Flesh and Blood

Flesh and Blood was released on 23 May 1980 on E.G. It went to number one in the UK for a week in June and returned to the top for another three weeks in August, and it reached number 35 in the US. It was the first Roxy Music album without the drummer Paul Thompson, which left a core trio of Ferry, Mackay and Manzanera with session players. Over You reached number 5 in the UK, Oh Yeah also reached number 5, and Same Old Scene reached number 12. The album includes covers of the Byrds' Eight Miles High and Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour.

It was engineered at Basing Street and Gallery Studio, mixed by Bob Clearmountain at the Power Station and mastered by Bob Ludwig. The cover was conceived by Ferry and Antony Price, with typography by Peter Saville and photography by Neil Kirk. Dates on the 1980 and 1981 tour were cancelled when Ferry had a kidney infection, and the band added Jealous Guy to the set after John Lennon was murdered. That tribute inspired the recording of the single.

Reviews were mixed. Ken Tucker panned it in Rolling Stone, while Greil Marcus called it pure romance. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing wrote that on parts of this album the band stop sounding tired and start sounding bored, but that Dance Away, Oh Yeah and More Than This deserve their thrones in AOR Valhalla.