If Roxy Music’s first five albums showcased the band’s genius for creating sonically crafted musical statements in the studio, then 1976’s ‘Viva! Roxy Music’ proved they were no less masterful in a more visceral and unpredictable live setting. Recorded over three separate dates between 1973 and 1975, ‘Viva!’ acts…
Named after King Arthur’s final resting place of legend – described by Bryan Ferry as “the ultimate romantic fantasy” – there’s a kind of poetic justice to the fact that the last Roxy Music studio album became their most successful to date. Summing up its myriad charms in The…
In the four years between 1975’s ‘Siren’ and 1979’s ‘Manifesto’, pop music had undergone a series of seismic shifts, with both disco and new wave threatening to cast into obsolescence many of Roxy Music’s contemporaries. No such worries for Roxy, however. Not only had their early records stood the…
The first Roxy album to break the US Top 40 demonstrated that, four records in, the band were every bit as hungry, audacious and pioneering as on their debut two years earlier. Opening with the urgent, propulsive ‘The Thrill Of It All’, ‘Country Life’ effortlessly embraces avant-garde song structures,…
‘Stranded’, the third long playing outing from Roxy Music, not only gave the band their first No. 1 album in the UK but was also the first to come to the wider attention of US audiences. An incredibly accomplished and consistent collection of songs, ‘Stranded’ thrills from start to…
Roxy Music followed up their stunning debut with ‘For Your Pleasure’, an album that’s come to be regarded by many as the ultimate musical expression of Roxy Music’s early period. For this record the band found the freedom to develop the songs along experimental lines in the studio, resulting…
Arriving seemingly perfectly formed from nowhere, Roxy Music’s self-titled debut instantly propelled the band into the affections of both the music-buying public and the serious music press – no mean feat in 1972. Frontman Bryan Ferry’s lyrical evocations of romance and glamour, pop-art references and allusions to both old…
Sixty weeks in the UK albums chart, seventeen weeks in the Top 10, four weeks at No. 1, three UK Top 20 singles… for Roxy Music 1980’s ‘Flesh And Blood’ represented their commercial peak to date. Always evolving, Ferry, Mackay and Manzanera and producer Rhett Davis alchemised an entirely…
