The illustrated Friends: Bryan Ferry

An obvious choice for art school kid turned popstar, here. But if we're going to do Bryan Ferry, we're bloody going to have Kevin Eldon lip-synching to him:



[Buy: Big Train]
[Part of The illustrated Friends]

OGWT OBE

Congratulations - at being suckered in by the establishment, dudes to Bob Harris on his OBE.

Bryan Ferry is now going to have to work out how to look suave with a CBE pinned to his dinner jacket.

The remaining two Goodies - Tim and Graeme - get OBEs to match Oddie's at long last (The Funky Gibbon, which surely is the main reason for giving a prize to them, wasn't a one-man track.)

But, perhaps best deserved, and longest overdue, is the OBE for Bernard Cribbins. Yes, there are the novelty hits. But there's also this:

I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

Ferry unwell

Some grim news this morning:Bryan Ferry is in hospital. There's been a brief statement:

The spokesman said: "Bryan has been feeling rough for some time and he felt event worse today. So, he thought it was best for the doctors to look into it. We’re all obviously very concerned for him."

Ferry's people seem to be playing it down; the Daily Mail has him as being "seriously ill". Let's hope it's just the Mail over-reacting.

Q Awards: Paolo Nutini, you say?

Obviously, you'd expect the response from this corner to be fairly cynical about the Q Awards, handed out last night. And, true enough, the would-have-been-interesting-twelve-months-ago Mumford & Sons best "new" act prize; the award for Bryan Ferry to promote the new album; Kasabian crowned 'best band in the world today' and the belief that Paolo Nutini is not just an artist, but the best male artist; all this conspires to suggest that Q is a cold and confused place.

So let's instead praise them for what they got right: one of their sixteen or seventeen lifetime achievement awards going to Neil Finn - making him the first man in history to pick up an award from a national magazine and be an answer on BBC Four's Only Connect on the same evening. It's nice to see someone who hasn't been lifetime-achievement-awarded to death getting a bit of stage time.

Those winners in full, then:

Breakthrough Artist Plan B

Best New Act Mumford & Sons

Hall Of Fame Takes That

Best Track Florence And The Machine - You've Got The Love

Q Classic Songwriter Neil Finn

Q Inspiration Suede

Best Live Act Green Day

Best Video Chase & Status - End Credits (ft. Plan B)

Q Next Big Thing Clare Maguire

Q Idol Madness

Q Hero The Chemical Brothers

Q Best Male Paolo Nutini

Q Best Female Florence Welch

Q Innovation In Sound Mark Ronson

Best Album The National - High Violet

Best Act In The World Today Kasabian

Q Icon Bryan Ferry

Q Classic Album Band On The Run - Wings

Thos

Little Ferry up before the beak

Otis Ferry, son of Bryan, is in trouble again: he's been charged with common assault and robbery following an incident when he clashed with a hunt protester last year.

It's going to be the word "common" which hurts the most.

Bryan Ferry laments

There's a splendid meeting between the Telegraph and Bryan Ferry, which keeps circling last year's "admiration for the aesthetic achievements of the Third Reich" comments. Ferry is, understandably, upset at having been reported as admiring the Nazis, but seems reluctant to broaden the debate out into a wider question of if you can really separate the aesthetic from the politics. Indeed, he actually turns it into a grumble about - yes - political correctness having gone mad. He'd bypassed the question earlier on in his chat with Nigel Farndale, but then returned to it when Farndale mentioned Roxy Music's album artwork, and the tendency to have sexy lady covers:

Yes,' he says, 'it's remarkable how liberated the climate was then. There is much more political correctness around today. What you can and cannot say. As I discovered last year. In a way it was much freer in those days. You could speak your mind. You certainly wouldn't have got told off for talking about Albert Speer's buildings in the 1970s.'

But if a band tried the Country Life cover today, it wouldn't be "political correctness" that would get them attacked - it'd be the sexist use of semi-naked women to sell albums. Likewise, although some of the stories on Ferry's Speer comments did boil the story down beyond any reason, he wasn't "told off" for "talking about Albert peer's buildings", people were reacting to his praising of what was a Nazi aesthetic. It's easy to wail "oh, they said I loved the Nazis" rather than debating the extent to which the art was crucial to the state; to mumble that you've been silenced by "political correctness" when you've chosen to close down the debate yourself is, at best, weak. And a not a little self-pitying.

In your Dad's suits you hide

Presumably, Marks and Spencer will be delighted by the new Take That men's suits campaign anyway, as at least they're unlikely to sound like the loved Nazis in the same way Bryan Ferry, the previous incumbent of the Autograph range, did.

However, their throats must have tightened a little when Rankin delivered his shots - the band don't actually look like they own the clothes they're modeling. Indeed, the general effect is of a bunch of dossers who have been visited by a jilted wife, as she distributes the clothes of her errant husband around the neighbourhood. It's less Autograph, more identity fraud.

Lavigne & Christina "duped" by Amnesty, says group

One of the many US anti-abortion outfits, the slightly shady Rock For Life, is seeking to draw attention to itself by noisily condemning Amnesty International for including Avril Lavigne and Christina Aguilera on a fund-raising album for survivors in Darfur.

Why, you might wonder, would even a slightly barking group object to raising funds to help people who've survived terrible events? Well, in RFL's blinkered worldview, Amnesty International aren't a human rights organisation, they're a "pro-abortion organisation":

Erik Whittington, director of Rock for Life, said: “The human suffering going on right now in Darfur is horrific. To add insult to injury, however, using this tragic abuse of human rights to raise money for a pro-abortion organisation is hypocritical and beyond belief.

“The manipulation of musicians to fund this hypocrisy is maddening.” He added: “We are writing to all the artists to ask for their views.”

What's that? Oh, yes. Rock For Life haven't actually been asked by Aguilera or Lavigne to intervene on their behalf; and haven't, in fact, even bothered to ask them yet before issuing this press release.

Indeed, despite having a very long list of bands who they name as supporters (none of whom, except perhaps POD and Bryan 'the mass parades and the flags' Ferry, you're likely to have heard of), neither Lavigne nor Aguilera are listed.

Now, even if your views on abortion aren't liberal, you might spot there's a slight tang of hypocrisy here: A group condemning an organsiation for "duping" artists into supporting a cause that those singers have happily signed on for, using those same names for their campaign without seeking their permission.

Neither Aguilera nor Lavigne have said anything, but Lavigne's management has managed to make a statement which demonstrates the sort of half-synapse powered thinking that Lavigne specialises in:

An aide to Lavigne said: “I don’t think she would want to comment on this. But what has abortion to do with Amnesty? It’s for a lot of different things such as prisoners of conscience and human rights.”

Yes, why would there be any link between human rights and the right to make your own reproductive choices?

We also love this entry from RFL's "pro-abortion" (they mean pro-choice) bands:

Le Tigre: often seen giving Gloria Steinem the mic

The Mirror says sorry to Ferry

Today's Mirror carries an apology to Bryan Ferry for not stressing carefully enough the distinction between his admiration of Nazi-era art and architecture, and the state which that art was in support of:

ON 16 April we reported on an interview given by Bryan Ferry to a German newspaper. Our article was headed "The Nazis were so amazing" and claimed that Mr Ferry had been "singing the praises of the Nazis". We now accept this was not true.

In fact, Mr Ferry had spoken only of his admiration from an artistic point of view for some aspects of German art, architecture and presentation which were associated with the Nazi regime. He made no mention of the Nazi regime nor did he use the word "Nazi". We accept that Mr Ferry abhors the Nazi regime and all it stood for.

We apologise to Mr Ferry for the offence caused by our report and are happy to set the record straight.

Interesting. The headline was an extrapolation way too far.

But also slightly curious - because in the original interview, still on the Welt Am Sonntag webistehe does. clearly, use the word "Nazi":

Da haben Sie mich ertappt. Normalerweise behaupte ich gegenüber deutschen Journalisten immer, ich würde mein Studio als mein "Hauptquartier" bezeichnen. Das ist weniger verfänglich. Aber die Art und Weise, wie sich die Nazis inszeniert und präsentiert haben, meine Herren! Ich spreche von den Filmen von Leni Riefenstahl und den Gebäuden von Albert Speer und den Massenaufmärschen und den Flaggen - einfach fantastisch. Wirklich schön.

It is noticeable, though, that when the interviewer attempts to lead him further down this line of thought - by raising Bowie's supposed admiration for Hitler's body language, Ferry refuses to be drawn.

Ferry docked

His "goodness, I merely meant I liked the cut of their suits, not the thrust of their policy" apology seems to have been too little, too late: Bryan Ferry has been dropped from the Marks & Spencers campaign.

An M&S spokeswoman said none of its models are on an ongoing contract, and that it would be "really unusual" for any of them to work with them for more than two seasons. She added that "no further executions are planned" of the Ferry campaign.

Bryan, of course, will be disappointed by that - after all, someone who has expressed his admiration for the way the Nazis got across their message would have been hoping for an ongoing series of executions. Possibly until an entire village had been wiped out.

Ferry's minister for propganda has denied he's been dropped. Merely not reinvited:

Stephen Howard, his manager, denied that Ferry had been officially "dropped" and said that the original deal signed with the retailer had only been for two photo shoots for two campaigns.

"Technically he fulfilled the obligations of the contract when he did the last photoshoot," said Mr Howard. "It was a successful association for both parties."

Well, until Bryan started doing the funny walk. If only he'd done the Jimmy Cagney.

Ferry: I'm not a fascist, I'm an art historian

Bryan Ferry has attempted to apologise for his admiration of the Nazis, stating that he was only enjoying the uniforms and filmmaking:

In a statement released on his behalf, Ferry said he was "deeply upset" by the publicity surrounding the interview.

"I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective," he said.

"I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent."

The trouble with praising a regime which murdered millions of people for the quality of their propaganda is that you can't separate the propaganda from the "regime and all it stood for" - it's like saying "well, obviously I don't like the idea of the gulags but you've got to admire the brickwork." The propaganda was so central to Nazi regime that you simply can't look at it and say "he way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!... Just fantastic - really beautiful" any more than you can see a soldier shoot a child in front of its parents and applaud the marksmanship.

What's odd is how Ferry's abhorrence at the Nazis only surfaces a month later, after the story has been picked up in the country where he has the lucrative modeling contract to protect, and not while he was talking about the Nazis in the first place.

Of course, maybe he did stress that he was only taking a cool, detached art historian's view of the apparatus used by mass murderers in their campaign of terror at the time, and that never made it into the version of the comments which followed him back across the Channel. But even so: how can anyone take a detached view of that?

Ferry drifts further rightwards

This is a tricky one for Marks & Spencer - the company has a long tradition of supporting Israel, something which has brought it into conflict with pro-Palestinian groups in the UK. Now, it turns out, one of the faces of its current advertising campaign is just as enthusiastic in his admiration for the Third Reich:

"My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves," he said. "Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."

Ferry's management is desperately trying to limit the damage:

"To take offence here is to confuse the aesthetic with the ideological," Steven Howard said. "To suggest that a certain appreciation of art and architecture that happens to be associated with the Nazi regime means condoning the actions of that regime is illogical."

This might - just about - wash if Ferry had only co-opted Riefenstahl and Speer; but when Bryan starts to get all misty eyed about the "parades and flags" the "I was only admiring the paintings, guv" defence just crumbles.

The propaganda machine - the marches, the flags, the films - were all part of how the Nazis governed, and Bryan is intelligent enough to know that you can't really separate the Nuremburg Rallies from Kristalnacht.

You could, perhaps, imagine someone reviewing Mein Kampf on the quality of prose alone - but it would be a profoundly dishonest review that could elevate Adolf's way with the bon mot above the content.

We expect an official example of how Bryan isn't a right wing sympathiser to be winging its way to the press before the week is out.

It's the (second) most glittering event of the year

Although now somewhat eclipsed by Al Gore and his anti-Exxon Communist Music Event, the party being arranged by Princes William and Harry to mark something (25 years since the Falklands, isn't it?) is still going to try and glitter.

The line-up for The Concert For Diana, marking 300 years of the Act of Union, has been announced. It's an odd mix of fox-hunters, lords, faded glories and a couple of contemporary US acts in order to try and get an American network interested ("US acts Diana would have appreciated"):

Take That

Kanye West

Pharrell Williams

Elton John

Bryan Adams

James Blunt

Keane

Orson

Rod Stewart

Meatloaf (sic)

James Morrison

Duran Duran

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Bryan Ferry

Joss Stone

The English National Ballet

Here, then, is the most compelling argument for wearing a seatbelt and not getting into cars with drunk drivers: if you perish in a road accident, look at what will be done in your name.

The times, they have a-changed

Bloody hell. The midweek album chart has got Bryan Ferry's alarming album of Bob Dylan covers at number four.

Stuff lifted with a straight face

Good stuff, as ever, in the weekly remember the 80's mailout, including the scary news that Bryan Ferry is going to perform for the Pope and the even more scary news that Spandau Ballet are going to re-release True next year, in order to screw more money out of the schlock market ("promote the recently released Box Set").

There are also plans for a DVD from the Spands, which will at least give us pixel-perfect versions of homoerotic epic Paint Me Down. Yes, it bloody is erotic, although not quite so much when you know what they end up turning into.