Bryan Ferry, musician and dandy: “Rock and roll is not just jeans and t-shirts” | Culture

Bryan Ferry doesn’t know how many jackets he keeps in his closets. “Too many,” he says. Hundred? “I have no idea. You can only wear one at a time, so you don’t need that many.” He then looks at the light blue shirt he is wearing this afternoon, with the top two buttons undone, and without a jacket, and adds, laughing: “Today I’m going casual”.

Ferry, 79, is as well known for his music with Roxy Music or alone as for his persistent elegance. He cultivates a marked dandy aesthetic: suit and tie; sometimes, a tuxedo and bow tie, like on the cover of his album Another time, another place, 1974. In 2020, the British edition of the magazine GQ defined it as “the master of men’s fashion.” “Clothes are fun,” he explains. “When I was young, while I was studying, I used to work on Saturdays in a tailor shop, and that made me interested in learning about the different ways of designing a suit.” His appearance of gentleman It is timeless. “I like old Hollywood movies, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum… They were always well dressed, even with a hat. “I miss that kind of stuff.”

The English singer and songwriter conceives music as a form of art – in fact, he founded Roxy Music during his time as a Fine Arts student at Newcastle University – in which image plays a prominent role. This is common to many other artists; The difference is that it seems that Bryan Ferry has been proclaiming for fifty years that rock is compatible with class and refinement. “Rock and roll is not just jeans and t-shirts. If you look at people like Little Richard, he looked incredible. Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Booker T. Jones… They came out to play in very elegant suits of different colors. It was something that inspired me a lot at the beginning of my career,” he says in an interview with El PAÍS via video call.

For one reason or another, Bryan Ferry, named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011, is one of the prominent figures in rock history. However, his solo career is only partially popular with the general public. Less enlightened fans surely identify him only by his album Boys & Girls, 1985, published after the overwhelming success of Avalon (1982), by Roxy Music, and with memorable singles like Slave to Love either Don’t Stop the Dance. Some even believe that it was then that he began his career on his own. But this beginning dates back to 1973, when he launched These Foolish Things. Sixteen albums he has recorded, leaving for posterity a vast catalog that spans fifty years and is now compiled in an anthology with 81 songs titled Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023.

When Ferry made his solo debut, Roxy Music was still taking its first steps: he had only released one self-titled album. His group mates did not take it badly. “I guess my first album was an experiment,” he explains. “They understood that I wanted to make an album that was different, a little more fun and with different material. Paul Thomson (roxy Music drummer) played on the entire album and Phil Manzanera (guitarist) on at least one song. They understood that it was a kind of fun. I still felt like my main job was the band, which I was writing for and was the vehicle for my songs. “It was a great band, very good, with unique characters, so being part of it was a real pleasure.”

He remembers that 28-year-old boy who went into a studio to record his first album as someone “full of ambition and excited to be recording songs. From a very young age I was a fan of music and I had never dreamed of expressing myself through it. It was exciting to find a way to do it and feel accomplished. As an artist, you want to make an impression or expand your consciousness and, to some extent, offer a better version of yourself.”

What I did These Foolish Things A different work was that it was a cover album. In the repertoire there were songs by Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Four Tops, among others. “I thought it would be interesting to try to record other people’s songs and develop my talents as an arranger, singer or producer,” he says. Since that release, cover albums have gained increasing prominence in Ferry’s discography, to the point where it can be said that thanks to his efforts he has laid the foundations for other rock greats to do the same. In 2007 he recorded a complete album with compositions by Bob Dylan (Dylanesque).

He finds true joy in working with other people’s songs: “The best thing is that you are not responsible for the lyrics and melody. There is great freedom. You say, ‘That’s a great song: let’s try to do something different, explore possibilities,’ and I usually do it in an instinctive way. You think it’s going to be interesting for me and other people.” He took jazz eminences as an example. “When I was a teenager I listened to jazz records, and I discovered that the same song was played by different musicians: Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra… There were different ways of making the same standard. I like my songs, but it was fun to record others that were different from my songwriting style. The first solo album had a wide range of musical genres. the song These Foolish Things It has very romantic lyrics. It was a pop album, something very different from what he did with Roxy, which was more intense, dark and mysterious. It was the way to have fun for two weeks.”

He combined his activity at Roxy Music with his personal project until 1983, when after the tour of Avalon, the band broke up. Unusual case: That album became Roxy Music’s best-selling album. (two million copies worldwide, half of them in the United States alone) and also his epitaph. So strange was it that they threw in the towel in their prime, that it is easy to imagine the managers of their company at that time banging their fists on the table and shouting: “No! “We want another album like it!” “It was a perverse move,” Ferry acknowledges. “It was something very English. Avalon it worked very well. I recently went to Los Angeles, where Bob Clearmountain (the album’s original engineer) was remixing it with Dolby Atmos sound, and I cried hearing how beautiful it sounded. It struck a chord with many people, and continues to do so. After Avalonthe next was Boys and Girlsand although it is a solo album, it has a similar flavor, a similar sound, and that is why I also like it a lot.”

There are those who maintain that Roxy Music’s music is very sexy. Ferry does not deny it, and explains: “There is sexuality throughout the history of rock and roll. Little Richard, Elvis Presley, even Fats Domino, they had a kind of sexiness to them. “Music is something abstract, it’s rhythmic and it can be romantic, and it takes people to another realm, which is quite nice.” Not only is his music perceived as sexy; so do its covers, which often feature scantily clad female models. The most obvious case is Country Lifefrom 1974, on the cover of which two models appear (Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald), whom Ferry personally located in Portugal and invited them to visit the studio of photographer Eric Boman. One of them appears wearing transparent white underwear (covering the bottom part with one hand) and the other, in topless, covering the chest with both hands. That image was censored in the United States, Australia and Spain, where it was decided to enlarge the image and present a close-up, cropped above the nipples, of the model on the left. One wonders what reception this cover would have had today.

“Times have changed, it’s clear,” he responds. “I don’t know the numbers of how many people think one way or another. I always believed in freedom of expression and choice, of thought, and it’s not fun when you see people afraid to talk about their tastes or what they don’t like. “It’s difficult.” In any case, Ferry assures that, in general, what he seeks is for the covers to reflect the sensitivity of the music they hide. “In the past, in vinyl stores, you would see the record displays and they were like street art. They were not in a museum, but available to anyone,” he alleges.

From the office installed on the upper floor of his London studio, sitting in front of a large bookcase, Bryan Ferry speaks slowly, politely and appears endearing. It is in that place where he spends most of the day, especially now that he is preparing a new album. “I usually finish recording at seven and then I like to go out to dinner,” he says. “I work daily with young people. And at night I see older people, generally designers, artists… I like to eat something and drink a little, and I try to socialize, although in small groups; no parties. On weekends I leave London and go to the countryside to breathe fresh air, look at the trees and listen to the birds. “Totally serious.”

He admits that he doesn’t have many close friends in music. “I’ve worked with many musicians, of course, but my closest friends are artists. I went to university with some. I like to continue friendships that go back a long time. I see musicians more at work. In London it is not so easy to get together with them, it is a somewhat closed place in that sense,” he points out.

He keeps his distance from the music that is made today. He says that yesterday he spent some time enjoying himself by listening to Harvestby Neil Young (1972). “It’s really beautiful. “I like albums, a full forty minutes of music,” he says. “I listen to the classics a lot, including classical music, which I put on the radio so I don’t have to choose it. I read about new bands and occasionally listen to stuff, but not much. If there is something really good, people tell you about it.” He concedes that “so much music has been made in the last fifty years, that it is difficult for a group that is starting to do something new”; Even so, she chooses among her recent preferences The Last Dinner Party and Wet Leg, two girl bands: “There should be more women in the recording world: engineers, producers… they have good musical instincts.”

He frequently visits Spain for pure pleasure. One of his favorite cities is Seville. “There I lived an unforgettable moment,” he recalls. “It was Holy Week, there was a procession in the street, it stopped and suddenly someone from a balcony started singing a capella It was just fantastic and moving. Even if you don’t understand the language or are not familiar with flamenco, you feel that great passion.” By the way, do you know that in Spain there is a music journalist, as well as a producer, who dresses like him, has his hair like him and is more or less the same age as him, Julián Ruiz? Haven’t you met him on several occasions? He laughs: “I don’t remember. Maybe if I saw a photo… I’m sure it’s an improved version of me!” he jokes.