IT says something about the artistic sensibilities of Bryan Ferry that he’s more worried about getting on the wrong side of Bob Dylan than being falsely labelled a neo-Nazi.
Talking up his concert tour of Australia this month, he shrugged off any concerns about a local regurgitation of the flak that surrounded his throwaway comments about Nazi iconography earlier this year.
That particular controversy goose-stepped its way around the globe, causing Marks & Spencer to drop the singer as a face of the retailer and forcing Ferry to issue a public apology after being quoted in a German newspaper as saying: “My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight … Leni Riefenstahl’s movies, Albert Speer’s buildings, the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful.”
Ferry still believes the quotes were blown out of proportion.
“That was so ridiculous, the furore that those comments caused . . . to be taken out of context and be used as some sort of support of Nazism was so unreal. It really is a weird world we live in,” he says.
Far from causing a continuing problem, Ferry believes his fans understood the comments were misunderstood.
“If anything, I think audiences were a little more sympathetic (to me) after that. Since the apology it has all been forgotten. Everyone has calmed down.”
But though that storm cloud may have blown over, rock’s most stylish frontman has expressed his continuing anxiety as to how Dylan would view his interpretations of his songs.
Back in the mid 1970s, Ferry had his first solo hit away from Roxy Music with an energetic re-working of the Dylan classic A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, and 30 years later finally got around to following that up with his album of Dylan covers, titled Dylanesque.
The album included his version of standards such as Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and The Times They Are a-Changin’.
It forms the basis of much of his concert material these days, along with his own classics of course, but his apprehension comes from the fact that he has never actually met Dylan to talk about his treatment of his works.
“My teenage sons, who are big Dylan fans, took me to one of his concerts last year. It was the first time I’d ever seen him and he was fantastic. What would he think of my versions of his songs? He might like some, he might not like others. He might like the band and the way they have been arranged. He might not like my voice or the way I sing them,” he says.
“He was never my choice back in the early days. All the folk music people had his albums, but I was into ’30s jazz and blues, Billie Holiday and other music back then.
“I loved electric guitars. I was getting interested in experimental rock and it was only later that I got interested.
“I think Blonde On Blonde was the first album that I really got into. After I did that early song of his (Hard Rain) I always thought about an album, but there you go, it took 30 years to get around to doing it.”
Though his concerts these days include an extensive playlist from his Dylan album, Ferry doesn’t mind playing his old hits when the audience demands it.
“I still get enjoyment from playing Jealous Guy and Let’s Stick Together … you know it really is a privilege to get up there and play, I’ve always thought that,” he says.
You get the idea that Ferry is still not easily riled. After all these years nothing much rattles the smoothest performer in the business, not Nazi scandals, not even an attempted hijack by a psychiatric patient on his Nairobi-bound jet several years ago.
His comment after stepping off that plane with his family was: “I have done a lot of plane flights in my life, but this is the most eventful. Really.”
And for fans who fondly recall those infamous Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music videos that featured a glamorous woman - usually Ferry’s former long-term the supermodel Jerry Hall - sashaying across the screen, the singer has good news.
“EMI is putting together a DVD of all our music videos to be titled the Thrill Of It All, which has been an interesting project to be involved in,” he reveals.
“There are some rare bits and (band member and collaborator Brian) Eno’s costumes alone are worth a look.”
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