These guys seemed to have been beamed directly from outer space: an outlandishly handsome lounge crooner with a 50s quiff, dressed in a sequinned black jumpsuit. A bloke (Andy Mackay) with two saxophones. A guitarist (Phil Manzanera) with huge ‘fly’ sunglasses. A drummer (Paul Thompson) dressed as Tarzan.

 

And it’s a full minute into the song before we catch our first sight of someone else(Eno), an actual alien creature with a bizarre hairstyle even by Seventies standards – none at the front, lots at the side – tinkering with what looks like a laptop before laptops had been invented. He barely features in the footage – it’s almost as if the director was afraid to show us a close-up of him, so alien and gender-fluid did he look.

 

The song itself is not like any other song of that time (or any other time): it’s got a bedrock of synths and mangled guitar holding it together and an improvised guitar solo by Manzanera. But it’s really all about the lyrics.  You find yourself hanging on every word Ferry sings, wondering what on earth the song is about. I still don’t know – he later described it as “slightly imponderable” – but it’s fabulous. In those early days his way with words was wonderful, his phrasing fantastic. He could have recited his shopping list and it would have sounded exotic and fabulous. 

 

And of course they all looked fabulous too – well, all except the drummer Paul Thompson who looked like what he was – a Geordie lad gamely agreeing to join the rest of them in their silly fashion parade by wearing a leopardskin leotard and trying not to look like a ‘wally’ as we said back then. 

 

Apparently the title came from one of Ferry’s own paintings, featuring a cigarette packet – ‘Virginia Plain’ is a type of tobacco – with a pin-up girl on it. The lyrics, setting the tone for Ferry’s exoticism and high-fashion sophistication, namecheck Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer – “Baby Jane’s in Acapulco, We are flying down to Rio” – and, more prosaically, music biz laywer Robert E Lee.