bryan ferry - these foolish things

After two albums with Roxy Music Bryan Ferry decided to cut a solo record, an album where he could indulge himself, not worry about songwriting, an album of covers of some of his favourite songs. These Foolish Things was recorded in a matter of weeks in the spring of 1973 and shows the lighter side of Bryan Ferry. Many of the songs are delivered with a mischievous sense of fun that didn't often manifest itself in Roxy. Ferry rarely sounds like he's having fun - making music often seems to become something of a chore for him - but what immediately strikes the listener is the sheer amount of fun Ferry is having with these songs.

 

Bob Dylan purists hated Bryan's take on "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" but I love it. Thumping drums from the Great Paul Thompson, cheeky backing vocals and Ferry getting his tonsils around every syllable. This was the first track recorded for this project apparently, in Spring 1973, and marks the first time that one Edwin Jobson first worked with Ferry. The whizzy violins on this track are all Jobson and Ferry soon realised that Eddie was a genius on the synth too. Eno's days in Roxy were numbered, and here was a natural replacement, and at only 18, wasn't likely to argue with Ferry the way that Eno did! 

 

The rest of side one is fascinating - mixing well known songs like "Piece Of My Heart" with more obscure tracks like "Please Don't Ever Change" (a Buddy Holly-less Crickets b-side if I remember rightly). What's so good is that Ferry also mixes total sincerity (like his brilliant and moving version of the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby") with camp pastiche - such as the frantic and comic "It's My Party" where Ferry doesn't even switch the genders round, so he's still the one who's jealous of the fact that Judy has stolen Johnny away from him… It somehow actually works, despite Ferry's well known reputation as a ladies man by this time.

 

We also get a lovely Elvis impersonation on "Baby I Don't Care" which has every bit of reverb turned up to the max, and some cracking drumming from TGPT. Oddly, listening to it today, I realised that Ferry wasn't alone in this sort of rock'n'roll revivalism - the sound on this track, and elsewhere on TFT, isn't actually a million miles from the sound of contemporary bands like Showaddywaddy or Mud. But Ferry delivers these songs with such verve and a knowingly ironic archness, which sets Ferry's work well apart from the chart fodder of some of these bands. The album cover also shows Ferry as something of rock'n'roll throwback - with a simple black teeshirt and his hair in quiff he looks more like the Fonz than anything else. And a million miles from the bow-tie / tux image that appeared on his next album cover, which he's been saddled with ever since.

 

Side two begins magnificently. Trying to cover the Rolling Stones is never an easy option, and trying to cover "Sympathy For The Devil" is almost impossible (Guns 'n' Roses did an appallingly lumpy cover in 1990ish, around the same time as their similarly dreadful "Live And Let Die"). But Ferry ditches quite a bit of the Stones original and wisely turns the song into a swampy, swirling mass of horns, spooky backing singers, and a snarling, cackling vocal quite unlike anything else he's ever done. It's quite breathtakingly brilliant. The whole song is basically one long climax, gradually building in tropical, steamy intensity, the stabs from the horn section getting ever more pronounced and urgent, the wurlitzer style organ becoming more and more unhinged, the backing vocals gradually more prominent and more insistent. It's wonderful and I’d forgotten quite how much I love this song. Sacrilege maybe, but I actually prefer it to the Stones version. Really.  

 

Tracks Of My Tears" is a real anticlimax after "Sympathy" - it's as if Ferry knew that nothing could follow it, so he chose to sacrifice the weakest song on the album. It's not actually that bad, but Ferry simply doesn't have the right voice to tackle real soul songs, and certainly at this point in his career his vocals are so mannered that they rarely sound truly sincere - and sincerity is what this song needs. This is not really a criticism of Ferry as his voice is wonderful for so many songs - but it just doesn't suit truly soulful tunes. Look how weedy he sounds on later covers like "Take Me To The River" or "That's How Strong My Love Is" - it's just not the right sort of voice for those songs. And by having the band play "Tracks Of My Tears" so straight it can only be compared with Smoky Robinson's original and can therefore only come off worst from such a comparison. Same thing applies to side one's "Piece Of My Heart" - only a few years after Janis Joplin ripped your heart out with her showstopping version, Ferry plays it safe and polite and it just doesn't really work. 

 

But things pick up with the Beatles' "You Won't See Me" - love the chirpy piano on this and it's clear that Ferry is once again having fun with the song. A nicely jaunty guitar solo from Phil Manzanera too. Ferry was a huge Beatles fan and would go on to cover a number of other Fab songs over his career - my favourite being a lovely version of "She's Leaving Home" in 1976.

 

Then another jaunty track - "I Love How You Me" begins with a harpsichord - or rather Jobson on synth impersonating a harpsichord - and features some sterling saxophone work too. Nice doo-wop backings.

 

"Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" is terrific, again the horns are really on form and TGPT is superb. Beyond Andy Mackay's sax and oboe Roxy Music never really used horns, and never in this sort of big band way, but Ferry's solo albums are often full of meaty horn arrangements. I really like the throwaway backing vocals on the verses. The girls echo most of Ferry lines but in a very offhand, casual kind of way which is very endearing. They are full on during the choruses, but extremely laid back in the verses, it's rather amusing. 

 

And then we end with the title track. A real smoky nightclub situation… A tinkling piano, the barman clearing away the glasses, Ferry all alone with his memories and his regrets. This song was made for him. But I can't help wondering why he decided to beef it up. I still think it would have worked fine just with the piano and lonesome trumpet, but after the first verse the drums kick in with a surprisingly robust beat. But somehow it does still work, in an oddly jaunty yet wistful way, and suits Ferry extremely well. The fade out is excellent, the girls aaaahhhing everywhere, leaving Bryan to fade away into the darkness with a bottle of cognac amid a haze of cigarette smoke… 

 

A really good, solid album. I first heard this aged about 14/15. The album was nearly 10 years old then, now it's 42… It was out of it's time even then, and I knew that these songs were throwbacks to the 60s, 50s and further back, but as with all good albums, it sets up a mood and creates images and ideas and the fact that it was weird mish-mash of musical styles and eras simply doesn't matter. Crucially, the songs are all excellent - unlike Ferry's follow up Another Time Another Place (which was saddled with a few stinkers and only really has half an album's worth of genuinely good tracks). It's probably easier than ever before to get hold of any album in the world, but I really can't imagine any 14 year old buying this record now, and being transported, as I was, even further back into rock history.