Bryan Ferry: the man David Bowie called his “favourite songwriter”
Few musicians have left a mark on popular culture like David Bowie. After a tenuous start as David Jones, the artist reinvented himself as the icon we now know and love, moving through various personas and refusing to be boxed into one category.
Bowie released a few records in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although none reached the levels of success that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars did. The 1972 album introduced the world to Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust, a red-haired androgynous character sent down to earth. The album remains one of his best and features standout tracks such as ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘Starman’ and ‘Suffragette City’.
As a seminal entry in the glam-rock genre, Bowie was one of the movement’s most iconic figures, taking particular inspiration from Marc Bolan from T. Rex. However, on the same day Bowie released Ziggy Stardust, another British band released a landmark entry into the glam rock canon: Roxy Music. Their self-titled debut was also shared on June 16th, 1972, making it an undoubtedly historic day for rock and roll.
Roxy Music became one of the world’s most significant glam rock outfits, and their synth player Brian Eno soon became a close collaborator of Bowie’s, even co-writing ‘Heroes’. Andy Mackey, the band’s saxophone player, told The Mirror: “We were never a typical rock’ n’ roll band. We were basically a group of art students, and my focus was always about creating this theatrical style and look, a really strong image.”
Bowie offered the band a supporting slot as he toured Ziggy Stardust, although Roxy Music soon became a force of playful competition for the musician. Still, that didn’t stop Bowie from singing the praises of frontman Bryan Ferry in a 1976 interview with Dinah Shore. He explains that Ferry is his “favourite songwriter” and that he “is probably spearheading some of the best music that’s come out of England in years.”
Bowie’s admiration for Ferry continued, with the latter revealing to Uncut that Bowie once phoned him to tell him that Pin Ups was inspired by Ferry’s covers album, These Foolish Things. He shared: “David Bowie actually telephoned me. We must have done the [Finsbury Park] Rainbow show with him before that, and the Greyhound in Croydon, another show where Roxy supported Bowie. David rang me cheerfully one day and said, ‘Just to let you know, I’ve just done an album like yours.'”
“But it wasn’t really, it was a covers LP, but all from the ’60s, whereas mine was a more comprehensive take on pop, just lots of different people who were interesting to me, writers like Goffin & King, Leiber & Stoller, The Rolling Stones, Smokey Robinson, of course, and Dylan,” he continued.
Bowie frequently covered Ferry’s songs during his career, both solo and with his band Tin Machine. Covers of tracks such as ‘If There Is Something’, ‘Love is the Drug’ and ‘Angel Eyes’ can be found online – a testament to Bowie’s continual appreciation for Ferry, who Bowie himself simultaneously inspired.
