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Andy Mackay's solo work
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Andy Mackay Solo Discography
Albums:
1974 In Search Of Eddie Riff
1978 Resolving Contradictions
2004 SAMAS Music For The Senses
1976 Rock Follies (Soundtrack)
1977 Rock Follies Of '77 (Soundtrack)
1985 The Expolrers (With Phil Manzanera & James Wraith)
1988 Crack the Whip (With Phil Manzanera & James Wraith)
1988 Up In Smoke (With Phil Manzanera & James Wraith)
1990 Manzanera MacKay (With Andy MacKay & James Wraith)
1990 Christmas (With The Players)
2001 The Complete Explorers (With Phil Manzanera & James Wraith)
Singles:
1974 Ride Of The Valkyries
1975 Wild Weekend
1976 Talking Pictures (Rock Follies)
1976 Glenn Miller Is Missing (Rock Follies)
1977 OK? (Rock Follies)
1978 Skill And Sweat
1984 Lorelei (The Explorers)
1985 Venus Di Milo (The Explorers)
1985 Two Worlds Apart (The Explorers)
1985 Falling For Nightlife (The Explorers)
Andy MacKay Sessionography
Mott - 1973 CBS (with Mott The Hoople)
Here Come The Warm Jets - 1974 Island (with Brian Eno)
Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy - 1974 Island (with Brian Eno)
Slow Dazzle - 1975 Island (with John Cale)
At The Sound Of The Bell - 1975 CBS (with Pavlov's Dog)
Diamond Head - 1975 Island (with Phil Manzanera)
Ensemble Pieces - 1976 Obscure (with Christopher Hobbs)
Ready Or Not - 1977 DJM (with Ray Russell)
A Biography - 1978 Riva (with John Cougar)
L - 1978 Mercury (with Godley And Creme)
Long Distance Romancer - 1979 Chrysalis (with Mickey Jupp)
Tug Of War - 1982 Parlophone (with Paul McCartney)
Pipes Of Peace - 1983 Parlophone (with Paul McCartney)
So Red The Rose - 1985 Parlophone (with Arcadia)
Please - 1986 EMI (with Pet Shop Boys)
Islands - 1987 Virgin (with Mike Oldfield)
Taxi - 1993 Virgin (with Bryan Ferry)
Mamouna - 1994 Virgin (with Bryan Ferry)
Revolution Ballroom - 1995 Active (with Nina Hagen)
Vozero - 2001 Expression (with Phil Manzanera)
6PM - 2004 Expression (with Phil Manzanera
50 Minutes Later (with Phil Manzanera)
ANDY MACKAY BIOGRAPHY
Andy Mackay-saxophonist, oboe player, widely-respected film and television
composer, and founder member of Roxy Music-was born in Lostwithiel, Cornwall
but grew up in Pimlico in central London. He discovered both classical music
(thanks to his father, a talented amateur pianist) and rock 'n' roll (thanks
to the BBC Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg). He first played oboe at his
grammar school, Westminster City, winning a weekly scholarship to the
Guildhall School of Music and then playing in the London Schools Symphony
Orchestra.
Mackay went on to read Music and English Literature at Reading University,
where a simple swap became a defining moment. He traded one of his boyhood
treasures, a telescope, for his first alto sax, experimenting on it with a
university group, the Nova Express. Andy became deeply involved with
avant-garde and electronic music, particularly the work of John Cage, Morton
Feldman and Karl Heinz Stockhausen. It was at this time that he met Brian
Eno, an art student at nearby Winchester College of Art, in avant-garde
performance events.
Scraping a B.A.Hons, Andy left university determined to earn his living from
music, but he was unsure how to make that happen. An advertisement in the
Melody Maker as a rock 'n' roll oboist proved unproductive, and he took a
break from the London music scene of the late '60s to live in Rome for a
year. Returning to England with determination undiluted, Andy was teaching
music at Holland Park Comprehensive when he became a co-founder of Roxy Music
with Bryan Ferry, to whom he had been introduced by a university friend.
Mackay was intrigued by Ferry's eclectic record collection, which extended
from the Inkspots to King Crimson, and with Newcastle friends Graham Simpson
on bass and occasionally John Porter on guitar, they began rehearsing and
developing a small batch of songs which Bryan was writing.
Meeting Brian Eno again on a tube train in London, Andy introduced him to the
embryonic Roxy Music, and Eno took over the VCS3 synthesiser, which Andy had
recently bought.
Roxy, as they were first known, started gigging in mid-1971. Andy kept his
day job, but not for much longer. By early 1972, they had appeared on John
Peel's highly influential "sounds of the '70s" show on Radio 1. Now renamed
Roxy Music, they attracted the attention of EG Management, who had managed
King Crimson, and Emerson Lake and Palmer. Roxy Music added young Geordie
drummer Paul Thompson whose dynamic and muscular playing was such a
distinctive feature of the next six albums, and Phil Manzanera, who replaced
Davy O'List, the former guitarist with the Nice.
EG secured a deal with the definitive independent record label, Island, and
Roxy Music recorded their self-titled first album, produced by King Crimson
lyricist Pete Sinfield. Melody Maker called it "the best first album ever"
amid a welter of acclaim from media and public alike, and Mackay played his
full part in the band's role on the cutting edge of style, wearing stage
clothes designed for him by Royal College of Art graduates Jim O'Connor and
Tamla Motown as well as St. Martin's graduate Carol McNichol. Andy was the
first to have his quiff bleached and the tips dyed blue by fashionable
hairdresser Keith at Smile, stopping the Knightsbridge traffic as he left the
salon.
Over the ensuing albums, Mackay was to become one of the architects of Roxy's
daring sonic and stylistic combination of retro and futurism, but before long
was also experimenting outside the group discipline. He worked on Eno's first
album 'Here Come The Warm Jets' in 1973 and the following year, recorded his
own solo instrumental album 'In Search Of Eddie Riff', a kind of musical
autobiography and an exploration of his own roots from Schubert to '605 rock
'n' roll.
In the spring of 1975, an inspired guest of a mutual friend put Andy in touch
with New York playwright Howard Schuman, who had been commissioned by Thames
Television to write an ambitious six-part drama with music about three girls
in a rock group. He and Howard struck an instant rapport and the result was
the memorable 'Rock Follies', effectively a full-scale television musical
starring Julie Covington, Rula Lenska and Charlotte Cornwell. Featuring a
real, on-screen band directed by Mackay, 'Rock Follies' ran to two series,
won the BAFTA award for Best Television Drama of 1976 and produced a sound
track album on Island that raced to No.1 in the UK.
Roxy's hiatus after the 'Siren' tour enabled Andy to concentrate on 'Follies'
and ensuing TV projects such as' Armchair Thriller' and 'Hazell',
collaborating on the latter with seasoned blues singer Maggie Bell. He also
played sax on the first pop promo made by Godley and Creme, 'Wide Boy'. In
1978, a trip with his wife Jane to China inspired a second instrumental solo
album, 'Resolving Contradictions', which featured Roxy's Paul Thompson and
Phil Manzanera as guests.
Roxy then reconvened for the 'Manifesto' and 'Flesh and Blood' albums, and
the tragic death of John Lennon in 1980 led to perhaps Andy's most recognised
saxophone solo on record, on the group's respectful and heartfelt cover of
John's 'Jealous Guy', an international No.1.
Amid Roxy's busy tour schedule, Andy found time to research and write a book
which had been commisioned by Phaidon Press entitled 'Electronic Music',
published in 1981. On the conclusion of Roxy's active service in 1983, Mackay
and his family moved to Kenmare in the west of Ireland, where he developed an
interest in traditional Irish music, but fresh air, fishing and Kerry polkas
were not quite enough to keep Andy off stage and out of the studio for long
and he began a new project with Phil Manzanera that became the Explorers.
Managed by Pink Floyd guru Steve O'Rourke, the group were signed by Virgin
Records and produced a self-titled album released in 1985, with a second set
from a projected follow-up released on Phil's Expression label in 1988 as
'Manzanera and Mackay'. Andy, in demand as ever, played on records for the
Pet Shop Boys, Japanese musicians Masami Tsuchiya and Yukihiro Takahashi (and
later Japanese superstar Hotei), Italian singer Enrico Ruggieri and Duran
Duran spin-off Arcadia.
But soon, after writing and directing the music for Schuman's 'Video Stars'
play for the BBC, Mackay virtually gave up rock 'n' roll to become a
full-time theology student at King's College London on the three-year
bachelor of divinity course (moonlighting on two London dates of Bryan's
1988-89 tour). Graduating in 1991, he resumed composing full time with an
extensive interest in a broad range of spiritual and poetic themes.
Early in 1992, following the sudden death of his wife, Andy suspended most
musical activity to bring up his children, but resumed composing in a
computer / digital suite at home in early 1993 and completing the music for
two series of Carlton's 'Class Act'. More recently, his major musical
preoccupation has been a setting of 'Four Psalms' for a mixture of sampled
sounds and electronic, midi and audio instruments. And an instrumental album
provisionally called 'London, Paris, Rome', deconstructing Standards such as
'Three Coins In A Fountain'. In 1998 Andy was involved in a fascinating deja
vu re-creating early Roxy tracks with contemporary musicians such as Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
2004 saw the release of SAMAS Music for the senses an album of relaxation music comisioned by the Kenmare Hotel in Irelend.
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