Beyond glam: Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno together for a photo shoot at London’s Royal College Of Art, 1972
BRIAN ENO’S AVANT-GARDE SYNTH MANIPULATIONS WERE VERY MUCH PART OF ROXY’S GLAMOROUS POP PACKAGE. SOON, ROXY AND BOWIE BEGAN CHALLENGING ROCK’S ‘REAL MUSIC’ ORTHODOXY
In August 1966, while record-buyers were being wowed by The Beatles’ Revolver, a bleepy curiosity, recorded above a flower shop, offered a different view as to where pop might be heading. On Moogies Bloogies, Delia Derbyshire of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop cast strange shadows behind Anthony Newley’s lyrics of bad weather, alienation and desire. Derbyshire called it Newley’s “dirty raincoat song” but, in its own quirky way, this collision of the humdrum and the otherworldly flashed forward to a synth-pop future. Strangely, it remained unissued, part of pop’s secret DNA, sounding a little like Low – if Newley fan Bowie had made it in his Laughing Gnome era.