Roxy Music
OVO Hydro
****
It has been half a century since Roxy Music began to announce themselves as art rock pioneers with an eponymously titled album which was too eclectic to be glam rock and too poppy to lumped with the prog rockers.
Now, two years after they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they have reunited on tour for the first time in 11 years, and chose Glasgow to launch their UK anniversary tour.
Founding members Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera, and Paul Thompson announced the anniversary tour having together seen the band cement their place as one of the most influential of all time with music that has inspired generations of musicians - including Scotland's own Franz Ferdinand.
Bryan Ferry is three years away from his 80th birthday and remains a rock icon, comfortably rubbing shoulders with his British contemporaries, David Bowie, Marc Bolan and Freddie Mercury. Only he survives.
In Glasgow in 2022, he still cut a suave and graceful figure in his sharp navy suit and open necked white shirt as he appeared to explain why the OVO Hydro had to be the place to start proceedings in the UK after 10 arena shows across North America.
"It is great to be in Scotland," he says. "Glasgow is one of our favourite places.
"It is 50 years since we started making records. Thanks for joining us."
They began at the beginning.
Re-Make/Re-Model is an experimental collision of funked up jazz, pop and glam rock that was the opening track of that 50-year-old opening album.
And so began a deliciously bewildering journey through the band's breathtaking back catalogue from their rock-out stage like Virginia Plain to their smooth 80s sophisti-rock revealed in Avalon.
While Ferry may have been encouraging the audience's adulation at the end, he was not always crowd-pleasing with his choice of songs, starting with some of their less well known but finely crafted tracks.
The packed 14,300 capacity venue came to life when one of their more familiar song emerged, albeit six or seven songs in with a top ten hit from their 1980 Flesh and Blood album.
The original new romantics may have been playing Oh Yeah on stage, but the key, as in a few of their biggest hits played tonight was in a strangely lower register - perhaps a sign that Ferry cannot quite reach the higher notes he used to.
This is, however, an insignificant factor as the familiar and unfamiliar, the ecletic and the accessible, the sophisticated and the strident are thrown into this 90 minute plus mix of sheer wonderment.
Throughout a huge screen projected the band sometimes in distort-a-vision mashing live on-stage faces with other abstract images, other times creating collages of their early years and adding pop art from years gone by from messed up visions of Marilyn Monroe to classic Campbell's soup cans, adding to their continuing mystique.
One of the least penetrable tracks off their 1973 album For Your Pleasure, In Every Dream Home A Heartache, was one of the unexpected highlights and reveals how far ahead of their time this band were. It opens with a sparse repetition of keyboard, wisps of discordantly beautiful Andy Mackay sax and a monotone Ferry vocal containing the topical retort: "Is there a heaven? I'd like to think so. Standards of living they're rising daily." The crowd appears to jump as a "but you blew my mind" rant and the thump of a drum marks an exhiliratingly ferocious drum and guitar cascade finale.
It was always going to be a difficult choice to sum Roxy Music in one show, with eight studio albums between 1972 and 1982 that are so diverse.
And those that wanted the hits - finally got their wishes as the final third of the 20-plus song set was packed with classics including Dance Away, More Than This, Love is the Drug, Virginia Plain and a rapturously received Jealous Guy.
Before signing off with Do The Strand, Ferry, who had been milking the applause two songs before the band's final bow, says: "It is always great to be in Glasgow."
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