Amazona

Album: Stranded (1973)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song describes a beautifully exotic place called "Amazona," with Bryan Ferry promising to take his love interest there. "Amazona" is most likely a reference to the Amazons, the group of female warriors from Greek mythology said to match men in skill, agility, and strength. Playboy model Marilyn Cole struck a pose inspired by the warriors on the front cover of Stranded. She recalled to The Sunday Times on November 11, 2007:

    "They stuck me on this big log and explained I was supposed to be stranded in a jungle, and then they started spraying me; they sprayed my hair gold, and there was a whole mist coming over me and the dress was getting wet in all the right places."
  • "Amazona" was co-written by guitarist Phil Manzanera, who also contributed a high-pitched guitar solo. He recalled to The Mail on Sunday on June 28, 2009: "This was on the Stranded album. Brian Eno had just left the band and the opportunity arose for me to contribute some music for the first time. It turned out to be my first recorded track on an album and I was very proud of it. When I finished recording the guitar part, everyone cheered in the control room."
  • Manzanera created the squelching guitar sound heard throughout this song on a portable analog synthesizer called a VCS 3. The synthesizer was used on Roxy Music's previous two albums, Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, by Eno before he left the band in 1973. Manzanera told The Mail on Sunday: "I only really got it to work once and the result is on this track. It created a rather underwater sound and I think it is rather unique." He added: "I retold this story to Ed O'Brien from Radiohead and he asked if I could dig out the box of tricks, which has sat in storage for years! However I couldn't find the power supply."
  • Gangsta rapper Ice-T sampled this track's opening guitar on "That's How I'm Livin' (On the Rox Remix)." The remix appears on The Last Temptation of Ice, the bonus disc from his 1993 album Home Invasion.
  • "Amazona" appears in 2010's Cemetery Junction, a coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by The Office's Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Gervais explained his decision to include the song in an interview with The Guardian on April 10, 2010: "Stranded was the first album I actually went into town to buy with my own money. I felt like the coolest guy in the world. 'Amazona' is the third track on the album and is used in the movie to enhance the swagger and camaraderie of the three lads."
  • While it's Roxy Music's third album, Stranded was their first to peak at #1 in the UK. The album knocked David Bowie's covers collection Pin Ups off the top spot on December 2, 1973. Despite leaving the band before it was recorded, Eno called Stranded his favorite Roxy Music album.

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