Roxy Music
Live

In 2001 Bryan Ferry was still in great form. Not that now, in 2022, he isn’t anymore… but at 80, it really becomes difficult to portray the figure of a dandy rock star. To be honest, he still manages it very well. It must be his immutable elegance or because his style is "non-dimming". In all honesty, the man would seem elegant even wearing the yellow and blue uniform of Ikea, and his appeal is indisputable. But the real reason why Bryan Ferry will never grow old, as we will all reluctantly have to do, is because he is already part of the myth. Deep down, we ourselves wished that time had stopped at those splendid seventies films, where we saw him jet-black-haired and leopard-printed, alongside that alien, full of rhinestones and sequins, who didn’t yet know he was the great Brian Eno. And then Bryan Ferry, exactly like Marlon Brando, "he is always him". In 2001 Bryan is almost 60 years old, but he doesn’t look it. He presents himself so calm, cool, and so damnably suave and detached that he seems like the protagonist of a new episode of James Bond. What’s most infuriating is that he seems only grazed by the torments and stresses of a life spent on stages around half the world and, god knows, in hotel rooms at night with who knows which stunning women attached there beneath.

I was saying about 2001, though, an important year, because Bryan realizes one of his (and our) dreams kept in the drawer, namely the "definitive" tour of the Roxy Music, reformed for the occasion. And don't think it was a "reunion" motivated, as too often happens, only by blatantly commercial reasons, not only at least. Legend has it that this tour was the result of one of those flights that make you s*** your pants. On that turbulent and desperate flight, by sheer chance, was Bryan Ferry, who was vainly crossing his fingers under his butt and praying all the Christs in his paradise, so as not to crash. It seems our man really thought the plane was falling and that he would never be able to recount it even in a song. And when that horrible thought had passed through his head, like a toupee at Cesare Ragazzi, he realized that what he truly desired was just to have back the band that had made him famous, the Roxy Music. I don't know if this story is a ‘panzanella’, but it sure intrigues more than the story about the money. The fact is that Bryan, getting off the plane and changing his underpants, calls together his comrades Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera, and Paul Thompson, all rich and well-off as each one of us would like to be at least for a weekend. The proposal is simple. Reform the band and (re)interpret the Roxy Music songs as had never been done before! Not in the brief days of the histrionic and uncontrollable Eno (who kindly refuses the offer) and not even in the years of the androgynous disciple, Eddie Jobson, an extraordinary musician whom we lost track of and who doesn’t manifest himself in this case either. In the DVD documentary that accompanied the release of the splendid triple album, simply titled "Live" and issued in a rather limited edition in 2003, everything is explained quite well. And we want to believe it.

The twenty songs presented were and are a real gift for the fans (indeed, the fans were consulted for input on the setlist of the 2001 tour) and trace a well-balanced synopsis of the entire career of Roxy Music. As you flip through their precious catalog and listen to the songs, you see the progression of a sound that has become a reference for a million bands. Thinking about the "long journey" from "Re-make/Re-model" to "Avalon", we can’t believe that only a decade actually passed between the two versions of Roxy. The gap seems astronomical, much more than in the chronology of dates. In their period of greatest splendor, the 70s, Roxy Music were surely at the forefront of glam, new wave, even bordering on punk. Then as years went by, they softened a lot becoming a more traditional rock group, almost of pure entertainment. The band surely had two souls. The youthful, unrestrained, experimental, and courageous one. The mature, more aware and less exciting but always classy one. In "Live" we find them both, in a full immersion of impeccable performances, some of which ooze finality. For the ecstatic audience, it’s a very entertaining and at times fabulous concert experience. Everyone, from the four original Roxy, to the musicians hired for the tour, like Colin Good on piano or the "Roxy ad honorem" Chris Spedding on guitar appear in good shape. Not to mention the adorable and extraordinary Julia Thornton on percussion and additional keyboards, Sarah Brown and Yanick Etienne on backing vocals, and also the four splendid dancers who outperform our showgirls from Striscia. In short, the stage is full of beauty, a topic to which Bryan has always been particularly sensitive and all, as I was saying, provide impeccable performances. Oh sorry, I was guiltily going to hide from you the stratospheric violinist/multi-instrumentalist Lucy Wilkins, of whom I am very jealous and still madly in love.

The songs on the album are those that made history. In these "live" performances they are flawlessly reproduced, which is no small feat, considering the diversity of styles the band went through. In any case, all are performed with true passion and a sort of newfound camaraderie among the main players on stage. I would like to make some special mentions. A "Street Life" never so well executed, with unexpected grit, a fluid "Out of the Blue" by Manzanera with an epic ending, a surprising "Oh Yeah!", which fits in perfectly among classics of decisively superior stature. And then guys, a literally stratospheric "Both Ends Burning." In my opinion, this is their most spectacular piece ever, with the overwhelming guitars, the overflowing sax of the author Andy McKay and the vocalists on fire "till the end." A masterpiece! Bryan Ferry is still "Mr Style" in every interpretation, even though he struggles a bit with his voice and the girls often help him with the high notes. I really like the instrumental "Tara" which introduces a magnificent "Mother of Pearl" and even "Avalon" has the same hypnotic sweetness as always. The final sequence is a triumph but beneath the enormous thickness of the group’s most famous pieces we find age’s cracks. Thus "Editions of you" wobbles and doesn’t have the brilliance it once had and if "Virginia Plain" seems like it can compete with ghosts, "Do the Strand" ends up showing the limit of Roxy Music’s long journey beyond the precarious boundary of glamour.

Elegance has always been a controversial idea in rock. The claim of "classy" music, dedicated to overcoming society's very divisions has always seemed a paradox but, for the band, also a source of inspiration. This true musical testament does not contradict Roxy Music. Their sound again confronts its claim to transcend barriers, once again defying the shared notions of sophistication. The music cuts deep, swiftly shifting from chaotic to cold, while remaining rooted in the well-known juxtapositions that have always represented the band’s stylistic hallmark. It’s music we find here reassuring, like an ancient shelter. Maybe it has lost along the way its provocative variety but it refuses to surrender resignedly to nostalgia and repertoire. And this is the strength of this album, three vinyls full of suggestions and memories that should not be missing in any collection that wants to call itself such. Now and forever, “Long live Roxy Music!”.