Bryan Ferry Pays Homage To Bob Dylan - Fri 19th Jan
Bryan Ferry Pays Homage To Bob Dylan 19 January 2007 http://www.easier.com There is a racing, joyous intensity to Bryan Ferry's interpretations of the songs of Bob Dylan. Just as his legendary version of 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall', recorded back in 1973, exchanged apocalyptic vision for exuberant swagger, so at the heart of these new recordings lies Ferry's brilliance in both paying homage to the original track, and reinventing it as entirely and iconically his own. Back then, in 1973, he had an idea: "I just thought it would be great to make a whole album of Dylan songs. And at the end of last year, finally, it happened." Between the idea and its execution, Ferry has been busy: as well as being the frontman of the elegantly modern art-rock, and bitter-sweet pop-soul of Roxy Music, he's also spent the last thirty-plus years establishing himself as a great songwriter (Love Is The Drug, Mother of Pearl, More Than This, Slave To Love) and as a distinctively modern singer who can transform another writer's song into a piece of compelling, unpredictable drama - filled with emotional complexity and structured with flawless timing. In covering songs written and recorded by other artists - be it 'The Price of Love', 'As Time Goes By' or 'I Put a Spell on You' - Ferry creates a vehicle for his own inimitable style -- unique works created from the endlessly alluring source material of popular culture. But it was with that first, astonishing cover of Hard Rain that he - along with Jimi Hendrix and The Byrds - gained entry into the sparse club of artists who've covered Dylan and improved on the original. And so now an album of Dylan songs - Dylanesque - that's closer in spirit to These Foolish Things than the mid-career epics of Avalon or Boys & Girls. Fans of his most recent work, 1999's Grammy nominated album of 30s standards, As Time Goes By, 2002's edgy and impassioned Frantic or the two tracks he recorded for Hal Wilner's recent Rogues' Gallery project will have recognised a new voice emerging; vulnerable, inspired and somewhat devil-may-care. With this new album, he was happy to saunter in and cut it in a week. "We just knocked it out this time!" laughs Ferry, almost surprised by his own efficiency. "I wanted to get away from that locked-in-the-studio feeling. We were doing live vocals, harmonica, live everything