Bryan Ferry – These Foolish Things

I’m not a fan of early Roxy Music, and to go by his first solo album, frontman Bryan Ferry may have been having some issues of his own with the band’s quirky and often uninviting output. His apparent solution was to do an album of nothing but cover versions, and if you’ve been playing along at home, you know that’s catnip to this tabby. I love this album from wackadoodle beginning to heartfelt ending, but it doesn’t mean it all works equally well. To truly appreciate a cover, you need to also know the song that’s being reinterpreted, and that doesn’t always go to Ferry’s favour. (Here’s a little playlist that I made if you want to do your own comparison.)

Let’s get the misses out of the way first. To adopt my late Uncle Brad’s comment on something reckless I had done, it takes more balls than brains to cover a Smokey Robinson song, and maybe he’d have been wiser to stay away from the luscious perfection of The Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears”. His innate eccentricities likewise get the better of him when he tackles The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”, losing the simple romanticism of the original. Finally, on “Piece of My Heart” he is competing not only with the well-known Janis Joplin version, but the blistering, heartfelt, tear the MFing roof off original from Erma Franklin, and Ferry’s kind of goofy take is no match for the vocal chops of Aretha’s older sister.

Another weird thing that shows up on some of these covers is a sort of vocal vamping, like it’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” night for the bottom two queens on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. It’s really noticeable on Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party”, which – sidebar – I now see as an empowering tale of a young lady with an IDGAF attitude who is owning her right to be publicly miserable because she’s been screwed over by a jerk, no matter how awkward it is for everyone else.

Some of the songs that work best have a tempo that is sped up from the original. Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” goes from stately protest song to rollicking madhouse rant. The Everly Brothers lite of The Crickets “Don’t Ever Change” is turned into a dance tune, with handclaps and dramatic piano. It will put a smile on your face, but also leave you questioning his intent: it is never entirely clear when Ferry is being serious or putting us on, when he’s being a romantic or a dick. And the wispy sweetness of The Paris Sisters’ “I Love How You Love Me” becomes a raunchy, sexual doo-wop: instead of letterman jackets and fraternity pins, there’s dance floor groping and couples being pulled apart by watchful teachers. 

Some of these songs just seem to fit Ferry better than their originators. It is blasphemy to say this about one of my favourite Rolling Stones tunes, but Ferry’s weirdness makes for a believably slick Satan as opposed to Mick Jagger’s seductive version in “Sympathy for the Devil”. His more mature sounding voice strips away the sweetness that Paul McCartney brought to “You Won’t See Me”, making for a more accusatory tone that better fits the lyrical content of a messy romance in its endgame. Likewise, there is a deeper tone and a more desperate vocal in his version of Four Tops’ “Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever”, so that Ferry does a better job of drawing the listener in to the celebratory tale of finally finding real love by dropping his cool for a moment to show the emotion he feels. Finally, the album ends with the oft-covered title track, which starts out like a piano bar lament, with the tempo rising as Ferry ticks off the little things that remind him of his lost love. But it’s a jaunty tune, and never maudlin: he misses his lost love, but has no regrets about it.

In the end, Ferry followed his muse, and while I don’t think it’s entirely successful, it’s still a lot of fun, just a guy singing songs that he loves the best way he knows how. There are two Roxy Music records coming up when I reach 1975, and dear God, I hope some of that fun stuck around for those albums.