"Love Is the Drug" is a song about hitting the streets in search of some casual, no-strings-attached sex. Speaking to
The Wall Street Journal on February 27, 2019, Bryan Ferry noted: "The image I had in mind for the song was a young guy getting into his car and zooming off into town, looking for action at a club."
The Roxy Music singer added that part of "Love Is the Drug" was inspired by the Caribbean patois of his Trinidadian friend, Christian. "He worked for Roxy doing wardrobe. Christian was a very amusing, laid-back guy. If there was ever a problem, Christian would say, 'T'ain't no big t'ing.' I liked the phrase, so my opening lyrics to the song were:
T'ain't no big thing
To wait for the bell to ring
T'ain't no big thing
The toll of the bell"
This song started life as a "distinctly English-y'' instrumental composed by Roxy Music saxophonist Andy Mackay on a Wurlitzer electronic piano before becoming more groove-driven. "The song I composed didn't have words or a title," Mackay told The Wall Street Journal. "When I played it for the band at the studio, my tempo was slow, with a majestic, sweeping feel, moving in a dreamy and ambient direction. Bryan and drummer Paul Thompson wanted to push it along, to make it more dance-y."
"Love Is the Drug" hears Ferry and co. flirting with disco music, a genre that was increasing in popularity in the UK and the US at the time. In an interview with Roxy Music biographer David Buckley, Ferry said this was an attempt to get more nightclubs to spin their records. "I was always interested in dance records," he said. "I spent a lot of time in clubs, I guess. It was really irritating that when we went out anywhere, there was never any of our music played in any clubs, because it wasn't really dance music. I wanted to introduce something. I always wanted to do something where you'd see people actually getting up to dance, rather than sitting down when it came on. And to an extent, 'Love Is the Drug' was good for that."
This song contains one of rock's most famous basslines. Written and performed by John Gustafson, it's cited by Nile Rodgers as one of the main inspirations behind Chic's "
Good Times" (which in turn inspired Queen's "
Another One Bites the Dust"). "They'd start clanking away, or Bryan would start clanging away on his Fender keyboard. He was just banging away on D minor and I stood there to see what the rest of them would do," Gustafson recalled to Buckley. "The drums joined in and I waited for about five minutes thinking, and just hit it straight away. It was slightly different from the rhythm they were doing and it sort of jolted them out of it into this poppy funky thing, and we carried on like that."
Ferry came up with the idea of starting "Love Is The Drug" with the sound of someone walking across a gravel path, getting into a car, and turning on the ignition after coming home from the recording studio late one evening. "Outside my house, I had a gravel drive, and the crunching sound of the stones under my shoes were an inspiration," he said to The Wall Street Journal. "We found the different sounds for the opening on various sound-effects library recordings – a car door slamming shut, the engine starting, and so on. Then we overdubbed them."
Mackay recalled to The Mail on Sunday: "Bryan used to work endlessly on lyrics and then deliver them as a live take in the studio, like a conjurer pulling rabbits out of a hat. The most thrilling of these was this song." He added, "It's probably been our best-selling single and the most covered."
Speaking to
Uncut magazine on November 14, 2014, Ferry recalled his songwriting process. "Traditionally, I've always written alone," he said. "Until in Roxy, Andy and Phil (Manzanera, guitar) started bringing ideas to the table, and I'd say, 'Oh yeah, I can work with that.' So that's how I started collaborating. But I would write the tune and the words and the title and they would generally provide the basic chord sequence. Then I'd try and do what I could do to turn it into something that was unique. We did some good collaborations, especially with Andy, '
A Song for Europe,' 'Love Is the Drug' stand out."
The music video for "Love Is The Drug" takes the form of a live performance, with Ferry wearing a G.I. Joe uniform and a black eyepatch over his right eye. While most fans assumed the eyepatch was a fashion statement, Ferry confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that he was suffering from an eye injury: "The day before our taping, I was sent to the hospital to have my eye looked at. I had walked into a door or something. I remember thinking, 'Oh, God, we've got to do a television show.' Which we did despite my eye. In the video, if you look carefully, you can actually see a bandage with a dressing underneath. But the black patch looked good."
This song has been played at every Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music tour since its release. Roxy Music performed it at the Berlin leg of the Live 8 benefit concert on July 2, 2005. The band also performed it as part of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 29, 2019. Previously, the Rock Hall included "Love Is the Drug" in their "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" list compiled in 2004.
"Love Is the Drug" appears in several films, including Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995) starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci. Oscar Isaac and Carla Gugino perform the song in the Zack Snyder action movie Sucker Punch (2011), while The Bryan Ferry Orchestra contributed a jazz version of "Love Is The Drug" to Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013).
The song also features in numerous television shows, including Sex Education (2020) and Luther (2015). It also appears in the Glee episode "The First Time" (2011), with Blaine Anderson seen dancing to it in Kurt Hummel's bedroom before declaring, "God, Roxy Music makes me want to build a time machine, just so I can go back to the '70s and give Bryan Ferry a high five."
Grace Jones did a cover for her 1980
Warm Leatherette album. Released as a single, it didn't chart, but a remix became a minor hit in the UK, peaking at #35 in 1986.
Bryan Ferry is a huge fan of the Grace Jones version. "She worked with Sly and Robbie at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, where we recorded some of
Avalon," he told
The Guardian. "It grooves much better than our version."
Ali Campbell and Kylie Minogue have also covered the song, and it was reworked by Rollo and Sister Bliss of the British electronic band Faithless. This dance remix reached #33 in the UK in 1996, a decade after Jones' cover.
The lead single from Roxy Music's fifth album,
Siren, "Love Is The Drug" peaked at #2 in the UK in 1975. It became Roxy's highest-charting single, only kept off the top by a re-release of David Bowie's "
Space Oddity." Roxy would land a #1 in 1981 with a cover of the recently deceased John Lennon's "
Jealous Guy."
"Love Is the Drug" also reached #30 in the US in 1976, making it Roxy Music's biggest-selling single in the States. Ferry discussed this with
Classic Pop on November 8, 2022: "Up to then we still felt like a kind of underground band but this brought us more universal acceptance, especially in America."
The
Siren album cover features the Texan model Jerry Hall, who became Ferry's girlfriend. The photo session, which took place in Wales during the summer of 1975, was the first time they'd met. Hall recalled in her autobiography,
Tall Tales, that the blue body paint she wore to look like a mythical siren would not wash off. According to the model, Ferry took her back to his house to help her remove the paint. Her stay at Ferry's London home marked the start of their relationship. Hall later appeared in several of Ferry's music videos for his solo singles, including "
Let's Stick Together" and "
The Price of Love."
