The Roxy Music song that Matt Berry wishes he had written
Matt Berry is a gifted musician who often cites a teenage obsession with Mike Oldfield’s 1973 Tubular Bells as his motivation to take music seriously. Reflecting on his formative years, Berry once told National Album Day that it was Oldfield’s album, conceptualised at only 17 years old and recorded at 19, that “gave [him] a boost and sense of purpose like no other art form or act. It is to this day one of the main reasons why I decided back then to get off my arse and do things.”
But he has also revealed a similar reverence for Roxy Music, telling the NME he wishes he had written ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’. Detailing his admiration, Berry said: “It’s original and unconventional, and the lyric is superb,” he gushed. “I have no real interest in how people write songs, though – we’re all different. I’m as interested as anyone is in how people work, but I don’t analyse anyone else’s techniques.”
Written by Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry, the record appears on the band’s sophomore album, For Your Pleasure. Ferry’s lyrics are sinister and surreal, half critiquing vapid luxury, half a love letter to an inflatable doll that he later kills. It’s a five-minute odyssey guided by Andy MacKay’s cinematic Farfisa organ, with Brian Eno’s slow building synth doubling the intensity of the lyrics on the VCS 3 synthesizer. The song then devolves into controlled chaos after Ferry’s decree of: “I blew up your body / but you blew my mind,” with a perfect instrumental build led by guitarist Phil Manzanera on the outro.
In 2019, the band would reunite on stage for the first time in eight years to perform the track as part of their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was solidified as one of the most iconic songs in the Roxy Music catalogue far earlier though, having been performed on BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test to much acclaim in 1973. Donning his favoured glam-rock shoulder pads and leather jacket to perform the track, Ferry’s unblinking stare and practically motionless vocal delivery adds to the songs creeping discomfort.
You can see the influence of Ferry’s psychedelic rock sensibilities across Berry’s work, particularly in 2020’s Phantom Birds. A blend of folk and progressive rock, Berry creates his own psychedelic world within the album’s lyrics, notably on ‘Man Of Doom’ where Berry chants: “Head of goat / Head of feet / Head of state / Head of sheep” with the same monotonal voice we hear in the build to ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’. ‘That Yellow Bird’ from the same album has the same balladlike crooning of Ferry, with Berry’s insistence that “The sky above / Is not big enough / To take this love / It’s all too much.”
Watch Roxy Music perform ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’ below.
