Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music [Paperback]

Michael Bracewell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.)
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Review

Boston Phoenix
"Re-make/Re-model is the Roxy Book of Genesis Bracewell is meticulous in his coverage of the many aesthetic inputs that made up the Roxy world."

New York Times Book Review 5/4/08
“Rejecting the standard album-tour-drugs-sex hagiography, Bracewell focuses on British art, fashion and academia in the 1950s and ’60s, and on how the cultural scene inspired several brilliant products of that milieu to create Roxy Music…Part oral history, part academic thesis, Re-Make/Re-Model essentially deconstructs the cast and credits of Roxy Music’s wildly inventive 1972 debut album…Creative connections to Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, David Hockney and others make this tale engaging.”

Time Out New York, 6/5/08
“Offers way more insight than any career-trajectory doorstop ever could have…Chewier than garden-variety pop-music books…Bracewell is the first Roxy biographer to enjoy the full approval of band members, access to their inner circle and the opportunity to nab dozens of killer quotes from people in myriad disciplines…He couldn’t be more in his element, and it shows…Not just an invigorating cultural history of late-midcentury England but a handbook for aspiring aesthetes.”

Jessa Crispin, NPR.org
“Bracewell combines art history, music theory and a smashing sense of fashion to create a new kind of rock history, one worthy of its groundbreaking subject.”

The Indepedant, 9/5/08
“Brilliant.”

Skyscraper, Winter 08
“Bracewell is unbelievably thorough…The writing in Re-Make/Re-Model is unique and challenging, much like the band of which he writes.”

Curled Up with a Good Book, 1/25/09
“Through a treasure trove of interviews, Bracewell often steps back to let the individuals tell their own story…However he is not afraid to add is own often astute observations from time to time…Part biography, part pop art appreciation, part late '60s/early '70s cultural study, this book equals more than the sum of its parts.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306814005
• ISBN-13: 978-0306814006
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genuinely original, June 16, 2008

By 

Mickey - See all my reviews

This review is from: Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music (Paperback)

Finding a balance between a forensic social history and something that anybody would actually want to read is a difficult one. This is an example that succeeds. Rarely have I been projected by a book into a different time and space and returned to feel so enriched by the experience. It is to Bracewell's credit that he has managed to do this by excavating the recesses of this brilliant band's pre-history by speaking with the protagonists, drawing upon their memories and personal archives intelligently and without prejudice. The result is a work that serves as a delight for true Roxy fans and those in any way interested in the middle-century history of England.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Look elsewhere for a full musical history of Roxy Music, October 31, 2010

By 

Car Guy "desertgrj" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music (Paperback)

I first heard Roxy Music in 1972 on a WLS AM radio ad in Chicago promoting "For Your Pleasure". I was hooked. This book is fine for exploring the early years of RM, although perhaps a bit over-wrought. Instead, look to "Both Ends Burning" for a thorough analysis of Roxy's music.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Art History, August 12, 2008

By 

Steven Thornton (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music (Paperback)

This is a history of how Pop art was disseminated across Britain, and how the Sixties turned into the Seventies, as much as it is a story about Roxy Music. Bryan Ferry doesn't meet Brian Eno until page 335, of a ~400-page book! But Ferry, Eno and Andy Mackay didn't just pop out of suitcases in 1972; their careers started much earlier, in Newcastle, Reading, and Ipswitch, and this book brilliantly tells you how. He draws heavily on Jonathon Green's "All Dressed Up" (suppressed for idiotic reasons, but highly recommended) in explaining the milieu of Sixties art and fashion, and how important these provincial players ended up being. The stuff on Richard Hamilton in Newcastle, especially, is fascinating, and opens up the real Sixties in ways that more conventional rock bios could never approach. Roxy was an art project, and if you don't understand the art background, you don't understand the music.

I didn't give it five stars because of the exceptionally poor quality of the photo reproductions -- the book calls them "plates" but they look more like hundred-year-old newspaper cuts. You can barely make out what's in them, which is a shame.