#3 Roxy Music
23rd October, 1975 [Support: The Sadistic Mika Band], from Japan, singing in Japanese!
Bingley Hall, Birmingham
Where?!!
This place hadn’t been used for concerts for ages, but such was the demand for Roxy that a large space had to be found, irrespective of its suitability for sound, audience spectatorship or atmosphere. There was no incline for the seating, as you get in a cinema, so if you were seated anywhere after the first ten rows it was carnage.
However, this was 1975 and peak Roxy (despite the mixed bag which was the current Siren album), with the GI gear-look and a powerhouse of a band, complemented by some super session players. The original line-up was boosted by Chris Spedding on second guitar and Johnny Gustafson on bass. The female backing singers, Jacqui Sullivan & Doreen Chanter lend some glamour and vocal panache to Ferry’s inimitable crooning. What a glorious noise this band made!
They entered with the new brooding and mysterious ‘Sentimental Fool,’ the kind of stuff which should have filled the Siren album. Then they launched into a blistering version of ‘The Thrill of it All’ from ‘Country Life.’ Manzanera & Spedding brought the house down with that. Those two songs alone filled the best part of fifteen minutes! We could easily have all packed up and gone home happy. It was like an encore. If you’re lucky enough to track down a bootleg, you’ll understand how good they were live. It’s no wonder that it became the encore at some shows.
Next. Footsteps and an engine starting up. The cool intro to ‘Love is the Drug’ and time for Ferry to show off. This is Roxy at their best, just the right side of cool, with a great tune exploring a variety of genres. After that it’s one classic after another: ‘Mother of Pearl,’ ‘Bitter Sweet,’ ‘Nightingale (not too grand),’ and the lengthy ‘Out of the Blue’ follow, where Jobson does his virtuoso turn with a violin solo. Another new song is attempted, ‘Whirlwind,’ which sounds a tad forced and not up to the required standard, before Ferry takes a break and Manzanera & Mackay showcase some solo material. Manzanera does ‘Diamond Head,’ the title track from his new album, while Mackay offers a rock ‘n roll pastiche with ‘Wild Weekend.’ There was little evidence of the lack of creative energy the band had felt in the construction of ‘Siren’ in the live performance here.
I remember John Peel playing the entire ‘Siren’ album on his late-night show and recording it. FM broadcast. I was delighted and dismayed in equal measure by its contents. Either brilliant or bang-average. Ferry had been pandering to his solo career far too much and Roxy at times were veering on the schmalzty rather than their exciting adventurous earlier material.
On to the second half of the set. This was blistering. The new ‘Both Ends Burning’ was more like it, complete with the unusual chord progression we demand from them. ‘Sea Breezes’ was an unexpected delight, with Spedding in his element - he had rerecorded it for Ferry as a solo track. ‘Street Life,’ ‘Prairie Rose,’ ‘For Your Pleasure, ‘ a colossal version of ‘The In-Crowd’ and ‘Virginia Plain’ bring things to a more than satisfactory conclusion. Any misgivings about the sound in the hall had been dispelled, at least for those if us near the front.
Back they come for an encore. ‘Remake Remodel’ starts the pandemonium, followed by a slick medley of ‘Do the Strand - Editions of You - Do the Strand.’ Great stuff. That brought the house down.
They wrap things up with a jaunty race through Ferry’s reinterpretation of Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.’
And that is that. Exceptional. Probably don’t play as well until the reunion tour of 2001.
So a privilege to witness such a great band at the peak of their powers. Unbelievable that they cannot reconcile their differences and produce more material. I hope they don’t regret it as much as us, their fans. Ferry seems content to be part-genius and part-bore these days. He’s turned into Noel Coward on downers.