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Roxy Music founder Bryan Ferry has been missing in action for the past five years. But on Oct. 19 he'll release As Time Goes By, an album of Thirties standards that he's been thinking about recording ever since he released his first solo album, 1973's These Foolish Things, which featured covers of Bob Dylan, Leslie Gore, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Temptations.| Nine solo albums later, Ferry has dusted off his parents' records and gives Cole Porter, Hart and Rogers, George Gershwin and ten of their contemporaries new life in his ironic, elegant near-monotone. But that's not all he has up his perfectly tailored sleeve. He's performing with a full orchestra at the Geneva NetAid on Oct. 9, is appearing on Jools Holland's new TV show and is mounting a tour beginning Nov. 1 in Vancouver. Ferry plans to reprise the album on tour, but allows that "one or two things might creep in. It depends on rehearsals. But at the moment, it's going to be this album, basically. It's not a rock & roll tour."
However, don't count out Ferry's rock & roll roots altogether.
Not only is Point Blank/Virgin Records planning to issue More
Than This: The Best of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music on Oct. 5,
but it will reissue every Roxy Music album beginning in January.
Even better than that, Ferry has been working with his old Roxy
collaborator, Brian Eno, for the past two years on a new album,
which he hopes to release next September. "It's all original
stuff," he says. "Some of the things are nearly finished, some need
to be worked on a lot. But Eno and I wrote a song together which
hopefully will come out next year. He plays on quite a few of the
pieces that I was doing as well. It was really good to work with
him again, somebody as intelligent as that, really. It's good to
have ideas flying back and forth."
Does this bode well for a Roxy Music reunion? Rumors have been
flying that one of the conditions that Ferry had to meet to reissue
the old albums was to guarantee a Roxy reunion. "That's a wild
rumor," say Ferry. "Having said that though, in the last few weeks,
listening to the remastered records did make me feel a bit
nostalgic. The idea of maybe someday soon playing again appeals to
me. It's rather sad that these songs aren't performed more often.
They're never performed, unless there's some band out there is
doing them that I don't know about. It would be rather nice one day
to re-form the band if only to go and do some concerts -- never
mind doing any new stuff. It's such a huge repertoire there waiting
to be played, and it would be quite nice to do it with some of the
original members."
JAAN UHELSZKI
(October 5, 1999)