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An autumn tour, 50th birthday frolics, and a book of singer Bryan Ferry’s lyrics: it’s all go for Roxy Music.
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IF NEWS of Roxy Music’s first full reunion tour since 2011 came as a surprise to fans and music journalists, they weren’t the only ones.
“I’ve been sort of locked down here in West Sussex, quite near to where Bryan [Ferry] is actually,” relates Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera. “I’ve been popping over, occasionally playing on some of his solo stuff – bits that he inevitably takes off… And one day, he just said, ‘Fancy doing some gigs?’ Whaaat?!”
This was shortly before Christmas 2021, as the 50th anniversary of the band’s eponymous futuristic debut album loomed. “So yes,” continues Manzanera, “if there’s a year to celebrate, this is it.”
Manzanera talks to MOJO between shifts of woodshedding. Not in an actual shed – “That would be to do it a disfavour” – but a garden den overlooking banana trees and Trachycarpus, an aptly cosmopolitan view for a man raised all over Latin America, and where he’s perusing the multi-tracks of the tour’s likely set list, getting back up to speed on For Your Pleasure’s In Every Dream Home A Heartache.