Which music video did Ridley Scott direct?
There’s no doubt that Ridley Scott is Britain’s biggest and most titanic living filmmaker. Having gifted Hollywood with an eclectic scope of genres across science fiction, historical epics, psychological thrillers, and romantic drama, Scott’s chequered filmography is coloured by a restless creative energy eager to test his own artistic comfort zones. He’s a machine, too, still directing mammoth features at the grand old age of 87.
Scott was the old British art school’s greatest success story. An essential feature of the post-war big state fast becoming vanishingly remote in the marketisation of Higher Education and reactionary contempt for perceived ‘Mickey Mouse courses’, Scott studied for a bachelor’s degree in design at West Hartlepool College of Art in 1958 and later headed to Royal College of Art in London for a master’s in graphic design.
Back in the day when television was more than open to ambitious working-class graduates, Scott worked as a set designer before directing commercials, counting thousands to his name before knocking on Hollywood’s door—1973’s ‘Bike Round’ clip for Hovis is often celebrated as the UK’s most loved advert.
Scott’s studied background in visual art and design brought a distinct aesthetic flair to his work, a knack for world-building and presenting the fanciful with a grounded authenticity. After his Napoleonic debut, The Duellists, 1979’s Alien, and 1982’s Blade Runner would stand as the two works that would forever define him, starkly illustrating his masterful command of texture, atmosphere, and immersive photography.
With such a packed CV and untold credits in TV, Scott curiously only ever lent his directing services to one music video. While the MTV age’s rapid shift of the band promo toward bigger-budgeted affairs and glossier productions could have swayed Scott at the peak of his powers, only one band ever found themselves in the target of the acclaimed director’s finger frame.
So, what music video did Ridley Scott direct?
By 1982, Roxy Music was a very different band. Gone were the retro-futurist glam get-ups and shimmering art-rock whirlwinds from a decade earlier; singer and principal songwriter Bryan Ferry now fronted a reduced core trio and was dreaming up smooth, sophisticated pop stylings that established the sonic template of his following solo career.
Serving as Avalon‘s second single after the enormous ‘More Than This’, the title track was a deeper submerge in Ferry’s affection for austere, crooning lounge skulk, a haunted classic of a pop cut that evokes the ghosts of faded lovers and spectral ballroom dances. It’s a number filled with apparitional drama that Ferry, along with Haitian singer Yanick Étienne’s striking vocals, orchestrates with cool command.
Shooting its video in Buckinghamshire’s Mantmore Towers, the country house’s 19th-century Jacobethan revival architecture provided Scott with a suitably arresting backdrop to capture ‘Avalon’s mystical aura. Not a lot happens, Ferry wanders the barren mansion lost in a nameless socialite’s beauty – played by Sophie Ward – and dabbles in some falconry, but it’s all in keeping with that special Roxy Music glamour vibe.
From a decade’s worth of vintage Top of the Pops clips and less-budgeted promo videos, Roxy Music’s step up to the MTV era with Scott’s help would prove their last classic swansong, disbanding after their parting record with a UK Albums number one.
