Cher Topiary,

Some great choices but then you went and ruined it by adding some mauvais mots!

Malgre sa, W2 thinks that your selection 'Tender is the Night' is inspired:

'Now picture this my point of view / In an ideal world I see the likes of you' opens his ode to F. Scott Fitzgerald's last doom laden work perfectly and is undoubtably one of the best post Roxy songs.
Of course, it's another Stewart/Ferry co-write (their Wearside collaboration does seem to have been very productive)! And, it's a song I'd love to see him sing live.

As for your Desert Island Disc choice, 'Mamouna,' who could possibly argue with that? W2 knows that it's an album that divides opinion in this hallowed cyber hall but it is a truly great album, and as you rightly say, the lyrics are sparse but poignant.

Salutations
W2

Debauched Diletantes,

Earlier in this post, the ever tasteful RoxySiren signalled out San Simeon as worthy of note from a lyrical perspective.

Having listened to 'Frantic' yesterday, W2 would enthusiastically concur.

His ode to 'Hearst Castle' and its romantic past captures the haunting ambiance of the place perfectly:

'Walk up the drive way endlessly curving
Go through the front door it's so inviting
Baronial great hall once so exciting
Haunted by shadows faces in hiding'

Evidently our hero considers this song to be a sort of extension of 'Dream Home'. It certainly has very much the same type of feel.

W2 visited Hearst Castle a couple of years ago and can understand why Ferry was excited by it. The place is completely intoxicating and the parties ..... One can only imagine!

Another great example of post Roxy creativity n'est-ce pas?

Salutations,
W2

I might digress from this great topic a little. A passion of mine is all things horticultural including "growing potatoes by the score". Mamouna also ticked that box for crediting a landscape designer ( Arabella Lennox Boyd) and for the line in NYC ' house and garden topiary' using the American pronounciation. Then along came San Simeon with the line ' geranium pattern shrub topiary' again in American style.

I'm not American and thought it peculiar why Mr Ferry would pronounce it this way twice.

Just a little nugget of so many lyrics and lines that delight.

This thread keeps getting better

So what are the two ways pf pronouncing "topiary"?

I guess I've been co-opted by the genius of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" but I've always thought San Simeon aka Heart Castle to be a rather garish monument to a media mogul run amok. Yes, certainly a setting for heartaches in a dream home,,, But instead of an inflatable doll, perhaps an inflatable snow sled denoted "Rosebud"

Cher Topiary,
You digress to good effect.
References to the horticultural and 'Country Life' have populated our hero's lyrics throughout and W2 thinks that his dual love of urban and rural life has enriched his work no end.
Who could forget that 'Rhododendron is a wild flower' when doing 'The Strand'?
Salutations,
W2

Before I die I'll write this letter
Here are the secrets you must know
Until the cloak of evening shadow
Changes to mantle of the dawn
Will it be sunny then I wonder'
Rolling and turning
How can I sleep'
Hold on till morning
What if I fall?

Strictly Fantastic

Speaking strictly confidentially, has it ever been reported that BF suffers from insomnia? The lyrics of SC and also Both Ends Burning ("who can sleep in this heat, this night?" don't make it sound like he's someone who often enjoys a good night's sleep...

I have read somewhere that BF admitted this...and that he took pills to counteract it. Can't remember the source though. I suspect there's a little story about where that really started...led...and ended.

For sure though; it inspired many a lyric from BF...and many of his best.

I always assumed the house and garden topiary imagery referred to two coexistent images: the H&G set, and the self same set who coiffure personal body presentation