Roxy Music - Street Life [Top Of The Pops Lost Show] [22nd Nov 1973]

[@dirktaylor5484]

Bit of a life-changin' moment, watching this on TOTP one Thursday night. The music and the imagery was like nothing else on earth ....it convinced me to go and buy my first Roxy Music album (Stranded). That album never left my turntable for weeks - immaculate! Within a few more weeks, I'd also bought the first 2 Roxy albums ...and they were so unique and inspiring too! I was well and truly hooked into the whole Roxy lifestyle, and it shaped me, as a person, for many years to come :-)

[@martins.7060]

It convinced me to buy a white tuxedo

[@neilpearce500]

@@martins.7060 It convinced me to buy a velvet bow tie.

[@robjones2408]

Bryan Ferry was rock's best-dressed man during the early period of Roxy Music. Along with Bowie, he kick-started the New Romantics look in the early 1980s. Back then, Roxy was at the cutting edge of music. I got this brilliant track as a single, in late 1973. Nearly fifty years old, and "Street Life" still sounds other-worldly. Thanks for posting it.

[@waltertryhuba3400]

The best group of the 70s. Bought every one of there albums as soon as they came out..

[@vordman]

They really did sound like no other band when they first appeared.

[@dough740]

A life changing riff.... Ferry's voice was an acquired taste, but I acquired it.....

[@albertotamburini9908]

Best art rock ever!

[@tigertuft]

An elegant gem of Art Rock. Ferry's live vocal is mesmerising :)

[@David-gu4yq]

Was a breathtaking moment for this 12 year old.

[@maryellendonovan9762]

Wow, this is great to see. Roxy is perfection here, but I especially enjoyed seeing all the kids who make up the audience standing there befuddled with no idea what to make of this strange group with this weird song. Thank you for finding this & posting it for all the world to enjoy.

[@DannyFeeney]

Thanks Mary Ellen Donovan x

[@PaulA-ys3yr]

Mary Ellen Donovan I have to disagree! Street Life was Roxy's third single - UK pop kids had long since taken them to heart.

[@PAULLONDEN]

@@PaulA-ys3yr Indeed....thankfully this time the TOTP's audience wasn't forced into their often weird incompetent dance routines, which sadly often ridiculed still amazing Bowie and other Roxy performances. Here their standing around like at some cocktail party ,fitted well .

[@stevenbaker7696]

That really is something! Mr Ferry singing live to a backing track, and singing so well, it is a bit of a bravura performance... and those guys 'sculpted' in the back there , the girls looking on adoringly below...('boys and girls').

[@girpo]

This song had such a big impact on my life in the early ‘70’s , I was already a huge Bowie fan, to me he was/is the greatest artist in my life, then Roxy Music came out, and they all start coming out! It was great! It’s hard to make you feel like i did back then, my life was changing, music was changing and I was growing up. I miss that time, and it’s never left me. Thank you David, Roxy, Mott, and all the bands that help shape my life. Thanks.

[@DannyFeeney]

Same for me mate.

[@richrol58]

That's kind of an infectious riff that Mr. Manzanera is playing...

[@PAULLONDEN]

WoW !! Thanks for this very special performance......Roxy at their zenith ! \\\\X////

[@spacial2]

Pure class.

[@ianwyse4354]

Great song from a fantastic band !

[@markhower7110]

and The Great Paul Thompson !

[@DannyFeeney]

of course, and The Great Paul Thompson.

[@neilpearce500]

@@DannyFeeney Absolutely and The Great Paul Thompson.

[@simonartley1645]

Eddie Jobson introduces his clear electric violin...and the vocals tell us of tempting illicit nightlife....😈

[@wrichardmorris]

Thanks Danny. Just stumbled across this tonight, I'm a big Roxy fan but have never seen this clip before. A great performance from Mr Ferry, what a treat!

[@DannyFeeney]

Cheers Richard

[@stan2886]

Very nice, never seen this version. Thank you

[@DannyFeeney]

Welcome Stan....D

[@ellenmurphy2150]

I love these old shows.Good to see what they were really like back in the day.And they are really singing.Later on in shows like these they were mouthing to their records .

[@johndixon3987]

Loved roxy at the time . Missed the performance that night as I was at the mott the hoople and queen concert at newcastle city hall. Great to see it .thank you

[@DannyFeeney]

That must have been a good night, would have liked that, still tuned into the 70's, still a big percentage of my listening pleasure John.

[@johndixon3987]

It was danny.saw roxy and leo sayer a couple of weeks before the concert. Still love the 70s myself danny. Where has it all gone.

[@DannyFeeney]

I know, where did it go? it's whatever makes you happy John, besides I prefer all the older bands, too long in the tooth now to change, even if I wanted.

[@johndixon3987]

Exactly danny . Sometimes people say I sound like some old bloke talking.when I mention 70s .

[@EnnioRome]

Avantgard Art Rock!!!

[@ProfessorBear]

Fabulous! Thanks for this!

[@DannyFeeney]

Welcome Professor Bear....

[@patrickdoake6022]

At high school got single when it came out, 70s were great time musically!

[@keithmackenzie-ingle757]

Fairly sure that's Sal Maida on bass. Classic song/performance and a joy to see The Emperor Himself on baritone sax.

[@EnnioRome]

Salvatore Maida,son of calabrian immigrate parents!!!

[@toddswift8737]

Roxy Music was great even without Brian Eno...check out Eddie Jobson on keys & electric violin!! Musikladen performance of this song was bomb!

[@SJBatie]

That’s really something..

[@juanpablojones]

The best era for Roxy Music. Much better than the reformed early 80s Yuppie bonkin' soundtrack.

[@mr.bloodvessel260]

JOHN PAUL Jones Give me the all too brief Eno era!!!

[@paulph12002]

One of many great TOTP clips that were wiped by the BBC...

[@richrol58]

So how is it we are seeing it here now...??

[@CaroleRogersCSL]

@@richrol58 someone recorded it at home, probably on U-matic low band video. No-one believes it, but we did have video recorders (called 'television recorders') in the 70s, they just weren't that good - and very expensive.

[@CaroleRogersCSL]

I stand rebuked. Someone a little way down in the comments identified it as a 16mm film copy of the original video, this film recently discovered at the British Film Institute. Frank Zappa did '200 Motels' on video, then had it transferred to film. But don't watch it. It's pretty bad. 🤣

[@CaroleRogersCSL]

Wicked!

[@friendlier]

Pointless passing through Harvard or Yale/Only window shopping and strictly no sale

[@DannyFeeney]

Big rivalry between Harvard and Yale, 2 of the Big 3 uni’s, guess he couldn’t work Princeton in there.

[@paulbullen7492]

yes thought wiped

[@alftupper9359]

Three lads at the back there at 1:35, look like they're so pissed off having to wait for The Rubettes to come on.

[@DannyFeeney]

Think that's their girls at the front checking out Ferry....

[@ladytron9188]

Probably jealous of Bryan ferry’s handsome persona😂😂😂

[@raymondbonington9355]

Rubettes didn't have there first hit till 1974 .

[@nickchristian8195]

Nothing wrong with the Rubettes!

[@sammyvh11]

Early Roxy ruled. So many other bands and artists copied them including Pink Floyd and every new wave band to come. Wish Eno and Wetton would have stayed with them.

[@DannyFeeney]

Early Roxy were fantastic and still are, I saw them in Glasgow a couple of times a few year back, still magic. Supported Bowie early days then took off big time with some of the best albums of the 70’s (and 45’s) Viva Roxy Music 😎👍

[@DannyFeeney]

1973 was a strange time, I was set to leave school, we had already had our leaving party when the Government announced the new leaving age '16' 😯 Another year, Another party 😀 our playlist? mainly Bowie, Roxy, Mott, etc... "Them were the days"

[@anneyoung6155]

I wondered when the school leaving age went to 16...! When this was on Top of the Pops I was in the Fifth Form at Grammar School. So young.... and yet I felt so grown up! And then, I started teaching at Alexandra High School, in Tipton, in September 1980. 40 years ago! I can't believe it.

[@samfisher05]

Genuine question, apart from the fact that he is a great drummer, why do people always prefix Paul Thompson with "the great" or "the mighty" ?

[@DannyFeeney]

Paul Thompson is an English drummer, who is best known as drummer for the rock band Roxy Music. In 1987 Thompson joined the RAF in Squadron 2624 RAuxAF attaining the rank of corporal and left the service in 1993. He is a member of Andy Mackay's project with the Metaphors and joined the reformed Lindisfarne in 2013.

[@DannyFeeney]

Kurtz

[@Kevin-mx1vi]

Because he had great technical ability combined with a really good sound AND enormous power. Drummers that have everything are quite rare, and Paul Thompson had everything in spades.

[@neilpearce500]

Because he added the heft, the weight if you will, to Roxy's sound. Ferry knew it at their 1st rehearsal together. Previous drummers were good but a little bit Fey and technical. Thompson 'gave it some', and that was the offset to Roxy's flamboyance and oddness. He was not without technique though. He'd been around and played with Billy Fury's band.

[@problemchimp4231]

Despite having the most pathetic, spoilt, prick of a son, in the history of kids...Be kind...

[@ssstch5221]

This performance was aired on the BBC's flagship pop music show "Top Of The Pops" on the evening of the 10th-anniversary of the dreadful and tragic assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy the 35th President of the United States of America, who was slain at 12.30pm CST on the 22nd November 1963 [declared dead at 1:00pm CST, by the doctors at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, TX]. In the world at the time of 1973, there was an energy crisis made worse by the Yom Kippur [Jewish New Year festival celebrated every year in and around October] War. The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, was a war fought from 6 to 25 October, 1973, by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria and a coalition of Arab states in the Middle East region, mounted ans attack against Israel. The attack was co-ordinated to begin precisely at the time it was calculated and expected that the Israeli's would be just about to begin the festivities with their respective families at home. Consequent on the war was the energy crisis it precipitated, when the infamous OPEC cartel overnight quadrupled the price of oil and therefore the petroleum products that come from the refinement of oil. The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel, [principally USA, UK and most western European countries], during the Yom Kippur War. The energy crisis most notably evinced itself in the UK, with the three-day week, made worse by the second strike by the British miner's union, the NUM. They had only 18 or so months earlier secured a generous pay increase and wanted to augment their pay even more so as to be on a par with other heavy industiries' workers in 1972, when Ted Heath had caved. The energy price crisis and the ensuing supply-shock it caused to the western economies at the time, precipitated two elections in the space of six months in the UK during 1974. The first held on the 28th February 1974 called by Heath on the self proclaimed platform and question "Who governs" famously during his political broadcast and address to the nation at the height of the three-day week regime that afflicted us all between November 1973 - February 1974 Thefirst election proved inconclusive enough that Harold Wilson returned as PM to form a minority Labour government propped up by the famous Lib-Lab pact, the Liberals lead by Jeremy Thorpe. Wilson then called a further election for the October month of 1974 when Labour secured a small majority. However, the oil price and supply shock to the world economy overshadowed the entirety of WIlson's second period of government as PM. The Labour government's economic policies formulated as a reaction to the climate of the time eventually precipated the need to go begging to the International Monetary Fund in the IMF crisis of circa Oct. 1976. The 1976 IMF Crisis was a financial crisis in the United Kingdom in 1976 which forced James Callaghan's, [Wilson having resigned earlier that year in June of 1976, when Jim Callaghan assumed the Prime Minstership largely unopposed] Labour Party government to borrow $3.9 billion ($17.5 billion in 2019) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the time the largest loan ever to have been requested from the IMF. Such loan of $3.9bn was made necessary as a consequence of the failings of all governments in the post-war period until that time, to more effectively manage the industrial decline in heavy industries and to move to the emerging technological industries sooner. Moreover, the tactics that Ted Heath deployed during his PM's premiership of June 1970 - February 1974, is what sealed his fate and eventually on the 11th February 1975, he was replaced by Margaret Thatcher following the manouevrings of the likes of Airie Neave and Keith Jospeh and other movers and shakers on the hard right of the Tory party Then later in 1979, OPEC again as a result of a further embargo, doubled the price of oil that compounded James Callaghan's Labour government's economic climatic problems of that time, that paved the way for Thatcher and the right-wing Tories of the Keith Joseph/Enoch Powell variety, to come to power. It was as a consequence of Edward Heath's poor management of industrial relations policy that Thatcher resolved when the time was right and of her choosing she would defeat the miners in a third struggle, that transpired in 1984-85. And I guess the rest is history...

[@andrewdock5137]

What is this Top Of The Pops?

[@DannyFeeney]

Yeah Andrew, TOTP 22nd nov 1973....

[@martinhughes2549]

Andrew Dock I belive this colour Telerecording (film recording on 16mm film) was located at the BFI

[@CaroleRogersCSL]

@@martinhughes2549 Really? I thought it was a U-matic home video - shows what I know! Lol. It does look like a video to film copy, though. Kudos.

[@davidcooke1972]

Ok you bunch of half wits, Bryan is MIMING.

[@DannyFeeney]

But he mimes good 😁 at one point the bands had to come in during the day and lay down the backing track, just to make sure they could actually play the instruments. There’s a few Bowie totp backings that Can be had online if you look. 👀

[@2msvalkyrie529]

Think they got rid of self indulgent ,pretentious virtue signaller Eno by this time ?? Good move . Should have been named Brian EGO....to be fair he went on to be excellent composer of Elevator muzak.

[@simonmason8582]

Copied from German Krautrock bands.