When Brian Eno left after their second album, For Your Pleasure, most of Roxy Music’s avant-garde flourishes left with him.

But while they edged gradually towards the mainstream on their third album, Stranded, there were still moments of magnificence.

Never more so than on A Song For Europe – in the year that Britain joined the Common Market.

Lyrically perfect, it’s a lovelorn tale of woe: romantic disappointment oozing from every melancholy line. “Though the world / Is my oyster / It’s only a shell / Full of memories.” Brilliant. “And here / By the Seine / Notre Dame casts / A long lonely shadow.”

It’s one of Ferry’s greatest vocal performances, his voice trembling with emotion at the end of that first verse, summing up the depth of his longing – “These cities may change / But there always remains / My obsession / Through silken waters / My gondola glides. And on the bridge it… sighs.”

Producer Chris Thomas, who also plays the bass, finds the perfect space between the instruments, never more so than when Andy Mackay’s sax melody floats ethereally between them.

It might be hard to keep a straight face when Ferry begins murmuring the first verse in Latin; harder still when he switches to French, turning his vibrato up to the max with his impassioned cry of “Jamais… jamis, jamais, jamais, jamais, jamaaaaaaais” before whistling insouciantly over the fade, like the poseur he is.

It’s just fantastic. If only the Remainers had used this as their signature tune, how different things might have been five years ago.

Or not.