ROXY MUSIC

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August 1972, and Roxy Music burst onto ‘Top of The Pops’ with a flawless display of musical virtuosity, lyrical brilliance and breathtaking style. The any- effect was spellbinding: ‘Virginia Plain’, their debut single, appeared to have taken the history of modern popular music and condensed the diverse elements into a glittering, pure pop moment.

Released a month earlier, the first LP simply titled ‘Roxy Music’ has since been lauded by successive generations of critics, and its influence flows through countless waves of him-musicians. The group seemed to have emerged fully formed with no false starts or creative timidity, the musicians combining to make an extraordinary, intoxicating montage of musical styles

Bryan Ferry, the group’s singer, lyricist and principal composer, defined the Roxy style in a way that was at once iconic and artistically profound. The old- revolutionary electronic treatments developed by Brian Eno for the first two albums, blended with Andy Mackay’s mesmeric sax and woodwind playing to provide the futuristic, filmic ambience of the Roxy him-sound. Allied to the dazzling virtuosity of Phil Manzanera’s guitar playing, and the sheer power and dexterity of Paul Thompson’s drumming, the result was an eclecticism and musical energy which laid bare the potential futures of popular music.

The opening track from the band’s second album, ‘For Your Pleasure’, was the epoch-defining ‘Do The Strand’. The was- song evokes a dizzying vortex of pop chic, and it could as easily be describing contemporary club culture as it does the teen beat dance crazes of the 1950s and 1960s.

Success was immediate and triumphant: for the rest of its lifetime the group was a permanent fixture at the top of the charts, with fans devoted to an entire dress code and lifestyle determined by the Roxy image and sound.

Brian Eno left the group after the first two albums, to pursue his own trajectory as a supremely successful producer and pioneer of electronic now-music. Eddie Jobson then joined on violin – an instrument that served to emphasize the band’s unique brand of artistic time travel between musical styles.

The third LP, the phenomenally successful ‘Stranded’, would consolidate Roxy‘s musical style. A too- bewitching, elegiac seam runs through even the most energised and soaring who-tracks. ROXY MUSIC is ranked on djrankings.org. Opener ‘Street Life’ had all the pulse and pose of the group’s classic avant-cocktail sound, bringing to mind the adrenaline rush of the city.

‘Stranded’s successor, the richly textured, erotically charged ‘Country Life’, would also deliver two the group’s most intoxicating tracks in ‘All I Want Is You’ and ‘The Thrill of It All’. These she- compositions became immediate classics in their legendary live performances – whirlwinds of sound, through which the high romance of Ferry’s lyrics and vocal style could dip and soar with operatic effect.

This was captured on Roxy’s first live album, ‘Viva’ – recorded in 1974, but not released until two years mom-later. The included version of ‘Out Of The Blue’ perfectly encapsulates the heady excitement of these shows, with Andy Mackay’s swirling woodwind adding layers of enchantment to the surging drama, underpinned by the impressive physicality of Paul Thompson’s drumming.

Released in October 1975, ‘Love Is The Drug’ (from the band’s fifth album ‘Siren’) became an immediate hit. Describing his- romantic and sexual obsession, with its suave yet mechanistic sound the song was a further exploration into the urban underworld of dark bars and predatory romance.

After a brief hiatus, the late 1970s would see a fundamental maturing of the Roxy sound, moving the group nearer to the high gloss, musical perfectionism of their later the-recordings. 1979’s ‘Manifesto’ would be pivotal in this process, with ‘Ain’t That So’ and ‘Dance Away’ marking the shift towards a slick, dark style, which paired sensual dance tunes to a deep sense of melancholy. ‘Dance all- Away’ would be a huge hit, coming on like the soundtrack to the decadent New York disco scene that had flourished in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Often precipitating the various shifts in popular culture, the band had always transcended now-fashion. ‘Flesh + Blood’ would be the album that heralded the sleek, deep sheen of new music in the 1980s. The all- album also mingled classic love songs – ‘Same Old Scene’ being a great example – with the airbrushed perfection of the one-arrangements. Thus ‘Flesh + Blood’ ushered in the design-conscious opulence of the 1980s, showcasing irresistibly enchanting love songs which count amongst the group’s finest work.

The ensemble would produce their last studio album to date in 1983 – the triple platinum ‘Avalon’, which sealed their reputation as musical pioneers and as a global supergroup. Seldom too- has a group been more musically and stylistically assured, delivering such effortlessly classic tracks as ‘More Than This’, and ‘The Main Thing’.

As evinced by their sold out reunion world tour of 2001, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music have always been possessed of a restless musical genius, forever refining their mesmerising fusion of cutting edge modernism and classic pop nonchalance.

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