avalon_eyes wrote:
Listening to Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of my tears" on this show reminds me of how "These Foolish Things" was received back in 1973. As I recall the NME hated it (" My Foolish Doings," they called it). At this time Eno had left Roxy and "Stranded" was in the pipeline. The critics must have thought Ferry to be a bit cocky and arrogant to put out an album of cover versions of songs dating back to the 1930s. As a 14 year old I just lapped it up, now I see it for the master stroke that it was and one facet of Ferry' s creativity that's never diminished.
Cher avalon_eyes,
I'm not sure from your post if you "lapped" up the NME perspective or the "creativity"? I'd love to know which it was? Perhaps you could elaborate?
As a more aged hipster (I was twenty in '73), I confess to remembering the album as a creative shock on the richter scale of Dylan going electric!
I remember being quite rattled and enthused at the same time. Rattled because I was heavily into the Roxy groove and this was clearly another furrow.
Enthused because I loved his choice of songs, his eclectic taste and the fact that for me, they weren't covers, they were interpretations.
This last point was really what turned it from a surprise into a shock.
As many will remember, although our hero will argue that songsmiths have been covering the work of others since time immemorial (and he's right ) his reference point in saying this is really pre '65.
For my generation, once the Beatles and Stones had started writing their own material, the practice of a serious, hip, creative artist recording the material of others had become quite demode. Particularly if it had been recorded successfully already.
Of course there were exceptions - The Animals with "The House Of The Rising Sun," etc. But, for the most part, post '66, the seriously intentioned did their own stuff but here we had the lead singer and songsmith of the most creative and stylish band of troubadours going apparently doing exactly that thing.
It was a huge shock. Furthermore, he had tampered with some pretty sacred material (Dylan fans were more akin to sack cloth priests at this point in history) and made it undeniably his own. He'd sprinkled Ferry dust on everything. The audacity of it all!
Of course, he'd exercised his talent to entertain and educate us all at the same time and in the most stylish of fashions but, it was a move that should not be underestimated for it's huge courage. Happily for all of us, it payed of big time and we got two massively creative furrows being ploughed in tandem. Perhaps he got it from his farther after all?
Regards,
Windswept