Some readers have said I should not have refused to review Roxy Music.
For me it was something simple. My taste did not include that group. I grew up on R&B and soul – Chuck Berry, the Stones, the Spencer Davis Group, Otis Redding – and I didn’t like groups that were arty and artificial. I was into funky music built up from rhythms and riffs. I loved good ensemble playing and great singers.
Roxy were very arty, very artificial, quite original. That was the whole point, doing something that sounded different.
But I just wasn’t into that.
Roxy’s publicist Simon Puxley rang and asked me to review them for The Times and I told him I didn’t like the album but agreed to go and see them play live, and if I liked the gig I’d write about them later. But they didn’t play as an ensemble, each man just played the notes, and Bryan Ferry’s “singing” did nothing for me.
Maybe Puxley was under pressure from the group’s managers to get a review in The Times, so he kept calling me. I saw them support David Bowie at the Rainbow, and support Alice Cooper at Wembley Arena, and play an outdoor festival gig at Crystal Palace in front of the lake.
But I never wrote a word about them because I didn’t see the point of slagging them off.
I remember the third gig because of Loggins & Messina, a group I’d met in New York when I was doing Alice Cooper. They were staying in our hotel and I saw them play in Central Park and was impressed and did an interview, which was published in the NME just before they played Crystal Palace.
Apparently EG Management had contracted Roxy to go onstage after Loggins & Messina at Crystal Palace but the managers went to see L&M at the CBS convention in a hotel in Park Lane. I was backstage with Kenny and Jimmy before that industry showcase. When Roxy’s managers saw what a tight, rocking sixpiece band Loggins & Messina were, they said, “We’re not gonna go on after that! We’ll play before them.”
That was a wise choice, smart management. This was all a long time ago but that’s how I remember it. Roxy supported Jethro Tull at Madison Square Garden, a kamikaze idea which doomed them to die a death. I wasn’t there but I’d been to MSG, and I’d seen Tull many times, so I could easily imagine that.
Later, we had groups that were arty and funky, like Talking Heads, Kid Creole & the Coconuts.
Later, the Sex Pistols didn’t support old wave dinosaurs because punks preferred to create their own scene. Malcolm McLaren had spent seven years bumming around art colleges before he opened his first Chelsea boutique.
Boy George, Spandau Ballet, same thing : play small places, a party, a strip club, a gay disco, a shop, a gallery. Create your own scene. Use the media, play for the people who’re not there.
Play anywhere but an ice-hockey arena supporting a long-haired guitar band.