The Roxy Music song Bryan Ferry claims is of “great social importance”
While it’s standard for art to imitate life and life to imitate art, there’s something particularly wonderful about art imitating art – when creators from varying corners of the artistic world recognise each other as guiding lights of inspiration.
Film and music have often crossed paths in this sphere. Take Bernie Taupin, known for his lyrical work with Elton John – instead of the Yellow Brick Road leading Dorothy on the right path in The Wizard of Oz, Taupin sees the glittering walkway as the path to stardom on 1973’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. Inspired by the movie Badlands, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ tells the real-life story of Charles Starkweather, who went on a murder rampage in 1958. And it continues.
Lady Gaga cited the Rocky franchise when she told MTV UK that her 2011 release, ‘The Edge of Glory’ was “about looking life in the eye and when you die saying ‘I won, I’m a champion’ like Rocky sprinting to the top of the staircase”. While Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music (for a Film)’ – as its title suggests – was written for Baz Luhrman’s take on Romeo + Juliet, Thom Yorke’s bandmates insisted the track deserved a centrepiece spot on OK Computer. Carefully placed, the track appears right after ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ as a cinematic closer to the first section of the record.
Roxy Music, a band with such an eclectic style, aren’t exempt here. Featured on their self-titled debut album released in 1972, ‘Chance Meeting’ was inspired by the 1945 British romantic film Brief Encounter, written by Noël Coward, directed by David Lean and starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard.
Much like the film, ‘Chance Meeting’ is about a couple of star-crossed lovers. Speaking about the song, frontman Bryan Ferry told NME: “Some of my lyrics are pure throwaway, while others are of vital relevance. I think ‘Chance Meeting’ is of great social importance.”
Telling the story of a passionate extramarital affair in the days preceding World War II, it is regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time. Kathryn Altman, the wife of the late auteur Robert Altman, recalled: “One day, years and years ago, just after the war, [Altman] had nothing to do, and he went to a theatre in the middle of the afternoon to see a movie. Not a Hollywood movie: a British movie. He said the main character was not glamorous, not a babe. And at first, he wondered why he was even watching it. But twenty minutes later he was in tears and had fallen in love with her. And it made him feel that it wasn’t just a movie.”
Roxy Music subsequently sampled ‘Chance Meeting’ on the title song of their next album, 1973’s For Your Pleasure. Clocking in at almost seven minutes, the experimental album closer also features a brief cameo by British actress Judi Dench reciting the lines: “You don’t ask. You don’t ask why.” In 1976, Bryan Ferry recorded his own eerie, haunting version of the track.
