rhett Davies was on
board as co-producer, fresh from groundbreaking work with Brian Eno
(both are apparent influences on the psychedelic/ambient outros to ‘My
Only Love’ and ‘Eight Miles High’, and atmospheric overdubbing
throughout), working with the band at his favourite Basing Street
Studios (later Sarm West) in London’s Notting Hill. There were also
occasional sessions at Manzanera’s Gallery Studios in Chertsey, Surrey.
Burgeoning
star NYC mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain took time off his work with
Chic to add some hefty bottom-end and fat drums at the fabled Power
Station studios. Bob Ludwig’s ‘definitive’ 1999 CD remaster is one of
the loudest, bassiest re-releases of the last few decades (but not a
patch on the original cassette!).
But basically Flesh + Blood is very
much Ferry’s show, layering Yamaha CP-80 piano (in his trademark ‘no
thirds’ style) and synths to great effect, and even adding some
amusingly sleazy guitar on the title track. He also sings superbly,
delivering a particularly impassioned performance on ‘Running Wild’.
Even
when he veers slightly out of tune, as on ‘Rain Rain Rain’, it’s an
artful, conscious move (unlike these days...), a la Dylan or Bowie. His
lyrics are generally fascinating – dreamlike, elliptical, odes to
unrequited love and possibly one or two illicit substances.
Flesh +
Blood was a big hit in the UK, reaching #1 on two separate occasions
between May and September 1980. But surprisingly it didn’t quite work in
the States, just scraping into the top 40, possibly not helped by a
stinking review in Rolling Stone (‘...such a shockingly bad Roxy record
that it provokes a certain fascination...’!).
But Ferry could see a
path ahead, and would repeat the winning formula (drum machine + piano +
painstaking overdubs + much-pondered-over lyrics/melody lines) for the
rest of the decade. Rhett Davies had his work cut out – he moved on to
work with Robert Fripp on the classic King Crimson reunion album
Discipline.
(movingtheriver.com/2020/12/16/roxy-music-flesh-blood-40-years-on/)
01. In The Midnight Hour (03:13)
02. Oh Yeah (04:50)
03. Same Old Scene (03:57)
04. Flesh And Blood (03:13)
05. My Only Love (05:19)
06. Over You (03:26)
07. Eight Miles High (04:53)
08. Rain Rain Rain (03:20)
09. No Strange Delight (04:44)
10. Running Wild (05:01)
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