Chicago - Tue 19th Nov
Rock review, Bryan Ferry at Chicago Theatre By Kevin McKeough They were dancing in the aisles of the Chicago Theatre Tuesday night, even as Bryan Ferry, the man leading the revelry, was describing the dark side of the party. He turned love into bondage, crooning, "I can't escape," on "Slave to Love," and a few minutes later equated the search for love with scoring a line of cocaine on the Roxy Music classic "Love is the Drug." From his founding days with Roxy in the early 1970s through his new solo CD, "Frantic," Ferry has always commingled lush romanticism with a sense of dread, extravagant glamor with the tacit suggestion that it's hollow. There were plenty of all these elements during Ferry's show, but he treated most of them lightly. Once jaded, then world-weary, Ferry in his late 50s is more an amiable showman than he is a scout reporting from the battlefields of romance. Performing "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" accompanied only by rolling piano early in his set, Ferry replaced Bob Dylan's wounded bitterness with an easy-come-easy-go lilt. Near the end, he sang "Do The Strand" with his tongue firmly in cheek as his nine-piece band romped through the Roxy glam-rock classic and two dancers in fuchsia Las Vegas showgirl outfits shimmied. Of course, Ferry, who donned three suits during the evening, has rarely worn his heart on his immaculately tailored sleeves. Instead, his velvety singing, which was as rich as ever, often smooths over emotions more than wrestles with them. His music remained equally elegant and sophisticated, whether it was his impeccably tasteful choice of cover tunes