Roxy Music

Eno heard the Velvet Underground on John Peel's radio show while a student at Winchester School of Art, and the reaction was instant: "Within the first few moments, I thought, 'Okay, this is important.'" What mattered wasn't just the sound but the pedigree — the band's tie to the pop artist Andy Warhol. "Bryan liked them as well," Eno recalled, "and we both knew about their connection with Andy Warhol, which gave them a sort of cultural position." Ferry had studied under Warhol's British counterpart Richard Hamilton himself; Eno, under Hamilton's student, the cybernetic artist Roy Ascott. Two art-school educations converged on one band's example.

listen: upstream & heresource: Louder Sound — Brian Eno on Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground and David Bowie (Eno on discovering the VU, the Warhol connection, art-school backgrounds) ↗share

1967

Venus in FursThe Velvet Underground

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1972

LadytronRoxy Music

listen forVenus in Furs drones through detuned strings and John Cale's electric viola, an unchanging pulse under Lou Reed's flat, reportorial voice — rock built to feel like ritual rather than song. Ladytron opens the same way: Eno's synthesizer holds a single sustained tone while Andy Mackay's oboe and Ferry's clipped vocal circle it, building an unsettled atmosphere around an invented woman rather than a real one. Both songs trade forward motion for texture, letting one held sound carry the mood instead of a melody.

In 1967, Ferry hitchhiked down from Newcastle to catch a package tour built around Otis Redding — Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Redding closing the night. "I hitchhiked down from Newcastle to see him," he told Another Man, "and I thought he was the greatest thing I'd ever seen." Years later he told Rolling Stone the show taught him what he wanted from music itself: "It was life-changing, really. I was so blown away by the beauty of that show and the energy of it, the incredible musicianship, the way they presented the music with such flair and these wonderful mohair suits, all different colors."

listen: upstream & heresource: Another Man — Bryan Ferry Speaks to Tim Blanks (hitchhiking to see Otis Redding; Richard Hamilton and the "collage of ideas" quote) ↗share

1966

Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding

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1972

Virginia PlainRoxy Music

listen forTry a Little Tenderness starts as a slow ballad and Redding drags it upward in stages, the Stax horns tightening each verse until the band is racing behind him — showmanship built into the arrangement itself. Virginia Plain never slows down, but the same instinct for flair drives it: Andy Mackay's oboe trills around Ferry's clipped, excited vocal like a horn line chasing a soul singer, and the song fades in, skips a chorus, and stops dead rather than fading out — the theatrical exit Ferry admired in the Stax show, compressed into two and a half minutes of glam pop.

Ferry has named a lot of favorite singers over the years, but only one gets the superlative outright. "Billie Holiday is probably my favourite singer ever," he said, "because she was so inventive, and soulful, and just so cool." He kept returning to one record, Holiday's posthumous collection The Golden Years Volume Three, built around standards like "The Man I Love," "Body and Soul," and "God Bless the Child." That same interpretive instinct — treating a song as raw material to be reshaped rather than simply sung — became the whole premise of Ferry's later career, which ran through covers albums built on exactly that logic.

listen: upstream & heresource: Far Out Magazine — Bryan Ferry Reveals His Favourite Singer Ever (the Billie Holiday quote and The Golden Years Volume Three) ↗share

1941

God Bless the ChildBillie Holiday

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1980

My Only LoveRoxy Music

listen forHoliday's 1941 recording is spare, just a small horn section and Eddie Heywood's piano, which leaves her voice exposed, trailing just behind the beat so each line sounds spoken as much as sung — hardship stated plainly rather than performed. My Only Love strips Roxy Music down the same way: after a decade of glam noise, it's a slow, patient synthesizer-and-guitar bed under Ferry's voice, his phrasing loosening into something closer to Holiday's conversational delay than the clipped delivery of his early records.