On 12 September 2022, Jill and I took the train in, went upstairs to Madison Square Garden, and were transported back decades as we watched the third date of Roxy Music’s 50th Anniversary Tour. It was fantastic. Bottom line: Paul Thompson, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera can still play as well as ever, and while Bryan Ferry has lost a lot of his vocal range he hasn’t lost any of his charisma or smooth, louche appeal.
(Brian Eno, in the original lineup for the first two albums, did not rejoin them, which surprises no one. There was only enough room in the band for one visionary, so Eno went off to pursue his own version of genius.)
But I’m forgetting the reader here, perhaps, since this is a band that may have changed the rock landscape but was only active for about a decade, and most people who read this may not have any idea who they are, or were. In a recent article in Variety, A.D. Amorosi does a good job summarizing those early years:
“Just over 50 years ago, on the same day, June 16, 1972, two albums were released that changed the landscape of rock and its sartorial splendor: Roxy Music’s eponymously titled debut and David Bowie’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.’ While each album was conveniently tagged as part of the start of glam-rock and its slow movement from Britain to the U.S., ‘Roxy Music’ was something that ‘Ziggy Stardust’ was not, despite the latter’s grandeur: downright weird.
“Dressed in a mix of ’50s greaser leather, silver spacesuits and more feathers than a revival of ‘La Cage aux Folles,’ warbling crooner Bryan Ferry, saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay, psychedelic guitarist Phil Manzanera, tom-tom heavy drummer Paul Thompson and slippery synthesizer player Brian Eno made a driving, sinister, suave brand of noisy avant-rock and Dadaist lyric-filled music like no other. And though Roxy Music has moved on to a more refined, ambient sound by the time of the group’s last studio album, 1982’s ‘Avalon,’ Ferry and company never totally lost their oddball tonality.”
Fifty years ago Ferry would wear a tuxedo on stage while the rest of the band looked like glam hippies, but today the clothing is a little more aligned.
What hasn’t changed is the extraordinary melding of romanticism, driving rock (Thompson can really lean into the four/four), surreal-yet-sexy lyrics, and art world iconoclasm.
“Lots of musicians went to art school, especially the Brits, but few have ever translated the ideas of fine art into rock music as adroitly as Ferry,” writes Rob Tannenbaum in GQ. “He studied under Richard Hamilton, a Pop Art painter and champion, and that expansive sensibility distinguished Roxy from other bands: Ferry had a non-hierarchical perspective in which Bob Dylan and the Shirelles were equals, he embraced camp, and he revered the possibilities of good design. The Roxy album covers, overseen by Ferry, were erotic, glamorous, and unsettling.
“Ferry fashioned a new type of character: a Euro Sinatra, shrouded in ennui and Gitane smoke, wearing a midnight-blue velvet jacket, weighed down by a soiled romanticism that’s become common lately, thanks to Drake and the Weeknd, who cites Roxy, especially Avalon, as an influence on ‘Blinding Lights,’ his blockbuster 2019 hit.”
I could have done with a couple fewer tracks from ‘Avalon’ and substituted ‘Virginia Plain’ and ‘Mother of Pearl.’ But it was a great evening. Their set list for Madison Square Garden, 12 Sept. 2022 (thanks to Setlist.fm):
- Re-Make/Re-Model
- Out of the Blue
- The Bogus Man
- Ladytron
- While My Heart Is Still Beating
- Oh Yeah
- If There Is Something
- In Every Dream Home a Heartache
- Tara
(Tribute to Queen Elizabeth) - To Turn You On
- The Main Thing
- Dance Away
- Same Old Scene
- My Only Love
- More Than This
- Avalon
(followed by band introduction) - Love Is the Drug
- Editions of You
- Do the Strand
- Jealous Guy
