Roxy Music blur past and present at the O2 Arena, London — review

It is 50 years since Roxy Music released their self-titled debut, “an extraordinary album, from an extraordinary group”, as the New Musical Express raved at the time. It was an impeccably staged collision of glam pop, juke-joint R&B, doo-wop and electronic music, topped by the seductive oddity of Bryan Ferry’s quavering croon. Amid stylised photos of the band with rockabilly quiffs and leopard-print shirts, the album’s liner notes asked: “What’s the date again? . . . 1962? or twenty years on?”

They are still a name to conjure with a half-century later, one of the key British bands of the 1970s. Their O2 Arena show ended a short run of reunion dates marking their debut’s anniversary. Ferry wore a handsomely tailored dark suit, open-necked white shirt and the genial air of a debonair host. “We’re pretty old now,” he said with a smile, before playing “If There Is Something” from the 1972 album, a young man’s archly ardent ode to a young woman. The 77-year-old singer did not try to muster the mannered display of feeling that he once brought to the role.

He was joined by guitarist Phil Manzanera, saxophonist Andy Mackay and drummer Paul Thompson from Roxy Music’s 1972 line-up. The original band’s chief technologist, Brian Eno, was absent. His madcap synthesiser parts were played by one of six accompanying musicians, including an extra drummer and guitarist. Three backing singers bolstered Ferry’s vocals. He either sat at an electric piano or stood at the microphone stand, one hand holding it, the other gracefully tracing arabesques in the air. 

The set ranged across the band’s recording career, which ended in 1982 with Avalon, their most commercially successful album. By then they had smoothed themselves into a gleaming new romantic lodestar, all feathery guitar and luxuriant balladry. Tracks from this sophisticated phase dominated the middle section of the show, sung by Ferry in a soft, calming fashion. His voice no longer trembles and quivers as it used to. Without its intriguing hint of instability, songs such as “To Turn You On” drifted through the arena in a handsomely sedate fashion. Elegant ennui — but ennui nonetheless.

Older numbers came across better; Manzanera and Mackay were more prominent in them. The guitarist, with an array of effects pedals at his feet, added echoing shards of sound to the needling beat of “The Bogus Man” as Salvador Dalí’s surrealist dream sequence from the Hitchcock film Spellbound showed on backing screens. Mackay’s wailing sax added a powerful undertow, a strange force looming behind Ferry’s vocals. The pair united magnificently again on “Ladytron”, with Manzanera making masterful use of guitar distortion while Mackay added baroque decoration on oboe.

“There’s a new sensation,” Ferry cried as the evening drew to a close with “Do the Strand”, a squealing, honking, pell-mell affair during which archive photos of the band flashed on to the screen. Then and now were blurred together, a final act of time travel from pop’s great retro-futurists, possibly making their last live appearance. A frisson of past glory ran through the venue. What’s the date again?

★★★☆☆

roxymusic.co.uk