On graduating, Ferry moved to London and taught pottery, before forming Roxy Music in 1970. It was not until 1975 that he met the cover star of Roxy Music’s fifth album, Seventies supermodel Jerry Hall.
Ferry sits up on the cough and his voice becomes tight when I ask about the image in which Hall, dressed as a blue-painted mermaid, claws her way out of the water. Had he met Hall before the day of the photoshoot?
“I had not met Jerry at this point,” he says. Then, sighing: “But I’d seen pictures of her by Norman Parkinson. There were these pictures of her with long hair - perfect for a mermaid. We went to Anglesey in Wales because we were looking for somewhere with incredible rocks and spray. But the day we went, it was the hottest day in history, so it looked like Greece, which was also good. There was this Greek-myth thing to it. And Antony painted her blue.”
As the story goes, Hall couldn’t get the paint off after the shoot and went back to Ferry’s house where they romantically removed the paint, starting up an affair. Is the story true? “Oh, no. Antony was taking the paint off,” he says. “He was scrubbing her down. But yeah, we did start… going out together then, for about a year.”
Is he still in contact with Hall? “Not really, although she is a friend of my friend Ivor’s [Ivor Braka, the London-based Francis Bacon art dealer]. “I… get on fine with her now. It’s funny how you can live in London and not see people for many years.”
I was always struck by the story I read about the night Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall got it together. Jagger and Ferry were friends at the time, and they were apparently playing a game of pool as Hall looked on. Ferry is said to be famously competitive - obsessive, even. He won the game but lost the girl.
When I mention the episode, Ferry shoots me a look. “I don’t play pool,” he retorts. “Billiards?” I suggest. He breaks into one of his deep chuckles: “The Jerry thing was pretty blown out of proportion, When you think about it - one year in the life.”