Not just any band could have their praises sung by fellow musicians as disparate as Bono, Siouxsie Sioux and Chic's Nile Rodgers, but then Roxy Music were not like any other band.
Emerging from Great Britain in the early 1970s, U2's lead singer remembers Roxy like this, "Imagine you're a teenager in the north side of Dublin and some aliens arrive on Top Of The Pops."
The brainchild of singer Bryan Ferry, the second half of Roxy Music's name was just one piece of a package that mixed art, fashion and sound like no other artists have done before or since. The DVD More Than this - The Story of Roxy Music is the authorized-by-the-band account of their initial run in the '70s and early '80s and subsequent reunion this decade.
Originally aired last year on the BBC, the DVD release contains additional documentary footage and concert renditions of three classic songs -- "Both Ends Burning," "Editions of You" and "Do The Strand" -- filmed in 2006.
Fresh interviews with all significant band members drive the story, along with additional commentary from contemporary musicians. Especially enjoyable are the bits with Brian Eno -- who left after Roxy's first two albums and became a notable producer working with U2 and others, but whose time in the band is often-regarded as their creative peak -- as he explains that the band was simply not big enough for his and Ferry's diverging visions for it.
And that is borne out as Roxy gradually moves away from the collage of musical genres that marked their inception to the suave-pop style of their to-date final studio album, 1982's lushly, magnificent Avalon. The story closes coming full circle with footage of the band, including Eno, at work on a brand new album.
More Than this - The Story of Roxy Music is available now.