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Art Rock

Newcastle art school, 1970

Roxy Music

Bryan Ferry studied fine art at Newcastle University under the pop artist Richard Hamilton, and in 1970 he started Roxy Music with bassist Graham Simpson. Andy Mackay brought saxophone and oboe, Brian Eno treated the sound with tapes and a synthesiser, Paul Thompson joined on drums in 1971 and Phil Manzanera on guitar in 1972. They signed to Island through E.G. Management and treated every record as a designed object, with models on the covers, Jerry Hall among them. Eno left in 1973 and Eddie Jobson took his place. After the Siren tour in 1976 they split, came back in 1978 and made their last studio album in 1982. They entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 and played a fiftieth-anniversary tour in 2022.

Drones, Satie and Island

John Cale

In New York in 1963 John Cale joined La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music and played sustained drones on viola. That September he took part in the first complete performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, with John Cage among the pianists, and it ran for over eighteen hours. After the Velvet Underground he produced Nico's albums and the Modern Lovers' first record. His own career started with Vintage Violence in 1970. In 1974 and 1975 he made three fast, nervous albums for Island with Eno and Phil Manzanera, beginning with Fear and Slow Dazzle. Music for a New Society followed in 1982, and Songs for Drella with Lou Reed in 1990. He represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2009, became an OBE in 2010, and released new albums in 2023 and 2024.

Catford, 1974, Hansa to Virgin

Japan

Japan started in Catford, south London, in 1974 with David Sylvian, his brother Steve Jansen and Mick Karn. Richard Barbieri joined on keyboards in 1975 and Rob Dean on guitar soon after. Hansa signed them as a glam-tinged rock band, and working with Giorgio Moroder in 1979 pointed them toward electronics. They moved to Virgin in 1980 and slowly turned into something cooler and stranger, with Karn's fretless bass sliding under Barbieri's synthesisers. Dean left in 1981 because guitar no longer fitted, and Tin Drum came out that year. They split in December 1982, after a last show in Nagoya, and a live album from Hammersmith reached No. 5 in Britain. In 1991 the four came back together once, as Rain Tree Crow.

Van der Graaf Generator, Charisma

Peter Hammill

Peter Hammill was born in Ealing in 1948 and co-founded Van der Graaf Generator with Chris Judge Smith at Manchester University in 1967. The name came from the Van de Graaff generator, misspelled by accident. Tony Stratton-Smith made them the first band on his new Charisma label, and Pawn Hearts in 1971 turned them into stars in Italy. Hammill's solo records began the same year. One of them, in 1975, sounded so raw that John Lydon played tracks from it on the radio in 1977 and called him a true original. He sang on a Robert Fripp solo album in 1979, founded his own label, Fie!, in 1992, and recorded at home in his Sofa Sound studio. Van der Graaf Generator reformed in 2005, and he has kept making solo albums ever since.

The Collection