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The wetness had returned in full force by the time Roxy Music took the Green Stage Saturday night, and might have been the cause of the jumbo screens going on the blink temporarily. During the opening song, “Re-make/Re-model,” the screens showed cover art from Roxy albums and then went blank. When they occasionally flickered on, they’d show guitarist Phil Manzanera or reedman Andy Mackay, but no Bryan Ferry. Was the infamously vain lead singer not having his image conveyed? Talk about remaking, remodeling.
Eventually, the glitch was repaired and Ferry’s still handsome kisser was all over the Jumbotron, but by that point we’d already heard “Out of the Blue” and had proceeded into that part of the band’s back catalog where they gave themselves over completely to unabashed romanticism rather than the curdled kind that characterized their first three albums. Younger rock fans who grew up listening to “My Only Love” and “More Than This” probably think this is what Roxy’s all about, but for all the Brylcreem and worsted suits and pneumatic fashion models, Roxy represented a perversion of the slick, sophisticated modern male. The best illustration of this is “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” which used to be quite scary. On the Green Stage it was given a lush arrangement that neutralized much of the song’s self-disgust and dread, and Ferry didn’t seem up to acting it fully, so he pumped it full of irony.
After a super sensitive version of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” they closed their set with more perverted love songs, and whatever Ferry’s frame of mind, there was nothing he could do to make them anything less than creepy. “Love Is the Drug” rocked fitfully, buoyed by the four black female backup singers who were arranged in pairs on risers on either side of the stage. Violinist Anne Phoebe, in a fetching silver lame body suit and enough eye makeup for the Statue of Liberty, revved up “Virginia Plain,” probably the feyest hard rock song ever recorded. The group added their own local touch by having Japanese guitarist Hotei play a bit on “Editions of You” and “Do the Strand,” which was as funny as ever but not as inventively played as it used to be. Old people are just too serious.
photo: Kumazawa Izumi
