Released
in May of 1982, the eighth and final studio album by Roxy Music,
Avalon, is marking its 40th anniversary this month. As a capstone to
the groups prestigious career, it would offer up perhaps the most
perfect example of their sophistication and creativity, at least as far
as their post Eno period is concerned. As well as being arguably the
greatest artistic achievement of the latter half of their career, the
album was also their most commercially successful. It perched on the
number one slot in the UK for three weeks and remained in the charts for
for over a year. While it only peaked at 53 on the US Billboard
charts, it proved to be a “sleeper” hit and continually ramped up sales
until it was eventually certified platinum, their only album to do so in
the US. Its success was buoyed by the four hit singles which were
released from the album.
The album continued the romantic
themes common to their last few releases and Brian Ferry has said that
he had wanted to interconnect the songs into a kind of narrative, though
the finished product would require a bit of stretching to reach that
end as Ferry admits he just didn’t have the patience to stitch it all
together properly. The concept of Avalon is an Arthurian legend of the
afterlife where the Queens ferry King Arthur off to an enchanted island
after his death.
The title song features a guest vocal
appearance from Yanick Étienne, who Ferry and Rhett Davies stumbled on
while doing some last minute re-cutting on the album on a Sunday when
the studio would make itself available during the quiet times to young
artists to record demos. When Brian and Rhett popped out for a coffee,
they heard Yanick singing in the studio next door and were immediately
taken with her. She spoke no English, so her manager had to translate,
but she was recruited to sing the high parts in the song, which helped
to finish the song off after going through a complete rebuild when the
first version proved unsatisfactory.
Roxy Music, overall, has
become one of an elite number of rock groups who have had an incredibly
profound influence on the generations which followed them. Groups like
Japan and Duran Duran built their careers on the foundations laid by
Roxy Music, both musically and stylistically in terms of their looks and
attitudes. Avalon offers up the quintessential expression of their
oeuvre with a set of songs that each display their own self contained
perfection. There’s no filler on this record and it has retained its
presence and power throughout the decades it has had to establish its
status as a pop music classic.
