Who Were Those Roxy Music Girls?
Even after listening to music for 40 years there are still new “old” bands to discover. When I say “new” I actually mean new to me as obviously Roxy Music are a very old band, but one I’ve never listened to before. I knew a bit about singer Bryan Ferry of course, and quite a lot about knob twiddler Brian Eno, but had dismissed them as one of those throwaway glam rock pop bands of the early 70s like T-Rex or Slade. Then I got talking to someone in a pub about music and he recommended I take a listen to them, and to For Your Pleasure in particular.
There is some great rock on this (their second album) and some interesting extended electronics which I feel is foreshadowing Eno’s Berlin work with David Bowie moreso than his ambient solo albums. Probably only Do The Strand is a well known single, certainly the only one I recognise and as often the case that’s probably a strength of the album.
Like a number of bands, including Little Feat mentioned in an earlier post, Roxy Music were famous for their album covers which featured various glamour models, some of whom were Bryan Ferry’s girlfriends.
The artwork for their early albums imitated the visual style of classic “girlie” and fashion magazines of the time, featuring high-fashion shots of scantily-clad models.
The model for the debut album was Kari-Ann Muller who was reportedly paid £20 for the assignment. She also appeared in the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and is now a yoga teacher living in London with husband Chris Jagger, brother of Mick.
“It was very ice-creamy, in a way. The colours remind me of a marshmallow, like something really delicious.”
Amanda Lear appeared on the cover of For Your Pleasure walking a black panther and is perhaps the most mysterious of Bryan Ferry’s muses. She was reportedly a mistress of Salvador Dali and Rolling Stone Brian Jones before having affairs with both Ferry and David Bowie. Bizarrely there were also persistent rumours that she was actually a transsexual man!
But what of those rumours?
“Hah hah! That was bullshit, a phoney publicity stunt in order to sell records. No-one wanted a boring girl like any other. But it was the time of the Rocky Horror Show, and I was around, looking glamorous, and people always dream, don’t they? The lady is a girl, and that’s it.”
To read more about her fascinating life (you couldn’t make this stuff up) please have a look at https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news
Marilyn Cole was the girl on the album Stranded. She was a Playboy model and eventually married Victor Lownes, president of Playboy Enterprises, after a brief involvement with Ferry.
“I’m very honoured to have been a Roxy girl. But I look at that picture and I think, why did they choose that shot where the dress is cutting into my armpit?”
Perhaps many people’s favourite (certainly of teenage boys) is the Country Life cover which features two random German fans the band met in a bar in Portugal, (l to r) Eveline Grunwald and Constanze Karoli. I don’t know how rare a name Karoli is in Germany but it always surprises me how often a shared name does indicate a blood relationship and in this case Constanze was Can guitarist Michael Karoli’s cousin, and Eveline was his girlfriend. It continues to be a small somewhat incestuous world.
Without looking too closely (honestly) I always thought this was a shot of the girls lying flat on the grass but they are actually standing against a pine tree and posing as if suddenly caught in the glare of car headlights.
“We just had to look weird and surprised.”
Some album covers of the 70s (particularly of heavy rock or metal bands — Blind Faith, Whitesnake, The Scorpions etc) were pushing the sexual boundaries and this cover was banned in many countries on release which was actually saying something in those days. Incidentally does anyone remember those truly awful Top of the Pops compilation albums our parents used to buy?
I think it must be strange to be remembered for one tiny (insignificant at the time) thing in life that happened forty years ago — literally a “15 minutes of fame”. Neither Country Life girl went on to become models. Eveline became an art teacher and Constanze is a practising psychotherapist. Rather cool to have such a dinner party subject to bring up though. Imagine flicking through a host’s CD collection and chancing across Country Life and revealing your secret!
Without doubt Jerry Hall is the most famous of the Roxy models and appeared on the Siren cover literally as a siren washed up on some rocks in Anglesey, North Wales. One of the original, if not the original, super models, Texan Hall dated Bryan Ferry for some time before meeting Mick Jagger. Her recent marriage to Rupert Murdoch was a surprise to many.
Again not looking closely enough I thought the model on the front of Flesh and Blood was one person but it actually shows Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Man casting javelins.
Aimee Stephenson (the nearest to the camera) later worked in film (script writing and production). She tragically died in 2001 from burn injuries sustained from exploding fireworks on a bus in Peru (I know, it sounds so unlikely but when your time is up, your time is up, and as I said above you couldn’t make this up — the bizarre and random twists of life, and death).
As for Shelley Man she is literally residing in the “where are they now” file, gone and forgotten at least as far as the internet is concerned — hopefully this indicates she is enjoying a quiet happy family life somewhere in the Cotswolds, free from controversy, rumour or tragedy.
Once more initial appearances can be deceptive with the realistic dancing “models” on the front of Manifesto actually being mannequins.
Having spent much of the decade enjoying many a dalliance with his band’s cover stars, Bryan Ferry finally made a long-term commitment to one of them in 1982, when he married model Lucy Helmore who starred (albeit anonymously with back to camera and wearing a medieval helmet) on the front of the Avalon album. They divorced in 2003. Tragically Helmore took her own life in 2018 aged 58.
