If there was one person (aside from Bryan Ferry) instrumental in tooling the shape and scope of early era Roxy Music it was Richard Hamilton, Bryan Ferry's tutor and mentor at the University of Newcastle. The artist behind collages, constructs and installations with titles that won't be unfamiliar to Roxy/Ferry fans..
The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass),
This Is Tomorrow
And 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' - the 'deluxe and delightful' 'smart town apartment' source material for In Every Dream Home a Heartache.
As Ian Dury, Adam Ant and the Velvets absorbed their visuals from Peter Blake, Allan Jones and Andy Warhol - Bryan ferry's assembly of art graduates and academics in retro-futrist finery - sculpting, styling and framing them into something as much pop art as much as pop group - is entirely Richard Hamilton's influence refined and re-rendered for the rock format
I was lucky enough to nip along (twice) to the Whitechapel Gallery earlier this year to catch the This is Tomorrow retrospective - showing the blueprints and background to the 1956 Brit-pop Art expo, breaking down Just What is it.... to it's component parts: muscle mags, moon-shoots, modernist living and comic book romance tales celebrating and selling shiny new futures and glossy modern exotica. All off which, really, are a base-build materials for the early Roxy Music albums
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