Roxy Music Celebrates 50 Years of Romanticism and Art-Rock on Reunion Tour: Concert Review
variety.comA.D. Amorosi 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.
It is this mix of the urbane, the soigné, the soulful and the strange that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees are currently celebrating on their 50th anniversary tour.
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