Roxy Music began with a list of old cinemas and a synthesizer

Roxy Music began in November 1970, when Bryan Ferry, who had just lost his job teaching ceramics at a girls' school for holding impromptu record-listening sessions, advertised for a keyboardist. Andy Mackay replied. He was mostly a saxophone and oboe player, but he owned an EMS VCS 3 synthesizer, and he also brought in Brian Eno, a university friend who was not a musician but could operate the synth and owned a Revox tape machine. Eno started as technical adviser and soon became a full member.

The name came from Ferry and Mackay compiling a list of old cinemas. Ferry chose Roxy because it had resonance and faded glamour, and, he said, because it did not really mean anything. When they learned of an American band called Roxy, they added Music, a play on “rock music”. Bassist Graham Simpson, guitarist Roger Bunn and drummer Dexter Lloyd completed the original sextet. Ferry even auditioned as lead vocalist for King Crimson; Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield thought his voice unsuitable but helped the young band find a record deal with E.G. Records.

The lineup kept changing. Paul Thompson answered a Melody Maker advertisement for a wonder drummer in 1971, and David O'List, formerly of the Nice, took the guitar spot after another advertisement. Phil Manzanera was in by the first album in 1972, and Eddie Jobson replaced Eno in 1973. The band gained success in Europe and Australia through the seventies, pioneering more musically sophisticated elements of glam rock and influencing early English punk and many new wave acts.

They split in 1976, reformed in 1978 and split again in 1983, their final studio album being Avalon, which went platinum in the United States. The title song and “More Than This” sit among their smoother late work. Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson reunited for a tour in 2001 and have toured intermittently since, most recently in 2022 for the fiftieth anniversary of their first album. Roxy Music entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.