John O'Brien

John O'Brien is the webmaster of www.vivaroxymusic.com

Since 2004 John has worked as an archive consultant for Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music and has been involved on several official projects especially a project of an archive nature.  

The first project was to help with the booklet for the the Bryan Ferry + Roxy Music compilation:

'The Platinum Collection' released 7th June 2004.

"As I had in some cases 8 different sleeves for some singles (mainly the singles up to 1978 had different sleeves in different countries). I literaly got my kids to pick some and lay them all on the floor and seen how they all looked together.

As there were several options in my collection to choose for Virginia Plain, Pyjamarama, Do The Strand, Street Life, All I Want Is You, Love Is The Drug & Both Ends Burning I eliminated any that had already been used in The Thrill Of It All box set. I used the Japanese versions of Do The Strand & Both Ends Burning because of their rarity value and I think I paid a lot for them when I got them. I also used the Japanese version of Tokyo Joe simply because of the Japanese connection. As there never was a sleeve for Carrickfergus I scanned the record label so there was at least some sort of image for that track. I also supplied It's All Over Now Baby Blue but it wasn't used as it was the same as and adjacent to Goddess Of Love and there were no alternative sleeves to choose from so the CD label was used instead.

I spent hours digitally cleaning up the images removing where possible any speckles, creases, folds made by the single inside etc. One of the singles had a tear where a sticker had been and I had to rebuild one of the letters to make it look as new as possible (The second R in Ferry on Smoke Gets In Your Eyes)

Many of the track by track annotations were information I had given for each song as well as details taken directly from vivaroxymusic.com which were then rewritten to form the sleeve notes for the CD booklet.
"

"More Than This The Roxy Musc Story DVD"

I was commisioned to write a chronology for Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music's career. This was to include details of every release, tour, major TV appearance, major press etc. This document was used to help form the chronology of the DVD documentary and is used in many other projects too. The chronology in the main menu on this site is taken directly from this document.

The Best Of Bryan Ferry CD/DVD

"I was asked to put an input from a fans point of view on what tracks should be used on this album. The album was aimed at a particular market so it had to be mostly hit singles. My input was that where possible they should use the original 7" versions if they where different from the album version so that they could be released on CD for the first time. I also helped create a list of what Bryan Ferry solo songs had a promo video for or a TV performance that could be used to represent the songs. This list had more than the 25 eventually used but for various reasons not everything could be used."

I am currently working on other projects but these have no release date yet.

 


 

John O'Brien is credited on the following Roxy Music and Solo Albums