David Bowie vs. Roxy Music success in the USA - major discrepancy

In spite of my earlier comment about Roxy Music being one in a long line of UK artists who never really reached the same commercial heights in the US, I still see why the OP can't help but compare these artists.

I was going to point out that, even in the UK, Bowie was significantly bigger than Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music; however, it's closer than I thought.

(I include Bryan Ferry's solo work in these numbers because there were no Roxy Music albums released in 1977 and 1978.)

If you look at the period between 1972 and 1983 in the UK, Bowie scored top 32 top 40 singles and 14 top 5 albums. Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry, by comparison, had 24 top 40 singles and 14 top 20 albums (10 of those were top 5).

So, as singles artists they were actually somewhat close, but Bowie's albums fared much better.

 

Correction: Roxy Music also released a Greatest Hits album in 1977 that reached #20.

 

Lots of great responses/theories in this thread....Bowie on the Dinah Shore show mentioning his favourite songwriter back in England



The whole clip is here....Bowie being introduced by Dinah, Fonzie & Rhoda's mother is priceless....I think they eventually all sit down and chat, but haven't watched it in years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxe4h7U8jow

 

Thanks for that! Very funky version of Stay at the beginning.

Bowie was on another episode of The Dinah Shore Show with Iggy Pop. They perform Sister Midnight and Fun Time. After that they sit down for an interview. The clips are on YouTube, but be warned that the quality is not so great, at least for those that I was able to find.

 

Roxy Music & Bowie of the 70s were my Beatles & Stones of the 60s. Actually Bowie had more hits in the 70s in America but really had to come out with a commercial pop record around 83 to capture the American public. This was around the same time as the beginning of MTV. Also around the time of Roxy's most popular album of Avalon. If there had been MTV in the 70s I believe Roxy would have been much more popular. I was a teenager and graduated from high school in 1975 in Southern California and I always felt like I belonged to an exclusive cool "In Crowd" with Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music.

 

I suppose Roxy Music was a kind of totemistic thing, you know?

 

IIRC, I saw an interview with Bryan Ferry who said he was driving/being driven to his US label's office when he heard the Cars on the radio. He immediately recognized the sound as exactly what his band would sound like if they went straight down the middle of the road for maximum commerciality. He seemed to imply that he realized his label wasn't going to expend more effort promoting his band.

 

And I like some Bowie (until about '77), but Roxy Music was IMHO one of the best bands of the '70s

I remember being shocked to learn a few years ago that Bowie saw RM before their record contract and stole his look from Bryan Ferry. I'd always assumed it was the other way around.

 

Roxy's albums were pretty avant-garde, not really AOR fare. In the UK they appealed to underground rock fans, but they also crossed over due to their glammy image and TOTP appearances.

 

roxy music was all over the radio in the northeast US on prog / free form stations. i really liked them, and the country life cover- no censorship in my upstate ny city. their music was ahead of its time, but the era they were futurecasting turned out to be a relatively weaker one musically, in hindsight. ultimately for me roxy music's legacy and lack of commercal success in the US has nothing to do with them being euro centric. it has to do with the fact that they were one dimensional more or less and did not produce that many memorable songs. bowie was anything but one dimensional and produced dozens of memorable songs.

 

Now I agree that Take That in America was nothing compared to the UK. But geez Louise, let them have their one big US hit from 1995 instead of claiming zero.

 

LOL .Duran Duran is the second coming of Roxy Music ?!!! Oh yes, of course, especially with the incarnation that had Eno ...

 

You're spot on here ;RM was very quirky and European in aesthetics and sound. Manzanera had his own unusual guitar style and Mackay's alto sax was very avant garde. The late 70's, early 80's seemed to bring an atmospheric mood elevation with albums like Avalon that remind me of the very European sounding "I'm Your Man" by Leonerd Cohen. Essentially, it's easy to see that RM is too noncommercial to have the critical acclaim Bowie did in the states.

 

Roxy were very European. Probably a little too exotic for American ears. Ferry's mannered vocals were also a matter of taste, although I love Roxy.
For all of his visual outrage, Bowie was pretty conventional on record up until the Berlin Trilogy.