Greetings,

and thank you for making this site available.
Two years ago I was wandering YouTube looking for a film I like to re-watch from time to time, called "These Foolish Things". It had been removed due to copyright upsets, but over in the sidebar an arresting thumbnail picture caught my eye. Dark hair, a drink, a cigarette, and impossible white lapels so broad they met the shoulder seams.

Well-familiar with many versions of that song, the unusual treatment of it in the video captivated me. From there it was off to the races with the YouTube sidebar, as choice after choice of this person and band I'd never heard of flowed on as if I'd fallen into some magical musical rabbit-hole where the more you explored the more you were given, and it would never end.

How I managed to completely miss Roxy, and Ferry, is down to the nature of U.S. radio airplay. The short of it is that by the time Roxy went smooth and was receiving better airplay here I'd already left mainstream radio listening behind, focusing entirely on more obscure stations which carried American roots music, blues, honkytonk, big band, bluegrass, et al. By the time I was seventeen my LP choices were Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw and scratchy old stuff from the 1930s - zero that was current. The kids in high school were all about the Stones, Steppenwolf, Elton John, the Doors; all well and good, just not the direction my own ears wanted to take. I wanted to know and hear the roots, where it all came from to begin with.

The next video I watched after "These Foolish Things" happened to be "Let's Stick Together". Here was the same guy - or was it? It wasn't just change of clothing - his face never looked the same way twice. Here in LST was a lounge-lizard who perhaps was pimping a little on the side, whose ride would be a purple Cadillac with pink fuzzy dice swinging from the rear-view. (Yes, we had actual people like that, well into the '90s. They could be seen in any city large or small, including at lunchtime on bright sunny days. Feathers in their hats, too.) Pale waxen skin as if he hadn't seen daylight since birth, and singing like it, too. I'd known of Harrison's LST original, so brilliant in its primitivity, and I thought, well, who is this person who puts American roots songs onto his lathe, turning and turning them until they spin into something new, bright, and bracingly alive. Then I looked at Hard Rain, and was blown away. Somebody had finally given powerful words a power music structure.

Thanks to finding this site I've been able to figure out much of the "who is this guy" question, and the song list here has been invaluable. While not a musician myself I'm an aficianado; I care deeply about good music. I'm a writer and a visual artist; it isn't always fun to feel compelled (from within) to create, in any of the arts. It's a driving thing inside that can be nearly impossible to try to explain to anyone. The part where you have to put yourself out there to the slings and arrows, and the lonely parts when you're making the stuff to begin with, can sometimes be steep hills to climb.

Much of Ferry's self-penned stuff speaks to me in such personal, effective ways that it has advanced necessary reflections and assessments of my own life as I enter its last quarter. The remarkable work ethic of Ferry and all the Roxy members over the course of their lives is inspiration. What a hell of a songwriter and arranger he is.

I've zero in common with somebody like Bryan Ferry (other than art appreciation . I'd have had more in common with his father, the quiet man of gardens and animals and straight plow furrows with four draft horses in loving hand.

Yet the words make it across the pond, land square on target anyway, and I am the richer for it.

Welcome to the VivaRoxyMusic forum and I am sure the regulars here look forward to your contributions.

J.O'B.

Thank you.

Hi sonnet18! What a great name and excellent first post. Welcome!

Wow.. what a great debut to the site, Sonnet18.
I can only imagine how it would be prospect through Ferry's body of work from a late start.
I came into the fray at such a young age (when A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall came out) and have kept the flame burning for over 4 decades - Ferry has explored vastly different avenues of music , and as , I think Windswept wrote on this site, introduced others to genres that they might not ever have countenanced - blues, soul, jazz , lol, even disco - it's not all called the Great American Songbook for nothing.

Thanks

What I love about the American Songbook is that it's from everyone everywhere. Nobody here is "from" here other than the Native Americans. This 100% nutso experiment that is the U.S. is so young and always in a flux of diversity. (I myself am only second generation here - only one parent was born here and none of my grandparents.)

The exchange of musical influence, the circular nature of it, I find wonderful. "Our" bluegrass and some roots of rockabilly come courtesy of Scots/Irish scraping hardscrabble lives in our mountains; black roots music comes straight out of the lives they were made to live here; Eddie Cochran, rockabilly hero, loved in England; the Beatles crash in over here to tell us they're in love with U.S. R and R; Ferry sees Bill Haley when he's ten and teddy boys tear up the seats, presumably unable to contain themselves. Bowie and John and Mercury come on over and sweep hordes away; Billie Holiday breaks hearts in Europe and Piaf saves U.S. souls in war. Our carols are the ancient ones of Britain and Europe. Wonderful, relateable circularity, and Ferry's contribution to it is invaluable.

It's been a little trippy to jump into the Ferry and Roxy catalogue over a course of only a couple of years, you're right about that. But worth every minute.

Sonnet 18 you are a breath of fresh air.

It's great to read posts here with a fresh outlook.

J.O'B.

Hi Sonnet18,

nice to have you here, welcome to the club


I like the rabbit hole metaphor. For me, listening to RM/BF always feels a bit like being beamed into a parallel universe. I guess that's the same experience, just in other words.

Cheers,

Lonely Dreamer

Right, parallel universe. Plus we're given plenty of room to think and imagine, something I really appreciate.

I love too the way song "rules" were/are so often cheerfully chucked out the window, the adventures in structure. In "I Thought", the first few clipcloppy seconds have you thinking they're about to saddle up, ride 'em cowboy, and you have no idea there's about to be a gorgeous, simply-worded song which will finish by tipping you blithely into a Van Goghesque Enoswirl of Middle-Earthy paradise.

The changeups throughout If There is Something, the abrupt silent end of Beauty Queen after you've been fully roped into its soundscape . . . Psalm, you're led to think it will build and build exactly as intense evangelical church sessions actually do, but the expected crescendo never happens, as if to join with the words to say well, you just might not get what you're seeking here. So many brilliant songs . . .

Ferry has said that he strives to make pictures with the music; for me at least he certainly succeeds in that. He's been asked in the past if he'll ever sit down and write his autobiography - I sure hope he does. I'd be particularly interested in hearing more about so many songs and how they came about.