No one does disappointed love like Bryan Ferry. He makes it look classy. He makes everything look classy. He’s a classy guy. You can tell by the way he holds his cigarette. Not exactly a realistic idol, but it’s nice to imagine there are classy men out there. It’s my motto that you can’t trust anyone whose shoes are too clean, and I certainly don’t trust any man who owns a tuxedo or wears a suit, but there’s real life and there’s fantasy. In fantasy, men who wear tuxedos are gentlemen, not probable white-collar date-rapists. Men in suits are smarmy. Bryan Ferry is a little smarmy himself, but in a roguishly sexy way. Like he’s the kind of man who’d break your heart because he’s still crying on the inside for his one true love. Like he’d give the corniest pickup line in the book and you’d fall for it. Like he’d have you dry-cleaning his suits while he drinks martinis. Like he’d buy you a fur coat and have you wear it naked. Mmmmm, sexy….
Here is a song that has made an interesting journey from deep obscurity to cultural ubiquity. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was never exactly a mainstream entertainer, as you can guess from his both his name and his visage. His willingness to play to racial stereotype by dressing up as a witch doctor didn’t help him with being taken seriously as an artist. He was seen as a novelty act and it wasn’t until much later that he became celebrated as one of the great innovators who helped invent rock’n'roll. Although the ooga-booga act looks like degrading minstrelsy to modern eyes, it can just as easily be seen as a massive fuck you to white society and assimilation. At a time when black performers who wished to be heard by mainstream audiences had to conform to a very strict image – clean, wholesome, well mannered, soft spoken, nonthreatening - taking up the image of a voodoo man or witch doctor was highly rebellious. That didn’t help Hawkins chart any hits. In fact, his I Put A Spell on You was banned from radio play for being to suggestive. It wasn’t until Creedence Clearwater Revival’s version became a hit in 1968 that the song truly invaded the public consciousness. Since then it’s become one of those songs that every two-bit garage band plays to earn their stripes. It’s been recorded by everybody and their dog, to the point of exhaustion. With artists ranging from Nina Simone to Marilyn Manson, there’s a very wide range of cover quality. My favorite one, not surprisingly, is Bryan Ferry’s. Because while nearly everyone else tries to copy the blues-rock sound of CCR, Ferry made it into a sexy, downtempo groove, which incidentally is how Hawkins originally envisioned the song (until he and his band got so drunk during the record they had no recollection the next day of what they had done.)
The erudite Bryan Ferry takes song title from classic movie. Hiroshima Mon Amour is an 1950′s French art house classic, which I’ve not seen. You know how I feel about New Wave French movies! If I knew what that movie was about, maybe I’d know what this song is about. I suspect, though, that in this case Ferry wasn’t so much interested in lyrical ‘aboutness’. It’s all about setting a sensual, slightly creepy atmosphere. Mission accomplished, thanks to Brian Eno’s keyboards and Jonny Greenwood’s guitar, not to mention whispering female voices that steal the whole show.
What is there left to say about Bryan Ferry that I haven’t said before? That his debonair romanticism makes my stony heart melt? That he’s got impeccable taste in everything from neckties to younger women to other people’s songs? Yeah, I’ve said all that before. Here’s another perfect song from another perfect album. But sometimes the interesting thing isn’t what you came for. This is a pretty typical Bryan Ferry song, and Let’s Stick Together is a pretty typical Bryan Ferry album. Like a lot of Ferry’s albums, it’s a lively mix of originals and well chosen covers. Among the covers are gems from The Beatles, Jimmy Reed and The Everly Brothers. And this little track by somebody called Gallagher and Lyle. Who the heck they were I don’t know, and this song doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. But there they are on YouTube, playing TotP like they’re real pop stars, dated June 1976, only a few months before Ferry released his album. From which I surmise that it was either a huge, huge hit in the summer of ’76 and Ferry just had to get his paws on it. Or, possibly, it’s older than that and Ferry heard it and liked and decided to do a cover and Gallagher & Lyle found out and scrambled to get some free publicity from having a genuine famous person take an interest in one of their songs. Not that it matters either way – people still listen to Bryan Ferry, but who remembers Gallagher & Lyle? Now, watch Gallagher & Lyle’s video and see if you don’t get a snicker two. It would be laughably dated, except that it’s not. That could be yesterday’s hipster darlings playing Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (or whomever the fuck hosts Late Night nowadays). It’s all there; the sappy earnestness, the meta-pretension of their every-schmuck persona, the doofy grins, the soft strumming, the dumb little hats and beards. They could be the very hipsters you see promenading about the farmers’ market on a Sunday morning. It’s like time stands still. Just shows you, if your lame sensitive-dude act goes out of fashion, just wait forty years and it’ll be good as new.
I’m going to go all fangirl and gush how much I love Bryan Ferry in makeup, with his shiny hair and huge gold epaulets. So glamorous. As usual the appeal is not so much straight forward attraction (although, yes…) as a desire to emulate and possess. I don’t know if this is exactly normal. Does everyone else who admires opposite-sex rock stars and actors just see them as bedtime fantasies? Am I the only one who sees them as someone I want to be when I grow up? Surely not, and surely it’s precisely the point of glam rock and perhaps rock’n'roll in general to erase boundaries like that.
I can’t even scrape halfway through the several million people who’ve sung this song. Suffice it to say, it was a lot. I’ll say, can’t go wrong with Leadbelly’s original, and out of everyone out there with a cover, I’ll take Bryan Ferry, because he’s the most handsome.
One of Frantic’s fine handpicked selection of covers. Choosing wise covers is a bit of an art form, at which Bryan Ferry excels. He always finds songs that are unexpected, yet come out sounding natural. He’s also a connoisseur of covering Dylan, and Frantic has plenty of that. Though it’s brave to tackle those big classics, we’ve come to expect it from him. More exciting when Ferry pulls off something less familiar. Don Nix’s Goin’ Down is probably best known in Jeff Beck’s shredding rendition. Beck made it a pretty epic workout, jacked-up blues style. Ferry, characteristically, goes for elegant restraint. Though it’s lyrically nearly meaningless either way, in Ferry’s hands it becomes warm and emotional, full of his signature refined woe.
Not everyone is allowed to write songs about Marilyn Monroe. Because most people are not worthy. Elton John, of course, had the ultimate song about Marilyn, but this is a close second. Because if anyone is worthy it’s Bryan Ferry, a connoisseur of all things comely, female and glamorous. A man you can count on for refined romantic longing. This song makes me swoon and drool a little, and then I get depressed thinking about how glamorous men simply don’t exist. There’s just no such thing. Ferry wasn’t born glamorous either. He’s the son of a farmer. He was enchanted by Old Hollywood growing up, and meticulously reinvented himself as a suave, chic, marquee-worthy star. Maybe the sons of landed gentry just naturally know how to work a bowtie and tuxedo, but out in the real world it’s a skill set few bother to acquire, sadly. If you ever see an elegant man in the wild, immediately jump his bones.
New Year Day Two, a song about jealousy. For anyone who’s ever experienced it, it’s an utterly soul-rotting emotion. And since we all have, it’s an enduring subject to write songs about. I’ve done my time coveting things I couldn’t have; my first love put me through years of misery, being constantly taken by a series of other women. But none of those other women were any friends of mine, so I had no qualms about quietly fantasizing their violent demise. How it would hurt if ever I should desire something belonging to my best friend I can only imagine and hope I’ll never be stupid enough to find out. But I’m almost certain that it would be excruciating and the suave Bryan Ferry doesn’t do the emotion justice. His aloofness is often touted unfairly as a weakness, even though it’s often just misconstrued British reserve. Ferry has put out his fair share of honest feeling and torn-from-life breakup stories. But I think in the case of this cover, although typically impeccable and gorgeous, some more depth of feeling was called for. This calls for crying, not suavity.
Let it rock, indeed. My lifelong crush Bryan Ferry can do no wrong. That’s why I’ll always keep putting up Mamouna album tracks, until I’ve run out. Admittedly, in 1994 it was looking like Bryan Ferry was stuck in a rut just being Bryan Ferry, but that’s no crime. There’s lots of people who can be accused of coasting on their perfected image. Though sometimes I dearly wish Ferry would be more eccentric, I’d still rather listen to all of Mamouna than nearly anything else from 1994. Finding a formula that fits and really perfecting it is great. Nor has Ferry ever let me down. Music in the 90′s was so awful, and he just went on sounding like it was 1983. It was a lifesaver.
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