Bryan Ferry

Miner’s son Bryan Ferry left his native North-East in 1968, a slick young Geordie with a degree in fine arts, down to seek his fortune in The Smoke. He was born in a Durham mining village called Washington – named after George, whose family hailed from there – and his father looked after the ponies at the local pit.

Starring at the local grammar school, Ferry was all set on “being an artist with a capital A,” but in the heady days of 1963, with Eric Burdon and the Animals blaring out their Bo Diddley in nearby Newcastle, he did what every thoughtful 17-year-old did in 1963: He formed the school R&B band.

At Newcastle University in 1966, when everyone was into Otis Redding, Joe Tex and Tamla, Ferry was fronting an eight-piece soul band called The Gas Board.

The other essential influence was Richard Hamilton, founding father of Pop Art, who taught Ferry at Newcastle.

In London, working as a van driver, art teacher and antique restorer, Ferry saw the gap in music and began casting around.

By the end of 1970, the foundations of Roxy Music were laid: Andy Mackay, another university man, a classical oboist, on sax and oboe; Brian Eno, a sculptor and an inspired dabbler in electronics on synthesizer; David O’List, late of The Nice, on guitar (he was replaced by Phil Manzanera just before the band broke); old Gas Board bassman Graham Simpson and another Geordie, Paul Thompson, made up the rhythm section.

Roxy Music was honed in a small rehearsal room off Kensington High Street during 1971 and by summer 1972, the package was complete.

Not just the music – Ferry’s mannered, allusive lyrics and poised melodies, the mixture of sassy rock, eclectic styles and electronic overlay – but also a whole visual style: camp, bizarre, nostalgic, a kind of futuristic 1950s look.

Everyone wore leather, leopard skin and glitter. Ferry sported a quiff that a unicorn would have been proud of.

After some exclusive party gigs and some enigmatic posters, they scored a contract and in two weeks during March 1972 recorded their first album, Roxy Music, at London’s Command Studios, under ex-King Crimson Pete Sinfield.

With its release in June came instant success: gigs with Alice Cooper, Bowie and at the Lincoln “Great Western Express” Festival, album and singles chart hits, voted in all four British music press polls as Brightest Hope of the Year, an across-the-board teen and intelligentsia appeal.

Looking back on that first album, its range is remarkable: tight, spunky and deadpan, full of unusual sounds, rich ironies and hard, ornate melodies like the early classics Ladytron and the Bogart-inspired 2 HB.

The path led, after an autumn British tour and a lukewarm debut in the US, to For Your Pleasure in March 1973. The band’s visual style moved from Futurismo Fifties to an outrageous, droogy luresque. The music had a new clarity and confidence to sustain its paradoxes.

On one hand, contemporary mythology like Beauty Queen and In Every Dream Home a Heartache, and on the other hand, the dandified nostalgia.

In retrospect, Eno’s departure was more a release for Eno than a loss for Roxy. His subsequent solos, Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and his supergig with John Cale, Kevin Ayers and Nico, show a talent that must have been cramped by his role in Ferry’s musical theatre.

Roxy’s Stranded was released in November, featuring Eddie Jobson of Curved Air as Eno’s replacement, and ushered in a new motif for their second British tour – jungle trees and ruined arches, the band urbane and elegant against a backdrop of primitive, luxuriant decadence.

Ferry gave the white tuxedo its first outing, and released his first solo album in 1973. These Foolish Things was a collection of his favourite songs and included a cover of Bob Dylan‘s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.

A second LP, Another Time, Another Place, followed in 1974 and Ferry’s ecstatic glam rock performances on early Roxy Music stand-outs Virginia Plain and Do The Strand mellowed through his mid-70s solo hits before his voice ripened into a liquid croon on 1982’s Avalon album.

From that point on, he became the archetypal velvet-voiced, suit-wearing smoothie, as likely to wrap his warm tones around standards such as As Time Goes By as recall his youth with an album of Bob Dylan covers.

Ferry began a relationship with model Jerry Hall in 1975, and the pair lived together in London and Los Angeles, until she left him for Mick Jagger in late 1977.

Roxy Music temporarily disbanded in 1976, and Ferry released three solo albums during this period – Let’s Stick Together (1976), In Your Mind (1977) and The Bride Stripped Bare (1978), all of which charted in the UK Top 20.

Disappointed by the lukewarm response to The Bride Stripped Bare, Ferry reformed Roxy at the end of 1978 to record tracks for what would become their sixth studio album, Manifesto, which reached #7 in the UK album charts.

The group’s final studio release, Avalon (1982), reached #1 in the UK album charts, and the band achieved their first and only UK  #1 single, Jealous Guy, in 1981.

On 26 June 1982, Ferry married London socialite Lucy Helmore, remaining together until they divorced in 2003 after she had an affair. Helmore died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2018,

Ferry disbanded Roxy Music in 1983 and continued as a solo artist, releasing Boys and Girls (which remained in the UK chart for 44 weeks with its lead single, Slave to Love, reaching the Top Ten), Bête Noire (1987), Taxi (1993), Mamouna (1994), and As Time Goes By (1999).

The new century spawned Frantic (2002), Dylanesque (2007) (an album of Bob Dylan songs), Olympia (2010), The Jazz Age (2012), Avonmore (2014), Bitter-Sweet (2018) and Loose Talk (2025).

Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson reformed Roxy Music in 2001 and have performed sporadically since then.

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