Evolving from the late-'60s art-rock movement, Roxy Music had a fascination with fashion, glamour, cinema, pop art, and the avant-garde, which separated the band from their contemporaries. Dressed in bizarre, stylish costumes, the group played a defiantly experimental variation of art-rock which vascillated between avant-rock and sleek pop hooks. During the early '70s, the group was driven by the creative tension between Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno, who each pulled the band in separate directions: Ferry had a fondness for American soul and Beatlesque art-pop, while Eno was intrigued by deconstructing rock with amateurish experimentalism inspired by the Velvet Underground. This incarnation of Roxy Music may have only recorded two albums, but it inspired a legion of imitators -- not only the glam-rockers of the early '70s, but art-rockers and new wave pop groups of the late '70s. Following Eno's departure, Roxy Music continued with its arty inclinations for a few albums before gradually working in elements of disco and soul. Within a few years, the group had developed a sophisticated, seductive soul-pop that relied on Ferry's stylish crooning.

Roxy Music began playing gigs towards the end of 1971, revealing a bizarre aesthetic stew garnished with turbo-glam allure. Dressed like a sex-changed mermaid, Eno would electronically feed the instruments (including Ferry's already mannered voice) through his synths while Ferry prowled the stage, orchestrating a sexy-tense, sneering vibrato. The band was a visual cacophony of satin and silver PVC, platform shoes, bejewelled shades and leather cladding. Eno, Manzanera and Thompson had long hair - which was just about the only thing that located them in 1971.

The debut album Roxy Music was released in June 1972, adorned with a sleeve that encapsulated a concept that was a red rag to arbiters of rock cred: Kari-Ann, a model introduced to Ferry by fashion designer Anthony Price, reclined in copious effusions of pastel pink and blue, sharing her silk sheet with a gold record.

It was a smart, stunning debut, but it was their first single, "Virginia Plain" - perversely not included on the album, though happily included on the CD reissue - that blasted them into a star's orbit. A two-and-a-half minute roller coaster ride, it was based on a painting of Ferry's that explored the ambiguity of Virginia Plain as a girl, a locale and a cigarette. A real motorbike revving up in the studio ('You're so sheer/you're so chic/teenage rebel of the week'), a strange synth riff coaxed from Eno's VCS3, and a trick ending to catch out the DJs, all added to the charm. It reached #4 on the UK chart.

A less than satisfactory tour of America supporting old lags like Edgar Winter and Jethro Tull didn't dampen their zest, and in early 1973 Roxy were back with another strange hit single, "Pyjamarama", which again featured on no album and allowed Mackay a left-field roam on the B-side. Next up was For Your Pleasure (1973), on the cover of which Amanda Lear tottered against a neon cityscape, leading a panther towards Ferry in chauffeur attire.

Ferry was becoming increasingly prolific. In 1973 he created his first solo album of covers, These Foolish Things, and hit the singles charts with a brazenly commercial rendition of Dylan's "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall". He was also moving from exotic rock star to household name - a guest spot on the Cilla Black TV show, and the emergence of the white tuxedo and bow tie lounge lizard image confirmed his interest in some sort of crossover.

'What it lacks for me is insanity', claimed Eno as he left the band in July of that year, his fervent experimentalism having become incompatible with Ferry's smoother aspirations - to say nothing of the threat Eno's cross-dressing presented to Ferry's standing as visual focus. As Eno set off on his extraordinary solo career, Ferry drafted in Eddie Jobson on neon violin and keyboards, a precocious talent who had played with Curved Air before joining Ferry during his solo work.

Stranded, released at the end of 1973, continued Roxy's ascendance, reaching #1 in the UK chart. With Eno gone, the ensemble collisions of Roxy's original formation might have been shed, but Ferry's ability to create a wide-screen tour de force was undimmed. "Song For Europe" had a haunting, even ridiculous, sense of elegance ('And the bridge...it sighs') and co-writer Mackay's oboe and sax embellishments found a new sublimity. The single from the album, "Street Life", hurled its existential trash-aesthetic ('education is an important key/but the good life's never won by degrees...') into the chart, too, with Jobson's violin providing a different icing on a different cake.

The fourth Roxy album, Country Life (1974), was strange and hyperbolic enough to represent a last blast of the real Roxy Music. It reached #4 in the UK and made a first inroad into the US Top 40. Had they stopped here, Roxy would have been a legend for ever.

There was no intention of that, however, as Ferry led the band off on tour with a Price-designed 'G. I. look' and host of babe back-up singers. It increasingly looked like a camp circus spinning around someone whose ego had begun to transcend all irony. The proof came with the sterile Siren (1975) and its languid big hit single "Love Is The Drug". Yes, you could dance to it, but nothing seemed to happen in the song. Motown-inspired basslines and lyrics about cruising singles bars were a glimpse of the obsessions Ferry would consolidate when he rather desperately re-formed the band two years after they'd sensibly split in 1976.