The Arts: Pop - The troubled mid-life of Bryan Still abundantly talented, widely influential and impossibly cool, Bryan Ferry has written enough brilliant songs to fill five Greatest Hits albums but hasn't hit the Top 10 in over a decade. What happened? By Bill Penrose FOREIGN Edition

• Published in: Independent (London, England : 1986)
• Main Author: Penrose, Bill
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 18.08.2000
• Subjects: Ferry, Bryan; Penrose, Bill
• ISSN: 0951-9467

Girls, of course, were essential to the [Bryan Ferry] experience. Every Roxy Music album had a new one on the cover, and part of the thrill of a new Roxy album was the first sight of the impossibly glamorous, outrageously sexual model whom Ferry had selected. A teenage Texan called Jerry Hall appeared on the cover of Siren in 1975, draped across a cliff in Wales, her body painted blue and barely dressed in an itsy-bitsy bikini. In her autobiography, Tall Tales, Jerry recalled her first encounter with Ferry: "He was charming. He was a real gentleman, handsome and beautifully dressed. His hair was all black and shiny and slicked back, and he smelled of Floris." The message for Ferry is painfully clear. Having been a prophet of the future, he is now primarily of interest for his past. He seems to have got the message. When, six years ago, Virgin rejected Horoscope, Ferry went straight into the studio and in a few short weeks knocked out an album of cover-versions of Sixties songs called Taxi. When Virgin rejected his last original album, Ferry went away and, in three months or so, recorded an album of songs from the Thirties and Forties entitled As Time Goes By. It was a more mature, less mannered echo of the elegant young lounge lizard who once crooned "These Foolish Things". Reviews, though, were lukewarm and sales patchy. This oldies' record was released, ironically, by Virgin Germany, which distributed it through - yes - Virgin UK, the very company that said no to Ferry a year earlier. The latter company, though, demonstrated where its real interest in Ferry lay by producing de- luxe, re-mastered editions of the Ferry and Roxy back-catalogue of albums.Ferry himself may have felt that his career needed a boost. He parted from IE Music, whose founder David Enthoven had managed him since the early Roxy days and whose ability to create stars has been proven in recent years by the success of another client, Robbie Williams. For whatever the reason, Ferry found new management and then a new recording contract with - good Lord - Virgin UK, which seems to have welcomed him back into its fold. Once again, there is talk of a new solo album, possibly early next year.