Song · Live covers
Ladytron
One of three Roxy Music songs Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood recorded for Velvet Goldmine.
1972
oboe, mellotron and a moon landing
Bryan Ferry wrote it for Roxy Music's debut. The opening noise is Brian Eno's, made on a VCS3 synthesiser after Ferry asked him for something that sounded like the lunar landing; over it come an oboe line close to the first movement of Prokofiev's third piano concerto, the Mellotron's famous three-violin tape, and a great deal more Eno processing. The words put Ferry somewhere between seducer and seduced, and the Ladytron herself may be a machine. The Times has called it one of the band's best-loved songs, and the electronic group Ladytron took their name from it.
1998
the venus in furs
In 1998 Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood played it beside Andy Mackay, Roxy Music's own saxophonist, in the Venus in Furs, the band put together for Todd Haynes's glam-rock film Velvet Goldmine. Yorke sang lead on it and on the band's two other Roxy covers, “2HB” and “Bitter-Sweet”.
the video
The Velvet Goldmine (soundtrack) recording.· Flexi23watch on youtube →
sources3
- Wikipedia, “Ladytron”, for the Roxy Music recording's instrumentation and reception.
- The Times, 24 July 2006.
- Niall Doherty, “That time Thom Yorke formed a glam rock band with members of Radiohead, Suede, Roxy Music and, umm, David Gray's drummer”, Louder, 11 July 2023, via this site's news story on the film, for the Venus in Furs.