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50 years of Roxy Music!

As important a landmark as that is, and as much as we’ve wanted to honour it in this latest deluxe Ultimate Music Guide, it’s one that Bryan Ferry – the arch-conceptualist, chief composer and lead vocalist of Roxy Music – is ultimately pretty modest about.

“We felt that 50 years was worth celebrating,” he tells us in the course of an exclusive new Roxy Music interview. The band spoke to us from the United States where they’re on an arena tour which arrives in the UK this week. “Seeing us together on stage is something our fans have wanted for a long time…”

Looking back over the band’s amazing career, it’s no wonder why that might be. For the BBC’s Valerie Singleton in 1979, they were the group who “brought stylishly-dressed men and scantily-clad ladies back into fashion”. Which was definitely one part of it. If you wanted to go a bit further, you could say that with Roxy, Bryan Ferry devised a project in which he would not only be writer and director of a widescreen production, he would also be its surprisingly self-effacing matinee idol, too.

Fronting the hugely successful “glam” incarnation of the band, Ferry approached making music as dizzying montage, in which relatable tales of love and dancing were transformed into the argot of some unimaginably chic demi-monde.

It was witty, sexy (at times controversially so), and it brought eyeshadow and challenging avant-garde music into the mainstream. You thought David Bowie did that? As Bryan Ferry was at pains to point out, Bowie was very good, but Roxy were using viola and synthesizer. Bowie, meanwhile, still used guitars.

Nor was this vision diminished on the other side of Roxy’s three-year hiatus. When the band peaked again, with Avalon, it was with a chilly Arthurian fantasia imagined from business class. Even while he braced vituperation from those who didn’t get it, Ferry retained composure as he has since, going on to make more utterly unpredictable music.

In this 148-page deluxe edition, you’ll find in-depth reviews of all the music made by the band (and solo work by its members), and also the pick of classic interviews from the archives of NME, Melody Maker and Uncut. Eno solo? The greatest Roxy singles? They’re in there too…

“We’ve got a lot of confidence in what we’re doing,” he told Richard Williams when his band had only a demo tape to their name in 1971, “and we’re determined to make it in as civilised a way as possible.

“We’re not interested in scuffling,” he continued. “If someone will invest some time and money in us, we’ll be very good indeed.”

You’ve got to love a happy ending. Enjoy the magazine.

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…