New York: Reunited Roxy Music Is Ferry Good - Tue 24th Jul
New York: Reunited Roxy Music Is Ferry Good
24 July 2001
From the New York Post By DAN AQUILANTE
July 25, 2001 -- LIKE Roxy Music's for-your-pleasure album covers of the '70s, which picture beautiful women dressed to thrill, the reunited legends of English art-rock flashed debonair, decadent sexiness at Madison Square Garden's Theater Monday.
That dashing flash is a pretty good trick, considering the band has been in mothballs since its post-"Avalon" tour in '83.
Bryan Ferry, the bleak-voiced, world-weary but nonetheless charming lounge singer with lusty intensity, was in full command of this performance.
Roxy's main man was obviously delighted to be making Roxy music again with his mates, guitarist Phil Manzanera and reed player Andy Mackay.
Keyboard wizard Brian Eno elected not to take part in this reunion tour, so the band fattened its sound with a half-dozen side musicians, a couple of backup singers and a quartet of showgirls whose role was to titillate - just like those old album covers.
The just-under two hours of music was hardly a perfect show - things waned mid-concert. But the band got a second wind with a storm of greatest hits late in the show. But, in a way this retrospective performance mirrored Roxy's roller-coaster career.
At the Theater show, Roxy Music's set list was divided fairly evenly between kitsch (which the B-52's snatched as the foundation of their act), bombastic Bowie-esque glam and riff-driven uptempo rockers. None of this sounded experimental in concert Monday, but back when punk was emerging and leftover psychedelic bands still roamed London, Roxy was unlike anything else in the record racks.
If you were to have asked a dozen fans exiting the concert what the show's "moment" was, more than likely they'd tell you it was Roxy's cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." It was terrific, as Ferry cemented his credibility with the audience by delivering a version filled with rubbed-raw emotion that brought him near tears.
His unabashed showmanship on this all-apology song unglued the very sedate audience from their seats and had them singing the number's simple backup vocals. His smart, whistled finale to "Jealous Guy" was as memorable as Otis Redding's goosebump-raising conclusion to "Dock of the Bay."
Ferry and company also excelled on the blue-eyed funk of "Love Is the Drug," one of Roxy's best-known, best-loved songs. "Avalon" (the title track from the band's final, 1982 studio album) was romantic, and Ferry's voice lent the song a soulfulness that wasn't duplicated in any of the set's other tunes.
If this was Roxy Music after an 18-year hiatus, the band in its prime must have been exceptional.