When we talk about Bryan Ferry, we first think of the Roxy Music group that he founded in 1970 and with which he celebrated his 50th career in 2022. Let it be said, Roxy Music remains for many the precursors of glam rock alongside David Bowie. And where the others broke everything, Bryan Ferry, leader always dressed to the nines, always seduced. He is what we call a gentleman rocker. Today, after more than five decades spent with us, through a constant solo career, landmark hits that have become monuments, like Slave to Lovehe released a retrospective composed of 81 titles. Among these titles gathered on five CDs, we find She Belongs to Mea reinterpretation of Bob Dylan or the unreleased title Star.
franceinfo: What do these 50 years of career represent?
Bryan Ferry : It was fun making this album because there were actually lots of songs to choose from. Trying to put them into little boxes, into categories, was quite a funny exercise. And then looking back over 50 years to look a little bit at his career, it’s always a pretty special moment. To the 80 songs that we put on this album, we decided to put one more. An 81st which was in fact a new title with an artist that I really like, Amelia Barratt. With her, we worked on several pieces, which will be the subject of an album that we will release next year. But the idea was also to say that it is certainly a retrospective, but it is also a way of talking about the future. To say that we’re still here, we’re still active, we’re still making new songs. Retrospectiveit’s a little bit of a way of telling fans what they will have the opportunity to listen to later.
This retrospective is the opportunity to dive back into these hits that made you the man you became over time. We think of the little boy in that mining town where you were born. Your father raised horses for the mine and you worked for a local tailor. Did you realize that you grew up very quickly?
I remember this childhood which was very beautiful, very stable, with parents who gave me a lot of stability. My mother came from the city, she was full of life, she loved music. And it’s true that I remember these moments through this record as well. It’s a part of me put on these pancakes. I remember when I was a student in Newcastle, at the time, I must have been 18, I was studying painting. And I hitchhiked to London, it was quite a trek, to see Otis Redding in concert.
“It was really at an Otis Redding concert in London that I said to myself: this is what I want to do.”
Bryan Ferryat franceinfo
However, you were part of Richard Hamilton’s class because initially, you really wanted to become a painter. You were attracted to pop art.
It’s true that I really wanted to become a painter, but what attracted me to music was being able to have this connection with the audience, being able to see their reaction. Create something and provoke reactions. So we still kept this spirit of painting, because with Roxy Music we had a palette of sounds at our disposal which was very broad, with people like me, Phil Manzanera or Brian Eno, with his synthesizers, who was someone who used a lot of color. So we had all these sounds and it was like taking several sounds and like a painter to make a palette.
I feel like bands were ultimately what gave you the strength to face the scene that attracted you. And being in a group gave you that feeling of family that you chose.
My solo career started a bit like an accident actually. After the release of Roxy Music’s second album in 1973, I found myself wanting to release an album very quickly afterwards. But I didn’t have any songs, I didn’t have any titles. I said to myself: I’m going to try to experiment with something different and I’m going to cover songs that I like. We made an album with a lot of covers, and it was successful quite unexpectedly. That’s how I started my solo career, but it was more of a kind of escape from my career with Roxy Music which still remained the main thing.
“My solo career was a bit of a way of getting out of the Roxy Music line to do different things, but it happened in a rather surprising and not very planned way.”
Bryan Ferryat franceinfo
One of the new ones is Star. Do you feel like a star? How do you define yourself? Who is Bryan Ferry?
This is a very interesting and very difficult question at the same time. I wouldn’t really know how to answer that. I think I would describe myself first and foremost as a person who works a lot, but also a person who likes adventures, who likes to move forward and who likes to discover things.
