For me, this was nearly as eye-openingly revolutionary as ‘Like A rolling Stone’.
It seemed to come from the future or from another, more fun, anarchic, sexy place - there was absolutely nothing like this before Roxy appeared, fully formed. Whispering Bob Harris was famously withering in his ‘wtf’ intro on the Whistle Test. He really didn’t get it.
And ‘wtf’ is spot on. Disbelievers like Bob thought they were ‘arty and pretentious’, everyone else thought they were incendiary, pretty/weird, totally original and incredibly exciting.
The key is that the craziness was underpinned by a dynamite rhythm section - Paul Thompson‘s drumming is phenomenal.
The whole thing is like musical graffiti - art and individual expression on top of rock solid base.
I competely LOVE this, and think it blew a lot of minds when people bought the album on the strength of ’Virginia Plain’.