Just a thought, but if Virginia Plain hadn't have been released or available as the first single, is there a track on the first album which may have been a successful single? Not necessarily a track we love but one which would have charted in1972. I'm not so sure, but of all of them I think Would You Believe? might have had the best chance.

Cher Bill,

Vous avez pose la question la plus intéressante!

Sometimes people respond to this type of question with the benefit of hindsight, the benefit of hundreds if not thousands of listens, and also by today's standards imposed on a historical situation.

Strip all of that away and trying to remember the UK scene is it was in '72 - the important thing for a quality band was to sell albums and the single was really the vehicle to do that.

The single charts for the most part was populated by a complete load of nonsense - Donny Osmond and the like - and to some extent, correlation between big selling albums and singles was starting to be lost.

Big selling LP's of that year included albums like The Stones' 'Exile On Main Street', T.Rex's 'Electric Warrior' and Neil Young's 'Harvest'.

That said, singles were important for a new band wanting to generate radio play and to get on 'Top Of The Pops'. They were also very important for the club scene were you really did need "a danceable solution to teenage revolution" and it was within this context that there was a bit of a problem.

As a thoroughly debauched dilettante who happily devoted himself to the north-east club scene, W2 rotated, pendant la semaine, between Annabel's, The Top Deck and Kirk Levington (it was the only way to live) and everybody was loving the album but nobody was playing it in the clubs.

Maybe, just maybe, 'Re-make/Re-model' could have done it but W2 doubts it and, it wasn't until 'Virginia Plain' came along a few weeks after the album, that those hedonistic - now aged - Roxologists hit the dance floor on our hero's behalf for the first time and absolutely fabulous it was too!

On reflection, there wasn't really a single on 'Roxy Music' and this made 'Virginia Plain' the most important release of all time and the only single that W2 bought in '72 and one of the last he can ever remember buying. Before and after that, it was LPs, LPs and LPs!

Salutations,
W2

Though I love Roxy's retro rock songs 'Would You Believe' and 'Grey Lagoons', WYB as a single might have led the listeners into the wrong direction, classifying Roxy Music as some kind of Sha Na Na twin. I'd rather propose 'Ladytron' with a shortened intro (but where is 'Roxy Music Deluxe' with the prolonged version ???). And 'Re-make/Re-model', cher Monsieur Windswept, could have been to crazy for Roxy rookies .

Bryan would dread the idea of RM as a fifties revival band. Sha Na Na was at Woodstock, of all things. But who would I be if I wasn`t a bit heretical? "Would You Believe?" has great charm, but very atypical for the Roxy that was to come.

Wasn't the whole point that BF wanted to keep albums and 45s quite distinct from each other? He'd probably have been horrified if Island had suggested putting ANY of the album tracks out as a single!

Cher Monsieur Smudge,

W2 is not too sure about that one.

The only commercial successful band that had completely ignored the singles market up to that point was 'Zeppelin'. Roxy would have been extremely brave to go that route.

Peut-etre, it was just their judgement that there wasn't one and maybe they were correct. They released singles from every album that followed. But one things for sure, although VP wasn't even on Roxy Music, the single completely revitalised an album that was starting to slide and it got them their TOP performance and took them to a whole wider audience.

W2 can't think of any other single that powered an album that it wasn't even on and which totally made the band. Hence his claim that it was probably the most important 45 rpm of all time.

Salutations,
W2

Perhaps the only one of the tracks on RM which would have worked as a single is Re-make/Re-model?

Also WS2, there were no singles released in the UK from FYP either.

Below is a chart from an issue of Music Scene from December 1972 which is interesting to compare with the other artists also around in that period.

The only commercial successful band that had completely ignored the singles market up to that point was 'Zeppelin'. Roxy would have been extremely brave to go that route.

Perhaps I should have made my point more clearly; by keeping singles and albums distinct from each other, I meant that the former would not also appear as part of the latter (a trait continued, as Roxy states, when Pyjamarama was not part of FYP).

I didn't mean to infer that the singles market would be shunned altogether, merely that I think BF wanted those early albums to sell on their own merits, rather than have a hit single as their commercial focus.

Phew, I have 12 of these albums in this chart! The only one I've bought about 8 times is RM first opus.

Roxologists are ageless
Just like Our Hero