The Ultimate New Zealand Soccer Website | home
Roxy Does Auckland!
Roxy Live In Auckland At Last - For Our Pleasure!
by Jeremy Ruane
The night of Sunday, 6 March, 2011, was one I had eagerly awaited for years. And long after its conclusion - well after the midnight hour, in fact - I was still having a really good time, relishing the thrill of it all!
When Roxy Music last performed in New Zealand, thirty years ago, I wasn’t even a teenager. Since their appearance at the 1981 Sweetwaters Festival, the musical masterclass that was the "Avalon" album sadly marked their studio swansong a year on, and a second disbandment - their first came in 1976 - followed.
The band I’d grown up listening to - the best group since The Beatles - had, just like the Fab Four, seemingly reached the end of the line long before their cup runneth over.
The Master, Bryan Ferry, has continued his meticulous solo career since then, of course, including three tours to NZ since that time. Indeed, on the eve of his 1988 concert in Auckland, he happily signed his "Bete Noire" album for the only fan on hand to meet him at the airport - no chance meeting, this, writes said fan today!
But of Roxy, not a sign - still falls the rain. Absence, though, makes one’s love grow stronger through the years, so you can imagine my absolute joy - no strange delight - when they reformed for their thirtieth anniversary world tour in 2001.
New Zealand wasn’t on the schedule, but that mattered not. One whirlwind flight eight miles high across the space between NZ and Oz saw me rolling up at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on 13 August.
Bryan, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and The Great Paul Thompson, the core components of Roxy Music since its inception, Brian Eno’s early departure notwithstanding, were in their element, central figures in a breathtakingly brilliant concert - all you need and more besides! - which realised a personal lifetime ambition: seeing Roxy Music live. ‘Could it happen to me?’ I had previously wondered? Oh yeah!!
Since that triumphant reunion a decade ago, Roxy have continued touring on and off, a song for Europe - twenty-odd, in fact, per show - rewarding the ongoing loyalty of their continent-wide fan base, whose appreciation of style, sophistication, class, culture, elan, the avant-garde and joie de vivre generally - Roxy trademarks all - is so much more advanced than in this far more laid-back area of the world.
All of which meant the odds of seeing Roxy Music running wild in New Zealand again were a lot longer than three and nine! Cry, cry, cry. Ah well, guess we’ll have to dance away the heartaches, dance away the tears after all …
Then out of the blue, love came rushing in. Out of the sky came the sun. Out of left field came their fortieth anniversary tour. Seven UK concerts, and seven in Australia, with another show, the last of the tour - and maybe their last ever, almost certainly so in this wee corner of the globe - to be added. Then came the news. Would you believe? Right here in Auckland!!
Oh, mother of pearl! Christmas come early!! It was a case of both ends burning the second tickets went on sale in December, and with it being Roxy Music, no expense was to be spared - this was an event not to be missed! Gold reserved seat, seven rows from the stage? Get in!!
Three months of eager anticipation ensued before the big night arrived. To Villa Maria Estate, please, and don’t spare the horses! (But I did spare myself the torment of the local support acts - they’re not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as, pause to inhale, Roxy Music!)
8pm rolled around, the last rays of the setting sun falling across the village green-like venue, which, in regular hours, is one of New Zealand’s foremost wineries. Not tonight, Josephine. Tonight, the stage belonged to the crème de la crème of music. Roxy Music.
They strode on to the sounds of India, ripped into The Main Thing with gusto aplenty and proceeded to serve up a storm, performing hits from all bar one of their eight-strong album catalogue and throwing in the odd surprise here and there, much to the delight of the aficionados, but perhaps not so much to those whose knowledge of Roxy is restricted to their oft-played hits from the "Manifesto", "Flesh & Blood" and "Avalon" albums.
The "radio-play" attendees soon discovered that Roxy Music is so much more than just those classic hits. Indeed, those sublime tracks merely scratch the surface of a richly crafted, colourful catalogue brimful of finely honed musical perfection at every turn.
Take the next four tracks on the play list, for instance. Street Life, Pyjamarama, Prairie Rose, and If There Is Something - all penned in Roxy’s first three years - bristled with brio, not to mention some stirring solo work from Phil and young Oliver Thompson, who has been a key component of Bryan Ferry’s music for five years now.
Following these was a song Roxy rarely play live. Indeed, this was just the sixth time on this fifteen-concert tour they performed a song which is, without question, one of their signature tunes.
Unlike the recorded version, there was no introduction - Bryan launched straight into it, and this time everyone knew the words. "Tell me one thing More
|
        |
Than This. No, there’s nothing …". Dead right there!
Onto Jealous Guy, complete with Bryan’s whistled solo and Andy’s mesmerising sax work, despite the technical problems he was encountering which required numerous adjustments throughout proceedings.
Then a real rarity. Roxy last covered Neil Young’s Like A Hurricane on the 1983 EP "The High Road". Twenty-eight years on, this version still beats the original artist’s effort hands down.
2HB, Roxy’s tribute to Humphrey Bogart, was accompanied by a terrific video featuring many of the movie stars of that era, and was followed by a Roxy standard, In Every Dream Home A Heartache, boasting the unforgettable line, "I blew up your body, but you blew my mind!" and the storming Manzanera-led finale which follows it.
Cue Tara, an absolutely gorgeous instrumental featuring Andy’s oboe and Colin Good on the keyboards. This led onto Bitter Sweet, a song full of contrasting musical styles, not the least of which is a verse sung in German! So different, yet so Roxy.
If More Than This is a Roxy rarity live, To Turn You On is even more so - this tour was the first time Roxy Music has ever performed this song in concert. For mine, it’s one of the sexiest and classiest songs Bryan Ferry has ever written - ‘twas a real treat to see it being performed here, with Jeremy Meehan’s seductive bass work contributing greatly to a fine rendition.
Another live rarity was next, and it was keenly awaited. It’s some thirty years since Same Old Scene graced a Roxy concert. It really is a brilliant song, encompassing everything you could want to hear in a four-minute masterpiece - catchy lyrics, driving rhythm, slick keyboard work, wicked guitar licks and a sax solo to knock your socks off.
How to follow one of my all-time-favourite songs? Easy. Just go to the very next track on the "Flesh & Blood" album, My Only Love - another Roxy standard, brilliantly executed, with Oliver’s guitar solo a particular highlight.
A Roxy Music concert wouldn’t be a Roxy Music concert without their very first single. "What’s her name?" Virginia Plain, and hard on its heels, another classic - Love Is The Drug, with Andy’s sax work supplemented by that of the multi-talented Jorja Chalmers, yet another young musical starlet unearthed by The Master. (We won’t hold the fact she’s a West Islander against her!)
Backing dancers Jade Sullivan and Marie Francis had plenty of reason to dance up a storm throughout the next song. Editions Of You is an out-and-out Roxy rocker in which Paul’s driving beat and Andy’s sax work were particularly impressive. After this, it was time to Do The Strand - always a popular number at any Roxy concert.
As is the next song on the play-list, the hauntingly beautiful "Avalon", with Bryan’s vocals supplementing that oh-so-seductive rock-samba beat, Phil’s shimmering guitar work, and the sultry background vocals of Aleysha Gordon, Hannah Khemoh and, in particular, Sewuese Abwa.
Another break with tradition marked the penultimate song of a simply brilliant concert. Bryan has made an art form, throughout his solo career, of producing versions of other artists’ songs which are miles better than the original. How fitting, then, in what will likely be one of the last-ever Roxy Music concerts, that the greatest band since The Beatles should perform a version of a Bryan Ferry single!
The anthemic Let’s Stick Together went down a treat! It’s always been a popular song in New Zealand, so much so that a bank used it as the theme song of a promotional campaign in the not too distant past. (One hopes they paid Bryan the royalties for the privilege!)
This tour, however, was at an end, and its title, For Your Pleasure, was the final song of the night. Those not familiar with Roxy Music would consider it a somewhat anti-climactic track on which to conclude, with the sight of the band members bidding farewell and departing from the stage one by one as the northern England farewell, "Toorah!", marks their exit particularly unusual, to say the least.
But to those who love the group, it’s the very ethos of Roxy Music. Always challenging established norms; going beyond known boundaries; daring to be different; style leaders, never followers. Not for them a modish straitjacket, a rulebook, recognised practice.
So it was here in Auckland, the last stop on the For Your Pleasure tour of 2011, and almost certainly the last time they’ll perform in NZ, even in light of the previous paragraph!
I loved every minute of this concert, which could easily have gone on for another couple of hours, such is the wealth of material which was overlooked for this tour, the titles (and, in a couple of cases, lyrical extracts) of many of which are woven into the pre-concert paragraphs of this review.
But Bryan, Phil, Andy and Paul aren’t getting any younger, despite the youthful exuberance they exhibited throughout this performance of some of the greatest songs of the past forty years.
Thanks so much for coming to Auckland, Roxy Music. The pleasure was, indeed, ours.
|