[2008-04-08] Roxy Music "Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music" paperback book by Michael Bracewell (Da Capo)

Linda · **Posted:** Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:01 am

From Publishers Weekly
In this innovative and intelligent book, British novelist and essayist Bracewell (The Nineties: When Surface Was Depth) explores how the 1972 release of the eponymously named debut album by Roxy Music—a manifesto written in the language of heavily stylized, nuanced and atmospheric pop and rock music—was actually the culmination of a decade-long British movement in which fine art and the avant-garde met the vivacity of pop and fashion with the goal of dissolving the boundaries between high and low art forms. Bracewell describes in fascinating detail a range of famous and obscure artists, first in the fine arts departments at Newcastle and Reading universities and later in the London of the swinging '60s, and delivers in effect a history of the British pop art movement, with special praise for the influence of artist Richard Hamilton at Newcastle, with whom Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry studied. By the time Bracewell ends his look at Roxy Music at its moment of becoming, he has definitively shown how the roots of Ferry's artistic vision of the band, both as a musical group and as a pop art concept, helped him produce one of the most original groups of its time, fusing an eclectic range of influences from modern music, popular culture and fine art (Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Bracewell is an adroit cultural analyst." -- Sunday Times (UK), 10/28/2007

"Bracewell writes well, with a tailor's attention to detail. He's excellent, too, on the immediate cultural backdrop to the first, groundbreaking Roxy Music album..." --Mojo, November 2007

"Bracewell chronicles a time between the summer of love and punk's year zero when young trailblazers in art, music, academia, and fashion collaborated. Bracewell's stylized prose and full interview access to all involved easily vaults this book past David Buckley's The Thrill of It All and Jonathan Rigby's Both Ends Burning. Recommended for all libraries." --Library Journal, starred review

"Exhaustively researched...Bracewell offers a dissertation, not on the dry facts that led to the formation of this massively successful and influential ensemble, but rather, on the particular intellectual and artistic milieu which enabled and encouraged it." --Buffalo News

"Looking beyond the obvious influence of artists-provocateurs like Duchamp and Warhol, Bracewell considers the impact of such members of the Roxy orbit as clothing designer Antony Price and hair stylist Keith Wainwright...Those with an endless interest in English art movements of the '60s may find Bracewell's work endlessly fascinating." --Kirkus Reviews

"Michael Bracewell likes to draw wider cultural contexts into his books, so this is as much the story of British pop artist Richard Hamilton and his Newcastle Uni fine art course--where Ferry forged the ideas that would bloom into Roxy music--as it is about the band." --Q Magazine

"Roxy Music left an enduring impression on British pop culture and Bracewell tracks all the connections with engaging thoroughness." --Design Observer

"This book is a perfect fit between cool subject and stuffy author...Beautifully rich in not-necessarily linear history that jumps decades without much notice, Bracewell's tale elegantly, irksomely and so-very loquaciously tackles the most brittle of glam icons." --Harp

Product Description
The generously illustrated inside account of how Bryan Ferry invented the legendary rock band Roxy Music, by "perhaps the most accomplished writer of his generation" (GQ).

In 1972 an English rock band released its first album to instant critical acclaim: Roxy Music. Here was a group that looked as though it came not only from another era, but also from another planet--a band in which art, fashion, and music would combine to create, in Bryan Ferry's words, "above all, a state of mind." Written with the assistance, for the first time, of all those involved, including Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera, Re-Make/Re-Model tells how Pop Art, the 1960s underground, and Swinging London were transformed into a unique sound and look--theatrical, arch, literate, clever, sexy, thrilling. In the tradition of Jean Stein and George Plimpton's Edie, Re-Make/Re-Model is the story of extraordinary individuals and exceptional creativity--and nothing less than the history of an era in music and pop culture.

About The Author
Michael Bracewell is an acclaimed novelist as well as nonfiction writer. He lives in England.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0306814005/?tag=imwan-20

[2008-04-08] Roxy Music "Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music" paperback book by Michael Bracewell (Da Capo)

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