Concord: Roxy Music re-creates golden age - Sun 5th Aug
Concord: Roxy Music re-creates golden age
05 August 2001
From The San Francisco Chronicle
The Band returns to stage with '70s-style fervor by Neva Chonin, Tuesday, August 7, 2001
Those reciting the lexicon of cool often say a work of art must be timeless, or rather transcend its own time, to qualify for the adjective "great." Every axiom has its loopholes, though: There is, for instance, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby," a novel whose greatness rests on its time- stamped reproduction of the jazz age. And then there is Roxy Music, a group whose greatness comes from having so perfectly captured 1970s nouveau- nostalgia.
Singer Bryan Ferry and his band mates realized that the '70s were as much about revisiting a past filled with starry glamour as they were about flights of esoteric space-age fancy. Roxy Music was the only band to draw both these currents into a unique aesthetic that laid the groundwork for punk visuals, '80s electro-pop and every suave male singer-songwriter who has since sashayed to fame in Ferry's shadow (including "Young Americans"- and "Station to Station"-era David Bowie).
NOSTALGIA TWICE-REMOVED
It was no coincidence, then, that when Roxy Music played the Chronicle Pavilion on Sunday as part of its first tour in 18 years, it chose to reproduce the same glittery, golden-age stage kitsch it used in the '70s and turn it into nostalgia twice removed. Nor was it coincidence that the group chose the closest thing we've got to a postmodern Cole Porter, Rufus Wainwright, as opening act.
True, the concert, which drew an enthusiastic crowd of 5,000 to a venue with twice that capacity, would have been better suited to Oakland's art deco Paramount Theatre, a place tailor-made for halcyon memories and swanky, fading charms. But the pavilion's half-empty house didn't stop the band -- Ferry and original members Phil Manzanera (guitar), Andy Mackay (saxophone) and Paul Thompson (drums) with seven backup performers -- or fans from partying like flappers on the eve of Prohibition.
Roxy's 105-minute set took a linear route from the band's earliest material to its latest, from glam rock ("Out of the Blue") to chic experimentation ("In Every Dream Home a Heartache"), from white-soul lounge ("Love Is the Drug") to chilly refinement ("Avalon").
GO-GO DANCERS AND SHOWGIRLS
Even the progressively more playful cheesecake of Roxy Music's album covers was resurrected by the appearance of go-go dancers during "Both Ends Burning" and feathered showgirls during "Love Is the Drug."
The show began tentatively, with understated versions of "Re-Make/Re-Model" and the jazzy "Streetlife," but quickly took off with Manzanera's jaw-dropping guitar solo at the end of "Ladytron."
From there the night was a three-ring circus starring Manzanera, Ferry and Mackay, with the ever-dashing singer taking pains to step back and remind the crowd that it's the music, not just Ferry's sleek baronial looks, that have made the group an enduring cult icon. The band's original members excelled in driving that point home: Mackay's saxophone and other reeds on songs such as the worldly "Song for Europe" alternated between a cool ache and sheer sizzle; Manzanera's extraordinary solos transformed songs into crescendoing arcs, particularly when played in conjunction with guest guitarist Chris Spedding (another underground '70s touchstone who has played on Ferry's solo tours).
Had original keyboardist Brian Eno been in the house -- he no longer tours - - Ferry might have been given an even harder run for his charismatic money. But while Eno's innovative synthesizers, which so defined Roxy's early sound, were missed, multi-instrumentalists Julia Thornton and Lucy Wilkins labored ably to fill the gap. Wilkins even had her own moment of glory, with a mesmerizing violin solo on "Out of the Blue" that earned her a standing ovation.
Ferry, the group's debonair linchpin, was in excellent voice, switching between vibrato and baritone as lithely as he swapped suits (a total of three, from black leather to white jacket to blinding silver lame). His delivery ranged from cool and arch phrasing on songs like "Mother of Pearl" to sweeping,
Evitaesque gestures on "Editions of You" and "Do the Strand." Backing his artful croon were singer Sarah Brown and guest vocalist Yannick Etienne (a veteran of several later Roxy recordings).
Performing the song "Oh Yeah," Ferry sang, in a wonder-tinged voice, "There's a band playing on the radio/ With a rhythm of grinding guitars." That's the real greatness of Roxy Music's complex nostalgia: It invokes a time when rock 'n' roll still signified excitement, much the way jazz sounded a clarion call to the hipsters of Fitzgerald's era.