The air of mystique that pervaded Roxy Music’s 1970s prime has, in recent years, been replenished by their absence from the live arena. It’s been more than a decade since the debonair art-rock contrarians last played in the UK, a span of time longer, incidentally, than the band’s entire eight-album recording history from 1972-1982. And so intrigue as much as expectation greets Roxy’s return for a 50th anniversary tour, with a line-up anchored around four core members from their imperial phase, including guitarist Phil Manzanera, drummer Paul Thompson and saxophonist and oboe player Andy Mackay. Still a vision of unreasonable chicness and good looks at 77, County Durham-born frontman Bryan Ferry glides onstage and on to his piano stool in a dark suit, white shirt unbuttoned and splayed to the chest. To borrow a lyric from Love Is the Drug: dim the lights, you can guess the rest.
A career-spanning set begins appositely with the opening track from Roxy Music’s self-titled 1972 debut album Re-Make/Re-Model – practically a manifesto to rip it up and start again with its rogue synth squiggles and squawking vocals. All glam, glitter and peacock feathers in the denim-clad age of bluesy hard rock, funky in the time of punk, soulful transatlantic smoothies by the time other British bands had caught up to their hitherto flouncing ways, Roxy’s originality and influence was something everyone from David Bowie to Kate Bush could agree upon. With his genius synth playing and mysterious sonic “treatments”, Brian Eno burnished his leftfield credentials as a founding member of the band before quitting in 1973, but Roxy’s reputation for invention well outlived the oblique strategist’s tenure.
