Bryan Ferry

Bryan Ferry was the undisputed leader of Roxy Music, right from the start, whatever Brian Eno and his more hardline fans might say, convinced that the “non-musician's” longa manus had always been decisive wherever it landed. A leadership that – as Marco Bercella recalls on our pages – progressively expanded throughout the 1970s, spent more or less deliberately devouring his own creation until its extinction. A “work of subtraction” in which every single sound seemed designed to frustrate the personal ambitions of whoever was performing it. This exercise – a little sadomasochistic, if you like – found its triumphant epilogue and point of no return in “Avalon”, from which Ferry himself was not exempt. Because – as Bercella again reminds us – if it's true that in the last, glorious album of the Roxy Music saga there's no longer any trace of the thunderous horns and guitar charges of the early days, replaced instead by discreet touches functional to the whole, it's equally true that the man's theatrical, declamatory vibrato has also vanished, replaced by languid, hazy, even whispered vocals.
But the dandy from Washington (the pleasant little town in Tyne and Wear, England, that is) was not just the undisputed leader of Roxy Music. His creativity, combined with his obsessive perfectionism, often shone outside the band too, despite the foolish condescension with which his solo career has often been regarded. A path that began just a year after the English band's debut, with “These Foolish Things” (1973), and has continued to this day, even if his latest work, “Bitter Sweet”, dates back to the now-distant 2018. It hasn't all been plain sailing – just think of unresolved records like “Mamouna” and “Frantic”, or the rather odd covers collections (“Taxi”, “As Time Goes By”, “Dylanesque”) – but it has certainly amounted to far more than critics usually give him credit for. With two absolute high points: 1985's “Boys And Girls” and its follow-up, at the centre of this new 33 1/3 Vision with which good old Bryan dazzled us.

A dance guru at the court of sophisti-pop

Released in 1987, “Bête Noire” is a work that consolidates Ferry's role as the dandy of sophisti-pop, capable of marrying sonic elegance with emotional introspection. A record brimming with sensuality and mystery, it develops the stylistic exploration begun with “Boys And Girls”, broadening its horizons with a more exotic, cinematic sound. But woe betide anyone who thinks the moves of the man in the white tuxedo are ever predictable. So, in the middle of the 1980s, Ferry, ever the keen observer of the contemporary pop landscape, points his radar towards the New York clubs set ablaze by Madonna's hits. And he summons to his court the man who had played a significant role in the Material Girl's breakthrough, first as musical director of The Virgin Tour (1985), then, a year later, as co-writer and co-producer on “True Blue” (as well as, later, on “Like A Prayer” and several other works well into the following decade). Brought in to give his sound a more danceable edge, Patrick Leonard would co-write five of the nine tracks on “Bête Noire” with Ferry.
But he's not the only ace up the English dandy's sleeve, who assembles a thoroughly respectable line-up – how could it be otherwise – starting with none other than Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, continuing with top-drawer session players like Guy Pratt, Marcus Miller, David Williams and Abraham Laboriel, plus two former Roxy Music touring musicians, guitarist Neil Hubbard and drummer Andy Newmark.

The 7-inch dropped as a surprise in September 1987 boasts another genuine collaboration: with Johnny Marr, the unmistakable guitarist of The Smiths. “The Right Stuff” actually began life as an adaptation of the instrumental “Money Changes Everything”, released a few months earlier as the B-side of the Manchester band's single “Bigmouth Strikes Again”. “He didn't know who I was, but he was looking for co-writers, and someone suggested my name to him,” Marr recalled. “They played him a few Smiths records and he said: 'Ah, this guy can play guitar!' So he invited me into the studio. Bryan Ferry had been one of my old idols, and it was fantastic working with him, but the end result was a bit too glossy for my taste.” Guy Pratt, who was playing bass with Ferry at the time, tells a different version. Ferry listened to “Money Changes Everything” and got the idea of adding a vocal part to it. The band's guitarist at the time was Chester Kamen, who “could play the intro, but couldn't really nail it”, so Ferry called Johnny Marr directly to record the part.
Glossy, yes, but also disarming, with its slashing guitars and pulsing rhythm, “The Right Stuff” is one of the album's most dynamic songs, and the only one to crack the British top 40, reaching no. 37. But it's not the album's high point. Perhaps not even for Ferry himself, who, to the dismay of some of his fans, left it off his mammoth 2024 collection “Retrospective”, a kind of definitive summation of his solo career.

When the typewriter clatter and the funky groove of the second single, “Kiss And Tell”, burst in, even the most skeptical fans get the message: Ferry's new flirtation is with dance music. But it's a transfigured kind of dance, dissolved in a passionate embrace with the most sophisticated pop, wrapped in a sumptuous, meticulously polished sonic frame, where the impeccable clean tone of David Gilmour's Fender Stratocaster finds its way through. And then there's that voice, shadowed, aching, sensually desolate, projecting everything into some luxurious hotel suite, perhaps in the company of a top model like Denice D. Lewis (also pictured on the single's cover), Christine Keeler and Mandy Smith, who star in the accompanying video. So much so that some have speculated that “Kiss And Tell” was Ferry's response to Jerry Hall's autobiography, published a couple of years earlier, in which the famous pin-up revealed details of their relationship, which ended when she left Bryan for Mick Jagger at the end of the 1970s. Ever reserved, Ferry never addressed the matter directly. “The field I'm exploring has infinite possibilities, because it concerns something that dominates most people's lives,” he told the New York Times in 1988. “In every country, songs are generally about love and anguish.” The single narrowly missed the UK top 40 (stalling at no. 41), but crossed into the US top 40, becoming the only Ferry solo single ever to do so. The song was also included on the soundtrack of the 1988 drama “Bright Lights, Big City”, starring Michael J. Fox.

Closing the trio of singles, but opening the album itself, is the controlled tension of “Limbo”, which starts out ambient before the beat picks up, turning hypnotic and pulsing, amid Caribbean influences, tribal percussion and David Williams' rhythm guitar. It's almost a statement of intent: Ferry's magnetic voice merges with a layered production, building a feverish, seductive atmosphere. Like an endless dance that drags on, draining and exhausted, under night skies. Perhaps too refined to make much of a chart impact, it stalled at no. 86 in the UK.
But anyone who thinks the album's substance is exhausted by its three singles is very much mistaken. Because, on the contrary, the rest of the record is even more delectable.

Libertango of jealousy

The reason, perhaps, also lies in the care lavished on the exhausting sessions, which also marked a technical leap forward: from the 48-track recording desk used for “Boys And Girls” to a 56-track one. So, in the end, what was meant to be a three- or four-month job turned into a two-year undertaking. Ferry recorded in Los Angeles (twice), Paris (twice), Nassau and London (twice there too). It's hardly surprising, then, that “Bête Noire” is steeped in that sense of cosmopolitan displacement that undoubtedly adds to its allure. Even Leonard, despite co-writing more than half the album, had to reckon with Ferry's obsessive perfectionism. Not that Ferry needed any lessons in rhythm, given the hard-disco sonic experiments he'd already developed in Roxy Music with “Love Is The Drug” and the “Manifesto” album. It was simply a matter of harmonising them with the dreamy sweetness of the melodies and the rarefied fantasies of “Avalon”. Easier said than done…
The lyrics, too, underwent constant revisions down to the smallest detail: rewrites followed other rewrites, which were themselves already modified versions of earlier drafts of the same material. In a 1988 interview with Q Magazine, the English dandy admitted: “I thought this would be a really quick record to make, but by now it seems my natural way of working is to just keep rewriting everything.”

"New Town", for instance, had been in the works for roughly nine years already. And the fruits of such perfectionism really show. Punctuated by shimmering synths à-la "Avalon", track number 3 explores more experimental territory, in a mysterious, unsettling atmosphere built on a minimal bassline and ethereal instrumentation. The vocal, almost whispered, slips into the sonic fabric, telling of alienation and the search for identity in a cold, dehumanizing urban setting, where the only human element seems to come from the female choir obsessively repeating, alongside Bryan, the mantra "New town, calling me". Appearances aside, though, the lyric conceals an ironic streak, almost echoing the famous "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" from Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure (“Out of luck, out of touch, out of love/ No laughing boys, forbidden dreams/ No willow weep for me now”).
The dark journey of "Bête Noire" is dotted with emotions and temptations, with creeping beats easing the tension on tracks like "Day For Night" and "Seven Deadly Sins", which combine the elegant romanticism of the "Avalon"-era Roxy Music with the mechanical precision of late Eighties electropop, while the muffled "The Name Of The Game" flaunts an unmistakable Leonard stamp: almost a new "Live To Tell" (Madonna), with its measured rhythm (courtesy of Vinnie Colaiuta) and synth flourishes, all in service of a catchy, choir-backed chorus.
But not everything was designed for the dancefloor or for pure entertainment: the spectral, experimental "Zamba", for example, unfolds over more minimal, rarefied atmospheres in an unusual 6/4 time, following Ferry's whispered vocal and only hinting, in filigree, at new Latin influences within an abstract, exotic package.

Sensuality is the thread running through the whole album, culminating in the sublime title track, the emotional climax of the record. Sinuous Latin rhythms, somewhere between tango and lambada, then those aching bandoneon scrapes opening up chasms of melancholy, until it all fuses into a velvet world of seduction and mystery, matching Ferry's utterly romantic crooning, lost in some smoky Parisian club brooding over an amorous obsession, grappling with a "bête noire" that's dangerous yet seductive, "like poison, like wine": “Say you’ll be mine/ Reflected in water/ Imagined by fire”. A libertango of jealousy. "Bête noire" remains one of the highlights of Ferry's solo career and is the perfect closer for the record, conceived by Ferry in collaboration with a group of musicians from the Argentine company Tango Argentino. He'd first seen them three years earlier, drawn in by an ad in the newspaper, and had followed them out of curiosity. He then ran into them again in Los Angeles, during one of the sessions, and invited them into the studio. "It was a great musical experience," he would tell All Star in 1987, "They had to leave for another tour the next day, so we had to finish everything that night: we started after midnight and finished around 2am. I usually work with musicians one at a time, but in this case we recorded everything live in the studio."

Seduction at all costs

A worthy successor to the splendid "Boys And Girls" from two years earlier, "Bête Noire" explores a mysterious, hypnotic sonic universe, where sinuous rhythms and velvety melodies merge into a gripping emotional crescendo. Every track contributes to a mosaic of boundless perfectionism: synths and piano gleam on the surface of the mix, lead guitars layer up, drum machines sit alongside the drummers in every groove, and the bass holds it all together superbly (Neil Jason, Marcus Miller, Guy Pratt, Abraham Laboriel). Ferry's voice is also in great shape, bolstered by his favorite backing singer, Fonzi Thornton.
"Vive la Résistance", Bryan writes in the liner notes, introducing the list of musicians involved. And we can only resist alongside him, in the company of his impeccably polished 1987 creation: hedonistic, lush, irresistible. A gem in the solo discography of the former Roxy Music leader, still able to charm today, thanks in part to a production that, though unmistakably glossy in classic 80s fashion, manages to defy the passing of time. Heading in one direction only: that of elegance and seduction at all costs. Because – let's not forget – Love is the drug.
Backing up the album came another splendid Bryan Ferry tour (a full concert below). On the charts, the album climbed to No. 9 in the UK, but, oddly enough, audiences would show a preference for Ferry the cover artist, propelling the follow-up "Taxi" six years later to No. 2 on the UK Chart. But we can easily live with that, as we face, once again, our favorite Bête Noire. Reflected in water, dreamed in fire.

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02/04/2026