How Roxy Music helped define generations of pop

By D.B.

MUCH IN life depends on timing. Imagine, for example, how many more Grand Slam titles a tennis player of Andy Murray’s excellence might have accumulated in his prime, had he not had the misfortune to share it with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, three of the finest players the men’s game has known.

The story of Roxy Music is a similar one. The principal reason they as a band, and particularly Bryan Ferry, their frontman and chief songwriter, do not occupy the exalted position in popular culture that David Bowie does is because, well, David Bowie does. Their heyday coincides almost exactly with his. Their sensibility—blending fine art, glamour, sensationalism, eccentricity and sex—runs parallel to his. Among English rock acts of that time, their spirit of adventure and their impact are surpassed only by his. Had Bowie’s career, for some or other reason, not unfolded as it did, it is easy to see how Roxy Music could have seized that spotlight. Their belated induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this March tells of a band who are far from unappreciated—their occasional reunion tours sell out arenas—but whose significance is much underestimated. They are, quite simply, the greatest art-rock group Britain has produced this side of the Beatles.