Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Disc OCTOBER 13, 1973 - by Caroline Boucher

THE BRYAN FERRY BAND LEADER

Bryan Ferry - still waiting for Roxy's success - talks to Caroline Boucher.

"My only regret is that I didn't call the band Bryan Ferry instead of Roxy Music. It would have made everything quite plain from the start that it was my show. But I always wanted a group name to hide behind, and besides, I didn't know how things would turn out."

Bryan Ferry reviewing the meteoric rise of Roxy Music. The split with Eno, following a clash of personalities, showed him only too clearly that to create, run and provide the musical direction for a band, you need also to be something of a dictator.

"The nicer you are about things, the more you get kicked in the teeth. I don't want to be a dictator - more a chairman of the board type set-up. And anyway, I like the name Roxy Music for a band, whereas Bryan Ferry is a terrible name."

Everything, says Bryan, was alright at the beginning, "because everybody frantically tried to be successful and there was a great bond of togetherness. But when success, to an extent, apparently happens, that is lost mostly."

The picture is not, however, as grim as one might think. Roxy are currently in the studio finishing up their third album, with new member Eddie Jobson (who does play some excellent things on Bryan's solo album), and John Gustafson on bass. From the backing tracks I've heard it's a very different and much matured album from the last two. The music has more continuity, more flow, and more melody.

Bryan's current preoccupation, though, is with his newly-released solo album, These Foolish Things, which has been severely panned here and there, along with its accompanying single A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. In fact, he was dubious about putting that track out as a single, but every time he played it in the studio, engineers and people passing by would start leaping about, so that decided him. The album is composed of his favourite old songs; and he loved doing it so much, he wants to do another.

"I'm more or less pleased with it. I could go back now and improve things, but that's always the way. It was a nice thing to do at the time, and I'd like to do another one. It also showed me how pleasurable recording can be, and I learnt a lot from working with session musicians, which I'd never done before."

There's some particularly good work from Bes Make Honey's Ruan O'Lochlainn, and Bryan also secured Doctor John's backing vocalists - ex-Ikettes Robbie Montgomery and Jessie Davis - while they were in London with him recently, for a couple of tracks.

Bryan started work immediately after finishing his solo album, on the new group one. When that is finished there's scarcely a breather before they go on tour and probably head for America early in the New Year.

"The trouble was that I couldn't work on both projects at once; I had to finish the solo album before I could start thinking of lyrics for the new group album. So we went into the studio first of all with tunes - because I'd done those - and I've still got to finish off the lyrics. One song I've done has got thirty verses, another one has fifteen."

Bryan is very pleased with the way Eddie Jobson is blending with the band. Onstage Eddie will play synthesiser, piano and violin.

Bryan still doesn't consider Roxy have achieved success. Despite the success of both singles - Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama - he won't be happy until the group are a household name.

Despite all the ups and downs, Bryan reckons he's still relatively unchanged.

"The great changes that happened to me did so when I was seventeen or eighteen, and I don't think I've changed much since. I'm no more conceited now than I was a couple of years ago. The only thing I worry about is working too much, it makes one become rather tedious, talking about what you're doing all the time, one worries about becoming a bore."