I also spoke with Rhett Davies, who worked with Roxy and Ferry a few years later.

Davies replaced his friend and mentor Phill Brown as engineer on the Roxy Music reunion album Manifesto in 1978, when Brown had to be hospitalized for a time.

Roxy had been recording in the band format: a song would be rehearsed, the band would set up in the studio, get appropriate levels and then record the song live five or thirty times until they got it right. Then they would record the vocals and solos and whatnot over that backing track.

Davies showed leader Bryan Ferry a new way, the "rhythm box" [click track] method he had learned from Eno. "In the old school method the drums are the most important part when you are cutting a backing track," Davies says. "Paul Thompson was a fantastic live drummer, but he was difficult to work with in the studio - there was a certain disinterest, and that frustrated Bryan as he was trying to get what he wanted out of him. But with the rhythm box you can lay
down tracks and not worry about the drummer until later.

"When it came to making Flesh and Blood, we basically cut everything from the groove upwards. Phil Manzanera had built a studio down at his house, so we laid all the backing tracks down there. Bryan really enjoyed that way of working and we had about four or five pieces down, but he was feeling a little bit uncomfortable that this was Phil's studio.

Bryan didn't feel he was getting his stamp on the record, so he said, 'Look, can I just have a couple of days working with Rhett alone to try to write some songs and get some things down?'

"In those two days we wrote and cut 'My Only Love' 'Over You' 'Flesh and Blood' and 'Same Old Scene.' Bryan was just over the moon."

And well he should have been, because those songs are the backbone of an album of indelible beauty, poignancy and energy. Flesh and Blood is the nexus between the art-rock, jagged Roxy of the '70s and the smoothly romantic Roxy (and Bryan Ferry) of the '80s, bearing the best characteristics of each.

"Same Old Scene" grooves to Alan Spenner's thumping bass and Ferry's
keyboard wash, as Ferry scrambles to staunch the flow of viscera from the
"same old scene."

In "Flesh and Blood," Ferry addresses his own penchant for dangerous beauty (Jerry Hall, Lucy Helmore), and their respective needs (his - "You'd nail her if you could"; hers - "Love me for my mind") over his own monster guitar riff. "My Only Love" captures a suspended moment before love's loss becomes unbearable, and features pungent solos from Manzanera and saxophonist Andy Mackay.

"Over You" pours out after that moment is lost, and then tries to look to a hopeful future when "Some day, yes it might come babe/When I'll be babe - over you." In that future lies a stunningly simple, elegant piano line from Ferry and an aching, soaring sax solo from Mackay.