Both conventionally debonair and utterly set apart from the ordinary, Bryan Ferry remains one of the UK’s most singular pop stars. As a book of his lyrics is published on 5 May, new solo music is released and a 50th anniversary Roxy Music tour is prepared, the 76-year-old will join us to answer your questions about anything in his long career, which you can post in the comments section below.
The riot of glamour in Roxy Music’s 1972 debut single Virginia Plain, its lyrics written and delivered by Ferry with a circus-master’s sense of theatre, announced a brand new force in British rock. Peacocking but cool rather than silly, Ferry’s invitations to “dance on moonbeams / slide on rainbows / in furs or blue jeans” on Do the Strand, and “just boogaloo a rhapsody divine” on Pyjamarama, were enthusiastically taken up by a fanbase who flocked to their art-school glam. They released eight UK Top 10 albums, eventually modulating into an arena-friendly soft rock band, and reading Ferry’s lyrics on the page from that whole era is a thrill: psychedelic fantasias that are leavened with humour, heartbreak, savage ennui and satirical pokes at the establishment.
