BF Bass (Ode To Olympia)

Album: Olympia (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • Ferry refers to Facebook in this song. Q magazine asked the singer if he's got a Facebook page. He replied: "I wouldn't know where to start. I can just about send an email. I thought it would be nice to mention something vaguely current. Girls love those things don't they? They live on those iPhones and Blackberrys or whatever they're called."
  • Ferry told The Sun: "I started off BF Bass (Ode to Olympia) by playing a bass riff down at my house one day."
  • French artist Edouard Manet's controversial 1863 nude painting Olympia was an inspiration for the album cover. Ferry explained: "I approached the record with the same intensity as the early Roxy Music albums, and I wanted the artwork to represent this. One of the inspirations for the cover was the 19th century painting Olympia by Edouard Manet's - a kind of early pin-up picture, and in a sense a forerunner of some 20th Century Pop Art, which I feel strongly connected to. The picture shows a young courtesan lying on a bed, receiving flowers from her maid, which is no doubt a gift from her lover. She wears very little more than a provocative expression, and the painting created quite an uproar when it was first exhibited in Paris."
    Ferry added to The Sun: "The painting was also an inspiration for those Roxy covers in as much as it led from one thing to another."
  • Ferry explained why he chose to put English model Kate Moss on the album cover. "I wanted a cover-girl for this record who could convey the glamorous notoriety of the original Olympia painting, and the obvious choice was Kate Moss. Kate has long been the 'femme fatale' of our age, as controversial as she is beautiful, and the most glamorous female icon since Marilyn Monroe. I was still finishing my album at the time of the photoshoot, so everything happened at the last minute (which is often the way with 'rock 'n roll). The shoot took place at Sunbeam Studios in London, and the designer Gideon Ponte built a fantastic set – with the finest linen...the perfect bed...Shoes and dresses were flown-in from Paris, jewellery escorted by security guards, flowers everywhere, a supporting cast of thousands... and everyone involved worked really hard to get the right shot, especially our photographer Adam Whitehead."

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