Bryan Ferry, 1979-1999: What Happened? What Was He Going For?

I have trouble hearing Boys and Girls, Bete Noir and Mamouna as "the same record over and over." It's hard to talk about, because I don't own the last two (because I got rid of the copies I had), and haven't listened to them for a long time. But even if the approach is obviously similar, Boys and Girls has good songs, something I found missing from the other two. However, maybe I shouldn't be trying to de-rail this. In less extreme terms than you put it, yes, obviously the style of Ferry's work there became much more uniform than it had been, and I don't have any good guesses as to why that happened.

(Incidentally, I don't think I prefer Boys and Girls because I heard it earlier than the others. I think I heard Boys and Girlsand Bete Noir for the first time at about the same time.)

(Also, Boys and Girls I can actually sort of imagine dancing to, or at least it evokes dance in a way that the other two didn't for me--from what I can remember. More rhythmic appeal to it, I think.)

I started a similar thread last year about Boys & Girlis vs Bete Noir, and Matthew (among others) made some great points.

Matthew, I don't believe this polarity: "a rocker as hard and weird as "This Is Tomorrow" and a pop song as limpid and earnest as "Dance Away" contemporaneously." To me, the imagination that conceived both is one and the same, and his career up to that point had pointed in a "Dance Away" direction if he chose to follow.

The solo albums are the problem. I still like Mamouna very much -- the keyboard sound, the title track, "The 39 Steps" and "Chain Reaction" -- but its predecessors are two of the emptiest, most dessicated creations ever made by a major rock artist. I can't believe he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on nullities like "Seven Deadly Sins" and "Stone Woman."

That was a good thread -- I was specifically interested in this one with discussing what I found in the last few weeks: the total disconnect between 70s Roxy and 80s Ferry.

The idea that Ferry's career pointed in a "Dance Away" direction is just not something I think the facts bear out. It's not like his music got increasingly dance-y -- the re-made/remodeled "Remake/Re-model" on Let's Stick Together may be funky, but it's not in the same pop universe as "Dance Away." Was he pushed in that direction by the session guys? Maybe, but there's nothing on Bride Stripped Bare (his first "Release the session hounds" record) that even hints at, say, "Oh Yeah." It's just a completely different aesthetic -- totally detached from the two things that had permeated everything he'd done up to that point: croon and irony.

It's just very, very odd.

The idea that Ferry's career pointed in a "Dance Away" direction is just not something I think the facts bear out

"Beauty Queen," "Psalm," and especially "End of the Line" are older, weirder prototypes.

As for "Dance Away," it's a song he would try to duplicate later, but only Roxy could provide those spaces in the music (and that guitar sound).

TBSB is an oddity, period. No other record, Roxy or otherwise, sounds like it -- and why I like it best.

as this has always been my favorite Brian Ferry stuff, and seems like the natural progression from "Avalon," I find this thread's premise at odds with my own experience

While I don't consider them his best work (that would be "Avalon" and the other 1979-80 work IMO) I love the aforementioned albums. He perfected an archetypical 80s new romantic sound in a great way, even after the new romantic movement had faded. And he did in a great way. "Bete Noire", in particular, is underrated.

"Taxi" is also ace, the way it manages to turn a lot of old pop standards into shiny and sleek new romantic wonders.

One possible reason:

40 Roxy Music Trash Mar 1979
2 Roxy Music Dance Away Apr 1979

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster." - Fredrich Nietzsche

Also, nuns->church, joe strummer.

...but there's nothing on Bride Stripped Bare (his first "Release the session hounds" record) that even hints at, say, "Oh Yeah."

Actually, I've always found it fitting that TBSB ended with "This Island Earth," which soundwise absolutely prefigures the next phase of both Ferry/Roxy, doesn't it? (I also think there's something telling about the title, not that I've listened to the lyrics too closely. It's the first sign, in a way, that Ferry is drifting away from the rest of us, sort of.)

Bryan Ferry became the Lothario character he always parodied

Did he ever really parody this? Didn't he always seem to embody it, even if his music embodied it in a much different way initially. I realize you're chalking this up to "conventional wisdom," but I've always assumed the opposite was what people said--that he always WAS that guy, essentially.

"This Island Earth," which soundwise absolutely prefigures the next phase of both Ferry/Roxy

Agreed.

as this has always been my favorite Brian Ferry stuff, and seems like the natural progression from "Avalon," I find this thread's premise at odds with my own experience

-- J0hn D., Sonntag, 20. Januar 2008 20:19 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

ditto

Did he ever really parody this? Didn't he always seem to embody it, even if his music embodied it in a much different way initially. I realize you're chalking this up to "conventional wisdom," but I've always assumed the opposite was what people said--that he always WAS that guy, essentially.

OTM

What most people here said. I actually got into Bryan Ferry in the first place with, of all things, "Is Your Love Strong Enough?," aka 'love theme from Legend,' 1986, full on stately dramatics. Worked brilliantly and I wanted to find out more about the guy!

I guess those who hate this type of stuff would consider all his 79-99 output as different shades of bland, but really 'Boys and Girls' and 'Mamounia' are not at all the same album.

The latter being Ferry's half-successful foray into "urban grooves"

If Ferry was 'parodying' this, then Posh Spice was as well.

http://www.connollyco.com/discography/roxy_music/viva_hi.jpg

My favorite eighties Ferry track has become "Help Me," and it's a damn shame Ferry and Nile Rodgers didn't record a whole album. Very hard to find too!

The more I think about this question, the more I think that the differences between Ferry's 70s work and his 80s/90s work, while certainly having some continuity in subject matter, the types of songs he covered, etc., are really pronounced in a way that's sometimes hard to reconcile. It seems like a lot of it has to do with production and arrangements--the technology he recorded with, the types of players he used (even though some are probably the same as he used earlier), the drum sounds he was after, etc. When he recorded standards on those early albums, like "These Foolish Things" and "You Are My Sunshine," despite heavy leanings towards lounge music, they're still essentially hard rock songs at root (in the former instance, hard rock combined with a slight reggae lilt, in the latter, hard rock combined with slight gospel overtones)--I mean, listen to the drums in "These Foolish Things," it's still very far removed from easy listening and has nothing at all in common with the era the song is trying to evoke (there was NEVER drumming like that on Sinatra records, for instance). I imagine had he covered those same tunes in the mid '80s or '90s, they would've come out much differently, way less "rock," way more atmospheric and ambient. I don't know where I'm going with this comment, but I do think the drumming on his records (not to mention the drum sounds) has a fair bit to do with why the two eras are so different.

Aren't some of his own version of Roxy Music songs on Let's Stick Together kind of going in that more atmospheric refined-nearly-out-of-existence direction?

refined-nearly-out-of-existence direction

That's a very nice way of putting it and why I love the guy. For all the talk about romance, Ferry always appears completely removed from the setting of his songs.

atmospheric refined-nearly-out-of-existence direction

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. In regards to Let's Stick Together--I suppose, but even early Roxy had lots of atmospheric stuff--yet it still (to me) sounds nothing like the '80s period. The sheen isn't quite there yet?

In some ways, the '80s Ferry adapted Eno's ambient ideas more fondly--so much so that it actually does become a kind of "background" music. I wouldn't even say this was completely by design, but it transmits that way perhaps.

I also wonder if he wasn't trying to make records that sounded more in tune with contemporary r&b--whereas the earlier records harken back more to classic soul? I don't think the 80s records are r&b in that you can dance to them, but maybe he's aiming for the sheen or the elegance of post-disco/post-Chic r&b?

Drifting through a world that´s torn and tattered
Every thought I have don´t mean a thing

I think I was stealing a phrase from something I once read about Andre Gide.

Good thread, and I also asked this from myself a few times. Am I the only one who thinks Ferry should've made a kind of chamber pop-records with Tindersticks-like melancholy and lush orchestral parts instead of this plastic-R&B dullness?

He has:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Q7Y2VMVHL._SS500_.jpg

... and it wasn't as good as the plastic-R&B.

i still think he should have made an entire album of stuff like 'Sultanesque'.

No, this was swing/big band music revival, not that thing that critics usually call chamber pop.

I'm not gonna go off on too big of a tangent here, but I like As Time Goes By way more than most critics, in part because I think it was his way out of his 80s-90s vocal malaise (not that I don't gravitate to that style sometimes as well--I mean, I love Avalon, absolutely). His version of "The Way You Look Tonight" is totally glam rock--the singing, anyway. Way more bite than ANYthing he'd recorded the 18 or so years previous.

Putting it into a wider context, a lot of the glam/art rock people of the 70s kind of blanded out in the 80s, ie Bowie, Reed etc.

I don't think the 80s records are r&b in that you can dance to them, but maybe he's aiming for the sheen or the elegance of post-disco/post-Chic r&b?

That's a nice line. It's certainly more true of "Angel Eyes," "Ain't That So," "Same Old Scene," and the other club-leaning tracks on Manifesto and F+B.

Here's my take on Ferry in the eighties.

Scott will disagree, but I started hearing aggressive singing again as far back as Taxi. Maybe Robin Trower encouraged it? He's even enunciating again on Mamouna's better tracks.

"Putting it into a wider context, a lot of the glam/art rock people of the 70s kind of blanded out in the 80s, ie Bowie, Reed etc."

Don't forget Eno.

Lou Reed eighties = far better than Lou Reed seventies.

You really think so? Personally I can take or leave most stuff he did after the title track of The Bells...

I like The Bells, but there's no way that any of the seventies albums compare with The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, and New Sensations, crap production and everything. But that's for another thread....

Scott will disagree, but I started hearing aggressive singing again as far back as Taxi.

No, I'm guessing you've probably just listened a little closer than I have. I trust your judgment! Maybe part of the point is you really have to listen hard to get it--I could see that.

I love this line from Alfred's Stylus piece:

"These albums raise the idea of Bryan Ferry into an abstraction too remote to quantify, removed from mortal thought—our own Holy Spirit of Sophisticate Melancholy."

Fantastic!

Nice article but I don't get/remember the rerefence in the last paragraph on Sade, who incidently rivals Ferry in the "atmospheric refined-nearly-out-of-existence direction" (esp. on Love Deluxe).

xp indeed, that's a great line.

as flawed as Boys & Girls and Bete Noir are, their sound and ethos seems unique to me. Has any other artist worked so hard to distance himself from his own music?

sw00ds OTM and may simply say it better than I have.

The key word upthread is "reconcile" -- discerning a thread of continuity between his 70's and 80's work, and it's something I think all too often simply gets dismissed. Even on this thread, people are just kind of casually making claims (Let's Stick Together refines the Roxy tracks out of existence!" "I can hear Boys and Girls in 'This Island Earth'!" "'Psalm' is a proto-'Dance Away'!!") that are either so wrongheaded, dubious or intellectually tenuous that one can understand why this "theory" has persisted.

Getting back to blowing a hole in it...

First, there's the difference in the music itself. sw00ds' point about the drums is something I thought a lot about this weekend ("These Foolish Things" has a reggae beat for chrissakes!) The departure of Paul Thompson was obviously a major catalyst for Ferry -- once he leaves, you can literally count on one hand the number of rock numbers he records. Everything he does from thereon out is either pop or funk.

But that doesn't account for the utter lack of irony in his 1980's music. In Ferry's earlier work, sincerity is strategically deployed -- in "Just Another High," it's the release for five albums' worth of deceptions. By the 1980's, it's all release, no tension -- and yes, maybe a bit of an Eno-esque ambient moment in that so many of the tracks from that era ("Which Way To Turn," for instance) are just one elongated sentiment.

Still, it don't jibe...

Ok, thinking about the idea that maybe he started singing with bite again around Taxi -- I've always thought he did, at least with "You gotta stop the things you doooooo..." line on "I Put A Spell On You" which has that old vampiric vibrato.

It makes me think: is it possible Ferry explicitly rejected his old aesthetic come 1980 or so?

(This thread is turning out great! The "atmospheric refined-nearly-out-of-existence direction" part alone = yay.)

and "Girl of My Best Friend" is sung with lots of the old irony. He's accepting his loucheness with a sly shrug.

Great thread - the kind I came to ILM for.

I don't remember why I did it know, but earlier this year, I listened to Dylanesque. I am not a fan of Ferry's covermania, nor a Dylan devotee, but I found this abut the most interesting (=vital) thing he's done in about 20 years.

I fear the Roxy album, if it ever comes out, is just going to sound like everything else Ferry's done since 1986 (ie. not as good as Bete Noire).

am i the only person who thinks his best song is 'slave to love'? probs.

It is touching and interesting to see such dedicated attention to the work of Bryan Ferry.

What about Morley's sleeve notes for Dylanesque? Does he seem to have understood Ferryism, or not?

The only thing I find puzzling is that, once there was an 80s revival really getting into the mainstream, Ferry stopped reviving the 80s. He had that sleek new romantic style, originally more or less "invented" on "Both Ends Burning", from the "Dance Away" single through the "Mamouna" album. And then, with "Frantic" he did something completely different, sort of returning to his 70s style all of a sudden.

Great thread. Also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWexyXpLKOY

Ned's reviews are, as usual, quite good -- Bete Noir in particular is a pretty fresh take.

I had to reread that review just now because I'd forgotten it completely -- would definitely change a lot of the style but I'm actually surprised by my conclusions, in a good way. I need to listen to that one again!

I'm listening to it now. "The Name of the Game" = wow. It's like Ferry heard "Live to Tell" and wanted to record a vocal as naked as Madonna's until his ethos got in the way -- he sounds like he's singing from Mons Venus across endlessly cavernous slap bass and synth tracks.

Writers think like writers, musicians like musicians.

The Occam's razor element here comes courtesy friends who played on some of these records.

At this point, Ferry had enough money to indulge his obsessive ideas about instrument sounds leading to some truly crazy frittering of studio time to get one beat of a percussion sound nobody would really hear. (I don't know how much drugs did or did not play into matters.)

So I don't think there's an art theory Macguffin here. And I think this helps explain the loopy disconnect between "Kiss and Tell"'s succinct dance pop and blurry whoosh of "The Right's Stuff". Without Roxy and his art school pals, he had nobody to bounce those sort of notions off (I forget when Simon Puxley passed on, but it seems Ferry spent much time just trying to keep him alive.)

Anyway--he DID have musicians. Anyone he wanted. And all the studio time in the world.

I mean, I saw him at Radio City in '88 and he had The Best Band Money Could Buy and it was literally the most godawful show I've ever seen, one Sisters of Mercy atrocity to the side.

I think his recent inclinations towards Manzanara and Eno show, perhaps, a humbling sense of needing reflective sources.

And then there's the facts that BOYS AND GIRLS made him a shitload of money, which would lend validation to whatever aesthetic caused that to happen.

The only thing I find puzzling is that, once there was an 80s revival really getting into the mainstream, Ferry stopped reviving the 80s....
― Geir Hongro, Monday, 24 March 2008 16:21 (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not really, when all around you are doing the same thing, it should be more implicit for the 'artist' to do something different...

I mean, I saw him at Radio City in '88 and he had The Best Band Money Could Buy and it was literally the most godawful show I've ever seen, one Sisters of Mercy atrocity to the side.

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2EqR89MpiQ&feature=related

Please check out the lead guitarist's hair.

/I mean, I saw him at Radio City in '88 and he had The Best Band Money Could Buy and it was literally the most godawful show I've ever seen, one Sisters of Mercy atrocity to the side./

Like this?



Please check out the lead guitarist's hair.
--Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

"Frantic" definitely had some more muscle to it, didn't it? Good Eno collab on that one, too. (Though to be fair, if memory serves, Eno is all over "Mamouna," which every much sounds like something he might have produced circa then).

What I've always found most odd about Ferry's shift to full-on smooth mode is how raw and invigorating all the prime Roxy stuff is. I mean, they had enough money to sound like Steely Dan, if they wanted to, but for some reason they kept it rough. I dunno. Maybe blame Manzanera as failing to fulfill his role as studio foil?

Also, unlike Sade, Ferry is just too inherently arch to pull off ennui sans irony. Also, the difference between "cool" and "cold," etc.

(xpost)
Ha. Saw a god-awful show at Radio City in the early nineties. Then a few weeks later ran into a friend of a friend musician, complained about the show I saw and she told me that she had been rehearsing with Ferry, but he fired everybody in the version of the band she was in, which she claimed was much better, and replaced them with the jokers that I saw.

As good as Manzanera, Mackay, et al were as musicians, they weren't Steve Gadd or Skunk Baxter, so on Manifesto, the closest they ever came to Katy Lied-Royal Scam era Dan (check out "Ain't That So"), they still sound like punks.

Well, yeah. But they could have *afforded* to replace them in the studio with session dudes. And indeed ultimately did, with Andy Newmark, Rick Marotta, their rotating cast of bassists, et al. The question is, why didn't they go whole hog with the session smooth earlier? I suppose there are some parallels to the Beatles as a touring unit vs. the Beatles as studio bound. When Roxy got back together for "Manifesto," they were a fundamentally different band in a different place, and I doubt they would have gotten to that place naturally, sans a disruptive hiatus.

No question but that Ferry would have replaced them ALL if he could. He tossed out Paul Thompson because he was too much of a "basher."

I thought Paul offered an easy opening by breaking his hand or something? Curiously, Thompson was back for the reunion tour but barely billed.

Can't wait for the next round of Alfred's and Scott's Roxy/Ferry podcast - the 80s are next
http://rockcriticsarchives.com/audiovisual/index-roxy.html

GQ linked to us!

Hey Alfred, when is the next podcast going up--I am loving these!

as soon as Scott edits the last three broadcasts.

I'll happily accept criticism, by the way. Relistening, I'm aware that I overuse "interesting."

The "post-enunciation" phase of Bryan Ferry's career:

http://rockcritics.com/2010/01/22/roxymania-1973/

This whole podcast series has been a v. inspiring idea on a number of fronts.

Revive to note that after two records of reconnecting with his earlier, rockier sound (Frantic and Dylanesque), Ferry has quietly slid right back into uber-session-y smoothie funk with the last two records (Olympia and Avonmore). It's like Lucifer caught him reneging on their deal.

with which I have no problem because the songwriting is often rather good

I love "As Time Goes By". One of his finest records.

I spend much more time listening to Billie Holiday than any "rock" vocalists these days, so I've always shied away from it the same way I have, say, Rod Stewart's Great American Songbooks records. It was Ferry who introduced me to "These Foolish Things" as a teen though, still one of my favorite songs of all time, so I should probably give "ATGB" a shot.

ugh bete noire is just fucking killing me with goodness rn

am i the only person who thinks his best song is 'slave to love'? probs.

No.

He's coming to Vancouver tomorrow night. I'm pretty strapped for cash but Ferry is one of my all-time favourites - is it a big mistake not to go?

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, it'll be very close to the album versions of songs you know, but he won't live forever.

I saw him last year…good show, but his voice is destroyed…

His voice is reduced a whisper of desires of past. The song selection is striking, though, and the band is first-rate.

So what DID happen?? I have theories.

No love for the Bête Noir title track, Alfred? It's the song that would top my list.
And from BN, definitely 'The Right Stuff' too, 'New Town' as well.
I'd also put 'The Only Face' from Mamouna in there.
And I am pretty fond of his As Time Goes By album, 'The Way You Look Tonight and 'Where or When' are highlights for me there.
'Reason or Rhyme' is a strong one from Olympia.

(But you can count me in with the 'few' mentioned in the OP who would say Boys And Girls and Bête Noir are his best solo albums, don't know what that says about me.)

I can't belive I omitted "Reason or Rhyme."

(But you can count me in with the 'few' mentioned in the OP who would say Boys And Girls and Bête Noir are his best solo albums

Ten years later, me too, surprisingly, on Boys and Girls at least. To the point that I even did a re-edit of "Sensation" a few years ago:

https://soundcloud.com/the-me/sensation-the-me-re-edit-1

Excellent writing as usual, Alfred.

Which way to turn and San Simeon are underrated imo

those are all good songs. nice list! I'm at peace with ferry as he turned out. I think he's done what he needed to do. and I still don't like Bete Noir that much.

Does anyone have a copy of Eno's 39 Steps mix? I am a big fan but can't find it anywhere.

same!

I have a different version, from The Horoscope Demos, but I have no idea if it's the Eno mix. Eno is all over that album in a supporting role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP6HoCNQtlU

I'll still defend Robin Trower's co-productions on this album and Taxi: he insisted on a few tracks per song at most, which put renewed interest on Ferry's vocals and keyboards for the first time since Avalon.

Dunno if this was ever posted but it's excellent. Bracewell's knowledge and respect for Ferry/Roxy makes him a keen interviewer.
Have only read his "Remake:Remodel" and "Souvenir" - both excellent. Would like to read more of his stuff.

err...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpwXiIvS7g0

That was enjoyable, thanks for sharing. Ferry’s breezy, devil-may-care detachment there is actually a great contrast to something I just stumbled back upon.

The Mamouna deluxe release has gotten me thinking about how few times in his career Ferry seemed to be unsure of himself. Another was The Bride Stripped Bare which also luxuriates in uncertainty and insecurity but in a very different way.

I was fairly thunderstruck re-reading this interview with Allen Jones in 1978 which oscillates between crushing self-doubt and chest-beating braggadocio that it is striking for an artist that Alfred correctly notes is almost famously unreflective in his interviews. The image of Ferry wandering around parties in Bel Air imagining himself to be an observational writer and “social explorer” but being received instead as a getting-on celebrity who’s just been dumped by his model girlfriend is one of many memorable images here. There’s also his admission at a time when he was estranged from his Roxy bandmates that he gets depressed and unmotivated absent “enthusiasm from other people.”

As for the Bride record itself, I still find it to be a grab bag of decent-to-very good originals—“Sign of the Times” is a classic—oddly straightforward soul covers and a handful of one-off experiments, performed by session musicians who don’t challenge Ferry here so much as indulge him.

But the hurt, loneliness and wounded pride are more audible in the context of the Jones interview – as Ferry waxes nostalgic about the “emotion” and closeness he felt to a bunch of guys he was paying to play for him in a remote Swiss studio while also admitting to the tremendous pressure he felt from Atlantic Records to break America. There is also the sense of immense frustration he felt with “Sign of the Times” flopping as a single at the height of a movement he felt some ownership for having helped create.

Where did that leave Ferry? Stripped of the credibility to offer ironic social commentary, firmly entrenched as a celebrity but with waning commercial draw as a solo act. That Ferry would return to Roxy a year later with session musos in tow to record the likes of “Dance Away” is perhaps not merely unsurprising but likely inevitable.

Mystery solved?