Bryan Ferry - The Best Of

Hanging out with The “In” Crowd

Speaking to this author in 2007, Roxy Music saxophonist Andy Mackay claimed that Bryan Ferry’s solo career wasn’t necessarily advantageous. Ferry’s self-titled solo debut, released in 1973, just five months after Roxy’s second LP, proved him a master of the fearless interpretation. The following year’s Another Time, Another Place, however, saw Ferry tone down the eccentricites on the likes of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, posing in that soon-to-be ubiquitous dinner jacket. “People tend to think of Bryan as a more conventional singer than he really was,” Mackay observed. “I think he was more original and stranger.”

On his cover of A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Ferry wasn’t afriad to add rain sound effects, laughing jokers and a sighing chorus to camp up Dylan’s portentious original: masterstrokes that proved Ferry to be the arch revisionist he could have remained. It’s the only track from Bryan Ferry on this mostly singles collection, however; the rest largely towing the crooner line: Slave To Love, You Go To My Head, Windswept…

The likes of The “In” Crowd, Price Of Love and, of course, Let’s Stick Together prove he’d not entirely lost his fire, though. Having started the early 70s as one of its greatest wheese-makers, however, as the dinner jacket became straitjacket, Ferry drove himself down the MOR as quickly as possible. Just compare the closing Dylan cover of The Times They Are A-Changin’ from 2007’s Dylanesque to see just how adrift Ferry ended up.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

EMI CDVX | 3066 (CD+DVD)

Reviewed by Jason Draper
<< Back to Issue 371

Login Here

Free Newsletter


Subscribe to
our email newsletter by emailing:

anna.bowen@
metropolis.co.uk