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For the first time I met Bryan Ferry in 1974 in my parents’ living room. He, a decadent rock’n’roll dandy in a white suit, with a glossy lardon and blistered upper class. I, a pimple teenager who followed a live special program of the “music shop” with a wide mouth. With “Editions of You” Roxy Music smashed my world that evening. After that I was ready for the future.
I only met the real Bryan Ferry decades later, in the spring of 2002 in a salon of the Hamburg Hotel four seasons. The young bird of paradise had now become a mature bonvivant. A passionate Landedelmann, art collector and female hero, which his biographer David Buckley still says a certain shyness.
But not that day. At first I believed that the successful new solo album “Frantic” was the reason for Ferry’s high spirits or the successful reunion tour with Roxy Music. But it was the young dancer Katie Turner – who circled us giggling with a video camera during the interview. And Ferry giggled back.
Bryan Ferry doesn’t like a sloppy look
“I don’t like training suits with stripes,” he says when I ask him about a definition of style. “What else I don’t like …?” He continues. “Turnshoes?” Katie Gymnasts. “Uuuuhh, sneakers …”, Ferry is disgusting. “Bomber jackets!” The dancer squeaks. “No, I don’t like to show myself with sneakers and bomber jacket,” the gentleman squeezes in the dark blue blazer.
But then Katie Turner knocks something like the ultimate disgusted joker on the table: “Speedos!” Ferry tilts back with laughter almost, thinking about the brightly colored and ridiculously small mini -briefs. Desperate he calls: “I would rather put on boxer shorts!”
The relationship with Katie Turner, who started at the time, lasted several years. But when Bryan Ferry led me through his London city apartment in 2010 to show me some pictures by pop art artist Richard Hamilton, the bedroom looked like an eternal bachelor booth: dark sheets on a gigantic black bed, heavy high curtains and fabric wallpaper, like from an opium cavity of the Fin de Siècle.
Only a small collection of perfume on one of the two bedside tables revealed: You Never Sleep Alone. At least not if you are called Bryan Ferry.
The archive text comes from the series “Rolling Stone will be 20. Our heroes”, which appeared on the 20th anniversary of the Rolling Stone.