Bryan Ferry, CBE

Bryan Ferry, CBE is a singer and songwriter who is perhaps best know as the lead singer of 70's new wave, art rock band, Roxy Music. Ferry formed Roxy Music with a group of friends and acquaintances, beginning with Graham Simpson, in November 1970. The line-up was expanded to include saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay and Brian Eno.

Roxy Music's first hit Virginia Plain made the UK top 5 in 1972, and was followed up with several hit singles and albums, with Ferry as their lead vocalist and instrumentalist (he taught himself the piano in his mid-twenties).

Other bands wanted to wreck hotel rooms; Roxy Music wanted to redecorate them.

He began his solo career in 1973, while still a member of Roxy Music. His early solo hits include A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall, Let's Stick Together and This Is Tomorrow. Ferry disbanded Roxy Music following the release of their best-selling album Avalon in 1982 to concentrate on his solo career, releasing further singles such as Slave to Love and Don't Stop the Dance and the UK No.1 album Boys and Girls in 1985. When his sales as a solo artist and as a member of Roxy Music are combined, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide.

But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.

In 1975, Ferry began a relationship with model Jerry Hall, having first met her, when she appeared on the album cover for Siren, which was photographed in Wales during the summer of 1975.

Ferry's Studio albums include: These Foolish Things (1973), Another Time, Another Place (1974), Let's Stick Together (1976), In Your Mind (1977), The Bride Stripped Bare (1978), Boys and Girls (1985), Bête Noire (1987), Taxi (1993), Mamouna (1994), As Time Goes By (1999), Frantic (2002), Dylanesque (2007), Olympia (2010), The Jazz Age (2012), Avonmore (2014) and Bitter-Sweet (2018).

I very rarely play the piano at home. Deliberately, so that when I do play it, I love it.

He was awarded his CBE on the 30th November 2011 by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Getting something like this is actually very humbling and I was very pleased to be recognised for a long career and doing something I love.

To get an official award like this is incredibly nice and quite a surprise – a very good surprise. I always knew I was going to be an artist – and spent four years studying painting, I thought that’s what I want to do.

I got to a point where I thought I’d put a band together and make a record and if it doesn’t work I’ll go back to painting, but the band worked incredibly well.

In 2019, Ferry was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.

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