Bryan Ferry, premier contemporary crooner, to play TV gig

Bryan Ferry’s forthcoming Dylan covers album, Dylanesque, due in early March, gets a mainstream TV preview next week:

“BBC1 Friday 23 February: 11.15pm - BBC1 Sessions: Bryan Ferry. The Roxy Music frontman performs an intimate concert at LSO St Luke's London, ahead of a new album of Bob Dylan songs next month.”

The album tracklist includes Dylan classics like:

All Along The Watchtower
All I Really Want To Do
If Not For You
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Positively 4th Street
Knocking On Heaven's Door
Simple Twist Of Fate

The album will be a must-buy for all fans of Ferry/Roxy Music and many in Dylan’s fanbase (count me in, twice over). Although the cognoscenti regard all the Ferry solo releases as inferior to all the Roxy Music albums, his cover versions - including Dylan’s A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall on his first solo album, in 1973 – generally garner high praise.

Ferry’s 1999 album, As Time Goes By, a collection of standards by the great Broadway writers such as Cole Porter, is a beautiful CD. It’ll be instructive to see how Dylan’s work sounds alongside The Great American Songbook.

For my money, Ferry is the leading contemporary crossover crooner, by a country mile – way, way ahead of competitors like Rod Stewart, Van Morrison and Sting.



Gerry Smith