Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music

by Michael Bracewell

In 1972 an English rock band released its first album to instant critical Roxy Music . Here was a group that looked as though it came not only from another era, but also from another planet-a band in which art, fashion, and music would combine to create, in Bryan Ferry's words, “above all, a state of mind.” Written with the assistance, for the first time, of all those involved, including Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera, Re-Make/Re-Model tells how Pop Art, the 1960s underground, and Swinging London were transformed into a unique sound and look-theatrical, arch, literate, clever, sexy, thrilling. In the tradition of Jean Stein and George Plimpton's Edie , Re-Make/Re-Model is the story of extraordinary individuals and exceptional creativity-and nothing less than the history of an era in music and pop culture.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Art, British Literature, 20th Century, 21st Century

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2007

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not really a biography on the the great British band , but more of a cultural history surrounding Roxy Music. Very detailed information regarding the visual art world, the boutiques, and the fashion stylists/designers of that period (mid to late 60's) who knew Bryan Ferry, Eno & company. The book stops right after the recording of the first album - so it's unusual that it's totally focus on the 'idea' of Roxy Music with everyone in the band participating in the interviews that are in the book.

Ferry comes off as smart and very dandy like as well as Andy Mackay (the sax player in Roxy) that was at one time in the 60's very Oscar Wilde like. This is a very good book dealing with what young people were doing in the UK during the 60's. Nice personal observations, plus you get a whiff of the Warhol Factory thing as well. For sure this book is a must for the Roxy Music fan, but maybe even more important for those who want to know more about the aesthetic UK during the 60's and early 70's. Style fashion freaks take notice!

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The most gifted writer of his generation" - good grief. I'm a fan of the first Roxy album and a huge fan of Eno. I plowed through this thing to impress my ex-boyfriend, who had a tendency to be entertained by boring things. This reads like a bad college thesis paper and says "Roxy music was the act of glam, putting on another face" ad nauseam. The only interesting part was when Brian Eno was at the Ipswich school. It will be years before I cleanse my mind of this brick and read a music book again.

[AL · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not entirely what it appears to be. It is a book mostly about the aspects that brought about the creation of Roxy Music and less of a book about the group's adventures as a band. There are a few accounts near the end of the book about the band and some of their gigs, but mostly this book focuses on the influences that went into forming the group, it's art school background, and the elements gained from these experiences, with vast discussions of the Pop Art scene in England, and the rise of working class students into art schools around England that promoted modern art styles. I learned more about Richard Hamilton, Mark Lancaster and Rita Donagh than about rock and roll personalities. In that I was initially a bit letdown, as I was hoping for tales of sex and drugs, but instead was attending a lecture in Art History. I soon accepted the divergent path I had been placed upon and became intrigued by this unexpected information, invigorating my dormant interest in visual art through such mentioned artists as Florine Stettheimer and Marcel Duchamp. Still, the author does keep returning the focus to Roxy Music which makes this account relevant to the band. Stories of the London fashion scene and avant-garde music happenings still lend the book a rock biography flare, giving you a sense of the time period of the late 60's and the emerging 70's. I will be constantly referring back to this book as it is filled with lots of interesting information about not only the music scene of England in the 70's, but also for the vast information about the Modern Art, fashion, and English culture of the period. Read this book. It's really great. But I still wish there had been more gossip about the band.

[Graham Catt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a biography of Roxy Music. In fact, the band don’t even get together until the end. It’s more an examination of the band’s influences - art, fashion and music. For huge chunks of the book the band members are just peripheral figures.

Sometimes, the endless references to 60s artists and academics seem relevant to the Roxy story. Mostly, to me anyway, they don’t. The book is filled with passages like this: Bryan lived in the same street as Juliet, who once travelled to New York with Simon and met Andy Warhol’s dentist.

If you’re looking for a book about the art world in 60s Newcastle and London, this might prove interesting. If you’re after a book about Roxy Music, however, this may be disappointing.

[Fred Garnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm involved in promoting Heutagogy, or the pedagogy of creativity, in education and the first 200 pages of this book are the best description of practical Heutagogy in UK Art Schools of the fifties which were a key factor in the explosion of British pop music with bands like The Beatles, Stones, The Kinks and notably The Who working out their approaches in Art College. Roxy Music are a seventies band and consequently had a much longer genesis in Art COllege, Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay and Brian Eno all spending some years as serious art students, rather than the somewhat briefer visits by the dilettantes of the sixties. Fortunatley I love Roxy Music so this is a dream book for me but it really is a book of 2 halves. First half, a history of creative education in post-war Britain, Second-half a a hat-trick of successes by the various instantiations of Roxy; I'm guessing Bracewell thinks they scored 2 goals early on. Overall a great meditation on music, creativity and society, my favourite combination of subjects, but the originality of this book - which could be entitled Roxy in Context or Roxy Music and post-war creativity in England - can make this confusing to anyone wanting a simple chronology of Brian and Roxy. Its far more interesting than that...
And, if you want to understand what Profs mean by Heutagogy (or self-determined learning), then read the first 200 pages.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

***1/2. Thoughtful, well written, and exhaustive look at cultural scene and influences that led to creation of Roxy Music. If you're not an Anglophile, maybe more than you wanted to know about British Art Schools etc, but it does an excellent job highlighting the varied art and musical strains Bryan Ferry drew upon creating this most unusual band. Great chapters on Brian Eno, too.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning! This book isn't about Roxy Music but rather the emergence of the band's pop art aesthetic in the British art schools of the late ’50s and early ’60s. If you are interested in a book about music or people making music, you'll be very annoyed.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent history of Roxy Music, or at least their backgrounds and how they came to be. It ends in 1972, when their first album was released.

What a fascinating convergence of art and music! Some of the members were art school graduates; Andy Mackay, the oboe/sax player was the only classically trained musician (as well as English literature). Bryan Ferry, the lead singer/keyboardist/main lyricist, studied art under Pop artist Richard Hamilton at Newcastle. Hamilton was known for collage-type art; Roxy's music is often itself a collage, with wildly differing parts within one song. Ferry's vision of melding art and music was extraordinary; the music and the members were themselves part of the art. It's not every day you see a band come together and invent a new sound. Roxy did that.

It talks about the scene in London towards the end of the '60s. What an amazing and creative time that must have been for all involved. The music, the fashion, the image...it was all part of making oneself into what one wanted to be. These mainly working-class kids decided they wanted to be part of "society," so they invented their own place in the British aristocracy. I think that's called "fake it till you make it."

Barriers were smashed. There has been much discussion about how Roxy Music was one of the precursors to punk rock. As I continue to learn, it's not so much about the music; there are a few elements of punk there, but Roxy was mainly a camp sendup of a rock band. The true punk connection comes from Roxy's DIY attitude. Much of the British press reviled them at first because they hadn't "paid their dues" by doing the grind of years of club work. They had a vision, especially Ferry, and they basically invented themselves as stars. The audacity! Their first album was a smash hit in the UK. Their very first album! Just remarkable.

This is a well-written and well-researched book that includes interviews with most of the band members, as well as various artists and designers who had an influence on the band. Really a fascinating history. A must-read for any fan of the band or anyone who is interested in rock music in general.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed to find once I started reading that this book is about the early years leading up to the forming of the band Roxy Music and ends just as the band releases their first album. A good half of it covers Bryan Ferry growing up and the influences of art school and the artist Richard Hamilton in particular. The next large section covers Andy MacKay and Brian Eno and their art school experiences which I found a little more interesting. Who knew saxophonist MacKay was hanging out with black power radicals and anarchists and engaging in Fluxus-like provocations? I was most interested in the last 50 pages of the nearly 400 page book about the forming of the band, the recording of their debut album and early gigs. I would have preferred more on their recordings and successes in the 70’s and 80’s and less on how their experiences in art school informed their ideas about blending pop and fine art and fashion vs. substance. I already knew that Bryan Ferry had auditioned for King Crimson but learned that Davy O’ List from The Nice was in the first version of Roxy Music until he was replaced by Phil Manzanera.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I approached this book as a huge Roxy Music, Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry fan and expected a potted history of the early days of the group. This isn’t what this book is at all. This is a book about the art school experience and early days of Pop Art in and around Newcastle and Reading Universities in the 50s and 60s and the group of artists, fashion designers, models, writers, hairdressers and yes pop stars that it produced and how it came about. Covering Pop Art, austerity Britain of the 50s, Rock’n’Roll, American Soul, early electronica, Mod and so much more. Roxy only arrive as a unit at the very end and record their first album. An excellent read.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roxy Music is one of favorite bands of all time but I could not finish this book. There were some interesting tidbits here and there but overall a disappointing snooze. I valiantly made it about 60% of the way through and I can tell you that entire chunk of the book consisted of going over in excruciating detail the art school educations of not only the band members but their friends and professors as well. I'm over here like, when is Jerry Hall showing up? I'm sorry but rock bios should be at least be a little bit fun!

[JW · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about a band where the band doesn’t appear until the very end. Still, it’s a great introduction to Roxy Music. Bracewell describes the milieu out of which Bryan Ferry created his group: a mix of Pop Art, Glam before Glam fashion, and rock ‘n’ roll. The prose may seem overwritten, but it’s apropos to its subject.

[Walter Higgins · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t finish. Too dry.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceedingly thorough. Reading some of those interviews was pure joy.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great cultural history of art schools in Britain in the 60s and how Pop and conceptual art of the 60s contributed to the creation of what would become Roxy Music.

[Pete Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up. Awful writing.

[Jeff Cleminson · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointing. Goes over the same points again, and again, and again …

[JCVerrall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearer 3.5, but definitely not a 3

[Dick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book on the transition from the sixties to the star of glam in the seventies. However if you are expecting a book detailing Roxy Music album by album this is not the book you need.

[BEARS · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read a book about Roxy Music where the author avoids writing about Roxy Music for 300 pages, this is the book for you.

[Jeremy S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...Roxy Music is a glamorisation. And I didn't think my own name was terribly glamorous; and I suppose, all those years ago, I changed my name to Roxy Music."
-Bryan Ferry

This quote helps close out Remake/Remodel and I think it summarizes the idea behind the book and what Roxy Music really is. It's more than just a band or musical act that puts out records. Roxy is a living art installation that was the vision of one man and became fully realized with the help of several like minded artists.

In the 1960's, the Pop Art movement was booming, R&B, Soul and American Rock n' Roll was gripping the western world and a new generation of designers, artists and more importantly, consumers was on the rise. Thanks to a political program in the UK, students were able to obtain grants which could send them to schools outside of their cities and towns. This enabled young people to choose more "non-traditional" paths and attend things like art programs across the country. Bryan Ferry was one of the young adults that took advantage of this. He enrolled at Newcastle University's art department. This would prove to be a wise decision as Newcastle was bursting with talent at the time. Richard Hamilton (famed pop art pioneer who would later design album covers for The Beatles) was the head of the department, and the supremely talented and stunningly beautiful Rita Donagh was also teaching at the time. Ferry's fellow students included Mark Lancaster, who would go on to work with Andy Warhol at The Factory, and uber-stylist Nicholas De Ville (who would help design and stylize Roxy Music's album art). New ideas about art and new concepts about the art making process really resonated with Ferry. While he was a gifted painter, he also performed with a couple small bands, one of which gained some local notoriety. After school, Ferry made the decision to break out of the traditional mold for art school graduates. Rather than stay in the tiny and rather un-noticed circles of the art world, he decided he would use pop music as his medium.

This is a wonderful book that tells the story of one of the most influential and progressive bands in music history. For the first time ever all of the major players are brought in as contributors. We not only hear from main stars Ferry, Eno and Mackay, but also from teachers, artists, stylists, designers, journalists and friends who were all there to witness the birth of Roxy Music. The lengthy read takes an almost academic approach and can be rather dense at times. However there's simply too much context and countless anecdotes to be avoided. Seeing the different influences and styles that went in to creating the group is also marvelous. Old Hollywood glamour, pop art, art deco, high society, film noir, blues, Motown and the avant garde are just a few of the ideas that inspired Ferry. The band is quintessentially post modern in the sense that they took the present and past and completely shattered the ideas of what it could be or what one could do with those ideas and concepts.

I had a great time reading all the little stories and side notes about the band members and their songs. Also hearing Eno's approach to his work and seeing his notebooks could be a book on its own (and it probably is). What is also great about Remake/Remodel is the art history context. I learned about not only pop artists, but dadaists, neo-dadaists, deco painters and post-modernists. There is also a wealth of information about underground and avant garde bands from the time and authors and literary figures who were also influential. Once you finish the book, you can see why Roxy Music is so prolific. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Roxy Music or glam/art rock, but also art history, fashion and the 1960's and 70's.

-JRS

[Graham Power · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roxy Music appeared to arrive out of nowhere or, possibly, outer space. Their electrifying 1972 debut album presented a fully formed vision which offered a new form of art pop. Or, if you prefer, a new form of pop art.

This books ends with the release of that classic record and is an exploration of the artistic and cultural milieu the band were shaped by and emerged from - art school, pop art, conceptual art, avant-garde music and high fashion.

The prime movers in Roxy were two fine arts graduates both called Bry(i)an. Ferry studied at Newcastle University where he fell under the influence of the British pop artist Richard Hamilton. Hamilton’s idea that an artist did not have to be committed to one particular style fed into the stylistic eclecticism of the band. Eno seems to have spent his time as an art student, at Ipswich and Winchester, assiduously not creating art but instead expounding elaborate theories about it (his immense facility for doing this has, in a sense, been the cornerstone of his subsequent music career).

Andy Mackay, who was to become the saxophonist and oboeist in Roxy Music, studied music and English at Reading University, and first came into contact with Eno through their shared interest in avant-garde music. The influence of composers like La Monte Young and Terry Riley was to provide a powerful counterpoint to Ferry’s more soul based and Great American Songbook approach. Last, but not least in terms of the evolution of Roxy Music, all three were dedicated dandies.

Bracewell has a tendency to treat Roxy Music as sui generis. They weren’t of course. The curious thing about his book is that he writes about the visual arts world Roxy emerged from at great length but says almost nothing about how they relate to the pop music scene they became part of. It detracts nothing from the brilliance of the band to point out that pop and art were bedfellows long before Roxy Music came along. As George Melly observed in his groundbreaking survey of sixties pop culture Revolt Into Style, published in 1970 when Bryan Ferry was still teaching ceramics at a girls school, the art schools were the great enablers of British pop music. John Lennon, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and Syd Barrett all attended art schools and the experience informed their work in various ways. David Bowie, the other great practitioner of arty glam rock, didn’t go to art school, but you would certainly be forgiven for thinking that he had. Bowie receives no more than a few passing mentions in the book and the relationship between his work and that of Roxy Music is left unexplored.

Bracewell has interviewed all members of Roxy and all the other key players in the bands’ pre-history and early history. His prose style is rather dry and quasi-academic but, thankfully, regularly interspersed with extended quotations from his cast of characters. What they have to say is anything but dry and constitutes a fascinating oral history of the British art and fashion scene of the sixties and early seventies.

If you’re looking for a biography of Roxy Music this is not it - the book is almost over by the time the band is formed. Bracewell’s approach is extremely wide-ranging and, at times, Roxy Music are lost sight of. To some extent he uses Roxy as an entry point into a particular stretch of British cultural history. But for anyone interested in the symbiotic relationship between art and music that was a feature of this period, particularly in Britain, Re-make/Re-model is rewarding reading.

[Jake Goretzki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, this is pretty dreadful if you are looking for a conventional band biography, but still proves to be interesting and more ambitious than one - by being a bit of a primer on sixties art education, fashion, retail...and underground London. In fact, it's a quaint reminder of how West London was once cool - much of the action happening in Ladbroke Grove, Chelsea and Kensington.

To be clear, at times - especially early on - I was starting to find it insufferable, feeling that here was a writer who desperately wanted to write a book about UK and US pop art, rather than a band. At points I wanted to ring him up and yell at him that Richard Hamilton and Mark Lancaster weren't in bloody Roxy Music and that to dwell on them for chapters was beyond ludicrous. Yes, I get how, yes, to know Bryan Ferry you need to know the 60s art world and his influences; you need to also know soul and music hall and 'You're Never Alone with a Strand'.

But Jesus Christ: some of the chapters on Warhol and the Factory were borderline enraging, a la "I don't understand how Warhol's favourite bagel joint has a bearing on For Your Pleasure". In fact, I was reminded along the way of what a shower of pricks Warhol's crowd were - and it was refreshing to read that vignette where, yes, some of them were genuinely ghastly and abusive. If I had a time machine I would go back and poke Marcel Duchamp in the eye. What a fucking prick. A culturally groundbreaking fucking prick, mind.

For all this, once you've settled into the form, what emerges is a rather readable, fast-building story of the world that the band emerged from and the very similar multi-media, multi-craft ethos that Ferry, Eno and Andy McKay lived. And boy, were they earnest and committed to it. The places too: I had no idea Reading and Newcastle were art education powerhouses - they were. The coterie of artists and writer eccentrics around them was also entertaining. Simon Puxley sounds like a real life Withnail - as in, gifted but lost.

I came though feeling that they were the genuine article and, yes, collectively, a work of art. Eno can be a twit, but he's a clever little imp; Bryan makes John Lennon look like Rolf Harris. All told, this is a bit of a collage of its own, that makes for something grander and more ambitious than you'd anticipate from a band biography. If you love Roxy, you come away loving them double.

[Roxy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saying a book changed your life is often quite a statement to make, and it's not a statement I'm about to make, however "Re-Make/Re-Model..." certainly enriched my life, as well as rekindling an interest in one of my favourite bands of all time, helping me (as an art student) to view Roxy as an art project, perhaps even a movement, and not just a bunch of musicians.

The book focuses not on the biography of the band so much as assesses and tells the respective stories of the formative years of the band's three central musicians, Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno and Andy Mackay. From Ferry's Newcastle art-school experiences with Richard Hamilton, to Eno's development as a seriously critical and conceptual thinker, to Mackay's Dada-informed political and musical anti-authoritism, the tale of Roxy's formative years involves a cast of colourful characters across a wide array of fields, and the crucial networks of these key figures on the fashion, music, art and cultural scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Bracewell is a writer who can weave words like no other, and tells the stories beautifully. This book is a wonderful, enlightening survey and exploration of exciting times which produced exciting ideas, looks and sounds and would go on to inform further generations of culture. If you're interested in the relationships between art and music and fashion, love the band, or ever wondered where the idea for 'Virginia Plain' originally came from, then definitely give this one a read.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has the title Roxy - The band that created an era. Since the book ends with their first record and all of the first 340 or so pages has nothing at all to do with the band itself but what led up to its creation I think it would be more correct to call it Roxy - and the era that created the band. But if you get over that this is an excellent book.

Through tons of interviews with those who were around (not just the band members, but the people around them) and an eye for details the writer has made an excellent job at explaining just what was happening in the sixties in England, if you were young and into the arts (which all of them were - Bryan Ferry himself studied art at college before settling on his music career) and wanted to make something completely different (through art, music or even fashion).

Though, if you are just interested in the music this might not be the book for your.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me start by saying I love Roxy Music, but clearly nobody loves Roxy Music like Michael Bracewell. This book is certainly informative, but the obsession for detail gets to be a bit much. And why say something once when you can say it twice? Or 3 times? I started out enjoying the book, then started to find it irritating, then finally gave in and got a lot of laughs reading passages aloud and counting the number of embedded clauses in each sentence. The main focus of the story is Bryan Ferry, but I enjoyed the interviews with Brian Eno the most. If you're a Roxy Music fan, it's worth a skim.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

One's appreciation for this book depends on whether or not one thinks Bryan Ferry is a genius. Basically a really well done 33 1/3-type book about a given album -- in this case Roxy Music's self-titled debut -- Bracewell explores Ferry's influences in the form of his art school teachers. If one's interest in Roxy Music is limited to the participation of Brian Eno, then a solid bookstore browse of chapters 17-19, plus bits & bobs later on, should suffice.

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an in-depth look at the art and music scenes of the UK back in the 50s and 60s. I would have liked it to have gone into a bit more into the stories behind select tracks of the entire catalog of Roxy Music, but getting full histories of the key members of the band (Ferry, Eno and Mackay) made for an interesting read. There are plenty of photos throughout, unfortunately the quality is a bit murky on most.

[Gary Fowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you get over the initial shock that a book titled 'ROXY - The Band That Invented An Era', isn't actually the Roxy Music story, but instead more the story leading up to their formation. Then this is quite a good, if somewhat misleading read.

If you have an interest in the British Pop Art movement of the late '50s/early '60s, then you could do worse than this. I enjoyed the book best though once Eno is on the page and things start happening.

[Michael D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly well researched book on Roxy, tangentially, this is in reality a history of British art schools during the 50s and 60s and how the ideas cultivated there affected popular culture and music in the 70s. It's several levels above your typical music book and worth reading if you're any kind of culture vulture at all. Highly recommended.