Riot Fest has ended, so now begins Glamapalooza! If you know anything at all about me, you know I'm a huge Bowie freak. I was beyond psyched when I heard the "Bowie is" exhibit was coming to Chicago. That time is fast approaching. A lot of programs were created to correspond to the exhibit. It's not hard to figure out, I'm also a fan of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry. When I heard he'd be speaking, I knew I had to go. I figured the talk would be about the glam rock movement, and thought it'd focus on Roxy Music. That was not the case. Glam Rock wasn't really discussed, and Bowie's name was not mentioned even once. This talk was not even mentioned as being injunction with the exhibit, not even during the introduction. My friend and I both thought this was odd. It was still cool, and great to hear Bryan Ferry talk. It was more along the lines of a retrospective of his career. That's not a bad thing by any means!
Bryan Ferry grew up in an industrial part of England. He said it wasn't pretty, but there was one area that was beautiful. A picture of it was shown, and it looked like an ancient Greek temple in a park. He used to dream about escaping. He had been of fan of music since he was 10. He won tickets to a Bill Haley concert, from a radio contest. He delivered newspapees twice a day, and would read rhe music magazines in them. He became a fan of all types of music. He mentioned Charlie Parker being a hero of his. He went to college in Newcastle. By the time he atarted college, he said his influences were anywhere from Duchamp to Smokwy Robinson. He started to sing when a friend asked him to audition for his band. The audition was in a bizarre hair salon. He compared the experience to a David Lynch film. He studied art under the pop artist Richard Hamilton. A newspaper clipping was projected that showed Ferry painting, with the caption "angry young artist". He said he wasnt angry at all then. He was having the time of his. To me, this helped explain how the visual image of Roxy Music was sso important. Newcastle had a pretty active music scene. He formed his first band during this time. Some of the band members also became part of Roxy Music.
After college, Ferey moved to London. He started song writing, learning to play the piano, and start to put together Roxy Music. According to Bryan, it took a few years to get the line-up for Roxy Music. I enjoyed the story of how Brian Eno became part of Roxy. The band wanted to record, but didn't have a tape recorder. Eno came over with one, and never left! They recordes the fieat album. Ferry seemed to like it, but thought it was unfocused, a mix of too many genres. A friend of Bryan Ferry's Antony Price helped formulate the bands image. Eno once called their style as intergalactic parliament. Antony designed clothes for the band and helped design album sleeves for the band. He is pretty much responsible for the Roxy girls, the girls on the various album covers. One notable Roxy girl is Jerry Hall. Ferry went to say, he thought the second Roxy album was their best work ever.
After the second Roxy Music album, Ferry decided to do a solo album of old standards. This started a very busy time for him. He'd record with Roxy, tour with Roxy, record solo, and then tour solo. I admired his honesty when he admitted it was very exhausting. He also admits everything was rushed. At one point, two videos were shot in a single day. Most of the people involved in helping where friends of his or the band. He got emotional when talking about the bassist, on "Love is the Drug" who just passed away a week ago. Also, he's wearing a real eye patch in the video. He had hurt his eye somehow right before. Fun factoid, Manolo Blahnik is pictures on the back of his second solo album, Another Time, Another Place.
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