I read that review too, my flying stingy insect! I'm a Classic Rock subscriber. Maybe they had a bad day or the London audience was jaded as they have a reputation for.
In Germany, Roxy never meant that much (more than Foghat, but probably less than Skynyrd), their seventies music was perceived as too stylish by the proggies and too proggie by the glam stylies. So it was surprising that they played Bonn at all, the explanation probably being that it lies in the former English Occupation Zone and that the Brit Army radio station sponsored it. In Germany, Roxy are better known for "Oh yeah" than "Ladytron". Bryan Ferry as a solo artist(e) (let's get that artsy Roxy slant in!
) is much better known, the Faces/Rod Stewart effect or sadly, as time passes, the Police/Sting one.
The concert I saw was nothing like the one described by Classic Rock. "Wine bar covers band" is an overstatement. Yes, they don't sound live like they just drew some Peruvian produce into their noses before mounting the stage, they don't have the amateur charm of their first two albums (which were not well-played at the time) anymore and they lack the frenzy of youth, I'm not as edgy and nervous a player as I used to be either. Good bands mature like good wine.
Due to the abundance of players they sound fuller than in the days of yore and old age has them play confidently relaxed rather than nervous, but they're not Toto (with all due respect for the latter's instrumental prowess, only saw them recently too and liked what I saw, these guys also have great humour), they still have edges and the harmonies (of the old stuff) are still weird/not catchy. The kid guitarist is closer to Joe Bonamassa than to your usual Brit prog guitarist and when he played a lengthy solo it was cute to see how his blues riffs played with the heart of a (young) lion carried him away, the much older "real" Roxy Members looking at him in benevolent mild bemusement and -wonderment. I think they were admiring the purity of youth - and Manzanera even stopped playing rhythm guitar to listen and let the kid shine.
Whether Ferry - these days a staunch Conservative, self-confessed Thatcherite and Country Alliance supporter (for the freedom of the fox to be chased to death and torn apart by a pack of dogs while humans enjoy the sight) - still "lives" the content of faux-artsy lyrics he wrote as a twen when he was fresh from art school is anybody's guess (I hope not, neither will Daltrey when singing My Generation), but he did not seem disconnected at all. He was seriously acting the role of the Roxy frontman just as he seriously acts his Bryan Ferry role when privately he's a much more rural person and hedonism an alien concept to him by now. Roxy Music were always
also an act of artifice (as you would expect from art school kids with limited musical capabilities, when they started out they were far less than proficient on their instruments) which is probably also the answer why they failed to crack America where in the seventies people would either prefer down to earth, but able musicianship or a larger than life show à la KISS.
