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Bryan Ferry (born 26 September 1945 in Washington, Sunderland) is an English singer, musician, songwriter and occasional actor famed for his suave visual and vocal style, who came to public prominence in the 1970s as lead vocalist and principal songwriter with Roxy Music. He is also noted for his alternative highly successful solo career.
BiographyBefore Roxy Music (before 1971)Born into a working-class family (Ferry's father looked after pit ponies), Ferry studied fine art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne under Richard Hamilton. He had applied to study History of Art at the world-renowned Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, but was rejected. His contemporaries included Tim Head and Nick de Ville. He became a pottery teacher in London, all the while aiming for a career in music. Ferry was, together with Graham Simpson, a member of the band The Gas Board. Early Roxy Music (1971-1976)
Roxy Music's first hit, "Virginia Plain", just missed topping the charts, and they followed up with several hit singles and albums, with Ferry as vocalist and occasional instrumentalist (he taught himself piano in his mid-twenties) and Eno contributing synthesiser backing. On a personal level, Ferry was known to date very beautiful women, who often appeared as cover models on the Roxy Music albums. Ferry dated singer and model Amanda Lear, who was photographed with a black jaguar for the cover of the For Your Pleasure album. She later went on to date and create music with David Bowie. For many years, Ferry has collaborated with fashion designer Antony Price for clothing and image consultations. Price is famous for his London shop on King's Road. He created suits recognized worldwide for their elegance, and gained fame when celebrities and rock stars dressed in his designs.
Solo success years (1976-1978)After the concert tours in support of Siren, Roxy Music temporarily disbanded in 1976. Ferry had already started a parallel solo career in 1973 (see 1973 in music), specialising in cover versions of old standards on albums such as These Foolish Things. Notably Ferry's Roxy Music bandmembers, particularly Paul Thompson, Phil Manzanera and Eddie Jobson took part in recording his subsequent solo material. Additionally in 1976, Ferry covered a Beatles song, “She's Leaving Home” for the transitory musical documentary All This and World War II. Jerry Hall and Bryan Ferry eventually moved in together, sharing homes in London and in the ritzy Bel Air section of L.A. It was while Ferry was away on tour that Hall began a simultaneous affair with Mick Jagger. To this day, Ferry rarely speaks about Hall, but fans often speculate that his song "Kiss and Tell" from the Bête Noire album was Ferry's response to Hall's tell-all book about their relationship. Ferry often refuses to discuss his feelings about Hall or talk about their romantic history during interviews. Bryan Ferry's solo album The Bride Stripped Bare is widely believed to contain references to his break-up with Hall, who left him for Mick Jagger in late 1977. However, Ferry's original songs on the album were in fact written some time before the relationship ended. After this album failed to catapult his solo career, Ferry decided to reunite with Roxy Music to record new material. Second Roxy Music years (1978-1983)After a couple of years as a solo artist, Ferry re-formed the band. Roxy Music recorded the successful albums Manifesto in 1978, Flesh and Blood in 1980 and Avalon in 1982. The pinnacle of their success being their only UK number one hit, "Jealous Guy", released in tribute to John Lennon - ironically, the only one of their singles not written by Ferry. After lengthy ("debilitating") tours like the gruelling schedule used to promote the Avalon album in 1983, Bryan Ferry decided to put a hold on Roxy Music and continue as a solo artist.
After Roxy Music (1983-2001)Ferry eventually settled down to married life with Lucy Helmore, and they had four sons, including huntsman and political activist Otis Ferry, infamous man-about-town Isaac Ferry, Tara and Merlin. Ferry continued to record, and in 1985 the album Boys and Girls reached the number one position in Britain. Ferry's performance at the London Live Aid in 1985 was judged by some as one of the flops of the event, but by the end of his set the crowd were up dancing again and his appearance was described as one of the most eagerly anticipated by the BBC. He was hit with technical difficulties on sound and the drummer's drumstick broke at the start of the first song 'Sensation' and his guitarist for the performance David Gilmour's sunburst Fender Stratocaster went dead and switched to his candy-apple red Stratocaster for the rest of the performance. The difficulties in sound were overcome for "Slave to Love" (featured on the soundtrack to 9½ Weeks) and "Jealous Guy." As with other successful Live Aid acts, his current album, Boys and Girls, remained in the chart for over a year. After the Avalon promotion tours, Ferry was rather reluctant to return to life on the road; however, a change of management persuaded him to try touring again in 1988 to belatedly promote the previous year's Bête Noire release; he spoke enthusiastically about the experience and repeated it for "Mamouna" in 1994/1995. Ferry continued with Taxi in 1993, and teamed up again with Brian Eno for Mamouna in 1994 (collaborating with Robin Trower on guitar and as producer). In 1996 for the Phenomenon soundtrack Ferry's performed the song Dance With Life which was written by Bernie Taupin and Martin Page. In 1999 Ferry appeared with Alan Partridge (played by Steve Coogan) on BBC's Comic Relief. After taking some time off from his music, Ferry returned in 1999. He began to perform a mix of 1930s songs (from As Time Goes By) and songs of his own, including several from the Roxy collection. Surprisingly for anyone familiar with his 1980s persona, so focussed on intricate and ambitious studio work, Ferry has rarely been away from the stage since: there have been several tours, significant changes of personnel within his tour band and the largely successful reformation of Roxy Music as - so far - a live act, playing its repertoire to great acclaim. Ferry has admitted in interviews that all this might be a way of keeping his mind from other things, such as his divorce from his wife Lucy, granted in 2003. Ferry and his family experienced a big scare in December of 2000, when his British Airways flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Kenya was disrupted in a hijack attempt. A man named Paul Mukonyi burst into the cockpit of the Boeing 747 flying to Nairobi. As three crew fought to restrain Mukonyi, 27, a mental patient from Kenya, the jet plunged downward about 10,000 feet. But disaster was averted when pilots recovered the aircraft and all passengers landed safely. Roxy Music reunion (2001-present)Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson re-reformed Roxy Music in 2001 and toured extensively for a couple of years while not releasing any albums. However, with the help of Manzanera and Thompson, in 2002 Ferry returned with Frantic, the long-awaited follow-up for As Time Goes By, where he was assisted on a couple of tracks by Manzanera and Thompson; the final track is a collaboration with Brian Eno. The album Frantic mixed Ferry originals with covers - something that Ferry hadn't attempted on a solo album since The Bride Stripped Bare, twenty-four years before. Following his split from Lucy, British newspapers photographed Ferry with Katie Turner, naming her as his new 'girlfriend'. Ferry and Katie Turner met while she worked as one of the dancers during Roxy Music's concert tour in 2001. Katie is also featured on the DVD of the 2001 Hammersmith Odeon Show and has appeared with Bryan Ferry on several TV appearances to promote the Frantic album. Katie also appeared in the live show during the Frantic 2002 tour. After their break-up, Ferry had a relationship with Lady Emily Compton, a socialite, and in 2005 briefly dated ER's Alex Kingston. In 2006, he resumed his relationship with Katie Turner. In 2004, Ferry starred in the short film The Porter.Also in that year, guitarist David Williams was involved in some recording sessions for Ferry. In 2005, it was confirmed that Roxy Music (Ferry, Eno, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson) would be performing further shows at that year's Isle Of Wight festival and that they would also be recording a further album of new and original songs, with no indication of when such a project would reach completion. Brian Eno has confirmed that he has worked in the studio with Roxy once more and has co-written songs for the new album. He has remarked how the bands dynamic has not changed since he was a member in the early 1970s. He has also confirmed he will not tour with the band. Ferry's most recent appearance was in Neil Jordan's 2005 movie, Breakfast on Pluto, starring Cillian Murphy as a young Irish transvestite who goes to London in the glam 1970s to find his mother. Ferry, appearing in a bit part as Mr. Silky String, plays a suave but creepy john who picks up the sexually ambiguous young man and, after a short conversation, attempts to strangle him in the front seat of his car. In October 2006, Ferry became the face of the men's clothing range Autograph with British retailer, Marks and Spencer. His album Slave To Love: Best Of The Ballads was reissued to commemorate this. Bryan was back in the studio in 2006 recording songs from the Bob Dylan canon with the Dylan tribute album 'Dylanesque' intended for release in March 2007 with a UK tour planned to promote the album. In the fall 2006, Ferry's Don't Stop The Dance was in the Scandinavian men-clothe store's Dressman TV ad. DiscographyStudio albums
Compilations
Singles1970s:
1980s:
1990s:
2000s:
Bibliography
See also
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