The Greatest Songs Ever: "Love Is the Drug"

It was the summer of 1975, and Bryan Ferry was the picture of rock-star malaise: wealthy, desirable … and hopelessly lonely. “A domestic life is something I don’t seem to be able to get together at the moment,” the Roxy Music frontman lamented to one interviewer. “I always tend to be the man on the outside, for some reason.” In short, he was in the perfect state of mind to come up with the biggest hit of Roxy Music’s career.

Formed in 1971, Roxy Music were David Bowie’s only peers in the field of flamboyant, conceptual art rock: highbrow dandies who mixed nostalgia and futurism, sweetening the blend with Ferry’s luxuriantly melancholy croon. Even the departure of keyboard magus Brian Eno in 1973 didn’t halt their rise; they released four albums in three years.

When it came time for number five—Siren—saxophonist Andy Mackay was keen to get a writing credit on a Roxy album, and not just for artistic reasons. “We’d been working really hard,” he tells Blender. “But the real money was in songwriting, and I hadn’t had much of that.”Mackay worked out a melody on his piano. It was slow and stately, with a curious nautical feel. “It had no lyric, and no one had any idea what the song was going to be about,” producer Chris Thomas remembered.

The band riffed for a few minutes until bassist John Gustafson came in with a lascivious, prowling bassline, complemented by guitarist Phil Manzanera’s spare funk stabs and Paul Thompson’s crisp, purposeful beat. “Then Bryan took the track away,” Mackay recalls, “worked very secretively on vocals and top lines, and presented it like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.”
 
Love may be the word in the title, but the protagonist in Ferry’s tale is a louche soul-man-as-roué seeking something far less romantic. The verses are itchy with pent-up lust as the horndog singer struts through brothels (“the red-light place”) and singles bars looking for a quick fix—the choruses practically erupt with relief. This was Ferry’s usual stance of suave alienation, with a newfound wiggle in its hips—and the mood was perfectly poised between cynicism and celebration. You can almost see Ferry’s grin spread as he purrs, with the lilt of a man considering a Caribbean sex vacation, “Dim the lights—you can guess the rest.”

But it was the irresistible, lubricious groove that ensured the song’s popularity in exactly the clubs that Ferry was singing about, much to his own delight: “I always wanted to do something where you’d see people actually getting up to dance,” he said.

Ever modest, Mackay bet Manzanera £5 that “Love Is the Drug” wouldn’t enter the U.K. top five. He lost. What’s more, the song broke the band in America, reaching No. 30 in the spring. “Love” paved the way for their discofied follow-up, and you can detect the influence of its freeze-dried funk on Talking Heads’ 1978 hit “Psycho Killer.” It has since been covered by Grace Jones, Kylie Minogue, and the title of the song itself has entered the pop-culture lexicon.

“Love Is the Drug” also solved Ferry’s romantic problems. Siren’s cover star was a 19-year-old Texan model named Jerry Hall. Ferry invited her home after the shoot to wash off her blue body paint. She stayed the night, and for the next two years, at least, Ferry had no need  for singles bars.

VITAL STATISTICS
Label Atco
Performers Bryan Ferry (vocals), Andy Mackay (saxophone), Phil Mananera (guitar), Paul Thompson (drums), John Gustafson (bass), Edwin Jobson (keyboards)
Writers Ferry and Mackay
Producer Chris Thomas
Chart debut 12/27/75
Highest chart position 30