Frontman Bryan Ferry has hailed "Avalon," from Roxy Music's eighth and final album of the same name, as a "swan song." The ballad takes place at the end of a sophisticated soirée, with Ferry singing to the object of his affection from across the room:
Now the party's over
I'm so tired
Then I see you coming
Out of nowhere
The lyrics are suggestive of Ferry's personal life at the time. After more than a decade in Roxy Music, he soon broke up the band to settle into a more domestic life with his soon-to-be-wife, Lucy Helmore.
Avalon is the mythical island of Arthurian legend where King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, was forged. It is also his final resting place after he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Camlann.
"Avalon is part of the King Arthur legend and is a very romantic thing, when King Arthur dies, the Queens ferry him off to Avalon, which is sort of an enchanted island," Ferry explained to NME on June 19, 1982. "It's the ultimate romantic fantasy place."
That's Lucy Helmore on the Avalon album cover. Photographed on a lake by her family home in Ireland, where Ferry wrote much of Avalon, it depicts her wearing a medieval helmet with a falcon perched on her gloved hand, evoking King Arthur's last journey to the mysterious land of Avalon. Helmore, a model and socialite, was married to Ferry from 1982 until 2003; they had four children together: Otis, Isaac, Tara, and Merlin. She remarried in 2006 to Robin Birley, the son of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and died on July 23, 2018 aged 58.
This song features the Haitian singer Yanick Étienne, who later contributed backing vocals on Ferry's 1985 solo album
Boys and Girls.
Ferry invited her to perform on the spur of the moment after overhearing her singing at Power Station, the recording studio in New York City where Roxy Music was putting the finishing touches to
Avalon. He told
The Mail on Sunday on June 28, 2009: "I asked her to come and sing on our record, which she did in one take - and a piece of recording history was made."
Roxy Music worked on "Avalon" at Compass Point, the recording studio in the Bahamas where AC/DC famously made their best-selling album, 1980's Back in Black. Ferry said the location helped to bring out the tropical feel of the song, with saxophonist Andy Mackay adding to The Mail on Sunday: "I always remember that Nassau in the Bahamas, where we finished recording the Avalon album, was surprisingly cold and windy beneath the palm trees. This seemed to suit the melancholy, which for me pervades our last studio album."
The video for "Avalon" was directed by Ridley Scott, the British filmmaker behind cinematic masterpieces such as Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). It stars Ferry and Sophie Ward, plus a cameo from the falcon pictured on the front of the album cover, and was shot at Mentmore Towers. Built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in Buckinghamshire, the country house also served as the filming location for the 1999 Stanley Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut.
In 1985, Ferry and Scott worked together again on the adventure film Legend, starring Tom Cruise, with Ferry writing "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" for the end credits. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd played guitar on that song.
Roxy Music played "Avalon" live on the
June 17, 1982 episode of Top of the Pops. The lineup included a masked Martha Ladly of Roxy Music support band Martha and the Muffins on backing vocals and The Cure founding member Michael Dempsey on bass.
On March 29, 2019, Roxy Music performed this song as part of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band was inducted into the museum by Duran Duran members Simon Le Bon and John Taylor. Duran Duran has long been open about their love for Roxy Music, with Taylor alluding to this during his speech: "I am always proud to say that without Roxy Music there would be no Duran Duran. Along the way, in the early 80s, we were inadvertently able to introduce Roxy's music to our young American audience when radio stations like WLIR started to play both bands back to back."
"Avalon" features in several films, including 2005's
The Business, 2013's
Felony, and 2017's
Fun Mom Dinner, starring Toni Collette. Two years later, Collette would have another cinematic encounter with Roxy Music, with the Australian actress dancing to "
More Than This" in the 2019 movie
Knives Out.
This song can be heard on the fictional radio station Emotion 98.3 in the 2006 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. "More Than This" was also included on the same radio station in the 2002 prequel Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Emotion 98.3 is hosted by the recurring disc jockey Fernando Martinez, with the radio station bringing "make-up and make-out music to all of Vice City's lovers."
The UK dance act M People covered "Avalon" on their 1997 album Fresco.
Another off-kilter version showed up in 2010 when the Norwegian producer duo Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas released an official remix of the song in the style of their signature "space disco" genre.
"Avalon" was the second single from the album, following "More Than This." The single edit, which features additional vocals from Étienne on the middle eight, peaked at #13 in the UK. It spent six weeks on the chart and was Roxy Music's final song to enter the Top 20.
Avalon is Roxy Music's best-selling album. Released on May 28, 1982, it went straight to #1 in the UK and remained on the albums chart for an impressive 57 weeks. While it only reached #53 in the US,
Avalon proved to be a sleeper hit in America, earning Platinum status over a decade after it came out on December 2, 1992.
In an interview with
The Guardian on April 28, 2022, Ferry listed
Avalon as one of his favorite albums by Roxy Music, describing it as "very different, a real mood album, very atmospheric."
