Nick de Ville, who was in the year below Bryan at college and who subsequently worked on all of Roxy's sleeves until Siren, was also taught by Hamilton. Hamilton was also the first bloke to put the word "pop" into a painting. At college Ferry was taught by pop art innovator Richard Hamilton, as integral to the Roxy equation as Warhol had been to the Velvets, though Hamilton was a seminal influence, not just an enabler. I was a bit of a snob, more into jazz and blues."įrom a co-ed grammar school Ferry moved to Newcastle Art College, which is where the Roxy story really begins. For the Coronation? "No, Newcastle got into the Cup Final."įerry remembers his parents living vicariously, "but we always seemed to be better dressed than anyone else." Musically what else was there apart from 'Cathy's Clown' at the fairground? "My big sister had Little Richard, Elvis, Fats Domino on 78s. Both ends burning.īRYAN FERRY GREW UP IN a working-class household in Washington, County Durham.
To have alienated purists across the celebrity scale is kinda unique. Where once they wound up hairy musos by being camp, they incurred latterday sneers for becoming Mr and Mrs Mainstream’s house band, the soundtrack in every dream home. Remarkably, there is not a single Roxy Music fanzine (there is probably a Woody Woodmansey's U-Boat fanzine), though their music is still played everywhere from high-class catwalks to low-cost wedding receptions. Fragmented into solo projects 1976: regrouped 1978. Subsequently irritated the purists no end. Avant-glamstars who had big pop hits exuding intelligence and humour rare in an age when the only other options were (a) buffoons in pancake make-up (Mud, Sweet, Slade) or (b) clown princes of pomp rock (everyone else). An audio-visual confusion, a collision of retro-futurism. The art school dance you could actually dance to. They were Roxy Music, and this is the story of their bizarre odyssey from iconoclastic chaos to chilled perfection - and the price they paid.Ī selective but salient résumé: a 1970s band playing 1950s music in the 21st century. Brought together by musical differences, they looked into the future - and it was dressed to kill.
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