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Fact #117628

When:

Short story:

Siren, the fifth LP by Roxy Music enters the UK albums chart, where it will peak at No4.

Full article:

Jerry Hall (model) : Brian Ferry hired me at 19, to be painted blue and dress up as a mermaid for the cover of his album Siren. It was love at first sight.

Tom Verlaine (guitarist/vocalist – Television) : There was a very uncool A + R guy who took the (Television demo) tapes back to London and played 'em for every fucking artist on Island Records. I tell that to people but they don't believe it. It happens a lot, especially with the English...

I mean, they ripped off a whole fucking artform from Americans. Their whole aesthetic is, like, if they hear something that's good it just sorta comes in their ear and goes out their mouth, y'know? And most of 'em have the means to set something on vinyl really quickly, crank out the stuff, so, yeah, so there's a lot of lines that are on our record (Marquee Moon) that might strike some people as familiar even though the songs are like four years old.

Specifically, a lot of the lines turned up on Roxy Music's Siren record - at least a dozen! Some I got so distressed about I said 'Well, fuck, if he's gonna take THESE lines! I mean how can I prove it? I can't prove it, right? But you know...

One of them is 'My heart stopped' and the whole band stops... 'Will it stop?' (in Roxy Music’s Sentimental Fool) … which is a move we used to do in Venus de Milo, which I got bored with and changed anyway. Another thing is 'This case is closed' at the end of - see, I only heard the album twice, I got so like pissed off when I heard it I took it out and sold it. Didn't want to hear it again! And there was this thing about little birdcalls I think on one of the songs. (Roxy Music’s Nightingale)

We used to have a (whistles like a bird) kind of effect on a song called Prove It. Another thing is on the tape I did for Eno. I did a certain style of playing piano - a certain kind of harmony with two hands - which showed up in their keyboards on, I believe, the second song on the first side (End Of The Line) just a certain way like - but I can't claim originality for that, it was just curious that even that showed up.

And then we had, the song Venus de Milo the whole subject of it is Love is a drug, I mean there's even a line in it "It's all just like a new kind of drug" - and then there's this Roxy song on Siren, Love is the Drug! Bryan Ferry's known as a thief y'know, everybody sort of knows it.