page_title: Roxy Music
section_title: Stranded, Country Life, Siren, and solo projects (1973–1977)
hierarchical_section_title: Roxy Music / History / Stranded, Country Life, Siren, and solo projects (1973–1977)
caption_attribution_description: Massey Hall, Toronto,1974
context_page_description: Roxy Music were an English rock band that were formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry—who became the band's lead singer and main songwriter—and bass guitarist Graham Simpson. Alongside Ferry, the other longtime members were Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay, and Paul Thompson. Other members included Brian Eno, Eddie Jobson, and John Gustafson. Although the band took a break from group activities in 1976 and again in 1983, they reunited for a concert tour in 2001, and toured together intermittently over the next few years. Ferry frequently enlisted band members as session musicians for his solo releases.
  Roxy Music became a successful act in Europe and Australia during the 1970s. This success began with their self-titled debut album in 1972. The band pioneered more musically sophisticated elements of glam rock while significantly influencing early English punk music, and provided a model for many new wave acts while innovating elements of electronic composition. The group also distinguished their visual and musical sophistication through a preoccupation with glamorous fashions.
context_section_description: Soon after the tour to promote For Your Pleasure ended, Brian Eno left Roxy Music amidst increasing differences with Ferry. The other members of the band are reported to have shared some of Eno's concerns about Ferry's dominance, but they elected to remain. Also, John Gustafson became the band's permanent bass player for the next three studio albums, but not always for live shows; though he toured with Roxy on certain dates in 1973 and 1975, other live Roxy bassists of this period (1973–1976) included Sal Maida, John Wetton and Rick Wills.
  Eno, meanwhile, was replaced by 18-year-old multi-instrumentalist Eddie Jobson, formerly of progressive rockers Curved Air, who played keyboards and electric violin. Although some fans lamented the loss of the experimental attitude and camp aesthetic that Eno had brought to the band, the classically trained Jobson was an accomplished musician. Eno himself later acknowledged the quality of the two albums that followed his departure, Stranded (1973) and Country Life (1974). Rolling Stone referred to the albums as marking "the zenith of contemporary British art rock".
   The songs on these albums also cemented Ferry's persona as the epitome of the suave, jaded Euro-sophisticate. Although this persona undoubtedly began as a deliberately ironic device, during the mid-1970s it seemed to merge with Ferry's real life, as the working-class miner's son from the north of England became an international rock star and an icon of male style.
  On the first two Roxy albums, all songs were written solely by Bryan Ferry. Beginning with Stranded, Mackay and Manzanera began to co-write some material. Gradually, their songwriting and musicianship became more integrated into the band's sound, although Ferry remained the dominant songwriter; throughout their career, all but one of Roxy's singles were written either wholly or jointly by Ferry (Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson did individually write a few of the band's B-sides). Stranded was released in November 1973, and produced the top-10 single "Street Life".
  The fourth album, Country Life, was released in 1974, and was the first Roxy Music album to enter the US Top 40, albeit at No. 37. Country Life was met with widespread critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone referring to it "as if Ferry ran a cabaret for psychotics, featuring chanteurs in a state of shock". Their fifth album, Siren, contained their only US top 40 hit, "Love Is the Drug". (Ferry said the song came to him while kicking the leaves during a walk through Hyde Park.)
  After the concert tours in support of Siren in 1976, Roxy Music disbanded. Their live album Viva! was released in August 1976. During this time Ferry released two solo records on which Manzanera and Thompson performed, and Manzanera reunited with Eno on the critically acclaimed one-off 801 Live album.
caption: Roxy Music, 1974
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