Bryan Ferry

Bryan Ferry, born September 26, 1945, is an English singer, songwriter, and musician who rose to fame as the lead singer and principal songwriter of Roxy Music, one of the most influential art-rock and glam-rock bands of the early 1970s. His distinctive vocal style — a wry, mannered croon indebted to mid-20th-century pop crooners — gave Roxy Music's avant-garde arrangements an unusual air of sophistication and helped define the band's fusion of glam theatrics and art-school experimentation.

Ferry has run a substantial parallel solo career since the early 1970s. His 1973 debut solo album, «These Foolish Things», set the template he would return to throughout his career: reinterpreting songs from wildly different sources, from the Rolling Stones' «Sympathy for the Devil» to the Beatles' «You Won't See Me», refracted through his own languid, ironic delivery. Personal upheaval, including his breakup with model Jerry Hall, fed directly into 1978's «The Bride Stripped Bare».

After putting Roxy Music on hiatus in 1982, Ferry released «Boys and Girls» in 1985, a set of original material that consolidated his solo identity, and continued to alternate between original songs and interpretive covers projects, including an album of Bob Dylan songs, «Dylanesque». His 2014 album «Avonmore» returned to the sound most associated with Roxy Music's classic period, closing a career-long loop between his band and solo work.