British musician Bryan Ferry performs in Zurich in July 2007. BMI will award him its Icon award. (Eddy Risch/Keystone/Associated Press)

Bryan Ferry, lead singer of Roxy Music and an influential producer and songwriter, will be named a BMI Icon at a London ceremony later this year.

Broadcast Music Inc., the U.S. performing rights organization, announced Monday it would honour Ferry at its annual London awards ceremony on Oct. 7.

BMI's annual London ceremony recognizes British, European and Jamaican songwriters who have the most played songs on U.S. radio and TV.

The Icon honour, awarded previously to Steve Winwood, Van Morrison and Peter Gabriel, goes to artists who have had "a unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers," BMI said.

Ferry was the songwriter behind Roxy Music hits such as Love is the Drug, Slave to Love, Kiss & Tell, Angel Eyes and More Than This.

Ferry sang with rock groups the Banshees and Gas Board before co-founding Roxy Music in 1971. He came to prominence as the distinctive voice of the British art rock band.

The singer began recording solo efforts in 1973, while still with Roxy Music and continued a solo career after Roxy Music broke up in the 1980s.

Ferry's latest album, released in 2007, was Dylanesque, a collection of Bob Dylan covers.

BMI announced last week that The Jacksons would be named Icons at the Urban Awards in Los Angeles in September.