Roxy Music with Brian Ferry

It’s hard to imagine now, seeing the ‘mature’ gentleman blowing on a saxophone in front of me, but It’s fair to say that Roxy Music are one of  the key influences  in modern Pop music history.  Glam, Punk and New Wave all bear hallmarks of the band’s influence from the days when Brian Eno might appear with a pink feather boa draped over his shoulders.  Part Band, part Media Package, Roxy Music encompassed Music, Modern Art and fashion.

Fast forward to 2010.  Brian Eno is long gone, and truthfully it’s hard to be fashion gurus when you are (Ferry), or nearly are (Mackay),  eligible for a pensioners bus pass.  Smart evening jackets and ties are order of the day now.  The Modern Art influence is  still evident though in the use of a giant screen backstage that mixes live video with pre-recorded material.  I especially liked the grainy black & white close ups and the ‘memory lane’ moments featuring iconic RM album cover art from the days when vast resources were spent on getting Amanda Lear or Jerry Hall to pose provocatively wearing not much more than lip gloss (and what WERE all those women with spears on the cover of ‘Flesh & Blood’ doing anyway?)

So much for the Fashion and the Art. Where the Music is concerned Roxy Music certainly deliver quality Pop in spadefuls. Alongside the band nucleus of Ferry, Andy Mackay on Sax/clarinet and Phil Manzanera on guitar there are some very impressive sounds from the ‘lesser known’ band members. Andy Newmark is replacing Roxy drummer Paul Thompson very ably on drums but it’s two younger musicians who catch my ears: Anna Phoebe  looked good from my camera lens and proved to be a bit special on electric violin when it came to the close-out for Andy Mackay’s instrumental ‘Tara’, delivering flourishing runs on her violin that matched the virtuoso clarinet performance from Mackay himself. Even more memorable for me was the guitar solo delivered by Olli Thompson at the end of ‘My only love’. At just 23 he’s certainly one to watch for the future.

Crowning it all of course though was ‘The Voice’. Like the very best vocalists, he doesn’t sound like anyone else. You hear Rod Stewart, or Billie Holiday and you KNOW who it is. That’s how it is with Brian Ferry. An early favourite was ‘More than this’ but as the evening warmed up, so did Ferry’s voice. It hit top form with a blistering ‘Both Ends Burning’ and sailed majestically through ‘Virginia Plain’ and ‘Love is the Drug’ – the giant screens showing a grainy black and white video close up of Ferry had the perfect air of emotional desolation.   Despite, or  perhaps even because of his years, Ferry is still visually the epitome of sophistication.  He still seems like the lovechild of a biologically impossible meeting between James Dean and Noel Coward.  Wherever you look at his face you end up drawn magnetically to those  powder blue eyes.

For those unlucky enough too be too far back in the large crowd to see those eyes there was still lots to enjoy though.  Speed driven Roxy favourites like ‘Do the Strand’ and ‘Stick Together’ were marvellous, but had the not so marvellous side effect of propelling the show forward at a dramatic pace until it was almost over before we knew it.  After belting through the tail end of their set the brakes were applied to stunning effect and it was refreshing that after such a varied musical journey with clarinets, saxophones and electric violins the Roxy Music ‘train’ should finally come literally whistling into the station with  Brian Ferry’s closing notes to Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’

Fans being what they are, the post gig debates that I heard revolved around the set coming out at under the allotted 90 minutes. Someone (with an air of German exactness) announced it at ’82 minutes’ which makes me wonder if some people come here with stop watches.

All I know is that this band were good enough to have ‘padded out’ the show with long solos if they’d wanted to. Instead we got a finely polished stage show proving that behind all that 70′s and 80′s marketing hype, and those blatantly sexist record covers Ferry and Mackay actually produced some timeless music that stands up on it’s own more than thirty years later.

As I walked home afterwards I couldn’t help but whistle ‘Jealous Guy’ to the heavens above.  Was that just a star, or was it John Lennon winking back in satisfaction from behind the Post Tower?

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