Roxy Music 50th at MSG

Looking back at my favorite concert of 2022

On 12 September 2022, Jill and I took the train in, went upstairs to Madison Square Garden, and were transported back decades as we watched the third date of Roxy Music’s 50th Anniversary Tour. It was fantastic. Bottom line: Paul Thompson, Andy Mackay, and Phil Manzanera can still play as well as ever, and while Bryan Ferry has lost a lot of his vocal range he hasn’t lost any of his charisma or smooth, louche appeal.

(Brian Eno, in the original lineup for the first two albums, did not rejoin them, which surprises no one. There was only enough room in the band for one visionary, so Eno went off to pursue his own version of genius.)

But I’m forgetting the reader here, perhaps, since this is a band that may have changed the rock landscape but was only active for about a decade, and most people who read this may not have any idea who they are, or were. In an article in Variety, A.D. Amorosi does a good job summarizing those early years:

“Just over 50 years ago, on the same day, June 16, 1972, two albums were released that changed the landscape of rock and its sartorial splendor: Roxy Music’s eponymously titled debut and…