Bryan Ferry

October 2013

IT is a career than has spanned over 40 years, with both Roxy Music and as a solo artist. And Bryan Ferry says he owes it all to a Nottingham man.

“He was the first guy to ever write anything about me and Roxy Music, so he discovered us in a way,” says Ferry on former Post reporter Richard Williams.

“I owe all my success in music to him really,” he adds, generously.

Williams, who until recently was a senior sports writer for The Guardian, was working at the now defunct music weekly Melody Maker when he first heard Roxy Music.

“I sent him a tape of the first Roxy demos and he called me later that day and said it was the best thing he’d heard since... God knows when.”

They are still friends.

“I saw him the other week when I went to Booker T and the MGs. He played with Otis Redding and I’d seen him when I was a young lad, so I went along to see him at Ronnie Scott’s and Richard was there. We had a good talk.

“Richard is a great writer; he wrote a great book about Miles Davis,” he says of one of his jazz heroes.

Williams wrote the sleeve notes for Ferry’s latest album, The Jazz Age, an unusual collection of instrumental versions of past Roxy/Ferry songs in a 1920s jazz style.

“My relationship with jazz goes back to when I was ten years old,” says the 68-year-old, who grew up in the north-east.

“When I started buying my first records they were all jazz.”

This was the mid-fifties, just before rock’n’roll exploded and the young Ferry was listening to the likes of trad jazz revivalists Chris Barber and Ken Collier.

“Listening to them you would naturally go back to the originals, so I began investigating Louis Armstrong and the like.

“That quickly developed my interest in other periods and great players like Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

“I really was into it big time for a few years, then the demon of rock music took over,” he says with a faint chuckle.

Jazz concerts were his first experience of live music.

“My family would take me to see Chris Barber, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and people like that at the City Hall in Newcastle. It was pretty powerful stuff.”

His dad would stay at home in County Durham.

“My dad wasn’t into music,” says Ferry, who is softly spoken and free of any accent.

“He was brought up on a farm and worked as a farm labourer, then in the depression he worked, still looking after the horses but, down the pit.

“So he was a country man. Music was all a bit noisy for him. He was used to the quiet of the farm and down the mine; I imagine that was pretty quiet.

“But my mother was into her music as were my big sisters. They used to have friends round the house playing records.”

His parents were different personalities, he says.

“He was from the farm, my mother was from the town. He used to court her on a plough horse for ten years before they got married. It was very old-fashioned.”

The young Ferry was exposed to the burgeoning music scene, taken to see Bill Haley on the first rock’n’roll tour of England but the realisation that music was his calling didn’t come until 1967 when he saw Otis Redding in concert.

“It was just before he died and I hitchhiked from Newcastle down to London to see him, Sam & Dave and all the others on the Stax Roadshow.

“It was an amazing concert and was when I felt that I really wanted to do this.”

He admits to being “an oddity” at the local grammar school after being consumed by art and literature.

It wasn’t until he went to university in Newcastle, where he studied fine art, that he met like-minded people.

While there he played with local bands The Banshees and Gas Board. When he graduated, Ferry moved to London and put Roxy Music together with Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson.

Their second bass-player, one of more than a dozen over the years, was Nottingham-born Rik Kenton. Lasting just eight months, Kenton played on the group’s first hit, Virginia Plain.

Roxy Music became one of the most influential groups of the decade, combining glam looks with rock, electronic and dance music.

Virginia Plain, a No. 4 hit in 1972, was the first of a total 17 hits before the group split in 1982. They included Over You, More Than This and their only chart-topping single, their cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. Ferry continued with the solo career he’d been running alongside Roxy Music and scored hits Let’s Stick Together, Slave To Love and A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.

The band has since reformed for arena tours including two visits to Nottingham.

There are no plans for another one and Ferry is focussed on the An Evening With... tour that comes to Nottingham next week.

“I’ve got to point out that I will be singing,” he says, aware that The Jazz Age is all instrumental.

“I have to stress that. I won’t just be on stage conducting.”

The show will feature a few songs from the album with The Bryan Ferry Orchestra but the majority of it will be what he calls “rock music.”

He says: “We’ve got quite a big band. We’ve got the jazz guys and the rock players from my band. We start off with some of the jazz things but the main show is the rock music.

“There’ll be a lot of songs from Roxy and solo albums; all the different periods, to get a good cross section of what I did.”


An Evening With Bryan Ferry is at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday, October 28. Tickets are £35 to £65, from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to trch.co.uk.

Bryan Ferry interview

July 2002





IT is the ultimate question, the one to which everyone wants to know the answer. OK, it’s stupid, but it’s worth a laugh. It has nothing to do with his years with Roxy Music. Nor the solo career, the hair care, the suit style, Jerry Hall or nutters on planes. The question is.... just what is Bryan Ferry’s favourite ferry?
Silence.
Oh dear.
We had, up to that point, been getting on pretty well. The gentleman scholar of popular music had answered all the questions with grace and charm. He’d told me about his connections with Nottingham; the former Post journalist who helped launch Roxy’s career, the Nottingham-born bass player who lent his skills to Virginia Plain but lasted less than a year. And Nottingham violinist Lucy Wilkins, who has become an integral part of his show, last year’s Roxy reunion and his future plans.
The silence suggested I had asked one question too many. I could almost hear his brow cracking in to a frown.
Seconds passed.
For a moment I thought he’d put the phone down. Then he breaks the tension. “My favourite ferry journey? Erm...” He’s in.
Bryan Ferry, God bless him, is playing the game.
“Let’s see. I don’t really know many of them.”
Have a go!
“Probably the one from Portsmouth to Le Havre. Quite a nice one, that. I’ve been on that a few times.”

I offer that years back while at college I travelled the same route on a “booze cruise”.
“Oh, right,” he says, unimpressed and quite clearly sending the message “right sonny, I’ve answered the stupid question now let’s move on!”.
Softly spoken but jovial and really rather posh as he is, it comes as a surprise to find Ferry’s upbringing was in the north-east and very working class. So where’s the Gazza accent?
“I come from Durham (Washington, County Durham). I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a Durham accent before? It’s a bit softer than your strictly Newcastle. And I have lived in London since 1968. You know, it’s rubbed off a bit.” Though he insists: “Whenever I speak to Paul (Thompson), my drummer, we very often converse in a very strong Geordie accent. He’s from Jarrow.”
So, we march on. Ferry, now 56, grew up with two elder sisters (both history teachers), “softly spoken” mum Mary Ann and dad Fred. What was his upbringing like? “It was like, erm, poor.” he says, laughing. “My dad was brought up on a farm and worked as a farm labourer. He was a ploughman really, then in the depression he worked, still looking after the horses but, down the pit. It’s an interesting part of the country there. It was the North-East/Durham coalfield where you’d find a pit village and farms all around. He was from the farm, my mother was from the town. “They were an interesting combination. He used to court her on a plough horse for ten years before they got married. It was very old-fashioned.”
The young Bryan was a bit of an oddity, he admits.
“As soon as I discovered art and English literature in the sixth form at the local grammar school, it changed my life quite radically. I began doing very much my own thing. When I went to university I met a lot of people like myself. I had a great time. That’s when I started doing music. It was very unusual to do that. You were considered very much an oddball. Even if you just went on to further education it was a bit unusual because a lot of people wanted to start work at 16, as soon as they could.
“Frankly I wasn’t very keen on that.”
While studying Fine Art at Newcastle University he played with local bands The Banshees and Gas Board. He put Roxy Music together soon after reaching the capital, the initial line-up including Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson.



Their second bass-player, one of more than a dozen over the years, was Nottingham-born Rik Kenton. Lasting just eight months, Kenton played on the group’s first hit, Virginia Plain.
“I don’t what’s happened to him. I haven’t seen him for many years,” says Ferry, who admits he can remember little about Kenton.
“He was No. 2 in a long line of players. He was very good.”
Last year I tracked Kenton down in Leyton Buzzard, where he writes music for television and film.
“He’s doing well is he? Oh good.”



Another Nottingham character played a significant role in the group’s success. Richard Williams, a former Post journalist from Burton Joyce, was a key music writer in London in the seventies. He went on to edit the Melody Maker and was the first presenter on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
“He was very important in Roxy’s history really. He was very much a leading rock columnist. I liked the things he wrote so I sent him a tape of the first Roxy demos and he called me later that day and said it was the best thing he’d heard since... God knows when. He was very positive, very enthusiastic. He was fantastic. Really helpful.”
Roxy Music became one of the most influential groups of the decade, combining glam looks with rock, electronic and dance music. Virginia Plain, a No. 4 hit in 1972, was the first of a total 17 hits before the group split in 1982. They included Over You, More Than This and their only chart-topping single, their cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. Ferry continued with the solo career he’d been running alongside Roxy Music and scored hits Let’s Stick Together, Slave To Love and A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. Last year, Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay and Thompson came to Nottingham Arena as part of their first tour in nearly 20 years.
“It’s probably the best Roxy show we’d ever put on,” he says. “I was very proud of it. Visually I was very pleased with the way it worked. The band played great. It was an entertaining show. Every night the audience were electric and that helps an awful lot.”
Among the Roxy band last year — and now an intergral part of the Bryan Ferry tour — was Nottingham musician Lucy Wilkins.
“She’s a real find, a great player. I’ve worked with her for two years now and she has become a really important part of the band.” Wilkins, who has also played with Paul Weller, Martine McCutcheon and Marc Almond, plays on Ferry’s latest solo album Frantic, which reached No. 6 in the chart.
The album also features Roxy Music co-founder Brian Eno who left the group in 1973 after a falling-out with Ferry. The enigmatic producer was not part of the Roxy reunion last year. “I get on well with him,” says Ferry, matter-of-factly. He is similarly vague about the possibility of more Roxy, er, music. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. We haven’t got any plans for it. This year’s all full up with solo projects. But who knows in the future? If we’re all in the mood for it. It would be nice.”
Frantic also features Jonny Greenwood “from that fairly new group Radiohead”.
“They’re very good and he’s a great player. He’s very much in the Roxy tradition of being adventurous and trying out new sounds.”
Ferry has kept his private life behind closed doors in the main. He is married to Lucy with children Otis and Isaac. Though he did once date Jerry Hall, the only recent time he has been splashed on the front pages was two years ago when a fellow passenger on a flight from Nairobi went crackers, broke into the cockpit and tried to grab the controls. The plane nearly crashed and Ferry feared for his life. But hopping aboard a plane these days does not bother him, he says.
“If there had been a mechanical failure it would have worried me much more. I can’t see it happening again. With any luck.”