Bryan Ferry: The SDE interview

Retrospective SDE exclusive blu-ray out today • New Bryan Ferry album, Loose Talk, coming in March

SDE recently sat down with Roxy Music legend Bryan Ferry to discuss his Retrospective compilation and his 50+ years in music. Bryan was joined by his longtime friend and producer Rhett Davies as we discussed their working relationship, mixing in Dolby Atmos and Bryan’s new collaborative album, Loose Talk, which was announced today.

SDE: Bryan, who came up with the idea of doing this Retrospective compilation, and what was the goal?

Bryan: Somebody at BMG thought it’d be a good idea. And we’d just done the 50 year live celebration of Roxy, so we were in an archive place and we thought, well sure, there’s never been a really comprehensive collection of the solo work; it’s been kind of undersold in many ways. And somebody at BMG had the very good idea of doing it in in categories. I thought that was a really cool way to do it; it made it more curatorial. So I got involved with Rhett here and the whole team. The first disc was fairly easy to do, because that’s the well-known songs, the singles and hits, and so it’s essentially just that. Then they fit it into these different categories of self-written songs, covers, the rarer things, the unheard things and then the jazz stuff. We thought it’d be good to do a selection of the jazz stuff that we’ve done. I think it all fitted together very well in the end.

How did you feel looking back over 50 years of output? It’s a long time!

Bryan: I was sweating. And looking back at various periods, it made me think why I did so many records in that year, or why did I do so little in another year? Because I do like to work and I like to be productive. It took much more time to do it properly than I imagined it would. And we researched the photographs and archives and had to get all those permissions. It was a slog, but it’s worth in the end.

I know the presentation side of things is always very important to you, isn’t it? So I imagine you were involved quite a bit in that side of it?

Bryan: Oh, a lot. But it’s better that way than not caring.

Rhett, I noticed on the on the main compilation, the 20-track first disc of this particular package, there’s quite a few 2023 edits. Was that something you got involved in? Was that a case of trying to squeeze it all in?

Rhett: No, it was just a question of mixing it with Bob [Clearmountain], and Bryan was listening: “that goes on too long!” [laughs]

Bryan: [At times] I thought, “why didn’t we edit it at the time? It repeats the chorus there too many times…”

That’s interesting. I thought it would have been just for timing reasons you had to do that, but it was more artistic than that.

Rhett: It was artistic reasons. I think Bob even suggested one or two.

1973 was a really prolific year for me

Bryan Ferry

I guess that does offer the advantage of some exclusive versions for fans! Bryan, you released your solo albums quite regularly. Do you have favourite eras or albums?

Bryan: Well, I do. I like the beginning. ‘73 was a good year. We’d made the first album the previous year and we’d had a taste of it, I’m talking about Roxy here, but the first album was really just a case of playing all the music we’d rehearsed, and we played around in a few tiny venues. We went into Command Studios with Pete Sinfield [who produced the Roxy Music album], who was delegated to us from his management – who was also our management – because he was with [King] Crimson, and Pete just kind of supervised us recording. But the second album is a different thing, where we suddenly thought, “oh this is really interesting, we’re making a record, and how can we do this?” And we got much more involved from that point. And that year was really prolific for me. The other really important thing was the Flesh + Blood, Avalon and Boys and Girls period when I was working very closely with Rhett and we were using drum machines in coordination together with real drummers and sketching things out with drum grooves.

Rhett: They were studio albums, rather than band albums

Bryan: And I relished that. Once again I love being in the studio

Rhett: Can’t get him out of there!

Those albums you mentioned Bryan, they’re great sounding records because they’ve got the layered sophistication and the production, but they haven’t dated in the way that a lot of 80s production has. And I’m just wondering, Rhett, what the secret was at the time, because they’re still very fresh sounding.

Rhett: I think it was Colin Good, who I’d been working with and he said the one thing that’s great about that period is that none of the synth sounds sound dated; we used very mellow-y, sophisticated sounds. I mean, there was so much synth stuff going on in the 80s that I hated, but I think our approach helped to keep it timeless.

Bryan: Just as a matter of interest, 10 minutes ago we were playing an outtake, a few rough mixes from the Boys and Girls album and the 18-year-old intern who’s in the other room, she thought it was new work. And she was thinking, it sounds so fresh. And we said it’s 40 years old! It’s always good to have that reinforced by somebody now.

Would the two of you kind of sit down and have an intellectual discussion, before you started work on a particular album, about the kind of sounds you wanted? What was the approach with the two of you when you were starting a new project?

Rhett: No, I think we [just] went into the studio. Bryan would have sketches from his house on his piano. And if I was driving into work that day and we were going to do a session, I’d be listening to the radio, and I might think, “hey, that Talking Heads rhythm sounds good”. So I’d go in and try and get a Talking Heads rhythm going, and Bryan would come in and say, “what’s that?” And he’d have his little sequence that he had from home that he brought in. So it’d be [a case of] “let’s try this with this”. I don’t think we had a master plan.

Bryan: No, we stumbled towards everything!

Comparing the Girls and Boys album to Avalon – obviously, one was a Roxy Music record, one was a Bryan Ferry album. What difference did that make to you, Bryan? Did you feel a bit freer because it was your record and you could do what you wanted?

Bryan: I did. Going back to ‘76 or ’77, I’d first of all worked with couple of American musicians, really good session players, and it opened my eyes a bit to a different way of playing. I still think that album [‘The Bride Stripped Bare’], by the way, was really good, and it was a combination of these great English players and these American guys. It was a very interesting combination of attitudes and skills. And that opened the drawer to me thinking about working with American people, spending more time in America, and through Bob Clearmountain, we met Nile Rogers and then Fonzi Thornton and all the top session singers in New York, and [saxophonist] David Sanborn and Neil Jason, the bass player. I brought in one or two people into the Roxy orbit, but there was a limit to how much one could do that because Phil [Manzanera] and Andy [Mackay] wanted to be on the record, obviously. But with Boys and Girls, it was a step further in that direction of having an open book of who you could call. And we’d say, “well, let’s call this guy”. And so many great specialists were available in New York, and we loved doing it there. We would begin tracks here in England, and then in New York we would like develop them and ultimately mix them there. We put a lot of hours in, nothing was too much trouble.

How do you know when to stop though, Bryan?

Bryan: When you get fed up with it. And you reach the point where you think, any change I make now will just make it different rather than make it better. And that’s hard to find that point. And sometimes I’m still not very good at it…

Rhett: A deadline helps! You need a deadline to actually finish it.

The record company would be giving you that deadline presumably?

Rhett: Or maybe if Bryan was booked on a tour or something then that was the deadline

With different people working on different tracks, you obviously you don’t want too many cooks spoiling the broth. How did that work?

Bryan: At that point we couldn’t have enough cooks. We would use one phrase from one guitarist and then another one from another. And just now we were listening, going “who was that?” And we couldn’t quite figure it out

Rhett: it was a melting pot.

Bryan: It was like an orchestra of rock players!

And was money no object in those days?

Bryan: We just had our heads down and wanted to make a great record. I suppose I wanted to have a hit, I wanted to have a single and we did sort of have it with ‘Slave to Love’ and ‘Don’t Stop the Dance’ as well. Although my favourite track is probably ‘Windswept’.

So when that album [Boys and Girls] was commercially successful, you must, must have felt very, very satisfied?

Bryan: I was too worn out to be satisfied.

Rhett: I was so worn out I retired!

I was going to come on to that, actually, but Bryan, obviously you worked with other producers, Patrick Leonard and Robin Trower and people like that, but so much of your work in the last 25 years or so has been with Rhett. What’s special about the relationship and how was it for you when you had to work with other people?

Bryan: Well with Rhett, for a start, we have quite a good sense of humour together. We laugh at things. And I think Rhett finds my antics quite amusing and I like his wisecracks. And also, I know Rhett is solid in the sense of, I know what he likes. And if I bounce the ball off his wall, I know it’s going to come back as a true bounce. That’s the interesting thing. I might want to do something and he’d say, “Oh no, I don’t think you should do that” and I’ll just be belligerent, until one day I might admit he was right, or I might say, “Oh, I think I was right in this particular case”, but I know where I’m coming from, so it’s based on trust and honesty of approach.

Rhett: The annoying thing, from my point of view, is that 99 times out of 100, when we might disagree, he’s right! [hearty laugh, from Bryan at this point]. I always used to come into the studio every day – and still do – and think, okay, what are the five curveballs going to be when I walk in the door? Because Bryan will definitely have been up all night or thinking about something, and he’ll throw curveballs at me.

Bryan: I think we both enjoy the process of record making. We’re both appreciators of music. I first met Rhett when he was a tape operator at Basing street [Studios, which later become SARM West] in his first studio job. And that was on the Another Time, Another Place album back in 1974. So it goes [back] a long way.

I wanted to have a hit

Bryan Ferry

Rhett, how was it, when you were listening to some of the albums that you didn’t work on? That must have been an interesting experience?

Rhett: Very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I love Mamouna album [produced by Bryan and Robin Trower]. I think it’s really good album. And Bête Noire [co-produced with Patrick Leonard] has its tracks.

Bryan: It was a bit of a mess. It was turbulent.

Rhett: ‘Limbo’ is great. And now with the Dolby Atmos mix we’ve just done with Bob [Clearmountain]. It was Bob’s favourite, and he did an outstanding job on it [it’s on the SDE blu-ray of Retrospective].

Bryan, you worked with Dave Stewart, didn’t you?  What was he like as a collaborator?

Oh, he’s great. But more as a kind of ‘getting the ball rolling’ type person. He likes starting things, but he’s not so much of a finisher. Dave always has several plates spinning. “Oh, I’ve got to go next door I’m working on a movie”, or then he’ll say something [crazy] like “Oh, I’ve got a Lemonade company”. He’s a real character. But he’s very throw away in his approach… whereas I want to get it finished. When we did ‘You Can Dance’, it started off as a country and western kind of track and I turned it into something with a different feel altogether. But he’s so enthusiastic, Dave, and a nice guy, and he’s a Geordie, from Sunderland… only a couple miles down the road from me [Bryan grew up in Washington, County Durham].

With Olympia I preferred working with infinite possibilities rather than the same guys.

Bryan Ferry

That album, the Olympia album, you can correct me if I’m wrong on this, but my understanding was that that record was initially thought of as maybe a new Roxy Music record, but ended up being a solo album of yours. Is that how it happened?

Bryan: I can’t remember the dates but it might have done. But then I wasn’t feeling it really, and I just preferred my other way of working with infinite possibilities rather than the same guys. I wasn’t getting the energy that I wanted.

Even though, commercially, it being a Roxy album would probably have been quite a good thing, that didn’t tempt you?

Bryan: I felt it would have been too much hard work. I’m trying to cast my mind back to be honest. I think Phil is great. He gets incredible guitar sounds and he’s a one off, and so is Andy. I love the oboe you see. And Andy’s oboe playing when he’s on, it’s really beautiful. And his sax playing. He plays with feeling and he has a particular tone and a great sense of humor.

Rhett: Phil has a good energy as well.

Bryan: Yes, Phil has a very good energy.

I love your cover of ‘Johnny and Mary’, the Robert Palmer song on this record. It’s such a fantastic song. What attracted you to doing that cover version?

Bryan: Isaac, my son, is a friend of [Norwegian DJ and songwriter] Todd Terje and wanted us to do something together. And I said “how about doing this song?” And it was mainly his work, actually. I was on a bit, but he’s really good. A great talent, a pretty prodigious talent. And I love the song. I met Robert Palmer only once when I was at Compass Point [Studios, in Nassau in The Bahamas] where he was living. I remember he came running in the studio, and said “Oh, I love that” –  ‘Limbo’ it was. But he said, you should call it ‘Down in Limbo’. And I went “Hmm, I don’t know, I think I like ‘Limbo’ better” [laughs].

Bryan [to Rhett]: Did you work with Robert?

Rhett: Yeah, I worked with Robert, I was assistant engineer on Sneaking Sally Through The Alley

Oh, wow, that’s going back.

Rhett: That was great. Every time I was out at Compass Point, either with B-52’s or Talking Heads, I’d bump into him.

He was brilliant. He had a very eclectic taste and very great musical knowledge as well, didn’t he?

Bryan: He was a friend of John Porter, who is a great friend of mine, and a bit of an unsung hero kind of character. He was at college with me, and he kind of joined Roxy. He played on For Your Pleasure, and helped me produce the first solo album. So he’s a really important figure in my development. And he was a great friend of Palmer and Little Feat, who they had in common. Richie Hayward, the drummer, was a great friend of John, and John didn’t really want to join Roxy as the bass player, because he wanted to be in Little Feat. That was more John’s thing. And he’s still alive. He played with me this year. I like to have continuity sometimes, but also young talent. I like to get a balance of the two.

Let’s talk about Dolby Atmos then, because that’s something I’m personally very interested in. Bryan what do you make of this new immersive audio? Have you got a set up there in your studio where you can listen to it?

Bryan: Funny you should say that. We just got one last Friday. We’re in the process of setting it up. In fact, we went downstairs and it turned itself on, for some weird reason. It seems to have a life of its own! But it’s nice to have the opportunity to be with Bob [Clearmountain] again and work with him again – to watch him at work and be part of it and make comments. I’ve never been into surround sound, particularly, but when he played me Avalon, it sounded incredible. And I thought, wow! And [to Rhett] we’re gradually doing the catalogue now, aren’t we?

When Bob Clearmountain was mixing the Avalon album in stereo, he said “I haven’t got enough speakers for all of this stuff”, and it’s true!

Rhett Davies

Rhett, Retrospective must have been a challenge for you and Bob, because it’s not just one album like Avalon. It straddles a whole decade’s worth of albums. So, tell me a little bit about the challenge of getting tapes together and preparing all that, with Bob?

Rhett: Bryan has staff here [Bryan’s West London HQ]. There’s a guy called Miller who is absolutely excellent at archiving, finding and putting all of that together. So when I got over here, the finding of the tapes, that was all mostly sorted. Bob absolutely loves the format. He’s so in love with Dolby Atmos. He always said when he was mixing the Avalon album in stereo, “I haven’t got enough speakers for all of this stuff”, and it’s true! So to be able to hear all of that in Dolby Atmos is just breathtaking. Getting together some of the tapes was difficult. Finding some of the things, we couldn’t find ‘A Waste Land’ [for Boys and Girls]. But we eventually found it in the middle of ‘Valentine’. But it’s a fascinating process to go through and to watch Bob do it is just incredible, to help him put it together. And he’s got a way of working in the studio where he’s listening to the record. He knows the record so well, but then suddenly he’ll just flick a switch and it’s magic.

Of course, congratulations are in order, because the Avalon Atmos mix has been nominated for a Grammy, hasn’t it?

Rhett: Fingers crossed. Although everyone seems to be convinced we won’t win it. Bob says “I never win these things”.

Bryan, do you still buy physical music? Or have you converted to streaming and listening to stuff online?

Bryan: I still play vinyl sometimes, but not regularly. The trouble is if you’re doing music all day for a job, at night I like to go to dinner and eat and so I don’t really listen or I might watch American football and just switch off from music. But I like looking at my records.

That’s a very common pastime… people love looking at their records!

Bryan: So I still like physical products and the new record, which is not what we’re here to talk about, but which I’m very excited about, we’re doing that as a record, and we’ve also done a Dolby Atmos mix. I’m excited about that.

One of the things I wanted to ask you, Bryan, was what does age offer the musician and songwriter like yourself, being an older gentleman these days, and what does it take away, if indeed it takes away if anything? What are the pros and cons of getting older and still making music?

Bryan: Well, the cons are that you’re going to die soon, so worrying that you’re not going to finish certain projects. I’m working in some ways harder than ever to try and catch up for lost time. I still have lots of music, bits and pieces that I’ve filed away, which nobody’s ever heard, and which I want people to hear. Some of these bits are in the new work that I’ve been doing.

I’m working in some ways harder than ever to try and catch up for lost time

Bryan Ferry

And it also helps if you work with younger people. My collaborator on this [new] album [Loose Talk] is a young girl [Amelia Barratt], in early 30s, working as a writer, and it’s been a really great new development. It’s the first time I’ve worked with anybody else’s words apart from covers of songs. She’s a great writer, and she performs the words, but its my music. It’s a different thing to anything I’ve done before and that’s exciting to find something new. To find something new is important. My engineer, James, he’s been here eight years, since he was a teenager, and he’s really great, totally on it and does all the things that young people do with computers. What I offer is experience and a certain taste in music.

Rhett: I don’t think your work ethic has changed, though, in all the years that I’ve known you. You are a workaholic. You love being in the studio, and you love controlling everything and exploring every possible avenue. Again, it’s just part of your DNA.

Bryan: It’s nice to feel you’re being adventurous. Trying things that you haven’t tried yourself, or nobody else has tried.

Are you in the studio most days then, Bryan?

Bryan: Monday to Friday

Do you have a team there with you?

Bryan: Well, Rhett comes in. He comes in for special critiques and on certain things he’ll help us with mastering, or maybe a mix that’s having a problem. Or with Bob, to do the Atmos mixes. We’re going over again in April to do some with him [since this interview, Bob Clearmountain’s studio sadly burnt down in the Californian wild fires]. It’s a great team here. And then there’s three guys downstairs, that we got out of music school, or rather production school.

Do you think you’ll go out on the road again, Bryan, or have you retired from live performance?

Bryan: Very doubtful. We’ll see how this new album goes. We could do some live presentations, but I’m not sure.

So this new album, do you sing on it as well?

Bryan: Not really. You might hear me in the background on a couple of things. But no.

One final question. The first Roxy Music album came out as a deluxe box set back in 2017 and everyone was delighted with that. But I think fans are waiting for For Your Pleasure and I’m just wondering whether that’s going to happen at any time soon. Do you know?

Bryan: Well, we were hoping to do it, but then they take so much time and effort.

Rhett: it’s time will come.

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Thanks to Bryan Ferry and Rhett Davies who were interviewed by Paul Sinclair for SDE. The SDE exclusive blu-ray audio of Retrospective (with a Dolby Atmos Mix) is out today and there’s only a few copies left at the SDE shop. You can read more about the Loose Talk album, here.

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