How Roxy Music built Avalon, the album. Producer Rhett Davies: “Bryan would lay down four or five scat vocals. We would spend quite a lot of time doing that, and we would actually comp the scat vocals as if they were final vocals with lyrics,” says Davies. “It might seem stupid that we were comping mumblings, but that is basically what we were doing. I think it gave Bryan a clue to the actual shape of the sound of the lyrics, be it an ‘e’ or an ‘o’ sound or whatever, so that they sounded right with the mood of the music. If you put the scat vocal tracks up and really listen to them next to the finished vocal, it wouldn't sound that much different than the finished vocal. He was using identical shapes! Over the months, he would work on the verses and choruses and slowly get ideas on what the song was about,” Davies continues. “He would come in and say, ‘I think I've got a first verse’ and he would try it. Then he might come in later and say, ‘I think I have a second verse,’ or ‘I think I've got a chorus.’ It was pieced together, along with the rest of the music, over the period.”
posted by Dragonness on May 28, 2011 - 44 comments

Amanda Lear is one of the greatest enigmatic personalities to emerge from the 70's. Known in equal measures for her disco hits (such as Enigma,Queen of Chinatown, and Follow Me WARNING, youtube link) and her affairs with David Bowie, Brian Ferry of Roxy Music (and thus appearing on their For Your Pleasure album cover) and Salvador Dali. Her past was hazy at best. The most debated aspect of her past (so prevalent as to be mentioned even in reviews of her paintings is what sex she was born (One popular telling of the rumor even claimed it was Dali who paid for her surgery to become a woman). Her more recent, very private life took a tragic turn in 2000 when her home in France burned down killing her husband, the equally interesting Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele. [MI]
posted by piratebowling on Mar 13, 2006 - 17 comments