Roxy Music Final Album: English rock band Roxy Music’s eighth and last studio album is Avalon. Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, where it was recorded between 1981 and 1982, is often considered to be the band’s most mature-sounding album. In the UK, it stayed at the top of the album charts for three weeks, and it remained there for more than a year. Avalon became the band’s sole million-selling record in the United States despite peaking at No. 53, and it was awarded platinum Certification by the RIAA.
The album’s first song, “More Than This,” was a Top 10 smash in the UK, Australia, and several other European nations. The album’s second single, the title track, was likewise a UK Top 20 smash. Roxy Music’s final UK Top 30 smash single, “Take a Chance With Me,” featured a remixed version of the album track “The Main Thing” on the B-side. No. 103 on Billboard’s Hot 100 was “More Than This,” while “Take a Chance With Me” was at No. 104.
Their first album, released in 1972, would serve as a springboard for a long and fruitful career. We didn’t invent eclecticism, but we did demonstrate that rock ‘n’ roll could embrace – well, anything, as Andy Mackay memorably stated. Brian Eno’s early contributions to the band’s sound laid the framework for a new direction for rock and roll, most notably by placing him in the center of the stage and manipulating his bandmates’ input audio to create otherworldly and abstract soundscapes.
Behind-the-Scenes information
While visiting at Crumlin Lodge on Ireland’s west coast, Bryan Ferry began working on the material for Avalon. Lucy Helmore, who would become Ferry’s wife in 1983, was in attendance. You can view this lough (lake) right from the lodge’s front porch. According to Phil Manzanera, 90% of the album was composed in the studio before they arrived at Avalon. For the final three albums, “there were a lot more drugs around as well, which was good and bad, for pretty bluntly affecting our working style.
” It induced a great deal of anxiety and disorientation. ‘I’ve always thought I should do an album where the songs are all connected together in the style of West Side Story, but it’s always felt like too much trouble to work that way,’ Bryan Ferry stated. Instead, I’ve written ten poems or short stories that could be expanded into a novel with a little more effort. When King Arthur dies, the Queens take him to Avalon, a sort of enchanted island, which is part of the King Arthur legend. As far as romantic destinations go, it’s hard to beat.
“When we were recording the third or fourth album in London, we’d often be working in the same studio as Bob Marley, who’d be downstairs doing all of those renowned albums,” Phil Manzanera has stated of the song’s title track, “Avalon.” “It has to get on someone’s skin someplace.” With the “Avalon” song, Rhett Davies explains how it was recut at the end of the album. Even though the original version of the song didn’t sound right, over the course of mixing it, we decided to entirely redo it with a new groove. Last weekend was the last time we were able to mix.
In the quiet studio time they used to allow local bands to come in to perform demos, Bryan and I went out for a cup of coffee and heard a girl singing in the studio next door, so we put some percussion on. At first, Bryan and I couldn’t believe our ears; it was a Haitian band that had come in to record some demos. Yanick Étienne, who sang all the high notes on ‘Avalon,’ was the culprit. She was completely illiterate in the language. He was the band’s manager, and so he was able to help translate. The following day, we combined everything.”
Reviewers’ Reactions
Avalon was named the year’s 11th greatest album in a poll conducted by The Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop reviewers in 1982. ‘The 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s,’ a list compiled by Rolling Stone magazine in 1989, placed the album at No. 31. Entertainment Weekly ranked it No. 25 on their list of the 100 Best CDs of All Time in 1993. If you love or loathe the Essential Disc Library, you’ll find it here. It came in at number 187 on Colin Larkin’s list of the top 1000 albums of all time in the year 2000.
On Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, the album was placed 307th. In the 2012 version, Avalon and Country Life were omitted, but Avalon and Country Life were re-included in the 2020 revision at No. 336, making it the highest entry of the four Roxy Music albums on the list (Siren was at No. 371, Country Life was at No. 387, and For Your Pleasure was at No. (https://flucamp.com/) 394). It was ranked 45th on Slant Magazine’s “Best 1980s Albums” list in 2012. The ten songs in the stereo mix run for nearly the same amount of time in the surround mix. In a contrast to a front and back view, the 360-degree stereo image is the main distinction, and the levels of multiple tracks from the multi-track are mixed in.
Multi-channel mixes, such as those for “The Main Thing” and “Take a Chance with Me,” are considerably more prominent than stereo mixes when it comes to the guitar parts. It’s common to see a variety of instruments in the back of the sound field, such as guitars and bass, while the lead vocals tend to be in the front center. This record probably means more to me than anything I’ve ever done,” Clearmountain said in a Sound on a Sound interview on the remix of Avalon. This record has received more positive feedback than any other in my career.
Remixed for Surround Sound in 2003
5.1-channel surround sound remixed by the original production team of Rhett Davies (producer) and Bob Clearmountain was added to the Hybrid Super Audio CD release of Avalon in 2003. (the mixing engineer). In the original 1982 stereo mix, the CD layer and the HD layer are identical, supposedly being transferred from analog master tapes to DSD and processed in DSD throughout. An additional track, “Always Unknown,” is included in the surround portion of the HD layer and is only available on CD in the 4-CD boxed set The Thrill of It All, and the 2012 Roxy Music Complete Recordings boxed set.
In contrast to some DVD-Video releases, in which stereo versions were ‘upmixed’ to 5.1 from two-channel sources, all of the tracks in the surround mix were reworked from multi-track sources, with the exception of the short instrumental piece “India.” There are several instances in India where the stereo mix is panned clockwise, which finishes with “While My Heart Is Still Beating” being played in the rear right channel, making up for “India” not being a fully-fledged surround recording.
Artwork
It was Peter Saville who came up with the album’s cover art. Avalon followed Roxy Music’s habit of using images of women on its album covers, albeit in a more subdued manner than previous releases. A falcon perched on the gloved hand of Bryan Ferry’s fiancée (and soon-to-be wife) Lucy Helmore evoked King Arthur’s final journey to Avalon on the cover of the album. John Abbott at TRP SLAVIN in Chenies Street, W1 retouched the artwork design on Transparency film, which is now the RADA Building.
