Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
A love letter to the lyrics of If There Is Something by Roxy Music
Dearest darlings,
A song with three acts: an incredibly gorgeous opus to love, youth and beauty.
Strap yourselves in: we are going for a musical ride with Roxy Music and their track “If There Is Something” from their first eponymously-titled album “Roxy Music”. You know, the one with the girl on.
Okay, they all had girls on the cover.
The track starts immediately with a honky-tonk country guitar and a western twangy sound, done with all the irony of a boy born in County Durham with an art school hair-flick and his mates having a bit of a laugh.
If there is something that I might find
Look around corners
Try to find peace of mind I say
Where would you go if you were me
Try to keep a straight course not easy
Immediately you imagine you’re in a spit and sawdust bar, probably holding a beer and eyeing up a cowboy. Well, I am. He’s seeking approval, validation even for his wayward behaviour, wanting someone to tell him he’s okay. But he doesn’t care, almost smirking at us and laughing out the final word “E-e-easy”, justifying himself to us. His words are weak: “might”, “try” which is repeated…he’s not really putting his back into this is he?
Somebody special looking at me
A certain reaction we find
What should it try to be I mean
If there are manyMeaning the same
Being specific just a game
Oh now — now we cut to the chase. He’s worried what she thinks. And he can’t tell if she likes him or not, or how he should behave. Bryan Ferry, hung up on a girl? So he does care — and this time urges “ Being specific” but then “just a game” which seem to contradict each other. He’s accusing her of playing a game, or is he admitting he is? To trick her into thinking that he doesn’t care either way? Ahah. No wonder he’s fake laughing the last line out. He’s scared.
The country ditty squawks its way out into the second part of the track, with a real change of pace and sentiment, sax and guitar screeching to a crescendo with the famous three violin track behind:
I would do anything for you
I would climb mountains
I would swim all the oceans blue
I would walk a thousand miles
Reveal my secrets
More than enough for me to share
I would put roses round our door
Sit in the garden
Growing potatoes by the score
His tone has completely changed, now there is no “try” and he’s “would” ing. On the final word of each line, he’s almost ululating his basest desires. Suddenly this is serious, he’s smitten and you can hear the desperation in his voice as all these promises come tumbling out. He’s practically offering to do a triathlon for her. Or, settle down with her in some country idyll with roses growing potatoes. Bryan Ferry “sit in the garden”? Surely he’s too cool? Even reads a bit desperate now — in “Love Island” speak this would give me “the ick”. We are in no doubt that he is almost driven mad by this, and exposes his vulnerability to“ reveal my secrets more than enough for me to share”. He wants her badly. So much so he’ll settle into domesticity — the ultimate surrender and commitment. And potatoes — the most mundane and simple of produce to focus on. I just hope he doesn’t eat too many himself.
We’re still reeling as the track winds on, slowing, whirling with that dirty sax as we catch our breath, the maelstrom ending with just the piano as a backing and join him much later along the line:
Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
Takes me right back (when you were young)
Throw your precious gifts into the air
Watch them fall down (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)
That first line is an absolute belter: a mix of joy and complete abandon. He’s practically screaming it to us. Desire and control, obsession and voyeurism. Like Scottie in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” who says to Madeleine/Judy in that famous transformation scene about her hair
“It should be back from your face and pinned at the neck, I told you that — I told YOU that”.
A man driven mad by his image of a woman just as he wants it. Is Bryan the same? The line is so visual and visceral — like the secretary who unpins her hair and removes her glasses. Don’t we all want to be told to “shake our hair”, not pin it back.*
I toyed with the idea of leaving no comment about “precious gifts” — Urban dictionary tells me it means “virginity” which could explain it.
The final verse becomes almost like a hymn to her, an adoration:
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The hills were higher (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The trees were taller (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The grass was greener (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)
He’s in control finally, giving her instructions. He wants to relive his youth, their youth, when everything was easier. Hills, trees, grass — a visual, natural yearning for the youth/green when things were simpler. Make her dance for him, like they used to. This is repeated to fade and his voices breaks with passion and delight. “Lift up” becoming just one word, one cried exaltation at the end. This verse is the final act in his love opera.
Beautiful. I’m exhausted and exhilarated — just how you’re meant to feel. Like you’ve fallen in love. Or just had an orgasm.
I first came across the track in the questionable movie “ Flashbacks of a Fool” starring Daniel Craig and Felicity Jones where it forms part of the plot. It is a GLORIOUS segment in which the roles are reversed: “Think Roxy Girl — I’m gonna be Bryan!” exclaims Ruth (played by Felicity Jones). She’s cooler, wearing the satin suit, he’s the nervy dweeb in a jacket with eyeshadow and she teaches him to stiffly dance to the track. It’s like a music video — and indeed the director Baillie Walsh is a former music video director. Aha! We fall in love with Felicity just as Bryan fell in love with his muse in the song — again the voyeur, the nostalgia, the gorgeousness of the set and her beauty draws us in.
I was lucky enough to see Roxy Music perform back in 2011 at the O2. It was a corporate box with a set of clients so strictly a work do. I had no idea if they’d perform this track, as their back catalogue includes so many more crowd-pleasers and, the hits “Avalon”, “Let’s Stick Together” “Virginia Plain”. This was never released as a single, just an album track.
But they did. And I was shaking my hair just like Felicity, and the girl in the song, lost in the moment, the joy of the track. It really does get you.
My boss at the time chose that exact time to ask me to go and get one of the client’s coats as they wanted to leave.
I went obediently back to the mundanity of a job, missed most of the track played live and snapped out of the fantasy.
Hold on, was the whole track indeed a fantasy — is it just a song about the idea of being in love? Oh god, I’m going to have to listen AGAIN!
And I can’t help thinking about the title itself, it’s so odd — like an unfinished sentence. The killer word is “If”, the one we always ask ourselves in matters of the heart.
I hope I’ve made you fall in love with the track too. It’s one of those that you could play forever, it never gets old. Go, on shake your hair.
Love,
Claire
p.s. David Bowie covered it with his spin-off band“Tin Machine” which gives the track a hard-rock makeover and is worth watching just for DB’s resplendent blouse.
p.p.s. It is also very much worth listening to the Peel Session performance where our Bry really does laugh out those lyrics
p.p.p.s It is very hard to find footage of Roxy playing this track, so if you uncover anything please do comment and link me up.
*someone once did tell me to. It was amazing.
If you liked this, you might also like this love letter to the lyrics of I Want Your Love by Chic, Hung Up by Madonna, and After The Disco by Broken Bells
