Bryan Ferry

If you log on to Bryan Ferry’s official website, you’ll find Roxy Music’s front man proclaimed as “a performer with the poise of Sinatra, the charisma of Gainsbourg and the intensity of Johnnie Ray”, a description I object to in only one respect: it’s not long enough. For the sake of accuracy and comprehensiveness, it should also state that Ferry exhibits the melancholy, misanthropy and grumpiness of Victor Meldrew.

My God, he’s miserable. During our time together in the subterranean West London studio he once rather unfortunately described as his “Führerbunker”, the 64-year-old complains, among other things, about the music industry (“the art world was my first love, really”), the demise of records shops (“I used to like seeing the displays in the windows, and then you’d buy the album and pore over every detail”), the agony and isolation of recording (“I lead quite a sheltered life”), the agony of songwriting (“some days are frustrating because you haven’t finished the lyrics, and you’re not sure what the lyric should be”), touring (“travelling gets harder as you get older”), Gordon Brown (“I don’t like the way the present Government has done things”), the press (“I’m very suspicious”), the fans’ predilection for original material (“they generally prefer it if you write your own songs, but for me it’s a great diversion to cover a song I love and pull it apart”) and, after admitting that he has never downloaded music or used Twitter, and is only just getting his head around the concept of texting on a mobile phone, technology too (“What’s IT?” he asks at one point).

On the rare occasions he manages a life-affirming thought, he nearly always follows it with a wrist-slashing, world-weary observation of some kind…

Read atTimes Online