Roxy Music – "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" (1973)

Inflatable doll

My role is to serve you

Immortal and life-sized

My breath is inside you 

[NOTE: It’s about time that there’s a Roxy Music record in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” is perhaps the most outré of all Roxy tracks – which is really saying something.  The following was originally published on February 18, 2020.]

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Take a look at the following list of recording artists and tell me what they all had in common:

David Bowie, Chic, Kraftwerk, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magazine, Devo, Talking Heads, Spandau Ballet, Human League, Ultravox, Duran Duran, Morrissey, U2, Nirvana, Garbage, Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, Franz Ferdinand, and . . . Bill Murray?

According to Tim de Lisle of the influential British newspaper The Guardian (formerly the Manchester Guardian), all of those artists were either fans of Roxy Music, influenced by Roxy Music’s records, or both.

Roxy Music

“The most influential of all British groups is clearly the Beatles,” de Lisle wrote in 2005.  “Who comes second is more debatable: the Stones, the Who, the [Sex] Pistols, the Clash . . . but have any of them had wider repercussions than Roxy?”

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A couple of the names on the list above deserve further comment.

Let’s start with Devo and the Talking Heads – two of the most interesting American bands of the seventies and eighties.  Both were devotees of Brian Eno, the musical genius who was one of the founding members of Roxy Music but who left the group after the release of its second album to pursue a solo career and to produce records for others (including Devo and the Talking Heads). 

U2 also collaborated with Eno and Chris Thomas (who produced some of the early Roxy albums).  When they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, U2 drummer Larry Mullen said in his acceptance speech that “The Sex Pistols, Television, Roxy Music, Patti Smith – these people are in our rock and roll hall of fame.”  (Three out of four ain’t bad.)

Garbage drummer Bruce Vig – who produced Nirvana’s Nevermind album – was a huge Roxy fan.  “I was president of the Roxy Music fan club at the University of Wisconsin,” Vig told de Lisle.  “We used to hold ‘Roxythons’ once a month where we would play their albums non-stop.”  How many people turned up for those events?  “Seven or eight,” Vig said.  “A small but loyal following.”

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What is Bill Murray’s connection to Roxy Music?

Do you remember the scene in the movie Lost in Translation where Murray goes to a karaoke bar with Scarlett Johansson?  The original plan was to have him sing Elvis Costello’s “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding.”

Murray and Johansson

But when Murray and director Sofia Coppola realized that they both loved Roxy’s music, they decided to have Murray sing “More Than This,” which was released in 1982 on Roxy’s eighth and final studio album, Avalon.

Click here to watch the Lost in Translation scene of Johansson and Murray singing karaoke.  (She sings a song by the Pretenders – another underrated group.)

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“Love Is the Drug” was Roxy’s only top-40 hit single in the U.S.  While Avalon went platinum here, it took 10 years.

But while the rest of you boobs underrated them, I didn’t.  I bought their first five albums while I was in law school, and played them loudly and incessantly (to the dismay of some of my dormitory neighbors).

“Liking them was an act of rebellion,” according to Tim de Lisle.  Rebel’s my middle name, boys and girls – no surprise that I was a big Roxy fan.   

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Bruce Vig's University of Wisconsin band used to cover today’s featured song, “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” which was released on Roxy’s 1973 album, For Your Pleasure:

“It’s guaranteed to freak out an audience when you’re playing a midwestern bar,” Vig said.  Given the subject matter of the song’s lyrics, that’s a fact, Jack! 

In Genesis, God formed man out of dust and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

In the lyrics of today’s featured song, the singer orders a life-sized inflatable sex doll and creates the perfect companion by blowing her up.  “My breath is inside you,” he sings.

Click here to watch a mesmerizing live performance of “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” on British TV. 

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.