Bryan Ferry would like to set record straight

By Steve James

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bryan Ferry, who has fronted Roxy Music on and off for 35 years, says he's quite lazy about writing songs these days but would like to write a memoir to set the record straight about his life.

Ferry, 61, came to prominence in the 1970s as lead singer and main songwriter for Roxy Music and has gone on to build a successful solo career away from the band that's known for such hits as "Let's Stick Together" and "Avalon."

But as well as recording his own songs, he has made several albums devoted to the work of songwriters he admires, some from the 1930s. He recently released an album of Bob Dylan songs called "Dylanesque" (Virgin).

The British musician, famed for his suave style, has dated a list of beautiful women, including Jerry Hall, who left him for Mick Jagger, and he was married to Lucy Helmore, with whom he had four sons, for more than 20 years before they divorced.

Ferry spoke to Reuters about his music and ambitions:

Q: What is it that attracts you to Dylan's work?

A: "It's the quality of the writing, really. The vocabulary, the imagery, the poetry of it all. So I think they're open to interpretation. Especially the early songs because he only played them on (acoustic) guitar."

Q: You've sung his work before, such as "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," your 1973 hit.

A: "For my solo career there's a relationship with his work. Also, it was a big hit, so it was like a lucky charm for me. As opposed to the songs I've done from the 1930s -- another area I've sort of plundered, or been inspired by -- those songs are quite complex ... There's a richness in the words which offsets the simplicity of the music sometimes."

Q: Are lyrics important?

A: "A great song has to have a lyric that works with the music. Sometimes you find a great lyric or a great tune, and they've got to jell together. And his songs do jell together incredibly well. I'm a singer, so words are important to me."

Q: What about your own writing?

A: "I like my own lyrics, but I don't write as prolifically as I would like to. So that's probably why I went into the whole world of interpretation in '73. Not that I was desperate, but I wanted to change. I had done two albums of my own songs with Roxy and the second album was quite dark or intense. I just kind of wanted to do something different from that as a kind of cathartic experience to escape from my own writing."

Q: Who is your audience these days?

A: "It depends on which country you're in. In England, there's a hard core of people who've been there since '72. The Roxy crowd, who've grown up with the music. Then you find their children and different generations. People sometimes come in because they read that some young band they like likes me."