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*MUSIC, 70smusic.co.uk, On This Day

Out Of The Blue

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Paul Fitzpatrick: November 15th 2022, London.

When you go to a gig nowadays to see one of your favourite 70s bands, words you rarely want to hear are…. “and here’s one from the new album folks”.

As a case in point, I went to see the Stones this summer, I’ve seen them a few times and you kinda accept that due to their colossal back-catalogue there’s gonna be some notable omissions.
Which is why, when Mick said here’s a new song I wrote about Lockdown, there was a collective sigh, and that’s how 65,000 of us got lumbered with “Living in a Ghost Town” instead of rocking along to “Brown Sugar” or “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

It wasn’t always the way though – exactly 48 years ago today on Thursday, 15th November, 1974, I sauntered out to the record store in my lunch-hour to purchase Country Life by Roxy Music, on the day of its release.

The reason I couldn’t wait a day longer is because I’d been to see Roxy a few weeks earlier at the Glasgow Apollo and they’d premiered a few songs from their unreleased album, Country Life, that had blown me away and had been swimming around in my head ever since.

Although predominantly an album band, Roxy always had the knack of releasing great singles – “Virginia Plain,” “Pyjamarama”, “Street Life” and “Love is the Drug” to name a few. The lead single from Country Life, “All I Want is You”, was no exception and was another great teaser for the album.


I’d been a Roxy fan since their first appearance on Top of the Pops with “Virginia Plain”. Their Apollo appearances for the Stranded tour the previous year had been talked about as one of the gigs of the year, so I was really looking forward to seeing them live.

The first thing that struck me was the crowd, up till then most gigs I’d attended at the Apollo had been dominated by Rory Gallagher doppelgänger’s, but this was more like a nightclub crowd, plus there was the unmistakable smell of Charlie (the perfume!) and Aramis in the air, as opposed to the usual aura of perspiration and Newkie Brown.

Roxy Music vintage 1974, was an impressive unit.
Apart from the original four of – Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson, they’d added a couple of Prog Rock stalwarts to their roster – Eddie Jobson to permanently replace Eno and for the live shows ex-King Crimson bassist John Wetton.

On the night, Roxy got the balance just right by playing all the crowd favourites – “Do the Strand”, Editions of You”, “In Every Dream Home”, etc, whilst slipping in a few new tracks from the album.

I remember vividly a sequence of three songs that has set the bar for any gig I’ve been to since.

Bookended by “Mother of Pearl” and “Song for Europe” was a new song that I would later discover was called “Out of the Blue”, it climaxed with a magnificent electric violin solo, played impeccably by Eddie Jobson on his clear plexiglass violin, which for dramatic effect lit up the darkened stage during the solo.

I still get goosebumps when I hear the song and that violin solo.

Out of the Blue – Roxy Music

To show it was no fluke, exactly the same thing happened a year later when I went to see Roxy again, this time they were showcasing songs from their soon to be released album, Siren, which became another record that I had to go out and buy on the day of its release a couple of weeks later.

After Siren, Ferry focused on his solo career for a bit and Roxy Music drifted apart, it was probably smart timing on their part to take a sabbatical during the Punk era although we would learn that the first band Steve Jones & Paul Cook of the Pistols formed, was called ‘The Strand’, in tribute to Roxy Music.
To affirm the connection further, Roxy’s producer, Chris Thomas would go on to produce Never Mind the Bollocks.

Roxy Music reunited in 1979 with a new album Manifesto and this smoother, slicker Roxy sound peaked commercially with Avalon in 1982.
I didn’t mind these albums but they sounded more like Bryan Ferry solo albums than peak 1972-1975 Roxy to me.

I still listen to Country Life and apart from being a good album it maintains Roxy Music’s glorious tradition of featuring glamorous femme fatale’s on the album sleeve.
 
The story behind the Country Life cover is that Ferry met two girls who were on vacation from Germany in a bar in the Algarve where he had decamped to write lyrics for the album.
Ferry needed some help translating lyrics into German for the song “Bitter Sweet” and Constanze who was the sister of Can’s Michael Karoli and Eveline (Karoli’s girlfriend), not only assisted with the translations but went one better, by also posing on an Algarve beach for the album cover.

Constanze & Eveline, pictured above, 40 years later….

The gig in Glasgow opened with the closing track from Country Life, a song called “Prairie Rose”, which in hindsight was an undeniable love letter to his Texan beau at the time, the model, Jerry Hall.

“Hey, hey, you’re tantalising me“

I always suspected Jerry made a bad call by choosing Jagger over the dashing Bryan Ferry and it has to be said that Mick’s insistence on performing his new Lockdown song instead of “Brown Sugar” only supports my case!

The set list for the gig is below and there’s also a link to an audio recording from YouTube of Roxy in Newcastle on 28/10/74 which was a few days after the Glasgow gig and the final gig of the 74 UK tour….

Prairie Rose / Beauty Queen / Mother Of Pearl / Out Of The Blue / Song For Europe / Three And Nine / If It Takes All Night / In Every Dream Home A Heartache / If There Is Something / All I Want Is You / The Bogus Man / Street Life / Virginia Plain / Editions Of You / Remake Remodel / Do The Strand

*MUSIC, Hall of Fame

‘You’re So Vain’ A Single By Carly Simon: Hall Of Fame Induction

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Paul Fitzpatrick: London, October 2021

If I was to transport myself back to December 1972, and look around my bedroom wall I would be surrounded by posters of Led Zeppelin, The Faces, The Who, The Stones, Bowie, etc…. a sea of white men with long hair brandishing shiny Stratocaster’s or menacing Les Paul’s.

Ashamedly, women at this point just didn’t figure in my record collection and whilst I grew to love Tapestry by Carole King, No Secrets by Carly Simon and the glorious Court & Spark by Joni Mitchell, the first step to those feminine treasures was a 45 rpm Single – Carly Simon’s self penned classic, ‘You’re So Vain’.

I first heard this tour de force in December 1972 at a point when the airwaves were awash with Glam Rock, Xmas singles and Novelty songs, one of which, ‘My Ding-A-ling’ by Chuck Berry was the nations current number one single.

I fell in love with ‘You’re So Vain’ the first time I heard it… Carly’s voice, the lyrics, the playing, the production and of course the ringing endorsement that was Mick Jagger on backing vocals.
Mick didn’t do guest vocals for anyone, he was Mick bleedin’ Jagger, the guvnor, but here he was singing his little heart out as an uncredited backing vocalist for this unknown hippy chick with the luscious lips.

It was 4 mins 19 secs of perfection as far as I was concerned.


I remember going Xmas shopping that year and having just enough money left to buy myself a single… the contenders were Bowie’s ‘Jean Genie’, Free’s ‘Wishing Well’ or ‘You’re so Vain’… all great songs and all newly released.

I plumped for Carly that day, probably as I was on my own, if I’d been with my pals I’d almost certainly have bought one of the others for fear of being mocked.
Sad I know, but such was the way of the world back then – how do you think Status Quo sold more records than Aretha Franklin in the UK??

In a similar vein, I can remember subsequent shopping trips where ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ by Maria Muldaur and Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing me Softly’ were covertly purchased.

Aged 14 I was used to deciphering songs about Norse Gods and ‘Deaf, Dumb & Blind kids’ but I instantly ‘got’ Carly’s lyrics and how they were aimed at a self-absorbed partner who loved himself so much that he assumed that the song could only be about him.

What I didn’t quite appreciate at the time was just how autobiographical the song was, until years later when all the speculation surfaced about who the song was actually about.

You can take your pick from – Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, David Bowie, David Cassidy or Mick Jagger, to name but a few.
You see, our Carly was a bit of a free spirit before settling down with Sweet Baby James.

Jack or Warren, who was so vain?

Reflecting on her list of suitors I remember thinking… it would be bizarre for Jagger to perform on a song that’s basically highlighting a major character flaw… until I realised that it was such an on-brand thing for Mick to do – he probably is that vain and as such was just doubling-down on the sentiment!

The songs protagonist was always a big secret (bit weird, as the album was called No Secrets!). However, in 2015 Simon confessed that the song is actually about three men (told you she was a bit of a gadabout!) and admitted publicly for the first time, that the second verse is about the Hollywood lothario Warren Beatty… who’s no doubt a bit pissed off that he’s having to share the honour.

I worry sometimes, probably unnecessarily, that all the speculation and noise about the songs muse (or muses) detracts from what a brilliant piece of music it is, but perhaps it helps to keep it relevant and that’s why current artists like Taylor Swift have adopted it as an anthem.


Consistently featured in most ‘Greatest Songs of all Time’ lists ‘You’re so Vain’ catapulted Simon into the public eye in 1972 and she went on to have a fantastic career on the back of her first big hit.

Looking back, in 1972 as a 14 year old with raging hormones another great attraction about Carly Simon was exactly that… the attraction of Carly Simon.

She was an absolute stunner, so whilst 14 year old girls had Donny or David or Marc up on their walls, a few of us had the album sleeve of No Secrets above our bed… of course, that was until our mates came round – then we had to get the Zep & Stones posters back up sharpish!

Isolated vocals of Simon & Jagger