GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

Bryan Ferry recently played a select gig for the BBC 4 cameras at St Lukes Church in London.

It being something of a coup to get the face of his company’s latest advertising campaign on the BBC - where, supposedly, no advertising is allowed  - the marketing director of Marks And Spencer was there to view one of his prime assets.

Ferry’s performance was competent, warmly nostalgic. He looked terrific, of course, many men 30 years his junior would give up - oh maybe a couple of pints and a takeaway each week to have a waistline like his.

Indeed it was the waistline that drew the most attention. Ferry was wearing a suit with a silvery fleck running through it, obviously not from his sponsors range, but the belt holding up the trousers looked, wrong, frankly.

The thought occurred that Ferry singer/musician was now secondary to Ferry the model. 

“How much did he get for that M&S contract?” a friend asked midway through the show.

Not sure but it must have been alot, I replied.

“However much it was - it wasn’t enough,” said my pal.

Indeed it is hard to think of a popstar, a living icon, who has so completely dumped over his magnificent legacy as Ferry, son of a coalminer turned shameless social climber.

Once he brilliantly  pastiched the lifestyle of the rich and famous, turned each stage of Roxy Music’s musical revolution into a style extravaganza. Then he took to the Country Life style for real, became a friend of the landed gentry, raised a son who, although named after  soul star legend Otis Redding, grew into a dislikeable right wing fox hunt supporting toff.

With his father’s admiration and approval.

Now Bryan’s  revealed his admiration for  Nazi Art and Architecture. An apology has been accepted by a spokesperson for the Jewish community, but, for fans of Roxy, his latest outburst has left a stain that will be hard to remove.

How could Ferry, whose whole career has been based on stylistic manoevres, be so thoughtless, so removed from history and reality to make statements admiring the perpetrators of the most evil episode in the 20th century?

Perhaps the fancy dress antics of his pals in the Royal Family give some sort of clue. But Lord Bryan is older than Prince Harry.

30 years after David Bowie came into Victoria station giving a Nazi salute and prophesying a right wing rising in the UK, 30 years after Rock Against Racism formed to oppose a growing right wing in rock music, one of our musical heroes shows that, for him at least, nothing has been learned.

Ferry’s manager added insult to injury accusing commentators who pounced on Ferry’s words of confusing aesthetic preference with ideological leaning - as if Nazi culture can somehow be separated from the death dealing genocide which was central to the Third Reich.

What happens to rock stars when all their dreams are fulfilled and they reach the top of tree?

Do they have to stop actively engaging with life, the world at large, cocooned in their own universe where everything - regardless of what it reperesents in reality - is  grist to their self regarding mill?

A shiver went through the spine of all who had followed Roxy when Ferry revealed not only his abiding regard for Nazi art but that he used to call the band’s studio the Fuhrerbunker.

A joke? Really? Surely the bigger, sicker joke is that Ferry has just released an album of covers of songs by Bob Dylan, the foremost living poet in rock who, in case you aint noticed, is - yes - Jewish.

I’d love to think that Bryan Ferry had not crossed the line from distracted detatched fop to unpleasant, wholly corrupt and decadent ogre - a living insult to his past.

But it will take more than a mealy mouthed apology - and his continuing presence as an aging male supermodel smugly looking down from  high street ad hoardings - to convince me otherwise.