Roxy Music Glasgow Hydro - The Scotsman - Wed 12th Oct

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Roxy Music, Hydro, Glasgow ****

By Fiona Shepherd

Roxy Music marked their golden jubilee with a modicum of glitter and an enduring well of indelible class. The ultimate art school gang was (mostly) back together with Bryan Ferry, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson sharing a stage for the first time in over a decade, supplemented by slick session players and three Vegas-ready backing singers to bolster the notes which Ferry can no longer manage.

Their 50th anniversary set balanced the requisite hits with deep cuts, particularly from the later albums, but started at the very beginning with a somewhat sluggish rendition of Re-make/Re-model, the revved-up opening salvo on their debut album. The gonzo rock'n'roll spirit was still there, however, with the performance matched exactly to footage of their younger, freakier selves.

Bryan Ferry was "lodged behind his keyboard for much of the set" at the Hydro. PIC: Calum Buchan Photography
Bryan Ferry was "lodged behind his keyboard for much of the set" at the Hydro. PIC: Calum Buchan Photography

Highlights of a moody first chapter included Mackay's mournful oboe on Out of the Blue and a stealth sighting of The Bogus Man (we're definitely not in Vegas now), while Oh Yeah hit the bittersweet spot. Although Manzanera was utterly in charge of everything he touched, Ferry, never the most animated of frontmen, was lodged behind his keyboard for much of the set, a place of safety from which to launch the brooding opening of In Every Dream Home A Heartache before Thompson’s thunderous clap of drums unleashed the crazed coda.

After such brazen melodrama, Ferry headed offstage for a lie-down, ushering in a snoozy longueur eventually broken by a closing run of their biggest hits which gradually ramped up the energy, from the moving More Than This via a moderately groovy Love Is The Drug to the urgency of Editions of You, accompanied by acid Warholian backdrop and wiggy keyboard solo from Ferry. He was on his feet if a little shaky on the Jealous Guy whistling detail while Do the Strand was a celebratory last dance.

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