‘A Song for Europe’, an underappreciated masterpiece by Roxy Music
Through their ten prolific years in the studio, Roxy Music released eight albums of admirable scope and influence. With Bryan Ferry’s seductive croon and colourful vibrancy as the only sonic constants, the band shifted through several chapters of metamorphosis, beginning with the oblique triumph of the Brian Eno years and ending in the early 1980s with the new-wave masterpiece Avalon.
On July 2nd, 1973, Eno left the band following the release of Roxy Music’s second studio album, For Your Pleasure. A media furore may have exaggerated the dissonance between the synth pioneer and his bandmates, but it was apparent veritable friction had formed a rift between Eno and Ferry.
“It’s very hard to know just how honest I should be about the reasons for my demise from Roxy,” Eno told Melody Maker at the time. “The problem is that when it gets printed, it all seems to look much more meaningful and serious when unqualified by that chuckle at the back of the throat. I started off by wanting to call a press conference so that I could state my case, but that’s all so pointless.”
“Another reason for my reticence,” Eno added, “Is because I don’t want to damage Roxy for the sake of the other people in it. I mean, I really like the other members, and I really like Bryan [Ferry], in a funny way.”
Eno continued solo, eventually becoming a master producer and ambient innovator. Meanwhile, Roxy Music regrouped with Eddie Jobson as Eno’s replacement on keys and managed to get a third album, Stranded, on the shelves by November ’73.
The album teems with the lavish elegancy demanded by the contemporary glam-era with popular jaunts like ‘Street Life’ and ‘Amazona’, but the true attraction of this record lies within its low-tempo piano ballads, including ‘Just Like You’, ‘Psalm’, and the perfect hybrid, ‘Mother of Pearl’.
The finest moment on the album, however, is the delightfully mournful ‘A Song For Europe’. Like a staunch Remain campaigner lamenting the Brexit vote, or indeed, Ferry anguishing over the recent departure of Eno, the song draws a tense, rippling piano composition towards a climax accentuated by Andy Mackay’s saxophone virtuosity.
With an oppressive driving rain, the piano sets a gloomy yet romantically Parisian scene before Ferry even croons the first line, “Here as I sit/At this empty cafe/Thinking of you.” As Ferry continues his stream of consciousness, we learn that he is indeed in Paris “by the Seine” under the shadow of Notre Dame.
At the song’s climax, Ferry begins to belt out French and Latin verse, including the Latin lines translated to English as: “There are only pains in the day/There is no rest/We only commit to the truth.” The emotionally tidal love song ebbs out to a refrain of the word “Jamais,” French for “Never”.
‘A Song For Europe’ derived its name from the like-titled former British pre-selection competition for the Eurovision Song Contest, but its narrative deviates from this association. As a romantic love song, Ferry drew on Parisian clichés in an obscure parody of the annual international music competition.
“It’s a pun, of course, on the Eurovision Song Contest, one of the more bizarre events in the calendar,” Ferry explained of the title in a 1973 interview with Melody Maker. “It sounded very European to me, so I thought I’d use Latin and French and do it as ‘A Song For Europe’.”
Although Ferry had previously preferred to work on his songs alone, Stranded was a notable break in tradition, with guitarist Phil Manzanera receiving co-writing credits on ‘Amazona’ and MacKay on ‘A Song For Europe’.
“I think the first time we all wrote together was on Stranded, by which time they’d started to present me with stuff. So, you know, I felt obliged, even though I wasn’t short of material, to incorporate some of their music into the songs,” Ferry recalled in a 2001 conversation with Backpages. “That worked very well with Andy because he had more musical training than anybody, including me.”
Continuing, Ferry revealed how MacKay was essential to Roxy Music’s more European influences. “So he would produce changes where the chords were a bit more unusual and developed. And that produced good things like ‘A Song for Europe’ and, later, ‘Love Is the Drug’. Andy had this European music background, where my background was much more American: Black singers and blues and various other forms of 20th-century music. It actually made for a good combination.”
Listen to Roxy Music’s underappreciated gem, ‘A Song For Europe’, below.
