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  4. I found a Roxy box set (a Roxy boxy?) at a record fair recently, which has had me listening to Biryani Ferret and the gang all week – wow, when they were on form, they were something else.

    I interviewed him once in 2010, around an exhibition of Roxy album art, at his London archive/studio/office. He was clad in M&S cords and a sensible cardy and spoke at length about his struggles with songwriting.

    This has been my tune of the week

  5. I’m torn between Roxy Music with Both Ends Burning at the Apollo in 2001 and Bryan with Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues in 2007.

    Let’s go with Both Ends Burning, not least because of his Dad dancing at the end.

  6. Happy birthday, Mr F. One of my favourite artists, and a performer who has always exuded class, whether with Roxy or solo.

    Boys and Girls is in my top 10 albums, with Avalon not far behind.

    For a long time, Roxy and Byron Ferrari’s albums had passed me by, although I knew the big hits of course. But I found myself rewatching the none-more-80s Miami Vice (still brilliant), and one episode began with a wonderfully eerie and atmospheric track sung by a vaguely familiar voice. Upon searching t’internet, I discovered it was the title track to the great man’s Boys and Girls.

    I immediately began snapping up his entire oeuvre – a word I expect he uses regularly -and what treasures I discovered. It’s hard to pick a favourite track, but if pressed (oh, go on then) I’ll pick Roxy’s My Only Love, and Bryan’s Windswept.

    • Roxy Music was my second teenage crush after T.Rex. I love every iteration and was delighted with Manifesto when it came out, as I had feared they had split up. It, with Flesh + Blood and Avalon are a welcome and brilliant coda to their career.

      He enjoys a trilogy. Boys And Girls, Bette Noire and Mamouna are another. Subtle details reveal themselves over time. The tunes are stronger than they first seem and countermelodies creep up unexpectedly. The rhythms are deceptively complex, set in a rich soundscape, ebbing and flowing beautifully on a bed of immaculate musicianship. Ferry’s vocal performances are superb. The lyric fragments fall into place like a Rubik’s cube, riven with loneliness, pain and distress. All three reward multiple revisits, one that sits more comfortably in the ears as they grow older. I listen to them more now than when they first came out.

  7. I adore the first five Roxy Music albums, but “Manifesto” onward, think they are spotty. Ferry’s 70s solo albums are delightful, and I rather enjoyed his “The Jazz Age”, too. “801 Live” is one of the most primo non-elf, non-symphonic but nevertheless “progressive” albums ever. These days when I hear Eno, I think his best work was up to about 1977, after which he brilliantly anticipated AI music, which is “ok, but…”.

    Roxy Music really opened up the 70s to style, retro fun, and knowing artifice, and between them, Bowie, Alice Cooper, and Lou Reed, my musical journey started. (I was told off at school in the 2nd year for telling Sally Crathern “hey, just swallow a razor blade” , for some slight). There was life beyond my brother’s hippie influences, and the naughty 6th formers with their funny cigarettes a few years later. Thanks Bryan, thanks arty glam.

  8. We’ve seen him live twice, and the guy just has an incredible stage presence – the charisma just seems to roll off the stage, quite unlike any other artist I can think of and it hit me like a sledgehammer. At Plymouth pavilions we were in maybe the third row and I found him totally. magnetic.

    The other side of the coin is that Mrs. T now dislikes him intensely. We saw him at Looe Festival a few years ago and the evening he was appearing the heavens opened and we were all stood on the beach getting absolutely soaked waiting for him because it was obviously too dangerous to perform for a while. When he eventually did come on there was not a word to the audience – he just performed the songs and got off and away without any appreciation of what we had gone through – no ‘thanks for sticking around’ or anything. The next day I went to the best hotel in town to see if we could book for next year and were told it was reserved for artists. I asked if BF had stayed there and the receptionist rolled her eyes – when pressed she told us how he had had to have a section of the restaurant cordoned off and no one was allowed to speak to him and so on. She compared him to Sham 69, who had been absolutely delightful apparently. More stories emerged about his behaviour in Looe that time later on – suffice to say he didn’t leave a great impression. Seems a real shame.

    • To counter this, I have a friend who ran a ‘roadie’ business…has met a lot of artists in his line of work and says that Bryan was a lovely guy and an absolute gentleman.
      I can’t recall any accounts of rude or diva-ish behaviour from him, apart from maybe Chris Difford’s strange period as his employee.

  11. Two favourites. Both have a yearning melancholy which at times over the years has complimented my mood

    Chance Meeting – Roxy Music LP and re-recorded as a solo b-side

    A really good time – Country Life

  12. He’s a big fan of Dylan, and I wonder if he got some of his musical style from him. He doesn’t have a great voice and uses a mannered style to make the most of it. He’s not much of a musician but can come up with original melodies and inventive lyrics and knows how to find the right musicians to bring the most out of his songs. I admit their dress sense is somewhat different.

    Only four years apart in age, although as Dylan got going was when he was 20 and Bryan Ferry when he was 27, they seem to be from two different generations.

    I knew someone from Washington, whose parents were about the same age as Ferry, and who regarded him as pretentious for someone from that background. But, like the Hibbing shopkeeper’s son, hasn’t that self-invention always been his great strength?

  13. A very early TOTP memory was Street Life and me thinking that he was very cool indeed. Particularly the finger clicks part.

    I was quite surprised to read in Morrissey’s book that Bry and Marr sneaked into the studio The Smiths were using in the very early morning to record something. Thereby saving some costs for the Bryan Ferry song they were working on. Morrissey had no idea this was happening until he himself went in early and there they were.

    The song was The Right Stuff, which is essentially the Smiths instrumental Money Changes Everything with new lyrics from Bry.

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