Poor Bryan, another wife has furrowed an unauthorized hoe:

Rock star Bryan Ferry and his wife, Lucy, were divorced Friday after 21 years of marriage.

The High Court Family Division granted Ferry, 56, and the former Lucy Helmore, 42, an uncontested divorce. The couple, who married in June 1982 and have four sons, did not attend the brief hearing.

In papers filed with the court, the former Roxy Music front man said his wife had admitted adultery, but he did not identify the other person involved. The papers said he had first suspected she was having an affair in May 2000 and that the adultery was continuing when they separated. [AP]

Doomed romanticism has been the underlying theme of his extraordinary career as leader of Roxy Music and as a solo artist: slave to love, indeed.

The last time this happened to Ferry it caused a bigger stink, when his supermodel (Yves Saint Laurent Opium perfume and Revlon cosmetics) wife Jerry Hall, who had posed for the sleeve of classic Roxy album Sirens in '75, dumped him for Mick Jagger in '79: love is the drug in life as in art.

Roxy Music is one of my top five favorite bands and Ferry one of my favorite performers and songwriters. I talked with the great producer John Porter about his stint with the band.

"I went to Newcastle University in '65 because it seemed like there was a great music scene: it had the first all-niter club in England, and a university band called the Gasboard. I joined that band and we did Bobby Bland, Freddie King, B.B. King, and stuff like that. We had a horn section - which was pretty rare - and Bryan Ferry was in the band, although at the time we didn't think he could sing. We gigged around and were pretty popular in northern England," says Porter.

For a brief time in the early-'70s Porter played guitar on sessions in L.A., but he had to sell his guitar and return to England when he couldn't get a green card or join the musician's union. Porter had worked with Ferry in various configurations since college, and he accepted an invitation to join Roxy Music in '73.

Porter played on the classic For Your Pleasure album, but refused to be photographed with the group for the album because he didn't wish to be seen "dressing like a pansy," and besides, he didn't really like the music.

I, on the other hand, think it's one of the greatest albums of all time.

Pleasure did extremely well, and Ferry, itching to try his hand at a solo effort, asked Porter to help him produce it. Porter hired some musicians he knew, including members of the Average White Band, Roxy-drummer Paul Thompson, and future-Roxyite Eddie Jobson.

These Foolish Things would establish Ferry's pattern of recording idiosyncratic versions of standard tunes ("A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "The Tracks Of My Tears," the title track) for his '70s solo albums, while keeping his original material for Roxy Music. Porter played on three more Ferry albums before a dispute arose regarding credits and they parted ways.