Rock Spot: Roxy Music and Mother of Pearl – A Review
By WTJU Rock
Christopher Pickles reviews Mother of Pearl from the Roxy Music album, Stranded.
“Stranded” by Roxy Music is one of the outstanding LPs of the early seventies and in fact of all time. It contains 8 tracks and 5 of them could equally be my featured track for this period. I bought the album because I read a full-page article in the New Musical Express which paid an incredible tribute to this work. The writer described each track in fascinated detail, saying that the more he listened to it the better it got; and the more he tried to find fault, the less he was able. This article was an almost bewildered piece of total critical acclaim. Roxy Music had done something astonishing.
This was their third album. There had been brilliance on the other two, but you wouldn’t have predicted this. From the Anthony Price styling and lascivious cover through to the smell of the vinyl, the masterful creativity of the songs and the perfection of the production, this was awe inspiring!
I have chosen Mother of Pearl for this review. I believe this was an ode to Jerry Hall, who like Bryan was living ‘in a looking glass world’ with few moments for introspection amongst the constantly changing guises that they had to step through.
Mother of Pearl starts loud and fast; dipping and bobbing to the tempo of Street Life, the opening track of the album; reflecting the chaotic, clashing party world they were living in. It is brought to a climax by a soaring roller coaster guitar solo which takes you heavenward before dropping you onto soft piano chords laid onto a big fat bass drum. Meanwhile Bryan has been party frantic with talk and themes and dilemmas, ending with “have you a future” … “no, no, no, no …. Yesss!” and you plunge and your heart stops and you turn around breathless.
‘Well I’ve been up all night, party time wasting . . . is too much fun!”
When I saw the re-formed band play this in Perth and the stratospheric solo dropped down onto the piano chords, the crowd was crying and cheering and clapping in a transport of delight!
We emerge into a parade of snippets and phrases and couplets – vignettes of society life. Bittersweet and wistful. Tentative expressions of an emerging respect that is going to turn into love. Embellished with the tastiest of guitar licks from Phil Manzanera and a great big thumping off-beat, heartbeat drum track from the great Paul Thomson, Bryan wants Jerry to know that he can see through the ‘Canadian Club’ life and that she is his ‘favourite señorita’. However it seems like he doesn’t want to over-commit and enter into a rueful monogamy, perhaps content with just a place in her heart (….. yeah, right!).
“A few throwaway kisses, the boomerang misses, spin round and round.”
His voice is at its quavering, melodic finest and takes us on a long lyrical ride. When eventually the bass, the tinkling piano, the drums and that eloquent guitar phrasing all drop away, his voice sings alone, the last line, over and over. Lounging elegantly in his lavish hotel suite, pretty sure that sooner or later the phone will ring.
When you have returned from the record player, having played this track over and over and then played the rest of the album because you just can’t help it, so we are talking several weeks from now, when you are back on the planet . . . . consider writing a review for the Rock Spot! Maybe the first record you ever bought having been inspired by a review, or a DJ playing it on the radio; maybe a new release; a concert, an opinion piece, the Rock Spot is for you. Use it. Send submissions to anniedeblanco@gmail.com
