Sound and Style

Art rock pioneers Roxy Music are embarking on a tour to mark the band's 50th anniversary

- DAVID CHIU

THROUGHOUT HIS LONG CAREER, BRYAN FERRY, best known as the lead singer of the legendary British rock band Roxy Music, has always projected a very cool and debonair persona-sort of rock and roll's version of James Bond. Yet the usually unflappable Ferry is genuinely amazed that his band's music continues to resonate with audiences five decades later. "I suppose we've always kept our heads down up to a point," he tells Newsweek. "So it's very gratifying that the music still has an audience. I'm blushing-I don't know what to say. It's great that people like it."

Over the course of eight studio records, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band achieved critical acclaim and recorded such memorable songs as "Re-Make/Re-Model," "Do the Strand," "Street Life," "Love Is the Drug," "Dance Away" and "More Than This." And like David Bowie and the Velvet Underground, Roxy Music inspired generations of musicians among them the Sex Pistols, Chic, U2, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Duran Duran, Garbage, Goldfrapp and St. Vincent.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the group's formation and the release of their self-titled debut album this year, four founding members of Roxy Music-Ferry, guitarist Phil Manzanera, saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay and drummer Paul Thompson-will tour together for the first time in over a decade. "It seemed something to celebrate," Ferry explains, "When the 50 years loomed up, it just seemed, 'Well this would be a very nice positive thing to do."" 

Manzanera says "Quite frankly, if we don't go out and play the songs, who the hell is going to play them? So we're going to breathe some new life into them."