These Foolish Things, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, original written by Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey, 1936
These Foolish Things, Billie Holiday/Teddy Wilson & Orchestra, 1936
These Foolish Things, Turner Layton, 1936
These Foolish Things, Benny Carter, 1936
These Foolish Things, Benny Goodman/Helen Ward, 78RPM, 1936
These Foolish Things, Nat King Cole, Nat King Cole at the Piano, 1947/50
These Foolish Things, Billie Holiday, Solitude, 1956
These Foolish Things, Ella Fitzgerald, Ella in Rome: The Birthday Concert, 1956
These Foolish Things, Etta James, These Foolish Things, 1960-65
These Foolish Things, Frank Sinatra, Point of No Return, 1962
These Foolish Things, Sam Cooke, Mr. Soul, 1963
These Foolish Things, Bryan Ferry, These Foolish Things, 1973

The song that stabilized Ferry’s reputation as a dependable hit-maker was ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’. The song that stabilized Ferry’s reputation as a durable, old-style matinee idol was These Foolish Things.  An extremely important song in Bryan Ferry’s lexicon, These Foolish Things cemented the two key strands of the singer’s career and subsequent image – one, as crooner and leading man, an interpreter of the Great American Songbook, and the other as postmodern stylist, using the tricks of performance and entertainment to present a European Cabaret rock fantasy, replete with music, theater, dance and the promise of a front seat at the Kit Kat Klub. Beneath both images was the unifying image of wrecked love contemplated and lost – remembered – over a gin martini and a pack of Gitanes cigarettes.

‘These Foolish Things’ is positioned at the close of the album These Foolish Things, providing the concluding moment to a record that has history and human activity as its central guiding principle. Opening with Bob Dylan’s mythological epic ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall‘, we listen as the poet-mind observes and recites for us the trauma of human experience across the ages:

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

Ferry sweetens the message by turning the folk song into a stomping glam-epic, rousing the troops with an archness and gaiety that resulted in the music critics seething with anger in 1973 (“I can’t really understand what all the fuss is about,” Ferry said. “I really can’t”). The songs that follow are tender and lighthearted: having provided a view of human history on a grand scale, we then are presented with the ordinary, observing the tug and drama of human love in all its tatty glory as demonstrated in the selection and presentation of River of Salt, Don’t Ever Change, Piece of My Heart, Baby I Don’t Care, It’s My Party, and Don’t Worry Baby.

Keen to maintain his structural framework, Ferry presents additional allegorical context by sequencing Sympathy for the Devil at the beginning of the second side of the original LP – a strategically placed doubling of Dylan’s mythological odyssey, only this time  we are lead across those sad forests and dead oceans by old saucy Lucifer, who is busy getting off on his crucifixions, revolutions and blitzkrieg. What follows next is chaos theory, but on a very human, mundane level – the minutia of the every day, the froth of love as seen through the sixties pop machine: The Tracks of My Tears, You Won’t See Me, I Love How You Love Me, Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever.

Then Ferry drops a (structural) bomb: until this point These Foolish Things has selected tracks from the 1960s – eleven of thirteen songs are from 1961-1967 – an important period for Ferry:  “[Foolish Things] reminds me of when I used to be in Gas Board in Newcastle – in fact, the whole LP does!” (Ferry). In a sense, Foolish Things is Gas Board’s first release, the record that never was. Just as Roxy Music‘s For Your Pleasure was a chronicle of the dark strategizing of an ambitious mind (through every step/a change), Ferry uses Foolish Things to consider his options and take a moment to pull back into his recent past, square up his influences, and digest and strategize on the kind of artist he is going to be moving forward. He then takes an intuitive leap and lands a career defining moment every bit as encompassing as Virginia Plain: he chooses a song largely forgotten by modern audiences, the classic, These Foolish Things.

II. These Foolish Things

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you

For sheer hairy yarbles, in-your-face daring, no song on Ferry’s first solo album has more visceral impact than These Foolish Things. Recorded in 1936 – the oldest tune on the record by a good few decades – ‘Foolish Things’ was originally added (late) to the set-list of a London revue titled Spread it Abroad, written by songwriters lyricist Eric Maschwitz and composer Jack Strachey and performed on stage by Dorothy Dickson.  This is the version most critics cite as the one Ferry emulated (“Bryan Ferry covered the Dorothy Dickson version of the song for the title track of his first solo album…” Wiki). Yet this is unlikely, as no recorded version of Dickson’s song exists. Instead, Ferry’s adaptation most resembles the version recorded by the man who first made the tune a hit – Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, the famous West Indian-British cabaret star of the 1930-40s. Visiting lyricist Maschwitz’s studio one afternoon hunting for songs, Hutchinson saw the unloved ‘Foolish Things’ manuscript sitting on top of the studio piano. The Great American Songbook quotes Maschwitz in his autobiography:

“What’s this?” he [Hutchinson] asked.

Maschwitz explained it had not been picked up by any publisher.

Hutch placed the music on the rack, played and sang the song right through.

The Moment he had finished, he turned to Maschwitz and said: “I have a recording session in two days’ time. May I use it?”

May I use it? Talk about being at the right place at the right time. Hutchinson recorded his version and it was an immediate hit in the UK. After Hutchinson’s success, a further five other covers charted the same year, 1936: Benny Goodman (# 1), Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday (# 5), Nat Brandywynne (# 6), Carroll Gibbons (# 8), and Joe Sanders (# 17). Between 1936 and 1963 the song continued its massive popularity, being covered by many of the great musical talents of the twentieth century – in addition to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra, there was Nat King Cole, Etta James, and Sam Cooke. The track also became a favourite of the bop and post-bop jazz giants, with versions recorded by John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Red Garland, Johnny Hartman, Dave Brubeck, Art Pepper, and Chet Baker – the seductive lyric an invitation for embellishment via saxophone, trumpet, or piano.

‘These Foolish Things’ is known as a “list” or catalog song, and is one of the very earliest examples of narrative cataloging in pop music, capturing, in particular, the virtues or vices of a spurned or absent lover (The Great American Songbook is now full of them: All the Things You Are, Thanks for the Memory, and The Way You Look Tonight). Maschwitz knew he wanted to write a song in the vein of Cole Porter’s You’re the Top – a hit two years previously, in 1934 –  in which Porter lists the many amusing qualities about his sweetheart. Maschwitz created a moody epic, lingering on such timeless images as The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations/Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations, adhering to a poetic sensibility with just a hint of flirtatious sex. Music critic Robin Miller comments in his 1963 article, that it is quite possible that a certain kind of songwriting success is no longer possible because “The great songs of the 1930s were written by adults for adults. People with experience of life and love, who could appreciate wit and were not afraid of sentiment. And sentiment, of course, is what is revealed by every line, every note of ‘These Foolish Things’.”

Not surprisingly, given the evocative and sensual lyric of the song, the public was fascinated by who Maschwitz might have had in mind while writing ‘These Foolish Things’. True, Maschwitz was romantically linked to the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong while working in Hollywood during the early thirties, but The Great American Songbook tells us the lyricist himself “does not mention this.”

The far more interesting story is that ‘These Foolish Things’ is a song inspired by Jean Ross, British writer, activist, film critic and the role-model for Christopher Isherwood’s ‘divinely decadent’ Sally Bowles in Goodbye to Berlin, later adapted into the long-running stage musical and film, Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli as Sally/Jean. According to the research, “most sources, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, posit cabaret singer Ross, with whom Maschwitz had a youthful romantic liaison, as the muse for the song” (Ross). The implication then, is that the dark and decadent Berlin Weimar Republic years of 1931 are the inspiration for one of the twentieth centuries most popular romance songs. I wonder if Michael Buble knows this?

This darker undertone would appeal to the cheap and vulgarity loving Ferry, shedding a bit of light on the reason why he selected the song – you can safely say ‘Foolish’ being out of style with the young teen fans he had converted with Roxy Music’s early singles. On on the one hand, the possibilities of seductive interpretation certainly appeal to any singer who tackles ‘Foolish Things’ – Hutchinson (stoic); Sinatra (self-absorbed); Ella Fitzgerald (emotive, insightful). To his credit Ferry chooses to play it straight, respectful, yet laced with dollops of camp and ironic awareness – this is the movies, after all. He nails the lyric by getting inside the seductive element of the song, not once flinching over the innate high-style Romanticism of the tune (think Morrissey dreading another sunny day) and never once backing down from such ironic, poor-taste pearls as Gardenia perfume ling’ring on a pillow/Wild strawb’ries only seven francs a kilo. Respected as a man who knows his stuff, Ferry is to be credited for keeping the original lyric, including the opening stanza “Oh will you never let me be?/Oh will you never set me free?” – even the song’s originator Leslie Hutchinson didn’t include that one. And Ferry didn’t add new verses or change lines lines, like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald did – indeed, Ella added whole new verses, but it’s Ella – so who cares?

We’ll look at the fantastic filmed promotional clip for ‘These Foolish Things’ in part two of this entry, but it is enough to say for now that Ferry’s vision for the piece was interesting, choosing to stage the song for cinema, contrasting sharply with ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall‘s pure (and funny) Top of the Pops band-in-action clip. When Ferry stages ‘Foolish Things’, he does so in pink flamingo shadows, an opened, half empty whiskey bottle sitting open beside a burning cigarette. The mood is sombre but heated, the shadow of tropical plants paint prison bars on the singer’s face. He looks up and around (a little awkwardly, it must be said) chasing down the memory.

Knowing the song is inspired by fashion model cabaret rebel Jean Ross, and bearing in mind his own taste for decadent Weimar imagery – Country Life is full of it, the track ‘Bitter-Sweet‘ in particular (years before Bowie and Iggy descended on Berlin) – we can posit that Ferry’s promotional movie is actually a re-staging of ‘These Foolish Things’ moment of composition, the point in time Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson discovered the battered manuscript on top of the piano, and he and the love-torn Maschwitz worked out the song between plentiful sips of “vodka and coffee”. Ferry replaces the West Indian-British cabaret star Hutchinson with a gorgeous African-American pianist, who is smiling up at the singer, but somehow distant, out-of-frame, yet responsive to the changes in Ferry’s phrasing and vocal enunciation. Ferry’s performance is almost diabolical in its seriousness, pushing through to a point where some viewers want to snigger, others simply laugh out loud at how odd and different the whole thing is. A little, perhaps, like Sally Bowles herself.

She had a surprisingly deep, husky voice. She sang badly, without any expression, her hands hanging down at her sides – yet her performance was, in its own way, effective because of her startling appearance and her air of not caring a curse of what people thought of her.

Christopher Isherwood

Credits
Great articles at The Cafe Songbook provide the historical context for this entry; as do clips from Ferry’s ‘Foolish Things’ film; with the web providing great shots of Leslie Hutchinson, Jean Ross, Ana May Wong, Hutch’s These Foolish Things, original release; and of course the brilliant movie poster art for Cabaret – not Bob Fosse’s best film necessarily (that distinction goes to All That Jazz), but any Fosse film is worth more than most.

Titbits
Not convinced by the Weimar Republic connection to ‘Foolish Things’? – no problem – enjoy instead Bryan Ferry‘s cameo doing Roxy Music‘s Bitter-Sweet on the television series Babylon Berlin. The woman watching is the flawed and lovely Weimar character Charlotte Ritter, police clerk by day, cabaret star by night..

Next: These Foolish Things – Part 2

Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, Bryan Ferry (These Foolish Things, 1973)
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, The Four Tops, (Ivy Jo Hunter/Stevie Wonder, 1966).
Club a’Gogo, Eric Burdon and The Animals (Animal Tracks, 1965)

My baby found a new place to go
Hangs around town at the Club-a-gogo
Takes all my money for the picture show
But I know she spends it at the club-a-gogo

Eric Burdon and the Animals, 1966

Written in typically optimistic fashion by Stevie Wonder (You Are the Sunshine of My Life/Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing) Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever is a wonderful Four Tops recording released by Motown in 1966, reaching #45 on the Billboard 100. The Four Tops original is so bright and assured that most of 70s rock royalty have added it to their reportoire – The Band, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins – failing in all instances to re-capture the sprightly bounce of the 1966 Motown release. Only Marvin Gaye comes close to the original by re-thinking the music and applying his typical pixie dust to the recording. Bryan Ferry and his magic band of John Porter, Eddie Jobson and Phil Thompson come close to the mark – the backing track is a percussive and funky wonder – but unfortunately the Ferry trademark vocal style interrupts the beat of the song, deflating it of its attractive innocence.

‘Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever’ continues Ferry’s fascination with the hit-making factories of 50s and 60s America, in this instance foregoing New York’s Brill Building hit-factory in favour of Detroit City’s Motown Records (the name Motown a mix of motor and town, the nickname for Detroit, and significantly, the location of the world’s first stage dive by Iggy Pop – it’s amazing what you can find at detroithistorical.org!).

The pull to Motown was significant for Ferry, for, growing up in Washington, County Durham during the 1950s, like many young people he needed a lifeline and an inspiration: “I loved American music,” he told Jon Savage in 2018. ““From the age of about 10, every week you’d discover somebody new. I was very much into jazz. You know how English people are; there’s a certain amount of musical snobbery. I mean, I loved Little Richard and Fats Domino, but when I heard Charlie Parker for the first time, this was something I really loved, and nobody else who I knew knew anything about him.” (Guardian).

Jazz came first (“In 1955, I also started listening to jazz – I became obsessed”), followed by R n’ B, Stax & Motown, soul – female singers, in particular, caught his ear: “I love women’s voices, actually – I haven’t got much time for men’s voices…But Billie Holiday is probably my favorite singer ever because she was so inventive, and soulful, and just so cool” (Pitchfork).

I. West Side
What is interesting is that the absorption of American influences and styles would produce such as European, neo-futurist, and often very weird sound with Roxy Music, a compositional blueprint that would eventually morph into the softer, restrained and more soulful sound of Manifesto (“West Side”), Flesh and Blood, and Avalon. Coming off an interview with Ferry in 2013, journalist Lindsay Zoldaz is impressed with how closely Ferry studies the form of song and performance – in this case, Prince on YouTube during a George Harrison tribute (“Ferry studies the screen like a quarterback taking mental notes on a rival’s game”) – and goes on to say, significantly:

From the innovative pastiche of Roxy Music‘s earliest records to his best solo albums– which feature wildly imaginative covers of Dylan, Otis, and Lesley Gore, to name just a few– [Ferry’s] career has played out like one prolonged, well-informed, and often-exclamatory conversation with popular music.

Lindsay Zoladz, Pitchfork, 2013

As musician and music theorist, Andy Mackay has identified the process of Ferry absorbing musical influences and turning it into a sound that was so successful for Roxy Music, while also recognizing the “tremendous influence” Ferry’s vocal style had “on people who perhaps wouldn’t have been confident in going out and becoming singers, because they didn’t sound enough like soul or rock singers or whatever. And then they heard Bryan…”:

The band he [Ferry] was in before, The Gas Board, was basically a soul band; and it’s very interesting that as soon as he got the chance to launch his solo career […] with These Foolish Things, he immediately did covers of all the songs by singers who he admired – which were soul songs. I think he thought he was singing one thing, but because he was English, it came out differently.

Andy Mackay, 1997

The Gas Board // Bryan Ferry (r)

While I was at university I put together my own band called The Gas Board and we played a lot of clubs in the area. None of the material we performed was original – it was mainly R ‘n’ B covers. But two of the musicians from that band – Graham Simpson and John Porter – were later to play with me in Roxy Music, so as you can imagine this was a very important time for me.

Bryan Ferry, 2009

The Gas Board was formed in the latter half of 1965 and included a three piece horn section (which, a bit surprisingly, included future film-maker Mike Figgis). American Soul was popular in the UK charts in the 60s, with Motown stars The Four Tops (Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever); The Temptations (My Girl); The Supremes (Baby Love); and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (Tears of a Clown) having big hits in the country, instigating a move away from classic Rhythm & Blues towards Soul.

Knowing which side their bread was buttered, this is the direction the Gas Board decided to take, with Ferry covering as best he could quintessential 1960s Stax and Motown hits of the day. “In my college band, I had been imitating whichever song I was singing.” Around the same time he hitchhiked to London to see the Stax Roadshow featuring Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Sam and Dave. This was the singer’s ‘Road to Damascus moment’: “I’d been nursing the idea for Roxy since my last band [the Gas Board], since 1964-65. Obviously, when I stopped with the other band I was still thinking about music, but in more creative terms” (Ferry). With the concept and idea firmly in his mind, Ferry started to plan the mixing of “black soul music and the art school influence” to create a new hybrid European sound.

II. Devil With a Hatchet
The cross-pollination of styles and collisions in Bryan Ferry’s musical output was due in part to the location and heritage of his hometown – the unglamorous working-class industrial city of Newcastle Upon Tyne (specifically, Washington, County Durham), in North East England. Against a backdrop of Newcastle’s typical cobblestoned, coal-dirty streets Ferry took in the visual influences of architectural marvels Penshaw Monument and the Central Arcade (see: The Track of My Tears), Newcastle also provided access to American Jazz in the 50s, R n’ B, Soul, and high-pedigree rock in the 60s. An early home for jazz in the city in the 50s, The Newcastle Jazz Club was followed by The New Orleans Club, and The University Jazz club – the latter owned by Michael Jeffery (probably best known as the man who managed the Animals and Jimi Hendrix) and also as the future founder and owner of the Club a’Gogo.

The Club a’Gogo was great. That was near the bus station. You’d go up these stairs, past all these bus drivers and bus conductors who had a tea room or office there, and the club was at the top. Later I saw all sorts of people there: Cream, the Spencer Davis Group, Wilson Pickett, Captain Beefheart – I was DJ at the club the night Beefheart played there.

Bryan Ferry, 2008

The significance of the Club a’Gogo was to provide a place where art, commerce, and music could meet.  In the latter half of 1961 Mike Jeffery and and his partner Ray Grehan had gone ahead with the purchase of a site above the Handyside Arcade on Percy Street. According to the excellent online series of articles on gigging in the North East (Ready, Steady, Gone), the expectation for Jeffrey was that the club be the “best in the city”. As well as live Jazz and Latin American music, there was to be a games room with roulette, meals and a late drinks license. Mike Jeffery targeted the youth and older crowds –

“by splitting the Club A’Gogo into the two discrete venues. The club consisted of two rooms either side of a landing. On the right was the licensed ‘Jazz Lounge’. On the left was the unlicensed ‘Latin American Lounge’, later to be renamed the ‘Young Set’”.

Roger Smith, 2013

John Lee Hooker: ‘You ever hear’a Newcastle’?
Interviewer: ‘Newcastle, Mississippi?’
John Lee Hooker: ‘Newcastle in Britain. Newcastle . . . boy, that was rough. There was a bar I played every night. It was rough.’

Like many Northern music venues, the club had a violent reputation. Gambling and late night drinking were a problem. Eric Burdon and The Animals were the house band during some of the club’s most influential years (even recording a song called Club a’Gogo) and the influx of music styles and cast of characters made it an exciting place:

The Club a Go-Go was a shining star of the northern British club world, which meant it also had to be a den of iniquity. It’s where the North East mob was born – they ran several clubs in the area. It was a mixture of teen heaven, with the devil running loose wielding a hatchet. It was the only place outside of one club in London that actually had a full-on gaming licence. It was very clear that the mob from London would take interest, as gaming back then was strictly controlled in England and only one club in London’s West End had been allowed the game of roulette. I have many great memories from Club A Go-Go.

Eric Burdon

My baby found a new place to go
Hangs around town at the Club-a-gogo
Takes all my money for the picture show
But I know she spends it at the club-a-gogo
Let’s go babe, let’s go, I love you, come on, yeah!

It’s one of the coolest spots in town
You take too much tho’ it’s bound to get you down
She’s got a boy-friend they call Big Joe
He’s a big shot at the club-a-gogo
Babe, come on, let’s go, let’s go babe, yeah!

Now they play the blues there every day and every night
Everybody monkeys and they feel all right
Ask my friend, Meyer he’ll tell you so
That there ain’t no place like the club-a-gogo
Let’s go babe, ah let’s go, come on it’s all right, s’all right, s’all right
Yeah!

I guess I can’t blame her for goin’ up there tho’
The place is full of soul, heart and soul, baby
It’s all right dad, John Lee Hooker, Jerome Green,
Rolling Stones, Memphis Slim up there, Jimmy Reed too baby,
Sonny Boy Williamson baby

Eric Burdon and The Animals, Club a Go-Go, 1966.

From Burdon’s description and lyric it is safe to say Club a’Gogo provided Ferry with access to music of some considerable variety and character, introducing an explicitly Roxy Music sensibility born of trampy, stylish decadence – the sleazy scene depicted on the cover of For Your Pleasure coming alive in its high-heeled glory – girls, clothes, dirty deeds done dirt cheap – as Ferry confirms: “Some quite hard men used to go there – like gangsters; dressed in mohair suits, with beautiful girls – the best looking girls in Newcastle; quite tarty. It was really exciting – it felt really “It” to go there. Beautiful girls …” (Ferry). And Ferry connects the dots of his flash American fantasy to the style and attitudes of the American bands – “the Stax label and Motown, they were into presentation and show business, mohair suits, quite slick. And the cover art…was a bit off-kilter as well; there was something a bit strange about it, futuristic as well as retro” (Guardian).

A bit off-kilter, something a bit strange, futuristic as well as retro: as if to seal his concept for the Roxy machine and his solo career, Bryan Ferry would recall that one of the large walls in the Club a’Gogo Jazz Lounge had a large day-glo mural of the New York skyline. Ferry assisted in painting the mural, applying his musical and artistic signature to the interior design of a club that brought him soul and excitement in equal measure. The primary artist of the piece – the flamboyant poet and writer David Sweetman – went on to became a life-long friend of Ferry – their common interests of art, music and writing outliving the typical life-span of a city nightclub, with its final claim on our memories, and all of our times and places.

It was by far the greatest club in the UK, even the planet for that matter and that’s an understatement!

Alan Brack, Club a’Gogo patron, 2013

The Club a’Gogo closed its doors in June 1968. To quote the Newcastle Live newspaper: “The whole 1906-built building, including the Handyside Arcade was, to the despair of many, demolished in the late 1980s to make way for the new Eldon Garden shopping mall.” (Maybe City Council will recognize the mistake, and like Liverpool’s Cavern, have to painstakingly re-build the club with its original bricks).

Postscript: It was nice to read that plans are being made to resurrect Club a’Gogo in January 2020 (“Newcastle’s legendary 1960s Club a’Gogo is set for a regular revival night).” We wish the owner much success, and will keep an eye on events and information as it becomes available: Club a’Gogo 2020 Facebook.

Credits: many thanks to the excellent info compiled at Ready, Steady, Gone – the brilliant site that reviews gigging in the North of England, late 60s/early 70s.

Photos: Gas Board original promo (Ferry in tie); Billie Holiday; Gas Board promo; Stax/Volt Road Show poster (Norway); Club a’Go-go logo; Club opening night; Animals recording of Club a’Go-go; Club a’Go-go exterior and interior shots; Club New York skyline mural by David Sweetman, assisted by Bryan Ferry.

Next: Triumph in Endings: closing out with ‘These Foolish Things’!

I Love How You Love Me, Bryan Ferry (cover version, These Foolish Things, 1973)
I Love How You Love Me, The Paris Sisters (original, Barry Mann/Larry Kolber; Produced by Phil Spector, 1961).

Bryan Ferry’s cover of the Phil Spector classic ‘I Love How You Love Me’ is a return to form on These Foolish Things after the misjudged train wreck of The Beatles ‘You Won’t See Me‘. Ferry is more confident of Spector’s material, getting the mood and swing just right, over-riding the smooth tones of the original and raising the temperature with a welcome doo-wop bounce. Ferry even throws in a harpsichord riff (provided by the brilliant Eddie Jobson) to get the party rolling, and it works beautifully. Perfectly timed and rendered, you can feel the album winding down now in glorious fashion as the band prepare the next tracks ‘Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever‘ and ‘These Foolish Things‘ on the sidelines.

‘I Love How You Love Me’ is another selection from New York’s Brill Building staple of writers (It’s My Party/Baby I Don’t Care/Don’t Ever Change) that provides Ferry further opportunity to cross paths with Phil Spector (Don’t Worry Baby) and the joys of 50s and 60s American AM Radio. At this juncture there are three distinct threads weaving through These Foolish Things: songwriting as assembly-line craft (Brill Building songs); the new 60’s breed of songwriting (Beatles, Beach Boys, Stones), and a ‘Do the Stand’ historical odyssey booked-ended by two extended tracks, A Hard Rain’s-a-Gonna Fall and Sympathy for the Devil. Interestingly, ‘I Love How You Love Me’ also provides a bridge between 54th Street production line ballad-making and 60s singer-songwriter aesthetic, via TV’s favorite teen throb phenomenon The Monkees (no less). What can we say – you heard it here first!

Written in the vocal friendly key of C-major, ‘I Love How You Love Me’ was composed by Barry Mann (Who Put the Bomp) and lyricist Larry Kolber (Sweet Little You), both staff writers at Don Kirshner‘s Aldon Music. Often mistaken as a pure Brill Building recording (Brill was actually located at 1650 Broadway, Aldon Music was next door at 1619 Broadway), ‘Love Me’ was nevertheless a definitive product of New York song-writing labor, sweated over in the Eastern US hit factory before Phil Spector took it to his home turf of California and the custom designed echo chambers of Gold Star Studios to record with his new girl group, The Paris Sisters.

Typically obsessed with the song (remixing the strings over thirty times), Phil Spector’s version of ‘I Love How You Love Me’ is a nostalgic wish to return to small-town America – a feeling capitalized on by Bobby Vinton‘s own 1968 hit version of the song (a David Lynch movie contender) where Vinton calls out an American innocence that was frequently name-checked but rarely existed, much like those abandoned towns and last picture shows captured in Virginia Plain, resulting in a sweetness of atmosphere wrapped in a banality kissed by a touch of menace. In keeping with the vibe of David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet then, ‘I Love How You Love Me’ is the sound of an all-American logging town of white picket fences and street-corner diners going Top 5, no questions asked, in August 1961.

Bryan Ferry seems to have copped this strangeness and wisely resisted it, instead giving ‘I Love How You Love Me’ a bit of much-needed bounce and lightness, courtesy of the girl singers he used as his own backing band, the wonderful The Angelettes. The brighter feel-good élan suits the song, re-making the original for a modern, ready-to-dance crowd. Let’s face it, the kids in the early 70s needed a bit of cheering up after Altamont, the Beatles break-up, and MacArthur Park climbing to the top of the charts.

“These Foolish Things… will probably succeed best in the context of a party”

Ian MacDonald

To me it was a business and I had to knock off the songs.

Don Kirshner

Pop from the production line; that seemed to be the story of the late Fifties and early Sixties.

Greg Shaw

There is an incredible TV rock show, rarely referenced today, that offered a staggering lists of musical guests and chart topping bands performing live in the studio, introduced by a man with a bad hair comb-over and a stilted, monotone delivery. The show was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, an American music program that taped live in-studio shows with the 70s and 80s biggest acts. (Think Old Grey Whistle Test or Der Musikladen in Europe). Rock Concert was the brainchild of one of pop music’s greatest businessmen: Don Kirshner (1934-2011). Kirshner was a pioneering New York City music publisher who brought the Tin Pan Alley approach to rock ‘n’ roll in the late Fifties and by the 60s had helped launch the careers of Neil Sedaka, Carole King, Neil Diamond and The Monkees. Setting up his publishing company Aldon Music in 1958 with partner Al Nevins, both men began working as producers as well as publishers, with Aldon not just offering songs but also recording finished recordings to the labels, which gave them a share of artist royalties as well as the standard publisher’s share of revenue from songs. With the business of business firmly in our minds then, we may recall the lyric to the opening lines of Roxy Music’s first single ‘Virginia Plain‘:

Make me a deal and make it straight
All signed and sealed, I’ll take it
To Robert E. Lee I’ll show it
I hope and pray he don’t blow it ’cause
We’ve been around a long time
Just try try try try tryin’ to make make the big time

This is a desire for fame articulated in a manner that Don Kirshner would have approved of – clearly, the business of music was on Ferry’s mind right from the get-go. Don Kirshner’s Aldon publishing empire is regarded as having played a significant role in shaping the Brill Building Sound in the late 1950s and 1960s, a pooling of talent that comprises well over half of the selections on Ferry’s These Foolish Things. Yet, with the coming of The Beatles, and the increasing practice of performing artists writing their own material, the demand for “song factories” such as Kirshner’s began to decline. As Ferry commentator Hal Norman notes on the Foolish Things website: “After the Beatles, how could a rock musician ever claim legitimacy or validity without writing their own material? There can be no sincerity or personal expression without originality…” (Norman).

This is the question Ferry strives to answer on his first album of singing the pop canon. Ferry’s fascination and admiration for Brill Building composers and recordings is embedded in the idea of song-writing as craft, a respect for pop as a work of art, akin to painting, sculpture, and movie-making. In the same manner that Ferry, Eno and Mackay fused classical, avant-garde electronics and rock ‘n’ roll in Roxy Music (The “accidental synthesis”, as Andy Mackay described it), Ferry makes an important personal move in 1973 to look under the hood of his new profession to see what makes it tick, using These Foolish Things to enter the doors of the Brill Building and navigate its “rabbit warren of cubicles” furnished with a pianos and desks. He is keen to throw light on the craft of pop music making, a genre that had previously been seen as imminently childish and disposable. Yet, critically, Ferry understands that pop’s disposable nature is the very bedrock on which it stands.  The Encyclopedia Britannica credits Madonna for exposing this defining paradox of rock and pop music, but surely it was Ferry’s early 70s postmodern approach to his own and other’s songs that gave early wide-acceptance to the idea:

Madonna can be described as a rock star (and not just a disco performer or teen idol) because she articulated rock culture’s defining paradox: the belief that this music—produced, promoted, and sold by extremely successful and sophisticated multinational corporations—is nonetheless somehow noncommercial.

And so Don Kirshner embraced the issue of authenticity vs commercialism and tackled it head-on: he arranged and produced the music for the television show The Monkees, the group formed in 1966 by American TV executives desperate to cash in on the Beatles phenomenon. The creators of The Monkees, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider (Easy Rider), knew exactly the kind of guys they wanted for their new series. So the ad they took out in the September 8, 1965 edition of Variety had to reflect the attitudes of the burgeoning youth culture (the ad included the line, “Must come down for interview,” a reference to being high, according to Rafelson). Don Kirshner was hired to provide the music from his staple of Brill Building writers:  “They were the idea of the studio, who wanted to capitalize on the Beatles’ `Hard Day’s Night’ with a weekly TV show built around the same kind of high-spirited hi-jinks,” Don explained. “What they did was hold a cattle call and selected the four guys out of a thousand or so, based on their appearance, rather than any musical ability. The group was thrown together from scratch and then the studio gave them to me with full creative control to supply the music” (Kirshner).

What happened next was extraordinary, even by music business standards, as the boys themselves were hired only to act and sing, while Kirshner applied his winning formula in a premeditated manner to produce a string of tuneful hit singles: I’m a Believer (Neil Diamond); Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce, Hart); Pleasant Valley Sunday (Gerry Goffin, Carole King); A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (Neil Diamond); Valleri and (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone (Boyce, Hart). Selling more than 75 million records – outselling the The Rolling Stones and The Beatles in the year of Sgt. Pepper, 1967 – The Monkees became the epicenter for the originality vs commercialism argument (the “how could a rock musician ever claim legitimacy or validity without writing their own material?”).

Moving in the same circles as The Beatles (Nesmith even appearing in the A Day in the Life promo video), Monkees band-members Dolenz, Nesmith, Jones, and Tork objected to Don Kirshner lying to the public about their musical abilities and not playing on their records (they did little more than provide vocals on their second album, More of the Monkees: In the October 2 edition of The New York Times, writer Judy Stone asked Davy pointedly if “the big push for The Monkees was fair to real rock groups?” Jones responded: “…you can’t fool the people, you really can’t.  There’s a showdown sometime” (MoM, liner notes). In response, the band demanded more input and control: Kirshner was fired for promoting his session musicians over the four members of the band and soon enough, with original material flowing from The Monkees (most of it not very good), the hits stopped coming altogether. By the end of their short two-year television season Mike Nesmith brought in the decidedly teen-(un) friendly Frank Zappa as guest, and for the actual final episode, directed and co-written by Micky Dolenz, singer-songwriter Tim Buckley performed a solo acoustic version of his lovely but mournful Song to the Siren. Buckley’s appearance marked a moment of authenticity incarnate in The Monkees debate – earnest folk solo artist guitarist and songwriter – and by the end of 1968 the kids of pleasant valley had killed the band (at least until MTV came along in the 80s).

Don Krishner went on to repeated success when he gathered yet another set of studio musicians to create The Archies (1968), a cartoon act that wouldn’t talk back (they were just cartoons, after all). The hits kept coming though, the most famous being Sugar, Sugar, written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, which went to number one on the pop chart in 1969, selling over six million copies. They called Kirshner the “man with the golden ear” for good reason.

Perhaps the biggest blight of the late ’60s was ‘bubblegum’, music planned entirely as a product, not as anybody’s art.

Charlie Gillett, The Sound Of The City

I take my musical influences from everywhere.

Bryan Ferry

While acknowledging the accomplished and personal song-writing power of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, These Foolish Things nevertheless strongly tips its hat to the fruits of what many consider a more cynical approach to song-writing – the musicians and writers buried deep at Aldon Music and the Brill Building applying a formula to drive towards a hit. And clearly Ferry believes in this approach – song as craft – as do contemporary musical stars of today as they apply the codes of beat and melody provided by every Apple computer. And such, for Ferry the implications of Foolish Things were wide-reaching and permanent: Stranded was written with a greater knowledge of song-writing craft, achieving what is perhaps the best and well-rounded album in the Roxy canon; and Ferry’s own personal voyage was set on discovering the perfect song, reaching a point later in life, perhaps, where he recognized that he had already written it.

Credits: America’s wonder-kid and convicted killer provides the one finger salute (we love you too, Phil); These Foolish Things Japan/The Paris Sisters; Ferry French ‘Love Me’ single release Island / Phonogram 6138.035; mash-up of “fake” bands The Monkees/Spice Girls/Madonna/Lady Ga-Ga/Bay City Rollers; BF at the piano around the time of recording These Foolish Things.

You Won’t See Me, Bryan Ferry (cover version, These Foolish Things, 1973)
You Won’t See Me, The Beatles, (original, Rubber Soul, 1965)

Although Bryan Ferry established a considerable work ethic early in his career – three albums written, arranged and recorded in 1973 – The Beatles set a sizable precedent in 1965 with the Tamla Motown influenced McCartney track ‘You Won’t See Me‘: adding the song as a late contender for Rubber Soul, ‘See Me‘ was recorded during a single thirteen-hour session that saw the Beatles finish three complete tracks (‘Girl’, ‘Wait’, and ‘I’m Looking Through You’) and only requiring – by necessity – two passes at ‘You Won’t See Me’ to get it in the can. (The rush-recording did impact quality control – ‘See Me’ is unique among Beatles songs in that it changes tempo slightly but noticeably, moving from 119 to 113 bpm over the course of the track).

Like everyone else born in the 20th century, The Beatles are mecca when it comes to influence, range of style, and sheer breadth of songwriting ability. Ferry has openly acknowledged the influence the band had on his music (“the best films were American films, the best stars were American stars… and the best music was American, until The Beatles came along” – Disc),  and he would go on to record a number of Beatle tracks – It’s Only Love; She’s Leaving Home; and of course John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy‘ – but the relationship for Ferry was never an easy one: as a band, The Beatles were so multi-talented that when it came to artists covering them, the plethora of vocal options presented a problem to outsiders: am I Paul; or John; or George? And am I all three during the harmonies? Joe Cocker was able to overcome this embarrassment of riches with his cover of ‘A Little Help From My Friends‘: all he had to do was appropriate Ringo’s expressive baritone. Covering Bob Dylan is an opportunity; covering Ella Fitzgerald is a challenge; covering a mid-period career-peaking tenor-sweet Paul McCartney is near on inconsolable.

Original full-length photograph // The Beatles // 'Rubber Soul' (1965)

Ferry’s version of ‘You Won’t See Me’ is unfortunately one of the least successful ready-mades on These Foolish Things. Starting with a high-in-the-mix sound effect, an engaged telephone that sounds half-hearted and confusing (certainly sounds dated, even for 1973 – when did phones ever sound like this) and not nearly as effective as Blondie’s urgent ring at the beginning for Hanging on the Telephone (I’m in the phone booth, it’s the one across the hall/If you don’t answer, I’ll just ring it off the wall). Ferry’s intention for the gimmick is to have it draw attention to the first line of the song – When I call you up/your line’s engaged – but something is horribly wrong: his voice is weak and pleading, almost irritatingly timid. On first listen you take a mental note to never answer the phone while this guy’s on the line, no matter how long it rings.

Ferry tries to cut through to the heart of ‘You Won’t See Me‘ by enunciating the lyric with new emphasis – his timing is purposely out-of-sync with the original, but the effect is disjointed, providing little reward or preparation for what follows next – the complete abandonment of the song’s key motif – the climbing and repeated vocal refrain you-/won’t-/see-/-me//you-/won’t-/see-/ me etc. Ferry kills the signature motif by replacing it with piano, so we get plunk-/plunk-/plunk-/plunk. It’s like recording ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction‘ while relegating the famous signature guitar line to glockenspiel. Ferry’s attempt is in keeping with Anne Murray‘s embellishment of her version with fuzz guitar (bzzz/bzzz/bzzz/bzzz) – but at least Murray’s version is funky and in keeping with the original Tamla Motown vibe.

More comfortable with love as an ideal, what’s really missing from Ferry’s version of ‘You Won’t See Me‘ is the nasty undercurrent of the original, provided by Paul McCartney in all his Liverpudlian male-dominant glory: in the opening lines he addresses, nay, scolds the woman by telling her to “act her age” – a position that is hilariously hypocritical given that, if the song really is about his split with Jane Asher, then McCartney screwing behind Asher’s back between 1963-1968 (!) is just what the little woman was expected to put up with, Beatlemania or not. McCartney discussed the song in 1994:

As is one’s wont in relationships, you will from time to time argue or not see eye to eye on things, and a couple of the songs around this period were that kind of thing… I would write it out in a song and then I’ve got rid of the emotion. I don’t hold grudges so that gets rid of that little bit of emotional baggage…

Paul McCartney

Women and relationships are the key topic of Rubber Soul (drugs are the key topic of Revolver). The album is riddled with take-it-or-leave it ultimatums: we listen quite happily to McCartney’s I’m-done-with-you-now songs (‘You Won’t See Me‘/’I’m Looking Through You‘); we marvel at George Harrison’s I’m-done-with-you-now songs (‘If I Needed Someone‘); and we cringe at John Lennon’s I’m-done-with-you-now songs (‘Run For Your Life‘). There are of course lots of romantic bits on Rubber Soul – this is a Beatles album after all – ‘Michelle‘ and ‘Girl‘ are lovely (She’s the kind of girl/You want so much, it makes you sorry) – but the overall feeling is, Jesus Christ woman, if you can’t handle me being a Beatle, then oan yer bike eh!

Perhaps this is why Ferry presents such a timid reading of the track: although capable of being a surly Northern male himself  (I hope something special will step into my life/Another fine edition of you), Ferry rarely sticks the boot in in his songs; his MO is wit and repartee, while The Beatles are quite happy to say I’d rather see you dead, little girl/Than to be with another man. The churlishness of some of the lyrics on Rubber Soul are rightly forgotten in the rush to enjoy the brilliant sunny optimism of the music.

Overall then, Ferry falls pretty flat on this Beatles track, a misstep he would easily recover from with his later versions of  ‘It’s Only Love‘ (1976) and ‘Jealous Guy‘ (1980). Indeed, the Let’s Stick Together cover of ‘It’s Only Love’ soars in comparison to ‘You Won’t See Me’, full of confidence and deft keyboard touches, warm to the touch for those open to the invitation. Even a majestic and inventive guitar solo from Roxy Music guest Phil Manzanera at 1:18-1:46 cannot muster the heavy-lifting required to save ‘See Me’. We might consider perhaps that Ferry felt more in the skin of the looser interpretive strengths of John Lennon than the precision beast that was Paul McCartney in full flight – the tenor vocal and backing harmonies alone making this minor Beatles track fly higher above its station than it perhaps deserves.

Credits: Alan Aldridge, Beatles illustrator extraordinaire;  rare Beatles Rubber Soul shot, LA Times; Paul and Jane Asher, Beatles Bible.

Next: ‘I Love How You Love Me’ – Phil Spector returns with a classic!

The Tracks of My Tears, Bryan Ferry (cover version, These Foolish Things, 1973)
The Tracks of My Tears, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (original, Going to a Go-Go, 1965).

Teenage dreams, so hard to beat
The Undertones

One of the more over-looked aspects of Bryan Ferry‘s public personae is his dedication, love and respect for the pop music canon – These Foolish Things (1973) not only established a solo career for Bryan Ferry outside of Roxy Music, but his first solo album also invited the listener deep under the skin of its author: if Roxy Music was the creative definition and projection of a perfect (desired) life, then Ferry’s personal and public dedication to popular music was an honest attempt to strip his image of its over-heated rhetoric and celebrate the very DNA of the culture and the social background that had defined him.

For those of us whose formative years were built upon late nights (10pm-midnight) listening the John Peel show, the music of 1977-1979 never dies – listen to that match strike cigarette flame as the first bars of ‘Dance Away‘ are broadcast to the world for the first time, or digest the thunderous bass line to John Lydon‘s post-Pistols classic ‘Public Image‘ and come to understand that, even as a teenager, the only certainty in life is change – and you get the same sense of wonderment, one might expect, that Bryan Ferry felt the first time he heard Charlie Parker, or sang Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. And so, as the next Roxy Music masterpiece took shape amid a background of tension and high expectation (Ferry recorded Foolish Things and Roxy’s Stranded back-to-back) we come to recognize there could be no ‘Mother of Pearl’ without Dylan; without Ketty Lester or Elvis; without The Miracles ‘The Tracks of My Tears’. How could this be so? Let us count the ways..

Central Arcade // Entrance to J. G. Windows Music Shop // Newcastle

I started being a music fan at the age of ten or eleven, and I bought my first record at Windows.

Bryan Ferry

I. The Kingdom

There is something that is both peculiar and captivating about the land and environment that Bryan Ferry grew up in. Like many of us raised in the North, headlines such as “Roman silver found in Fife by teenager” didn’t seem uncommon. To muck around the desolate hills of say, Fife Scotland (as I did), or the plush greens of Herrington Country Park, Newcastle upon Tyne (as Bryan Ferry did), meant that you were occupying – or more likely, abusing – the playgrounds of history. Dads were by-and-large coal-miners and builders, hard-drinkers many of them, living in dreary surroundings against a back-drop of endless history – wars, fallen castles, broken monuments. According to Fife City Council, my own tribe lived in the esteemed “Kingdom Of Fife”. Or just “The Kingdom”. (Even our local shopping mall was “The Kingdom Center” – as far removed from the Promised Land in 1974 as one could imagine). Ferry’s tribe lived in Newcastle upon Tyne, with its 2,000 year history of invaders, Romans, Angles, and Norsemen. The town was one of the earliest industrial centers in Northeast England due to the availability of coal and the possibilities of easy export offered by close proximity to the River Tyne.  Coal grime, then, was under your fingernails, in the blood. And it was history – the past – that whispered its secrets, wrapped in tales of beauty and magnificence:

Over the hills and down the valleys
Soaring aloft and far below
Lying on stony ground the fragments
Truth is the seed we try to sow
‘Strictly Confidential‘

One of the those unavoidable truths in Ferry’s playground was the massive and dominating Penshaw Monument, the impact of which was explained in Michael Bracewell’s essential Roxy biography, “Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music“: “In the late 40s and early 1950s, looking back up, was Bryan Ferry, then a boy…entranced…”

Strand Power // The Penshaw Monument 1844 // North East England

When my parents were first married they lived in a farmhouse; and there was a hill nearby called Penshaw Hill. On top of the Hill was a local landmark – a Greek monument built for the Earl of Durham. This is where my father was brought up and his family had farmed on the sides of the hill. When I showed this place to Antony Price he said, ‘Now I know why you’re so interested in the visual things: it’s because of that monument.‘

Bryan Ferry

For Ferry, living under this slab of neo-Greek classical architecture represented a “symbol” for art and “another life away from the coalfields and the hard north-eastern environment; it seemed to represent something from another civilization, that was much finer.“ (ibid). This then is the beginning of the definition and creation a “state of mind” that would eventually take shape in the art project Roxy Music. By several accounts (Bracewell/ Buckley/Stump), Ferry was a man at odds with his surroundings – sensitive, out of place – yet possessing a deep understanding and respect for his working-class roots: “My father used to win prizes for his ploughing, but during the Depression the farm failed and he had to work underground, tending pit ponies. He courted my mother for ten years before they got married. It brings a tear to my eye every time I think about it”.  Once comparing himself to “an orchid born on a coal-tip” Ferry recognized he had a depth of feeling: “it was a case of where to channel it” (ibid).

Imagine then the wonder to a kid of a local High Street music shop, standing as strong and as iconic as the classical monuments that first informed his childhood. Better yet, imagine that record store being housed within an architectural gem – The Central Arcade, Newcastle, a temple built in the heart of industrial Newcastle. 

Exclusive Doors // Central Arcade Architecture // 1906

II. Windows

“It’s always sad when I go back to Newcastle and see that certain places don’t exist any more,” Ferry told Michael Bracewell in 2007:

But it’s great that one shop – which was very important for me … – is still there, in an wonderful old arcade, with extravagant tiled floors, rather like the Bond Street arcades. It’s a shop called Windows, which is a family music shop and the only place you really go to buy records. I started being a music fan at the age of ten or eleven, and I bought my first record at Windows.

J.G. Windows record shop is built within the spectacular and durable Central Arcade in Newcastle, the elegant Edwardian shopping arcade built in 1906. An incredible entrance to an incredible and stylish world, shut far off from Northern hardships and reality, the Arcade was designed to house a commercial exchange and newsroom. The book Newcastle Through Time (John and Joyce Carlson) identifies the design of the Arcade as being inspired by the Temple of Vesta in Italy. Temples, Monuments, cobblestone streets holding up the polish of the new, and at the end of the long corridor a gentle invitation of warm light: the record store! Dramatic, certainly. Longlasting, definately. A modern church containing sacred artifacts of music, history, and endless escape.

J.G. Windows is 110 years old and it was Ferry’s high street go-to music shop. “Some of the first records I bought were jazz records” Ferry noted in 2013. Note then the reverence in which Ferry describes seeing a jazz trumpet in the Windows display as a boy:

The windows are full of clarinets, saxophones, electric guitars – a proper music shop, which sold everything. But to just see a trumpet in the window – a real instrument, to look at it and study it!

The fascination and wonder can be heard in the voice over half-a-century later. A real instrument, to look at – to study! There can be no better place to understand the considerable legacy of Roxy Music as conceived by Ferry in these moments: the ‘ideal of beauty’ that was found among the trumpets and the clarinets, the perfect timbre of a perfect visual: Roxy (cinema) Music (sound).

III. The Archivist

An archivist is a collector and, yes, a fetishist, to be sure – remember the creepy lessons we learned in Silence of the Lambs – but an archivist is also a custodian, a caretaker, a steward and keeper of the flame. Speaking to Melody Maker writer and supporter Richard Williams in 1973, Ferry acknowledged “The trouble with doing something like ‘The Tracks of My Tears‘ is that the original was so brilliant it’s hard to touch it.” (Williams). And so it remained. “Ferry’s voice was perfect for his own songs,” David Buckley offers in his biography of Ferry: “where he could shape the contours of the music to suit his undulating and highly distinctive delivery, but when pitted against some of the technically finest singers in pop history, his interpretations were destined to come off second-best.”

This is a fair statement but somehow misses the point, for it feels now, with the benefit of time, that Ferry wasn’t trying to go head-to-head with Smokey Robinson or Brian Wilson, or even Janis Joplin, but was wanting to collect and possess – even own –  his favorite records as perfect artifacts, to get inside them, to understand what made them tick, to unravel the mother-of-pearl coating in order to reveal the oyster within. This is the beginning of ‘Stranded‘. This is the beginning of the theme of the art of obsession, of trying to possess the unobtainable. The nose is pressed against the window; the siren’s sound has done its work: these foolish things await their call.

Q: Is your constant pursuit of the beautiful an attempt to escape the everyday and mundane?

Yes. It’s a search for a better world, really.

Chris Roberts interviewing Bryan Ferry, thirty-seven years after the release of These Foolish Things.

Titbits

My favorite music archivist, speaker, singer, poet and music enthusiast is Henry Rollins: a beautiful heart and mind in the body of a modern warrior. As Morrissey said, it takes strength to be truthful and kind. Between radio shows, tours and books, Rollins is also a collector. He has just released a fascinating new book “Stay Fanatic Vol 1“, a 330 page fanzine.  “If you like music,” says Henry, “going to record stores, to shows, if music is one of those things that is and has always been one of the best friends you’ve ever had, you might like this book.”

Music has always been the one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and was always there when perhaps others couldn’t be. So too for Bryan Ferry: it’s the whole point of These Foolish Things. Perhaps it’s the whole point of his career. So too for Henry Rollins; for John Peel; and for a lad wandering the city alone, trying to find The Kingdom.

Next: Ferry tackles the greatest: The Beatles. December 2019!

Don’t Worry Baby, Bryan Ferry (cover version, These Foolish Things, 1973)
Don’t Worry Baby, Beach Boys (original, Shut Down Volume 2, 1964)

Released May 11, 1964 as the ‘B’ side of ‘I Get Around’, the Beach Boys minor classic ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ was an unabashed homage to Phil Spector‘s ‘Be My Baby‘ by the Ronettes. Coming off the back of a series of teenage angst songs (Don’t Ever Change/Baby I Don’t Care/It’s My Party) Ferry recalibrates These Foolish Things by re-writing some of the lyrics for ‘Don’t Worry Baby‘ and wisely rejecting the drag-car teen drama in favor of an expression of love that is more in tune with Brian Wilson‘s music than the original lyric ever was.

It’s easy to see why Bryan Ferry would include a Beach Boys song on his first solo album, as both band and subject matter personified for the singer an ideal American Dream of the 60s, brimming with potential and pleasure in equal measure. “At least 50 per cent of the things that influenced me were American,” Ferry explained to Disc magazine: “The best films were American films, the best stars were American stars… and the best music was American, until The Beatles came along.” At this stage of These Foolish Things – 7 songs in – the source of the music belongs to America and the great hit-making factory of The Brill Building in New York, with the subject matter veering towards the lovelorn and the heart-broken – ‘River of Salt‘ and ‘Piece of My Heart’ both originally sung and made famous by female singers (Ketty Lester and Janis Joplin, respectively) and presented by Ferry in a straight-forward fashion (if a man singing a song as a woman in a quivering European accent can be seen as straight-forward). Nevertheless, at this juncture of These Foolish Things Ferry avoids the American vistas of ‘Virginia Plain’ with its images of classic Hollywood, Route 66 and James Dean, and steers instead towards the universal – love lost, feelings squashed, narratives spun. That is until we get to The Beach Boys ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ – a song that strives to re-state and confirm the American Dream, with its hyperbolic ode to California, Chevy Impalas, ice-cream floats, and illegal hot rod racing.

‘Don’t Worry Baby’ was co-written by early Brian Wilson‘s collaborator/lyricist Roger Christian. Wilson, the gifted yet troubled singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Beach Boys (and composer/arranger of one of the best pop songs of all time – ‘Good Vibrations’ – even Paul McCartney was in awe of that one), was obsessed with Phil Spector and the sound Spector created with The Crystals (‘Da Doo Ron Ron‘) and The Ronettes (‘Be My Baby’), in particular ‘Be My Baby’ – the song of which ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is an attempt to emulate and eulogize.

Salon magazine paints a pretty good picture of Wilson’s obsession with Spector, with Wilson eagerly awaiting the opportunity to provide Spector with a self-penned song (‘Don’t Hurt My Little Sister‘): Spector invited Wilson to play keyboards on the backing track, whereby Wilson was cut off after only a few bars, and was told by Spector that his playing was not good enough and he should be on his way.  Weeks later Spector sent the head Beach Boy an official American Federation of Musicians paycheck for the few seconds Wilson performed on the track. Ouch. (The Beach Boys eventually recorded ‘Don’t Hurt My Little Sister’ – it’s a decent song, embodied with the Spector sound). This act of disdain did little to dissuade Wilson that Spector was mecca, and with typical obsessiveness – see the Roxy entry Strictly Confidential for an overview of Wilson’s mental health struggles – Wilson records his thoughts on his home tape-recorder (“Hour after hour of stoned ramblings on the meaning of life, color vibrations, fate, death, vegetarianism and Phil Spector…” according to Beach Boys biographer David Dalton). Wilson keeps copies of  Spector’s ‘Be My Baby‘ everywhere inside his home, in his car, in his studio: “Brian locked in the bedroom of his Bel Air house in the early ’70s, alone, curtains drawn shut, catatonic, listening to ‘Be My Baby’ over and over at aggressive volumes, for hours” (Dalton). The result of this extremism is the birth of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ – a song that conclusively beats Spector at his own game.

Bryan Ferry’s first album of covers (or “readymades” as he prefers to call them), These Foolish Things is not known for its radical re-interpretation of classic songs (barring the breath-taking opening cut A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall). What is radical about his arrangement of ‘Don’t Worry Baby‘ is his decision to re-write some of the lyrics. While keeping the song-writing credit intact (Wilson/Christian), Ferry tackles and removes the song’s greatest flaw: the tediousness of its original Girls & Hot Rods storyline. Writing in 1964, with The Beatles already penning ‘And I Love Her‘ and ‘A Hard Days Night‘ (and hurtling at astonishing speed towards ‘Eleanor Rigby‘), ‘Don’t Worry’ is sung from the point of view of a teenager who agrees to a street race after bragging about his car.  At root then ‘Don’t Worry’ is a reiteration of the classic cars and Beach Boys idea – getting a bit old in the tooth by ’64 – but Brian Wilson’s wonderful music for ‘Don’t Worry’ works against the constraints of its lyrical narrative, taking the track beyond previous Wilson/Christian car-obsessed curios like ‘Little Deuce Coupe‘, ‘Ballad of Ole’ Betsy‘, ‘Car Crazy Cutie‘, and ‘Cherry, Cherry Coupe‘. Although a car-lover himself, Ferry successfully clocked the lyrical deficiencies of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ before taking the decision to re-write the lyric and change the emotional sentiment and point-of-view of the original.

The primary lyricist of the original ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ was Roger Christian, a member of the California Hot Rod & Surfin’ Set and a prominent Los Angeles DJ during the 50s. In addition to his day job, Christian was a car-and-surf song composer, and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is a standard template of the genre:

I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can’t back down now
Because I pushed the other guys too far

No threat to Shakespeare, but well within the frame of reference for the writer of ‘Car Crazy Cutie‘ and ‘Don’t Worry Baby‘:

Well its been building up inside of me
For, oh, I don’t know how long
I don’t know why
But I keep thinking
Something’s bound to go wrong
But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says don’t worry baby

Rhyming looks in my eyes with makes me realize does not qualify Mr. Christian for any literary prizes, but interestingly, Bryan Ferry keeps this line and the entire first verse intact – a hint that Ferry’s concerns in re-writing the lyric was not poetic fussiness but a desire to secure the emotional and gender-sensitive tone of Brian Wilson’s original music without the clutter of Roger Christian’s hot girls/hot cars balladry. Here’s a comparison of Christian‘s and Ferry‘s lyric for ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ (Ferry’s changes in blue):

In Ferry’s version the car race is removed entirely, and the song is turned into a mediation on what the woman’s love means to him. The change is effective as it allows Ferry to write a romantic poem (“Each morning I awake to find…”) and find a tenderness  (“there’s magic in her eyes“) that was never in the original, which suffered such banalities as “she makes me come alive/and makes me wanna drive”. The song shifts out of writer Roger Christian teen-male zeitgeist and expands into a mature song that shows the male narrator discovering – or at least responsive to – his inner feelings, fulfilling the musical vision that Brian Wilson intended for the song, with those gorgeous trademark Beach Boys harmonies and group interplay.

And so side one of These Foolish Things comes to a close after providing an entertaining mix of radical re-interpretation (Hard Rain), expressions of heart-break beautifully rendered (River of Salt), and a re-working of a Beach Boys classic that provides a lyric worthy of a Brian Wilson original. The effect is captivating and moves beyond Ferry’s original intent of the album, which he hesitatingly stated was “for amusement value. I think”:

It’s a very catholic selection, I’ve given up trying to please all of the people all of the time. Some will like it for one reason, some for another…I hope the general point of it will be understood.

Bryan Ferry

Recorded: AIR Studios, England June 1973.

Credits:  James Dean memorial junction – some interesting reading out there, I was surprised to learn that a car pulled in front of Dean resulting in the crash (Dean’s speed obviously a factor – he was training for a car race); Beach Boys promos; Phil Spector walks past his competitor Brian Wilson (again); Bryan Ferry recording these Foolish Things, June 1973; Bryan Ferry Foolish promo.

Next: Foolish Things takes a darker turn with ‘Sympathy For the Devil‘ – woo-woo!