The Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music Album By Album Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Dr. Weber, Dec 24, 2008.

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  1. Sounds like you don't like "Help Me"? A so-so song in a terrific movie.
     
  2. Done A Ton

    Done A Ton Birdbrain

    Location:
    Rural Kansas
    I hated Avalon, but I loved Boys And Girls. Favorite song: The Chosen One.
     
  3. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    According to the Dylanesque DVD, some work started in January 2006. Since nothing has been issued from those sessions, we can conclude that the work was partial or unsatisfactory. However…

    …back in November 2007 I started the long and winding King Crimson album by album thread. In April or May 2008 word circulated that the reunited band would tour in August as preparation for a celebratory 40th anniversary tour. What transpired, the timing helped by my month-long European holiday, was that I managed to coincide that thread with the tour, that is, concluding the recorded output right as the tour started…

    … now I harbor the same idea that this Roxy Music thread will conclude right as a new studio album is released…

    Dream on… (and don’t be rushin’ me :D)…

    Dr. Weber
     

  4. Ferry started hitting a wall as far as writing (don't know if it was from the music or lyric side) and he's always found recording someone else's material "liberates" and inspires him to do his own stuff.
     
  5. johnnyyen

    johnnyyen Senior Member

    Location:
    Scotland

    It's still a "work in progress", and it will only be released if the band feel it's good enough. There was a clip of the sessions on the recent BBC 4 documentary with Eno in attendance, and the music was reminiscent of the first album. I think they wanted to recreate the early music and put a modern twist on it.
     
  6. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Interesting, I hadn’t heard a word about the style. Think of it, the new Roxy Music studio album will follow Avalon, not Frantic or Dylanesque. How does Ferry and band follow their arguably most successful album, released back in June 1982? With what style? Ferry explored and refined the logical style via Boys and Girls and subsequent albums to Mamouna, which has already been called “dull” in this thread. How does a creative individual go back to mid-career and start anew when the logical and personal style has been thoroughly explored? In theory, Manzanera and Mackay could have greater roles and thus alter or personalize the results.

    Is Eno a full-fledged participant? Yes or no, going back to the beginning to modernize the initial style is an intriguing concept seemingly full of possibilities, except that style was also developed, although I don’t believe it was explored and refined to the same extent as the Avalon style.

    Still, it isn’t surprising that there is some creative blockage. Even highly creative individuals can only go forward with success. Then factor in the quality of the original Roxy Music albums. The new project must be the equal. It is daunting, indeed.

    A comparable example seems to be Townshend, who for years said he couldn’t write for the Who…

    Dr. Weber
     
  7. johnnyyen

    johnnyyen Senior Member

    Location:
    Scotland


    Well, it is 27 years since the last album, and Manzanera and MacKay can easily adapt to different styles, it all depends whether Ferry wants a commercial sound or not. I would like to think this is more of a collaborative effort, and Ferry isn't exactly risking his solo career anymore. From what I read they wanted to return to the classic Roxy sound of the early 70s.

    I think Eno has spent a day here and there, so no, he's not full time.
     
  8. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    yea, so so song. Couldn't get thru the movie; a little too gross for me.
     
  9. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
  10. fabtrick

    fabtrick New Member

    Location:
    NorCal
    The 1972-75 "style" is what I'm after. That was their greatest period. They "rocked" back then - and then they got all disco/jazzy/mellow - which has it's merits, but....

    I was never more disappointed in their live presentation than that double live album they put out after the reunion tour. Very "soft". And the tapes I've heard of Bryan's most recent solo concerts have him being pretty "wussy" in his vocal delivery - no power, no belting it out. If they're just going to do something else "ethereal", like Bryan's been doing for the past 27 years, I couldn't care less.
     
  11. "Soft"? I'm not sure I agree with that. You expected them to play the songs as if the were the same people in 1972-5? They're not. Having attended the shows it was thrilling to see them retackle and revisit their music in a style that was similar to what they did in the early 70's.

    I think that what probably inspired Ferry to revisit their earlier style had much to do with those concerts. They had so much fun playing and reinterpreting the material in the spirit of the time.

    I'm not surprised because Ferry has gone on record as stating that his favorite Roxy Music album was "For Your Pleasure" (although that's not mine).

    As far as his vocal delivery Ferry doesn't quite have the voice he used.
     
  12. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    This is a subject, or subtheme, I hope we cover in some detail as this thread moves to its conclusion and changes become noticeable in Ferry's voice and delivery...

    Dr. Weber
     
  13. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Excerpts from Buckley’s The Thrill of It All, pages 258-60:

    …At the time, Ferry referred to the album (Boys and Girls) as his meisterwerk, but, with the benefit of nearly two decades’ worth of hindsight, even he would not deny that he took his creativity to extraordinary lengths:

    I wanted to do an album of my own songs, and thought I’d done enough group albums. Now I wish I had done that, Boys and Girls, with the group. It was a very painful record to make.
    -----

    The album’s focal point, though, was “Windswept,” Ferry’s favourite track in the collection: “That was just like a mood which just kind of intensified the more we worked on it. It just started off as a keyboard melody and Rhett (Davies) was very good at helping me find the right keyboard sound.” In fact, Davies and Ferry would experiment throughout the album with a number of different rhythms, including, for the first time in Ferry’s music, Latin styles: “I was always a big fan of Come Dancing on television,” Ferry confessed. “I loved all those Latin American dances. So it was getting away from all the to and fro of rock drumming which I’d had it up to here with.”
    -----

    Dr. Weber
     
  14. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    …although available online, the July 18, 1985 ROLLING STONE review of BOYS AND GIRLS by Ira Robbins (formerly the editor-in-chief of TROUSER PRESS)…

    When Bryan Ferry first began making solo records in 1973, his apparent goal was to forge a path radically different from what he was writing and performing with Roxy Music. So while the group produced utterly original, unconventional music, Ferry perversely made albums of songs by other artists, from Dylan to the Beatles to Motown, singing them as if he'd never heard them before.

    Ferry eventually dropped the gimmick (though Roxy surprisingly picked it up on occasion) and devoted himself to the band as it became steadily more mainstream. Now that Roxy Music is defunct, Ferry seems determined to keep its sound going on his own. If Boys and Girls resembles a semifunky follow-up to Roxy's 1982 swan song, Avalon, credit the cast of musicians, many of whom contributed to both. Conspicuous by their absence, of course, are Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay, Ferry's former partners. But three ace guitarists – David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler and Neil Hubbard – are prominently featured, and several tunes have sax work that recalls Mackay's characteristically sinuous sound. Considering the subordinate role Mackay and Manzanera had taken in recent years, Boys and Girls could have been billed as a Roxy Music album, and no one hearing it would have demurred.

    Ferry is unquestionably one of the greatest, most influential vocalists of our time. He has also authored numerous brilliant songs. On Boys and Girls, his singing is typically above reproach; his writing, however, is quite another matter. The nine songs (all his, including one collaborative effort) are distressingly short on melody: "Slave to Love," the album's first single, is a worthy – and not dissimilar – successor to Avalon's "More Than This," but "Sensation" and "The Chosen One" are merely adorned one-note grooves over which Ferry meanders in search of a discernible melody. "Windswept" and "Don't Stop the Dance" are skimpy but appealing; the rest of the record is smooth and attractive, but utterly forgettable.

    Boys and Girls is instrumentally exquisite, the top-notch players – Nile Rodgers among them – turning in economical, inventive performances deftly orchestrated by Ferry and his coproducer, Rhett Davies, into mild, state-of-the-art dance tracks. The guitar work is especially good, with restrained soloing providing the record's most exciting highlights. There isn't a moment here that doesn't shine with enormous skill, taste, stylishness and artistic integrity. Unfortunately, the flimsy content ultimately makes this record a frustrating exercise. (RS 452-453 - I.R.)

    Dr. Weber
     
  15. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Single: “Is Your Love Strong Enough” b/w “Windswept” (instrumental)
    Label: EG FERRY 4 (UK)
    Released: March 1986
    Peaked: #22 (UK); and at #97 (Canada)
    From The Legend soundtrack
    Also appears on: Slave To Love: The Very Best of the Ballads by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music
    The A-side also appears on: More Than This: The Best of (1996) by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music; and on: The Platinum Collection (disc three) by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music

    Single (12”): “Is Your Love Strong Enough” (extended) b/w “Windswept” (instrumental), and “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” (4:55 single version)
    Label: EG FERRX 4
    Released: March 1986

    Single: “Help Me” b/w “Broken Wings”
    “Help Me” composed by Ferry / Rodgers
    Label: Warner / EG 28582-7 (US) (a US-only release)
    Peaked: no significant chart activity
    Composed for The Fly soundtrack
    Also appears on: The Ultimate Collection by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music


    From Buckley’s The Thrill of It All, page 263:

    In 1986, Ferry busied himself with a new studio album, but returned to the UK Top 40 with the song, “Is Your Love Strong Enough?,” which he had recorded for the Ridley Scott fantasy film, Legend. The song was actually a Roxy Music number, having been demo-ed for Avalon, when it was known as “Circles.”


    From Wikipedia:

    The producers (of The Fly) also commissioned Bryan Ferry to record a song for the film for promotional purposes. The resulting track was entitled "Help Me". A music video was made for the song, and footage from the film was featured heavily in it. On the DVD's commentary track Cronenberg admitted to liking the song, but felt that it was inappropriate to the film itself. Brooks and Cornfeld originally wanted to play the song over the closing credits, but after Cronenberg screened it for them they agreed with the director that it didn't mesh with the movie. As a result, the song is featured only briefly in the film, in the scene where Brundle challenges Marky in the bar. "Help Me" quickly disappeared and became extremely rare, as it was not included on the film's soundtrack release. It resurfaced in 1993 on the Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry compact disc Ultimate Collection.


    Personal notes and observations:

    These two singles bridge Boys and Girls and Bete Noire. I never saw either movie or purchased either soundtrack or single, but liked “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” since first hearing it… I believe… on a local public radio program. I first heard “Help Me” only in recent years. It has left less of an impression...

    Dr. Weber
     
  16. sound chaser

    sound chaser Senior Member

    Location:
    North East UK.
    I was always fond of "Is Your Love Strong Enough", I sat through "Legend" to hear it but never did, I didn't realise it was released as a single, I had to buy the Roxy Music Early Years box set with the free EG cd to get it digitally back in the day.
    "As The World Turns" is another corker, but I had to needledrop my 45 to get that onto digital media, I didn't fancy spending £45 on the Japanese "Mamouna" ep cd. Bryan was supposed to be releasing all of these anomalies on cd, what happened to that?
     
  17. johnnyyen

    johnnyyen Senior Member

    Location:
    Scotland
    Re Broken Wings. Was this a cover version? I seem to remember a song in the early 80s by Mister Mister I believe? It was a fairly bland effort so I'm kind of hoping Ferry's is a different song.
     
  18. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Different songs, indeed.

    Even though nearly seven years elapsed between The Bride Stripped Bare and Boys and Girls, several of the finished leftover tracks from the former proposed double album only now surfaced (1985-6) as B-sides, among them “Broken Hearts,” a Ferry original.

    The 1985 “Broken Wings” hit by Mr. Mister was composed by George, Lang, and Page, the songwriting core of that group. Interestingly… at least to me… as far as I recall, this is the only song mentioned in both my Roxy Music and my King Crimson album by album threads (the drummer on this hit later joined King Crimson, Pat Mastelotto).

    To be forthright, I’ve never heard the Ferry original…

    Dr. Weber
     
  19. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    The British chart history of Ferry’s “Is Your Love Strong Enough?”

    Week Position
    29/03/1986 #45
    05/04/1986 #36
    12/04/1986 #29
    19/04/1986 #22 (peak position)
    26/04/1986 #30
    03/05/1986 #45
    10/05/1986 #74

    Dr. Weber
     
  20. fabtrick

    fabtrick New Member

    Location:
    NorCal
    I have fond memories of "Is Your Love Strong Enough?".

    I was in the US Air Force at the time, stationed in the UK. I was taking a promotion exam, during the period that IYLSE was in the charts. Outside the classroom, some construction was going on nearby. Throughout the time I was taking the exam, a worker on the crew was singing, quite loudly:

    "Is your LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE strong enough?"

    I'm sure it's just a coincidence - but I passed the exam, and got the promotion.
    :cheers:
     
  21. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
  22. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    From the AC (Adult Contemporary) Singles Picks column in the September 20, 1986 BILLBOARD, page 73 (the only AC review this week)

    Bryan Ferry – “Help Me” (4:35)
    Producers: Nile Rodgers, Bryan Ferry
    Writers: Nile Rodgers, Bryan Ferry
    Publishers: Plan 9, ASCAP / EG, BMI
    EG / Warner Brothers 7-28582

    Delicate mood piece from the new horror film remake, The Fly; Ferry’s wistful longing is enough to make you swear off Raid.

    -Dr. Weber
     
  23. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    BOYS AND GIRLS reviewed by Mark Rowland in the August 1985 MUSICIAN, page 96: Post-AVALON elan: Still crying in his Perrier, Ferry perfects his smooth white whine.

    In the world of Bryan Ferry, sensation is the currency and the air is emotionally intoxicating. Boys and girls score love the way junkies score smack, enslaved or annulled by their passions. To anyone who has never felt the grip of such obsessions, who has never known, as Ferry puts it, “how the strong get poor and the rich get weak,” these crises de conscience must sound a tad melodramatic, or perhaps merely dreamy. In the hands of an ordinary artist, they would probably just fall flat. But Bryan Ferry has never sounded ordinary, and the siren songs of Boys and Girls are at once stormy and shimmering.

    The record is Ferry’s first solo LP since 1978’s The Bride Stripped Bare, but its themes and musical conception bears closer resemblance to Roxy Music’s 1982 offering Avalon, an album that’s finally receiving its just recognition as a pop classic. Ferry’s music has grown more groove-oriented over the years, and his eerie colors and voicings – in the past oft-rendered by Phil Manzanera’s space-age guitar and Andy Mackay’s Black Forest oboe – can be both emotionally jolting and musically refined. Neither sideman appears on Boys and Girls, but their legacies are echoed by a core of studio musicians, while guest guitarist Mark Knopfler provides languorous embellishment to the title track and to “Stone Woman,” a paeon to sensual detachment suggestive of “Flesh and Blood.” Meanwhile, erstwhile Roxyites Andy Newmark and Alan Spenner help ignite those formidable Ferry rhythms, equally applicable for getting it on the dance floor or standing in the shadows and brooding over your drink.

    But the real show here is Ferry himself, who has rarely sounded quite so blue or so elegantly seductive (listen to the way he shapes “Windswept”’s pleas) and whose odd yet delicate phrasing is a match for any other pop singer today. Ferry’s musical arrangements are the epitome of cool, yet his vision remains restless and bleak, here lacking even the guardedly optimistic spirit which occasionally graced Avalon. And on songs like “Sensation,” “The Chosen One,” and “Slave To Love,” Ferry melds dire sentiment with an opiate musical atmosphere – the reflection of a heart torn between yearning and despair. Boys and Girls may well be the most extravagantly romantic tableau since Lawrence Durrell’s Justine; at the very least, it’s a great cassette to have on your Walkman for cryin’ in the rain. Love is the drug, indeed. – M.R.

    ------
    Worth noting: this is the first and main review in an issue with only seven substantial reviews larger than a paragraph. Not remembering, I was surprised to find such a prominent review in this monthly magazine.

    Dr. Weber
     
  24. AtcoFan

    AtcoFan Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    Single: "Is Your Love Strong Enough" (3:57)
    Label: MCA 52788 (US)

    Billboard Review (Pop)
    22 March 1986:
    Misty mood music with a rocking chorus, from the film "Legend."
     
  25. Dr. Weber

    Dr. Weber New Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    An excerpt (Part 1) from “The Importance of Being Bryan Ferry” by Timothy White in the October 1985 MUSICIAN, pages 54-5:

    MUSICIAN: It’s a question you have always dodged, but how would you describe your music?

    FERRY: My music has always been very deeply felt. That’s the only thing that I can vouch for as being of any value in what I do. I’ve done some rubbishy things in my career, mainly on my solo albums, although recently I think everything I’ve done has been good.

    MUSICIAN: The early Roxy output had a hard edge, flirting almost with the sinister. But Flesh + Blood, Avalon, Boys and Girls, are in a much different vein. They are warm, sensual, but vaguely eerie music that can transform the mood of a room.

    FERRY (smiling): For my part, I wouldn’t dare play my records with anyone else in the room. I don’t play my own music much anyhow. I actually meant to listen to everything of mine before I began work on this album (Boys and Girls), thinking, “I must get a day to take stock…” but I never got around to it.

    MUSICIAN: You broke up Roxy Music after the Avalon tour that resulted in the live The High Road EP, yet Boys and Girls expands on the Avalon aura.

    FERRY: I didn’t want the album to be Avalon, Part Two, but it does have a continuity in that at least ten of the musicians on both records are the same. And I’m the same composing-wise that I was on the previous album. But it has some differences as well. I’ve always seen my Roxy catalog as my main body of work, as opposed to my solo career, and I do see Boys and Girls as coming from my Roxy work.

    MUSICIAN: Was this record done recently, or in dribs and drabs following the breakup of Roxy Music?

    FERRY: It was an ongoing drab. Sometimes I’d take a week or two weeks off to work on the lyrics. I’d do the verses at night, go to bed thinking, “Leave it in the typewriter, I’ve got it now,” and the next day, “Oh, hell!” I usually write freehand, but when it’s looking right I put it in the typewriter to make it more real.

    Most of the work on Boys and Girls was done in the White House, a little demo studio on Kings Road in London owned by Mark Fenwick, my manager, and E.G. Records, Ltd., the people I’ve been with for all of my career.

    Dr. Weber
     
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