Bryan Ferry feels the pain, shares the joy
After all these years, Bryan Ferry remains the author of the best song ever written about sex with an inflatable doll. That’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” one of the many Roxy Music nuggets the British art-rock icon will be performing, along with newer solo material, when he hits the Pavilion on Sunday.
“Those Roxy Music songs feel kind of naive, but with a strong spirit,” he said by phone from Washington, D.C., last weekend. “They have lots of musical changes within them, and a lot of mood changes, so it’s interesting the way they dart around stylistically. ‘Dream Home’ is definitely a dark song, not a joke in any way. I hate talking about my own songs, but that one caught the mood of its time. It related to some artwork I was very fond of by Richard Hamilton, the man I studied under — a piece he did that related to consumer extravagance. It’s one of my best songs, and it still feels like a very natural one to sing.”
Ferry doesn’t tour America very often, and his last Boston show didn’t even happen: His voice gave out during a sound check at the Orpheum in fall 2014 and the show was canceled. “One of those very unfortunate things that happens to singers, especially after a lot of flying,” he said.
His latest album, “Avonmore,” was partly inspired by a recent divorce, but its lush soundscapes and sad romantic feel are his natural territory.
“That’s what music is to me. I’ve always been drawn to the beautiful sad songs, whether it’s Billie Holiday or Richard Strauss. I’ve always associated music with deeply felt pain and have tried to capture that. I don’t have many happy-go-lucky songs — ‘Do the Strand’ and ‘Editions of You’ are the rare ones. To me, the albums always come out of tough times in life; they’re quite stressfully made. You’re trying to express your deepest feelings and that’s not easy. The new one is connected to what I went through, but not as directly as you might think. It was a time of change, which is always difficult for someone like me.”
Despite turning 70 last September, Ferry has no intention of retiring.
“There’s no secret to longevity; I just like to work, and I like to share it with the audience. I don’t follow any weird diets, though I do see a Pilates teacher three times a week — that’s very helpful. I used to much prefer being in the studio because you always want to do new work, but now that I have so much work to perform, I’m really enjoying the live side of it. Even when I do the hit songs, I can feel the reaction coursing back from the audience, and I get a lot of pleasure from that.”
Still, Ferry prefers the quiet life when he’s not on the road.
“I think that to enjoy life you need to have a contrast. I spend a few days a week in London, but I have a home in the country where I’ve been for 40 years now. It’s really become part of me. And I have four kids, so I try to see as much of them as I can. My house is very quiet with a garden. It gives me time to reflect and ... I think people nowadays call it chilling out.”
‘I can feel the reaction coursing back from the audience, and I get a lot of pleasure from that.’ — BRYAN FERRY, musician