Roxy Music

Newcastle and London

Roxy Music began when Bryan Ferry and the bassist Graham Simpson met at Newcastle University. In November 1970 Ferry advertised for a keyboard player, and Andy Mackay answered. Brian Eno arrived as a technical adviser and then became a full member. The first line-up was a sextet, with the guitarist Roger Bunn and the drummer Dexter Lloyd. Paul Thompson replaced Lloyd in June 1971, and Phil Manzanera took over the guitar from David O'List on 14 February 1972.

Ferry was teaching art and ceramics in Hammersmith when the first demos were made, in May 1971 in Eno's flat in Camberwell. They already held early versions of Ladytron, 2HB and Chance Meeting. After Ferry sent a tape to the writer Richard Williams, Melody Maker featured the group in August 1971, before any record company showed interest.

Ferry took the name from a list of old cinemas and added Music after hearing of an American band called Roxy. The founders were products of art school: Ferry studied in Newcastle under Richard Hamilton, Mackay in Reading, Eno in Ipswich. Their first show was a Friends of the Tate Gallery Christmas party in London in December 1971. Ferry later described the idea as treating music like making paintings.

Treating music like we were making paintings.

Bryan Ferry, Uncut, 2009

Glamour and the first records

The debut album, Roxy Music, came out on Island on 16 June 1972. Peter Sinfield, the former King Crimson lyricist, produced it, and E.G. Management paid for the sessions. Ferry later said a lot of it was first or second takes. It reached number 10 in the UK. The follow-up was a stand-alone single, Virginia Plain, recorded in July and released on 4 August 1972. It reached number 4.

A Top of the Pops appearance on 24 August made the band's look as famous as the record, with Manzanera in fly-eye glasses and Eno glimpsed mostly through his silver-gloved hands. Manzanera later recalled miming to the record. The exposure helped send the debut album back up to number 10 in September.

For Your Pleasure followed on 23 March 1973 and reached number 4. It was the last album with Eno, who left in mid-1973, and the eighteen-year-old Eddie Jobson joined on keyboards and electric violin. Stranded (1973) went to number one in the UK, and Country Life (1974) became the band's first US top 40 album. Siren (1975) produced Love Is the Drug, which reached number 2 in the UK and number 30 in the US. The band split after the Siren tour, and the live album Viva! Roxy Music appeared in July 1976.

Return

Roxy Music reunited in 1978, adding the keyboardist Paul Carrack. Manifesto came out in March 1979, and Flesh and Blood followed on 23 May 1980 and went to number one in the UK. Thompson left in 1980 after breaking a thumb, which left Ferry, Mackay and Manzanera as the core with session players. After John Lennon's murder the band played his song in tribute and then recorded it. Jealous Guy spent two weeks at number one in March 1981, their only UK number one single.

Avalon

More Than This came out in March 1982 and reached number 6, the band's last UK top ten single. The album it introduced, Avalon, was released on 28 May and spent three weeks at number one in the UK. It was built from drum-machine rhythms and finished in New York with the mixer Bob Clearmountain. It remains the band's only million-seller in the United States. After the Avalon tour Manzanera shook Ferry's hand and told him it had been a great pressure working with him.

The band dissolved in 1983, and the live album The High Road documented the Avalon tour. Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson toured together from 2001 to 2011, without Eno. Roxy Music entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, inducted by John Taylor and Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, and played a 50th anniversary tour of the UK and US in 2022. The Guardian's review of the Glasgow show noted that it was the band's first UK appearance in more than a decade.

The Economist called them the best British art-rock band since the Beatles. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing wrote in 2012 that what set each phase of the band apart was Ferry himself, one of rock's great sustained acts of self-definition. Duran Duran, Simple Minds, the Human League, ABC, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Talking Heads and Devo are among the acts that cite or follow them, and Bowie named them a favorite British group.