Brian Ferry

December 10, 2007, 1:30 a.m.

Sound and shadow in Brian Ferry

The Devil's Clack Dish:
A Column

Richard Hamilton's "Just what is it that makes our modern homes so different, so appealing" is a small (10” by 10”) but powerful opening salvo of Pop Art. Studying art under Hamilton seems to have inspired Brian Ferry.

The first two Roxy Music releases are ostensibly loaded with glam/pop/rock, but, in reality, they are collages with a bit of Three Penny Opera and a dash of Noel Coward.

For example, “The Strand” is little snippets of art (Guernica, the Mona Lisa) and pictures of artists, dancers and writers, characters fictional and real, impressions of moonlit nights on perfumed terraces, all in one disarming pastiche. It’s as good a collage as can be done with words and musical sounds (those horns, that liquid staccato of the piano, the clash of eras meshing in each second of music). Ferry moves with a studied dexterity and his phrasing is as much music hall as it is astonishingly fresh. It’s a musical fusion that isn’t just glam rock. It ushers out be-bop and prepares the way for punk.

“Virginia Plain” is another example, with Brian Eno providing the exotic silver lame’ (or feather boas) and Ferry in a suit talking about a Studebaker and roller coasters and airplanes while that insistently charming impossible oboe swirls around him. Amazing pop-art culture bombs explode like fireworks in the music. There was nothing as literate, brilliant or as just plain fun as this music and it’s hard to think of anything current that is as well realized and original in its appropriations. The feeling of a new art medium being explored is implicit in every note.

Many people sing in bands. And that's what they do. They sing. In the days before Roxy Music, the stages were loaded with folks standing around grinding out their hits. That's what we are stuck with now. It's all pretty dull. Roxy Music and the glam bands filled the stage with a riot of colors and excitement.

Plenty of glams have left us not much to remember except their awful clothing, their congealed eye make-up and our own youth. No matter how good the music, watching Queen put one foot in the self-serious drama of Uriah Heep and the other in glam makes one's skin crawl. But Ferry's voice is riveting and distinctive. You could always listen to Roxy Music. And when you watch them, it's still fun.

Rhododendron
Fred Ferry, Bryan’s father was skilled in the garden and won prizes for his vegetables. He had originally been a farmer and later tended the “pit ponies” in the mines in Washington, Sunderland, where Bryan was born.

Fred Ferry was good with the ponies and Bryan has several times recounted that his dad decked a guy who hit one of the little, sturdy horses. Ferry’s family originally had no phone, no indoor bathroom, a tin bath on the wall and no refrigerator. They were poor, but I imagine they were not in the minority at that time. They later moved to better digs. Bryan was Polly Ferry’s beautiful little boy, and I expect she doted on him somewhat.

Re-upholstered
No nasty polyester slipcovers for Brian Ferry. He always re-upholstered, plushly, when covering a song. The song structure is there but over-laid with Ferry’s signature dark, velvet vibrato. He augments the frame of it. Maybe he refinishes it, gives it more luster in some parts. Leaves the patina in others. But the song shines through.

Some people sculpt a cover song, using it as clay to make it over in their own image. Think of Craig Wedren’s breath-taking version of Atlanta Rhythm Section’s "So Into You" or Devo’s exhilarating cover of the Stone’s "Satisfaction." Ferry re-makes the surface and leaves the song better than he found it. He succeeds beautifully nine times out of ten. Wilbert Harrison’s “Let’s Get Together,” Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” as well as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “These Foolish Things,” “I Can’t Get Started,” and of course Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” may all just as well have been expressly written for Ferry. He knew what to do with them.

Ferry's latest release, Dylanesque, is characteristic of his refinishing work. "Positively 4th St." smooths out and drapes silkily into a very beautiful song. " Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (which I've always thought had a whiny quality) unfurls into a soft and lovely song. Ferry irons the kinks out of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down." Dylan's distinctive voice often rushes or drones through a performance as if he is a bit tired of it all and would prefer to be unwatched. Ferry's voice seems unperturbed by scrutiny. This unflappability gives his thoughtful interpretations of Dylan an assured quality that allows you to really listen to the music. And why, oh why, didn't Ferry cover "Tangled Up In Blue?"

Dylanesque is full of revelations about Ferry, about Dylan, about music.

The Moon Smiles At Him
Ferry was born in 1945, on Sept. 26, a birthday he shares with T.S. Eliot, George Gershwin, Théodore Géricault and Marcello Mastrioni. These four guys almost make a perfect word picture of Ferry. (It would help to throw in David Hockney or Kurt Schwitters, but they aren’t his birthday mates.) Horoscopically speaking, he’s a Libra with a Scorpio rising – azure hot and crimson cold. (He auditioned for King Crimson. Ferry is King Phosphor, though, don’t you think?) He’s a looker. Yes, of course he’s a miracle of the art of Fred and Polly Ferry’s DNA. There’s no denying that he’s well constructed. But that’s not the kind of looker I mean. He watches things. Quietly, shyly, inquiringly, intently, he’s always watching, looking, preserving little bits and pieces of the world in his mind’s mirror and reflecting them back in music, words, gestures, colors. He can make you squirm with that stare. Not always in a good way.

There is a mirror he doesn’t let anyone see. He may not even need to use it now. No, not the “Snow White” mirror, albeit he was and is the fairest in the land. No point in asking that.

There’s another mirror, a private one, where he practiced every move. Like a dancer you say? Not really. He was never much of a dancer. More like a physical interpreter. No one was ever better at it. It had to require a mirror. He doesn’t need it now. Wonder where he keeps it.

His Birthright
Perhaps “birth rate” is a better word. How many children were conceived to the sound of Ferry’s voice? If you want to know why the eyes of people over 40 mist over when you say his name, you need to realize it is highly likely that their most romantic evenings were accompanied by Ferry. It’s quite possible that you wouldn’t even be here if not for him. His voice is all absinthe and wistful dreams.

Might be his particular fate, his birthright, to be always searching for the bewitching romantic moment and feeling bored and disappointed when the spell wears off. Can you imagine trading in a Triumph Spitfire (finicky, stylish, charming, speedy) like Ferry for a Chevy Nova like Mick Jagger?

So maybe his birthright is also a bit of troubling heartache. He searches for the perfect moment, ponders and re-ponders his missteps, allows us in to look at the artwork he creates with the tools of his despair (“Kiss and Tell,” etc., etc.) and, in the process, he comforts us.

Theatrical Magic
Not Like David Copperfield. Bryan Ferry is not a cheap magician. There’s real stuff underneath the artifice. That’s what makes his romantic murmurs so swooningly disconcerting and that’s also what makes it art. Has he been faking it sometimes? Sure. Don’t you? Sometimes, though, his romantic discomfiture is palpable. He also seduces, he cajoles, he reduces normally smart-ass writers (like yours truly) to gushy twits. He knows where the camera is.

I called a friend to ask him when exactly it was (and where it was) that we saw Ferry on tour. I knew it was in support of Mamouna. I remembered what Ferry was wearing. I even remembered the encores, the stage décor, the palms, the tent-like intimacy, the incense. But I couldn’t remember when. Seems like yesterday. Turned out to be 1994. Not exactly yesterday. The Orpheum. Downtown Minneapolis. My friend said, “Remember how that incense and the lighting made it seem all misty, like a dream?” Yeah, some of that was the staging. Some of it was pure, undiluted essence of Bryan Ferry.

I was in a gruesome cover band in the ‘70’s and we played a gig with some Brits, who, under the influence of some mighty good Thai stick proceeded to teach me the whole "Ferry Schtick" for "The Strand." You know. The "fandango" pose, the paging through Who’s Who, the Najinsky "Strandsky" moves. I never forgot it, and can still do it to this very day. You wouldn’t want to see it, though. I’m not as elegant as Ferry and I end up looking a lot like Martha Ray. There’s more than a little Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht in all this.

Shadow
Ferry’s dark side, as he shows it to us, is his heartache, his searching. But there’s another dark side. No, I don’t think he’s a Nazi but one has to admit that he understands the propaganda of style. He admires it. He relates to it. Even at his most sincere there’s a glint of a control demon in his eye. Ah, maybe we don’t see him at his most sincere. Maybe Gracie Fields was actually a terrible snob, maybe Gandhi loved cheeseburgers. Things are not always as they seem. Maybe Ferry is untroubled and unruffled by his heart and work. Maybe the Spice Girls were codifying Wittgenstein.

His darkness is real, I think, and like all good (or bad) dark, scary places, it’s disturbing and confusing. Even if it’s in the guise of love. Our scrutiny does little to free him from it.

Palette
He may now be looking for that perfect grey, like Ansel Adams, but has settled for black and white. Remember the iridescent pinks and baby blues of the ‘80’s? The reds and oranges of the ‘90s? The Wall Street browns and toreador jackets and capes? What an astonishing array of colors he uses. His not-so-secret ambition has always been to paint with the tools of music and fashion. This is a very difficult thing – blending two non-musical mediums to a snapshot or a canvas of "aural" paint. No wonder he’s sometimes frustrated by his perfectionism.

So, once in a while he works with collage, sometimes he watercolors love, occasionally he commits a scene to oils or takes a picture. But never with actual paint. Always with wardrobe, sets and music. Is it theatre? Maybe. It’s more portraiture, I think. If you are frustrated, saying to yourself, "Yes, but doesn't everybody do this with music?" I would counter with, "Sure, but is it worth looking at?"

Kiss
A writer once called him "sex on a stick" and you need to be a very young writer, indeed, to not see his attractiveness. He has no earring, no tattoo (that we can see anyway), no shaved head, no army boots or trainers, no wife-beater “T” or wallet chain. He’s classier than that. He knows more about how to attract romance than most of us know about putting our socks on in the morning.

There are women who are put off by a man in a jacket, a nice tie, a tasteful shirt and creased pants. There are women who fear the serious intentions of a man with really beautiful shoes. Okay, they’re not women. They’re girls. Ferry attracts women.

Yet, for all this sex appeal, no kisses. Poring over hundreds of Ferry photos, one sees him with his arm elegantly draped around the occasional super-model or fan or friend. No kisses. The only time I’ve seen him kiss anybody was the surprisingly warm, open, friendly kiss he gave to Jools Holland’s cheek on an interview show. Holland was visibly nonplussed. Ferry’s warmth? Devastating. He is familiar with affection, not just sexiness. A revelation to me, anyway. Whatever his eyes have seen (and one can only imagine) they now glow with warmth.

Kisses mean something, or should. They're decidedly not for public entertainment. It’s a warm shy masculine thing, this. Yep, he's a dying breed: a gentleman.

The Crow’s Wing
The impossible wing of hair that falls into the eyes so perfectly, can that be his natural casual elegance or did he practice in that mirror? His hair still hath charms. Even when he’s singing “Let’s Get Together” in 1976 in that perfectly crumpled white suit with the horrid little gigolo mustache on his face; that hair falls into his eyes and you accept that weasel-stache. Even in his weird “Grizzly Adams” phase with the beard; the hair tousles and you accept the grizzle. In 1994, standing on the stage in a short red jacket, he pauses, the hair is tumbled boyishly down and you’re snared. At 61, he still knows how to use it.

Yes but isn’t it all a bit cheesy? Looking at the many videos of Ferry on YouTube, one is thunder-struck with the Velveeta of the eighties. It makes one squirm to hear the casio keyboards and see the awful white shoes, high heels with anklets and big plastic earrings. So, one warms with familiar memories and flushes with embarrassment for the excesses. Ferry, in spite of all this gouda, always looks great, timeless, assured. Yeah, it’s cheesy. But that's Brie.

I’ve been eating, drinking, smoking, reading about and staring at Bryan Ferry for a couple of weeks. I was going to just write a little paragraph about him, how much I still love Roxy Music, For Your Pleasure, Bete Noir, Boys And Girls. I wanted to say that Dylanesque is revelatory and classy.

But that Ferry smoke got in my eyes. I started dreaming about him. No joke.

I've met an awful lot of my music heroes thanks to writing gigs. When Ferry was in town I was always asked if I would like to interview him (probably because I was the old babe), and I always said no. I want to keep my dreams. He would totally understand this.

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