DREAM SEQUENCE, TAKE 2

Norman Lear, the television producer-currv-socialcritic, is looking grimly innovative as he steps off the elevator and nearly into the arms of Mike Nichols, the comedian-cum-social critic turned stage and film director. The two men greet each other fondly and fall into conversation. Presumably, Norman has an idea for an artistic collaboration: a docu-sitcom called Shit in which a divorced, thrice-aborted lesbian mother of seven just barely makes ends meet each week by saying dirty words on national television and thus allowing the show's smarmy producer to run away with the ratings during the Nielsen sweep period. Of course, it will be performed before a live audience. Across the lobby from this would-be conversation, Bobby Short, the legendary jazz pianist/vocalist -cum-television commercial star, is rounding the corner and stepping into the elevator which Norman Lear has lately abandoned. Presumably, Bobby is on his way upstairs for a nap before his nightly stint at the keyboard in the lavish hotel bar. As the^elevator doors close behind him, a tall, slinky blonde in diamonds coasts by on the arms of two black-haired men in dinner jackets. They are on their way out at 4:30 in the afternoon. Norman Lear eagerly does an about-face to accompany pal Mike back upstairs' where they will flesh out the concept. Somewhere, also upstairs, Henry Ford H's suite anticipates his rapidly approaching retirement | from the Pinto business. The Hotel i Carlyle is a discreet and elegant pied d j terre from which the princes of art and commerce can hold forth when they are stopping in New York. In a room on the ninth floor, Bryan Ferry, singersongwriter for the reconstituted Roxy Music, whose first studio album in three years, Manifesto, has just been released, is dreaming that he kissed himself and turned into a prince. Bryan Ferry, frog-cum-prince, has this to say.

Hi I Ws'r« th« Village People and we're here to tell you the amazing news about Mazda, a natural for good eating...

Ferry: There's a very weird thing about how images develop of somebody in a business like this where you sometimes get written about without the writer ever meeting the person. There's a lot of hearsay.

CREEM: People have tended to think you were entirely serious with this image and that there was no element of humor or self-parody involved.

Ferry: Well, there was. Very much so, I thought. To me, it was always one of the things I thought we brought back into rock 'n' roll—perhaps with dis-, astrous results now, when you see that the whole music thing in England is totally image-dominated. Image seems to come before music now, which I think is the wrong way round. I felt that we had the right balance of the music with what we were doing, and the

records were always the most important thing.

To me, it was like reviving and extending the sort of things I'd like to see. The best thing I ever saw was Otis Redding, that Stax road show with him and Sam & Dave and Steve Cropper and a lot of,other people. They all just played amazingly and sang so incredibly. The music was faultless, and if was presented with such kind of verve and exuberance and they were all in

"In England, l became a sort of Howard Hughes figure."

peacock suits, really dressed up, and the whole thing, the dance steps, the twirling around, the whole thing was just fabulous. That was enhancing the music. We couldn't dance as well as they, so we looked pretty bizarre when we came out on stage. To me, it all added to, the whole thing. And what also made it valid, I thought, was that we were doing it ourselves. It wasn't like some manager or outside figure said, "Do this and do that," which has happened a lot in rock 'n' roll: The fact is that I was designing the record co vers and the sleeves and a friend of mine was designing all the clothes and it was very much an indigenous .thing. It knit * the whole thing together. Therefore, I never felt there was any hype involved at all, which we were accused of at the beginning by some.

I guess that some people thought that if they looked kind of weird, the music must be bad, kind of a cover-up. If you try to do too much, people will tend to find fault with something, and I think that's one of the things we've been accused of, trying to do too much. And that fve done too much, what with the solo career and that. People will like "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" or "Mother Of Pearl" and we also expect them to like my interpretation of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "These Foolish Things" and they're quite a long way apart. It's quite a wide area to cover. And I think that's where people have found fault with me a lot. I've done such a wide thing, but it's always been my intention to do that. CREEM: Was "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and that album just an experiment?

HI! Wa'ra Kansas and wa'ra hara fo tall you tha amazing itaws about Palmoliva: wa'ra soaking In it...

Ferry: The first solo album was an experiment. It was, to me, a selfindulgent exercise that would be really interesting ... a slightly camp idea, I thought, to try and do an album of some of my influences, some of the people I liked, some of the people I thought were important in rock 'n' roll. It was a quite interesting collection of different things like Dylan, the Beatles,^ the Stones, Leiber and Stoller, Goffin and King. They're all kind of different areas. And then I said, "Why not do one song, a real standard from the Thirties or Forties?" And that was "These Foolish Things," I decided to make that the title of the album because I thought a lot of people would think it was a foolish album anyway. And then this turned into a completely separate career because a lot of people liked it. I was totally surprised. I was very surprised at the success of the first Roxy album, too. I thought we'd have the smallest audience in the world for the things we do. But this other thing seemed to find a completely different audience, or at least extended the audience right into the man in the street. It did in England, anyway, because that was really much more accessible material. Anyway, after the first solo record, it seemed crazy not to do a follow-up, and then it just turned into another career.

After the Siren album, I felt that I had to have a break from Roxy. I didn't say, "Oh, the band is finished," or anything like that. I wasn't totally sure, but I was fairly sure that there woujd be another Roxy album. But I thought it would be, like, 18 months later or something like that. I was curious to do a solo album that had my songs on it. That was In Your Mind, and then I did a tour on that. It seemed to me that I had to do some sort of solo tour at some stage because there were these four albums out which had done very well. Not in America, but in other places. Better than any Roxy album had ever done. So I thought it was important to

tr~,— thought we'd have the smallest audience In the world. ■ ■

do that solo tour because people had never seen these songs performed. Anyway, the other thing I wanted to do was to play with some other players in depth. So it ended up being a longer disbanding or suspension of Roxy than I had planned.

Playing with other people was Very educational to me. Playing with people of that caliber was like going to school. Funny thing is that these session players were so good that I ended up playing less; less of me went onto the solo albums than went onto any Roxy album because I was a bit intimidated all the time. If it was a question of me playing or not playing on a song, I would veer off. But in Roxy, it's always, "No, you must play on it." Phil Manzanera is very good at enthusiasm, enthusiasm for what I do, and, like most people, I need to have a lot of that energy, that feedback from people. But if you're sitting there in the studio and you've hired all these amazing players to play with you, the last thing you want to do is spoil the record by doing something yourself, something that may not be right. I was just always very scared because I was never a trained musician. In Roxy, I feel like I can make all the mistakes in the studio I want without anybody . . . without worrying

at all about it. I'm very shy basically. With Manzanera, I think I bring out the best In him when he's playing, and he encourages me to play more and put more of myself into it.

CREEM: If your solo career had taken off, would there now be a new Roxy album?

Ferry: Oh, I think so. But I think it might have been a bit different. I think it would have been this year, but maybe a few months later. Before The Bride Stripped Bare was made 1 was thinking about Roxy getting back together. CREEM: People want to know if you did this because of commercial . . . Ferry: Oh, because of the commercial failure? Fair enough question, and I knew that people would ask that because as soon as we started the Roxy | thing, The Bride Stripped Bare turned | out to be the least commercially £ successful record I ever made . . . and I also by far the most expensive. It was just a total coincidence really because I thought there were a couple of singles on there. But I had already started the Roxy thing when I knew that, so it basically proves to me that it [the Roxy reunion] was done as an artistic thing ai opposed to a commercial thing.

One thing I do know about Roxy is that a lot of my records weren't getting a fair crack of the whip because of the whole image thing that had been built up around my name, and I felt I was fighting an incredible uphill battle to get my work over as, like, seriqus work. People tended to think, oh, some sort of jet-setting type character or some star-playboy. All of which to me was totally mad, although I'd known it for a while and we had done some photo-* graphs with girls dressed up, tongue-incheek sort of things, and we were always playing around that sort of image, but it was all built up in the press to something more than it was. I do have friends who are sort of cafe society kind of people, but I see them so incredibly rarely. The last 18 months I've done nothing but work. I haven't had,a holiday in that period, and I've been totally lost in my work. That's another reason for the Roxy thing coming together, because I really felt like I wanted to work a lot and that working with some other people would help me to work. I felt that the music I'm doing would get a fair hearing as well. CREEM: I notice you've been downplaying the jet-set image.

Ferry: I never played it up even. CREEM: But the album covers . . .? Ferry: But there was only one. CREEM: But the girls on the Roxy covers . . .? "

Fenvy: That's true. But, to me, it was always just a small part of my personality and my life. It was written about because it was easy to hang a story on a guy who was a rock 'n' roll singer who sometimes wore a black tie, who was invited to film premieres, who was seen in watering spots around the world. CREEM: I always thought you were funny and were trying to be such, but I never heard you say "funny", or that you were parodying something. Now you are creating a distance between yourself and this image that's built up, whereas you used to play it completely straight.

TURN TO?AGE 70

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28

Ferry: That was always a part of the humor of it.

CREEM: I always thought that something like "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" was a funny, but scary, joke.

Ferry: Well, I thought a lot of our things that had a humorous twist to them were more like tragi-comedy. It really had a contrast of humor and sentiment. You didn't quite know where the realnesS began and the unreality took over. I quite like tension in music, and you can get it so many different ways. You can get it from content; you can get it from the style of playing or tWo different, opposed styles'playing together. Any art work that's of iriterest/has some kind of inner tension.

CREEM: Have you ever thought of going back to being a visual artist? Ferry: Not really. It's sort of an ambition through movies. I could see that. But it's a very expensive business to get into.

CREEM: Would you want to do writing or directing?

Ferry: Basically a bit of both.

CREEM: What about acting? I Ferry: Maybe a bit of dcting. Acting I'm not so; keen on, but I'd do it if something of interest came up. So many people have asked me this, and I've always said what I said to you, but my main interest would be to someday write my own vehicle, hopefully. You get spoiled in this business getting total control over, what you do.

CREEM: You seem to have more control than most.

Ferry: Yeah, I was lucky. That's one of the benefits of starting'late. I didn't start 'til I was 25, and by that time I just didn't want to do anything that wasn't me. So it would be very hard for me to do a script that somebody else had written without saying, "Hey, this line is terrible. Let me rewrite it." ] CREEM: Who are some directors you like?

Ferry: It seems to me that if I was to do something at the moment, I'd do it with 6ne of the German directors because they seem to be doing the most artistic work.

CREEM: Who?

Ferry: I don't really know much about them, but Fassbinder . . . There's a whole school and one of his disciples, called Bachmeyer, carries to see us'in Essen and he wanted to do something, so that's kind of interesting.

CREEM: You seem to like to work in the same mode, Berlin in the Thirties, decadence .

Ferry: I like the whole 'tradition of Hollywood movies as well. Some art movies quite bore me, in fact. Something like Citizen Kane works for me on all levels.

CREEM: Do you see many movies? Ferry: No, I don't. That's why I think basing myself in New York, as I may do after this tour, will be good for me because when I'm here I tend to go to the rqovies more. In England, I stopped going out. I became a sort of Howard Hughes figure just before I left. I did it to avoid being stared at. I stopped going out at all. Whereas, when I was in L A. last year for six months . . . Can you imagine for me how it was a treat in L.A. to go into a supermarket? I hadn't been in one for a couple of yeajrs. Just pushing a trolley around and the muzak's playing and looking at these vegetables and' those . . . It was incredible to do something and not feel like you were being observed.

CREEM: Have you rethought the idea of stardom?

Ferry: Yeah, that's why I'm hoping the album will be a total flop. {Laughs] Only kidding. ; -

CREEM: What would you do then? Ferry: Make another one.

CREEM: They would let you?

Ferry: Oh, yeah. It would take a few failures before the curtain would come down.

CREEM: What then?

Ferry: Then I would pick up a camera or a pen and start writing the movie I've been wanting to do for such a long time but I've never had enough time or motivation to sit down and do it. Nobody's ever forced me to sit down

anti do it. I'm a bit of a ^dreamer, you know, I could sit all day just imagining things up.

Back downstairs in the lobby of the Carlyle, Bryan Ferry's dream is unreeling on cue.