Bryan Ferry turned an art-school education into Roxy Music's sound and style
Before he fronted Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry taught pottery at a London school and failed an audition for King Crimson. That rejection still paid off: the band's managers signed his new group. Ferry went on to shape its music, its album covers and its tailoring, turning glam rock into something closer to a gallery piece.
Ferry grew up in Washington, County Durham, the son of a farm labourer who also tended pit ponies. As a paperboy he spent his wages on jazz magazines and picked up a knack for whistling that later surfaced on record. He studied fine art at Newcastle University in the mid-1960s, spending a year under the pop artist Richard Hamilton, then moved to London in 1968 to teach while chasing music.
He started assembling Roxy Music in November 1970 with an art-school classmate on bass, then added the saxophonist Andy Mackay and Brian Eno, who owned tape recorders and played Mackay's synthesiser. When Ferry tried out for King Crimson, Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield judged his voice wrong for them but liked him enough to bring his band to their management company. The 1972 debut reached the UK top ten, and a Top of the Pops appearance with Virginia Plain gave mainstream television one of its first electronic performances. Ferry art-directed every album cover, beginning with the model Kari-Ann Moller sprawled in an Antony Price gown.
Remarkably, he ran a solo career alongside the band from 1973, recording old standards on These Foolish Things when rock singers simply did not do that. Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan later followed the same path. Between 1972 and 1974 he was part of six studio albums. Stranded, made after Eno left, became Roxy's first UK No. 1, and on its tour Ferry stepped out from behind the keyboard in a white dinner jacket that became his signature.
Roxy split in 1976, regrouped for Manifesto in 1979, and reached No. 1 with Flesh and Blood and then Avalon in 1982. Their only No. 1 single, a 1981 cover of Jealous Guy recorded in tribute to John Lennon, was the one Roxy single Ferry had no hand in writing. After disbanding the group in 1983, he topped the chart solo with Boys and Girls in 1985 and played Live Aid with David Gilmour. In 2019 Roxy Music were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Source: Bryan Ferry
