Bryan Ferry on Roxy Music, ‘Retrospective,’ and His Solo Hits

Bryan Ferry has been making mischief for more than 50 years, on the margins of the rock world. But he’s still not done. He began as the singer/peacock/visionary of Roxy Music, but he started making his own solo records almost as soon as the band began. Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023, out Friday, is a five-disc journey through his solo career, with hits, rarities, outtakes, and B sides. It ends with an excellent new song, “Star,” a collaboration with singer-writer-painter Amelia Barratt and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

At 78, Ferry reigns as the elder statesman of rock-star romantics, the king of elegant melancholy. Despite his dashing image, he’s written so many dark and desolate classics, from “Mother of Pearl” to “Casanova” to “In Every Dream Home a Heartache.” As an English art-school rebel, he made his name in the 1970s with the avant-garde flash of Roxy Music, the only glam rockers that David Bowie accepted as his artistic peers. They had one of history’s great hot streaks, with five classics in three years: Roxy Music (their proggiest), For Your Pleasure (their trippiest), Stranded (their stateliest), Country Life (their bitchiest), and Siren (their sexiest). Nobody but Ferry could pierce your heart with a love song like “2 H.B.,” sung to his screen idol Humphrey Bogart.

But he got even more influential in the 1980s, as the suave synth-pop crooner of Avalon and the Lost in Translation ballad “More Than This.” In his solo work, he’s specialized in interpretations on swank covers albums like These Foolish Things, Taxi, and Dylanesque. Yet he’s always had an audaciously irreverent flair for mixing up the experimental and the trashy, the futuristic and the old school. “I like both, you see,” he says with a devilish laugh. “You have the new stuff and the old stuff, but you need both to be up to date. I think Andy Warhol would agree.”

Ferry is the consummate rock gentleman, impeccably charming and witty even on a Zoom call from London. (This man looks better on a Zoom screen than any of us do in real life.) Today he sips tea and shares some of the wisdom he’s learned along the way. He spoke to Rolling Stone about the art of collage, his favorite movie stars, his favorite museums, staying true to yourself, why he hides in the corner at parties, and how he keeps artistic inspiration fresh after all these years.

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Congratulations on the new Retrospective box. It’s such an amazing trip through your whole story. 
Yeah, it’s been interesting to listen to all the stuff from the past 50 years. That’s quite a while. I wish it could go on for another 50 years.

Retrospective is a surprise because you’ve always been an artist who looks forward, not back. You tend to avoid repeating yourself.
I always hope so. I mean, you don’t sit around listening to your own records all day. So when you do, you go, “Oh, yeah, that’s … interesting. Why did I do it like that?” But sometimes you celebrate it.

In your solo music, you’ve always been big on interpreting other people’s songs. How did that start?
It’s odd because the solo career started off as a one-off project, after the second Roxy album. I felt I’d like to try something different and do an album covering other people’s songs, in the same way as other singers in the past, like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. They weren’t songwriters, so they sang other people’s material, and I wanted to try doing that. I chose some really nice songs on that first solo album, These Foolish Things. The first one, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” that’s a Bob Dylan song, great lyrics, and as a singer, I like to sing words. That was maybe the best cover I ever did — great enthusiasm and gusto. That was the beginning of my solo career, which for a while ran in parallel with Roxy Music, which I felt was my real job.

Yet you had such a subversive vision of pop-music history. It’s one thing to do Dylan, but it’s different to go from that to “It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry If I Want To).” Mixing Dylan, Lesley Gore, jazz, Motown — you were ahead of your time.
It’s always interesting to collage things together, I think. And maybe it shows who one is, by the things that you choose to try to put in the same picture.

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Where does your collage sensibility come from?
I like to think visually. That’s what I studied in school — I thought I was going to be a painter when I was growing up, in my late teens. And then music took over as the main interest. But I still tend to visualize. I’m always mixing different kinds of art. One of the great things about going on tour over the years is being able to visit so many different museums and art galleries in America, Europe, around the world. In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery is amazing. In New York, I like the old Frick — those lovely Gainsbouroughs. The Metropolitan is fantastic. You could spend all week there and still have more to see. Basically, that’s why I tour — to go and see the museums.

You played a huge role in the visuals of Roxy Music, as the art director of your own album covers. 
Those were always fun to make. It was great to make a record, but then we said, “Hey, what should we put on the cover?” I said, “Well, I’m an artist, I’ll try and figure this out.” I was working with the designer Anthony Price and various photographers. We developed a series of vignettes, in these tableaus of, I guess, quite glamorous women. The covers helped identify the band, but in a way that was a little bit different — trying to divert attention away from ourselves.

At Rolling Stone, we just did our list of the greatest album covers of all time. Can you guess which Roxy album we chose?
Hmmm… For Your Pleasure?

That’s the one.
Good taste, then. Yes, that one was something different and dangerous — it had an edge to it. And that beautiful car! The Cadillac, the girl, the panther. The final one, Avalon, was more serene. We did that photo very early in the morning, at dawn on the west coast of Ireland. We used to really enjoy doing things on location. Siren, that was in Wales. And those were the days when you didn’t instantly see what you were getting. With the photos, you’d have to cross your fingers and hope that when it came back from the developer, there was something there.

What is your process for writing songs?
Great anxiety. It involves a piano, usually. I still have the piano I’ve written most of my work on, actually, an old Steinway that I got in 1973. It’s a beautiful old instrument — hard to keep it in tune now, but it has a really great sound. And I still like doing little demos on it, even on cassette. It’s usually nighttime. I think in the day I’m too busy being crazy, but at nighttime, it’s the best time for songwriting.

Well, you write very nocturnal songs. You go to some really dark places.
I do, actually. I think most of the songs I’ve written have been, as you say, nocturnal ones. And I don’t want to say dark, but they’re not cornflake-ads music. But there’s nothing wrong with that. “Do the Strand,” that was quite up and joyful, and one or two others. But generally I write the kind of moodier pieces, so I write in the nighttime. There’s something intimate about that time of day.

You’ve got such a glamorous voice, but you’ve written some of the loneliest songs in history. Where do these songs come from?
I’ve always been the kind of person who occupies the corner in a party. I’ll try and hide because I like to be in the shadows, and I like to observe. I’m always curious about life and to see what’s going on. And then when you have those quiet moments at the piano, when you’re working and trying to express yourself, all those experiences come into play. You’re influenced by all the books you’ve read, and by the movies you’ve seen, obviously. But it’s mostly just observing life and observing people. 

What is the best advice you ever got?
To always be yourself. You have to follow your own course and chart your own destiny.

Who are your heroes? 
The first big one really was Charlie Parker. I loved his work and still do. It just seemed so beautiful, yet so angular and vibrant and just so full of life. The first record I ever bought was a Charlie Parker EP, his Quintet with Miles Davis. I learned all those solos in my head. I could whistle all those solos. 

Then I loved the music from Memphis, Otis Redding and so on. I saw the Stax Road Show when it came to England in ’67 — it was life-changing, really. I was so blown away by the beauty of that show and the energy of it, the incredible musicianship, the way they presented the music with such flair and these wonderful mohair suits, all different colors. Sam and Dave, all those great players — Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn. I was just like this [stares with jaw hanging open]. Then Otis came on for the finale. That’s when I thought, “Oh, I’d like to do this.”

And then I think Bob Dylan was amazing — such wonderful songs. I’ve only seen him play once, but I’d like to see him again, actually. I always thought Neil Young was good, great voice. I loved his early album After the Gold Rush — that whole period. The Velvet Underground — they were so adventurous. They really had something.

Are there film heroes that play the same role for you?
I would always say Cary Grant. Especially in that Hitchcock movie, with Mount Rushmore — North by Northwest, that’s the one. And Bogart, obviously. I loved Bogart so much I wrote a song about it [“2 H.B.”]. I like Katherine Hepburn very much. Bette Davis — I love her, and I love that picture All About Eve, with George Sanders. He’s so fantastic, so evil. All those other people that Humphrey Bogart worked with — Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. I love those old movies — the wit and the dialogue, so beautifully filmed in black-and-white. I have a preference for black-and-white movies.

When I was seeing those Bogart films for the first time, I kept hearing lines I recognized because you quoted them in your songs. Like In a Lonely Place, when Gloria Grahame tells Bogart “We’ll have dinner tonight, but not together.” I knew that line from “Casanova.”
Maybe that was a subliminal one that seeped into my consciousness. Unlike “l’amour, toujours, l’amour” [in the Roxy hit “All I Want Is You”]. That was in another film, Sabrina.

When I saw Sabrina, I thought, ‘So that’s where he got that one.’
It’s a sign of a misspent youth, you see.

There’s a famous scene in your “Avalon” video where you brandish a falcon on your arm. Not a lot of rock stars appreciate the art of falconry.
Yeah, it’s a bit off the wall, isn’t it? That was pretty much a one-time thing. We just thought it went well with the original picture, on the album cover for Avalon — the mist on the lake, this female warrior with her helmet and her falcon. The bird of prey of choice for a female warrior had to be a merlin, which is the small bird of prey. So we had a merlin in that video, which was pretty cool. I called my youngest son Merlin, actually.

One of my favorite lines you’ve ever written is in the Eighties hit “Slave to Love,” where you sing “We’re too old to reason, too grown-up to dream.” Do you feel we ever reach a point where we’re too old to dream?
No. I’m a great dreamer, and I carry the flag for all dreamers.

The Roxy Music reunion tour last year was a huge success. How have those old songs changed for you over the years?
I think as you get older, you still have the same feelings. Maybe you express them differently, but I found a way of feeling pretty authentic when I was performing on the last tour. I didn’t feel embarrassed by them, put it that way. We tried to stay true to the original arrangements, but it was nice to have fun with them as well. It was terrific to be there with Phil [Manzanera] and Andy [Mackay] and, of course, Paul Thompson, the drummer, who’s always marvelous, always a legend. It was just great to hear them playing — they all have a particular sound and individuality.

Are you ever surprised that Roxy has been so influential over the years?
Yes — at first, we were very much a niche interest. But maybe the solo career helped to broaden the audience for Roxy. Because with the solo career, I was tending to choose material that was more accessible, stuff that you could whistle on a ladder or while you vacuum the floor. And perhaps that helped to bring people in to listen to Roxy Music.

One of the big discoveries on the Retrospective box is the unreleased version of “Mother of Pearl” from the early Nineties, with vocals from Ronnie Spector.
That’s one of my favorite songs that I wrote. So I wanted to do a different version, because there’s always different ways to do things. When I started out as a kid listening to music, I listened to a lot of jazz, and I noticed straight away that the same artist, like, say, Charlie Parker, would do several versions of a song over a few years, with different bands, different lineups, different ways of approaching the song. So that interests me. I’ve occasionally done covers of myself, doing different versions of the songs I did with Roxy. Sometimes better, sometimes worse — it depends how you feel on a given day. On The Jazz Age and Bitter-Sweet, I did my songs in jazz versions — I was imagining my songs done in an earlier age, say the 1930s, in a jazz idiom.

But then any version of “Mother of Pearl” is going to be intense, isn’t it?
“Mother of Pearl,” that was always a hard one to sing live, so it was rarely performed. It was a very special night when we recorded it, way back in ’73. We’d done the track as an instrumental, but I wasn’t ready with the lyrics. So I came in a few days later to do the vocal, and it kind of worked. Chris Thomas, the producer, never heard it before, and the band hadn’t heard it. When I came out of the studio having sung it, Chris was lying on the floor, saying, “I love that.” 

One of my favorite albums is The Bride Stripped Bare, from 1978. You have Celtic folk music next to songs by Otis Redding and the Velvet Underground.
Yeah, I enjoyed making that one. That was a record I made in Montreux, in Switzerland, the first time I ever worked with American musicians. That was fun and educational for me — it was a soulful record.

It wasn’t a hit, but it has one of your greatest heartbreak songs, “When She Walks in the Room.” Now that’s dramatic. 
And a great string arrangement by the late Anna Odell. Yeah, it’s a touching song — it’s great when you find a song that has a place, and a character, that makes it stand apart from any other songs that you’ve done. It was built around my stumbling piano part, and the strings stumbled along with it. I always have to talk about the other musicians, but Neil Hubbard played beautiful guitar on that. It’s great when you finally feel you get it right.

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Retrospective ends with a great new tune, “Star.” How do you keep your artistic inspiration alive across so many years?
I like to vary what I do in my career, to try and keep it fresh. Going between those Roxy Music albums and the solo albums — I felt each career was refreshing the other. So I was lucky to have two ways of doing things. I was having fun on the side, but it also enabled me to broaden my horizons. Roxy was great, but I got to work with musicians from different spheres, like Nile Rodgers, David Gilmour. I’m a keyboard player, so I like working with different guitarists.

Obviously, in the end, when I finished the band, it all came together as under my name. But to always feel that you’re doing something new, to add to your body of work — that’s important to me. It’s what I do. “Star” is my new song, with Amelia Barratt. It points to what I’ve been doing the last couple of years, and that’s been really exciting, working with a young artist who is a writer. It’s the first time ever for me to work with somebody who’s writing words and I’m doing the music. We have an album coming out in the new year. So to always keep excited about what you’re doing is important. But if you love what you do, then you do what you do.