"Something completely different"
Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry took a most unusual path
The renegade British comedy group Monty Python used to use that phrase to connect unrelated sketches in their shows - “And now for something completely different.” And in writing about both Roxy Music and the solo music of lead singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry, that phrase seems particularly apt.
Roxy Music seemed to arrive on the scene fully formed; Bryan Ferry had liked the writing of British pop critic Richard Williams so he sent him a demo tape of the band’s fledgling work — talk about targeting your audience. And Ferry was right, Williams loved what Roxy Music was all about, hyped them in Melody Maker and the rest is rock and roll history. In 2019, Roxy Music was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!
Delightfully, you might even say, impishly, Ferry opened their 2019 Roxy reunion set with one of their strangest — and in some ways, most eerily prophetic number, “In Every Dream Home A Heartache,” a cut from their 1973 “For Your Pleasure” record, their second album.
It’s a song that anticipates where love/sex/relationships would be for some lonely men 25-30-40 years hence; where the idea of actually relating, connecting, being intimate with the opposite sex or maybe anyone at all, was so uncomfortable only an inanimate object would do — an inflatable love doll.
When I first heard the song all those years ago, I laughed as I’m sure many in the Barclay Center in Brooklyn did when those creepy first notes kicked in and fans immediately recognized the classic Roxy number. But Ferry, who would go on to explore his obsession with dozens of love-themed songs over his Roxy and solo career, must have sensed something was there in this topic and he dove in.
“In every dream home a heartache,” he wrote. “And every step I take takes me further from Heaven. Is there a Heaven? I’d like to think so.”
So on the one hand, he’s recognizing that his “heartache” is sinful and possibly taking him further from Heaven; on the other, he has to settle that heartache somehow. Will this doll and their “relationship” keep him from Heaven? In other songs, like “Psalm,” Ferry has wondered about religious matters which, I think, gives this song an underlying tension that’s subtle but undeniable. Is there a Heaven? Hmmm.
Then, the emptiness of modern life, the loneliness creeps in for the singer, despite all these modern “improvements.”
:”Standards of living, they’re rising daily. But home, oh sweet home. It’s only a saying.”
What a remarkable line, using that cliche to imply how empty the place feels to him. And then he zooms in even closer — details!
“From bell push to faucet in smart town apartment. The cottage is pretty. The main house a palace.”
All the modern, high-tech amenities that mean, ultimately nothing to him. His loneliness is absolute.
“Penthouse perfection (great alliteration) But what goes on? What to do there? Better pray there.”
Talk about a line that captures the alienation, the quiet, the seeking and not finding, never finding. And when he throws in, “better PRAY there,” brilliantly tying in the Heaven reference earlier, you see this is a writer at work here. Even in a song this strange.
He continues: “Open plan living. Bungalow-ranch-style. All of its comforts seem so essential.” Notice the brilliant use of “comforts” when all these features have exactly the opposite effect on this lost, lonely soul. Are they comforting to him? What is?
Finally, we get to what Ferry has brilliantly set up, what does comfort him. At least, at first. The purchase!
“I bought you mail order. My plain wrapper baby (what a great line! The doll comes in a plain wrapper so no onlookers would suspect the depth of the depravity) Your skin is like vinyl. The perfect companion.”
So he IS seeking a companion, just an inanimate one. One with no feelings, that doesn’t talk back.
This concept so inspires Ferry, look where he goes with the next verse:
“You float in my new pool. Deluxe and delightful (Again! Brilliant alliteration!) Inflatable doll. My role is to serve you. Disposable darling. (Again!) Can’t throw you away now.”
My role is to serve you? WHAT?
Then we get to an absolutely killer line that you have to think he thought of right away and had to set it up. Which he did, brilliantly.
“Immortal and life size. MY BREATH IS INSIDE YOU. (That line still takes my breath away! Brilliant, about as intimate as he dares get) I’ll dress you up daily. And keep you till death sighs.”
So he’s bought this inflatable love doll he’ll dress up daily, let it float in his new pool at his empty, hollow smart-town apartment and carry on this perversion in private except, maybe fearing this might keep him from Heaven, things change in the final verse.
“Inflatable doll. Lover ungrateful. I blew up your body. But you blew my mind.”
Lover ungrateful. Inspired word choice, don’t you think? The hurt lingers.
Then cue a snarling, churling Phil Manzanera guitar solo as depraved and naughty as the song itself as Ferry sings out the dramatic finish on the album. At the Hall of Fame, Ferry handed the finish off to his female choir “Dream home heartache…”
Who else could have written that song and pulled it off? Bryan Ferry’s singular vision for a different kind of music, a Roxy Music, definitely took rock in an unusual, perhaps unprecedented direction. A well-read, very literate man, obsessed with love, R&B as well as the classics from Cole Porter to Hoagy Carmichael, Ferry’s tasteful, intelligent stew, though such a low-class term, he might prefer to call it a “braise” or “fricassee,” gave listeners something so foreign — in a good sense — to listen to, it was definitely not American, yet those influences were somehow there, too.
That particular song might have been as far out as Roxy ever got. But with every album, there was something fresh, surprising, challenging, music that intentionally, it seemed, wasn’t like anyone else. The studio albums that followed “Stranded” and “Country Life” (probably my personal favorite), “Siren,” “Manifesto,” “Flesh And Blood” and the brilliant career capper “Avalon” gave us a rich body of work, distinctive, thoughtful and to my ears, unlike anyone else.
While it’s great that Ferry seems to have found new inspiration writing the music for Amelia Barratt’s words on the new album “Loose Talk,” which is, again, heading in a different direction, supposedly there was some new music recorded when the band (really just Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay by the end) rehearsed for their 50th reunion tour a few years ago.
It was hinted somewhere, maybe in Mojo, that there were a few tunes just waiting for Ferry to write the words for them. But we’ve never heard them and likely never will.
Ferry, it seems, has handed the word-writing chores these days to Ms. Barratt. He’s had his say, though, of course, we’d love more. For some reason, when I taught Shakespeare’s final play “The Tempest,” something about it made me think it’d be perfect for Bryan Ferry to write music for it. But that’ll never happen.
What has happened is through eight Roxy Music albums and 16 solo albums and an extraordinary career, Bryan Ferry gave us something completely different indeed.
HERE’S “IN EVERY DREAM HOME A HEARTACHE” AT THE HALL