Emerging from dingy Durham into the multi-coloured, ambi-sextrous world of 1970s pop, as the founder and frontman of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry found himself immediately thrust into a realm of beautiful women. What must have seemed like never never land viewed from the perspective of the coal mining pits of his youth swiftly became do you want some and more?
As the hits kept coming, from ‘Virginia Plain’ to ‘Love Is the Drug’ to ‘Dance Away’, so purportedly did the beauties, such as Amanda Lear and Jerry Hall, at least until the latter rocked off in favour of Mick Jagger. Still Ferry and Roxy Music arguably peaked in the early 1980s, when the albums Flesh and Blood and Avalon when straight to the top of the British charts, while in his personal life Ferry settled down and tied the knot. A few years later Boys and Girls brought solo success. And even today, at the ripe age of seventy, the slick crooner’s penchant for fox hunting only has the ladies sniffing and foraging for a scent of his increasingly soiled undergarments.
But its not only his voice or his charms or even his looks which make him a style icon. The man has impeccable fashion sense. As a teenager he worked in a tailor’s shop, and while he might have grown up in the time of Teddy Boys and Mods, these days he namechecks Hedi Slimane and buys his clothes from Dior and Gucci, Rubinacci and Charvet. He gets his shirts and ties custom made in Paris.
Yet there’s always been a roguish element to Ferry’s dress, and thankfully his style tips aren’t only for those with money. He also knows more than a thing or two about projection and poise. Just look at the video for the 1982 single and future Vice City and Lost in Translation classic ‘More Than This’.
As the video well demonstrates, all you have to do for the suavest of rockstar postures is sneer via the top lip, clench the jaw, and hang the chin dog-like over the neck and sternum, while gazing seductively at the object of your love with lazy eyes. Accompany the exaggerated mouth gurning with an awkwardly repetitive swaying action, and occasionally place your hand so absurdly high that instead of landing on the hip, it looks like you have kidney problems.
It wasn’t necessarily the rule, but there are plenty of examples of Ferry achieving this sort of thing in the 1980s. Did they not have mirrors or playback devices where he lived? Or is this after all what the ladies mean by alluring? Ricky Gervais evidently drew inspiration from Ferry, only not as the guitar-strumming David Brent or in his earlier music career, but instead as the comic care worker Derek.
