We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.

Bryan Ferry needs no introduction. As the debonair frontman of Roxy Music, he was one of the major architects of 1970s glam and art rock — a charismatic vocalist capable of both glacial sophistication and nimble theatrics. His eclectic solo catalog is just as impressive, encompassing Bob Dylan covers, collaborations with electronic artists, and jazz and standards albums.

With his new solo album, Loose Talk, Ferry is doing something completely different: leaving the vocals to someone else, Amelia Barratt. Instead, he’s focused on sculpting unique musical backdrops based around evocative piano with cinematic tendencies. Listening to Loose Talk on headphones especially, the album resembles an audiobook of little mini short stories or vignettes owing to Amelia’s sonorous voice and crisp narration.

“I haven’t collaborated that much in my career,” he says now. “I did of course in the band; I was very fortunate to be in a great band with Roxy. And then, on the solo projects, I worked with lots of different session musicians. That was exciting to meet all these great players, some of them well-known and some of them who were just brilliant and unsung heroes. That’s been great, but never really collaborating together like I am now.”

It helps that Ferry and Barratt both went to art school — the latter went to Glasgow School of Art and the Slade School of Art, London, while the former attended Newcastle for four years. “We both have had long apprenticeships as artists, as it were,” Ferry says. “She’s a practicing painter—and I make pictures and music.”

Ferry chalks up the sound also to the musicians he worked with, like Maxwell Sterling (“an interesting electronic musician who has all modular synths with wires everywhere, like spaghetti wires”) and two long-time collaborators from Roxy Music, including Andy Newmark and Paul Thompson, and bassist Guy Pratt. 

”You work with people who you’ve known for years and also young people, all mixed together,” he says. “And I kind of like that, you know? And James [Garzke], my engineer and me, we kind of bind it all together, and Amelia was the star.”

Sitting in an impressive library above his recording studio — his Zoom backdrop is floor-to-ceiling books — Ferry sounds energized by this collaboration. As it turns out, he’s already immersed in making the second album with Barratt, even as Loose Talk is just seeing the light of day.

Loose Talk (2025)

Loose Talk marked the first time you’ve created new music with another writer’s words. What made now the right time for this — and how much of an adjustment was that for you to not be singing?

BRYAN FERRY: Well, [it was] the right time because I met somebody who writes really well. I really liked the writing very much, and that’s never happened before either. And since I’m not really touring — I did a tour a couple of years ago with Roxy, of course — but generally, I’m more of a studio animal. [Laughs.] 

I met Amelia, and I really love the work, and I thought, “Maybe this could work with music that I do.” It works great for me, and it’s very enjoyable to make the album. I hope that shows.

What did you particularly like about the way she wrote? What stood out to you?

FERRY: It seemed very cool to me. And the texts themselves are strong. They create moods. For me, they have a sort of haunting quality, and that’s what I, at my best, have in my music. [There’s] also her delivery, which is very cool and measured, and yet it’s a kind of an emotional thing going on as well. So, there’s a lot going for it.

I’ve always written words myself or done covers of existing songs, and this is a fresh departure. It gives me so much freedom as a musician to run free, and not [be] so constricted by a form of a song which might have a chorus and a bridge and a middle eight and so on. It’s more free-flowing.

Reading how the album came together, and how she would send you things, I was really struck by the freedom. There was so much trust involved in the creative process. She let you do your thing; you let you do her thing. That’s like the ideal artistic collaboration.

FERRY: Yeah, it’s trust and respect for each other’s work. From the first off, it seemed to work. The first thing she actually wrote for me was her lyrics for “Star,” which was a track that I did based on an idea and a demo that Nine Inch Nails sent me. I got the song where I wanted it musically, and I was struggling with the words, and I said, “Hey, can you help me with the lyrics for this thing?” She did, and that worked great. And that was done in parallel with doing the first couple of songs for Loose Talk. It was quite a while ago because we’ve been working on this for quite some time, but at our own pace.

How did Trent Reznor end up sending you music? Did you ask for it? Did he reach out?

FERRY: They came to one of my shows in LA a few years ago. I met them there, and I met them somewhere else on tour in Europe. We were both playing at the same festival or something. And, yeah, they sent me a couple of things to collaborate [on], because they like what I do, and I like what they do, so that’s how it works. [Laughs.] And they’re cool, so it seemed like a really nice thing to try. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

All of all these years you’ve done all this stuff — and now all of a sudden you’re coming to this. I love that.

FERRY: I like making stuff. It’s what I do. Most of the pieces musically start off with piano demos that I would just play at home. Some are recorded on cassette and some on [our] phones. There’s a kind of intimacy about that part of it. If I play back things later and say, “I quite like that, and maybe I can turn that into something,” then I bring it to the studio here, downstairs — not in the book space, but down below in the laboratory, as it were. [Laughs.] [That’s] with James [Garzke], my engineer, who I work closely with, who’s brilliant at all the technical stuff.

I do extra keyboards and things and try and make the mood more of what it is. And then other musicians come in one by one at different times, and I try and get the best out of them and see how they respond to this and what they can bring to it, to make the atmosphere more interesting musically and sonically.

It’s really fascinating work. I really enjoy it. And in the background is Amelia’s text, which then comes more and more forward as we mix the thing. I try not to get in the way of the words because it’s great to hear them because they’re such cool phrases and such; as you say, they’re great little vignettes, and they’re scenes from everyday living, everyday life. And yet there’s something soulful about the work, which I love.

It strikes me as you’re describing this process that it’s almost like sculpting something.

FERRY: Yeah, it is like song sculpture. I’ve always seen it like that. Sometimes, it’s more painterly when you’re doing the washes, but yeah, it’s really like that. It’s like building something out of thin air. [Laughs.]



Has doing this collaboration piqued your interest in revisiting painting again?


FERRY: No, but it has led to me doing the videos. I’ve filmed the three videos we’ve done for tracks: “Loose Talk,” “Orchestra,” and “Florist.” It’s all [a] hands-on and do-it-yourself kind of thing, which I quite like. And I was behind the camera, and Amelia was in front of the camera. And James, my music engineer, he does the editing—or we do the editing together. They’re little things go with the track; sometimes they want some illustration to go with it on their phones. It’s fun to be a visual artist again in that respect.

Revisiting Older Tracks From His Archive For Loose Talk

Some of the music on Loose Talk dated back to the early 1970s. What kind of memories came to your mind as you were going back and listening to that music and modernizing it?

FERRY: Some great ones. There’s a track called “White Noise,” and I think I did the piano for that in AIR Studios one night in about, mm, could be ’73, ’74. And I had it lying around for years — literally years. [Laughs.] And every now and then, I’d say, “Hmm, I wish I could find a place for this, and how could it realize its potential?” Some things you just don’t turn into a song, and they hang around in your studio. You don’t hear them very often. Every few years you might have to dig through your tapes and ideas — like sketchbooks, you know?

And that was one of them. It brings back memories of AIR Studios in Oxford Circus, Oxford Street, London. That’s where we made so many Roxy albums, and I made my first solo album there. It was a great place, great studio, started by George Martin and really old-fashioned engineers with white coats.

But most of the work has been done in the last two years in the studio here. The originating little germs of the ideas, they come from here — and quite a lot of them on my old piano, which I still have. I’ve had that since ’73, this old Steinway that I bought from a harpsichord player I knew. It’s now a battered old thing, but it’s a great voice. It’s a lovely sound. It’s got a great presence. Each grand piano has its own sound, it’s quite interesting. I mean, I’m not a concert pianist by a million miles, but they must find it really interesting how each piano they play all has their own personality.

When you find an instrument that you like, you stick with it. It’s like the guitarists who keep the same guitar they play for a long time.

FERRY: Yeah, they do. It becomes your friend. [Laughs.]

It has personality.

Appearing On Top Of The Pops Performing “Virginia Plain” With Roxy Music (1972)

That performance was a lightning bolt for so many musicians, like John Taylor of Duran Duran, and this appearance also came up on your recent Rockonteurs podcast appearance. Do you have any strong memories of that TOTP appearance?

FERRY: Yeah — feeling really uncomfortable in that setting because here we were, kind of like an art school band, and we felt we were more underground. And then suddenly we had a hit record, you know? The first album [1972’s Roxy Music] did really well, but it didn’t have a single, so the record company, Island Records, said, “Don’t you have a single that we could put out to go with this album?” And I had this song, “Virginia Plain,” which was just about finished. And so I quickly completed it, and we recorded it, and suddenly we were on Top Of The Pops. Everybody in Britain watched it; millions of people watched that show.

And then, as you say, a lot of kids saw it and said, “Ahhh!” Like I had done with seeing Otis Redding or all the great people that I saw when I was young, and I thought, “Oh, well, I would like to do that.” [Laughs.] Or at least have that physical rapport with an audience.

I thought I was destined to be an artist, a painter. That’s what I was studying at art school and at university. Music was a hobby. I had a college band. But then when I saw Otis Redding, that was my Top Of The Pops moment, as you were, that you were talking about. I hitchhiked down to London — how many hours it took, I can’t remember, but [it was] 300 miles away. And I saw Otis Redding with the Stax/Volt Show, it was called, [with] Sam and Dave, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Al Jackson, all these great players — Booker T. and Eddie Floyd. All the artists from that label were there. And it was really exciting. And I thought, “Hmm, maybe if I could make my art more this or have some of that energy I felt that from that…”

I’d seen shows before, but nothing as powerful as that. I mentioned it in the [Rockonteurs] podcast with Guy [Pratt], [I saw] Bill Haley, which is when rock and roll first came to Europe. I won front row seats to see that when I was about 10 years old. And before that, when I was nine, I think I went to my first jazz concert. I was really precocious as a music fan, you know? I loved it.

Covering Bob Dylan (Across Multiple Albums, Including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” On 1973’s These Foolish Things And The 2007 Covers Album Dylanesque)

But then you threw yourself into music — like when you look at the early 1970s, how many records you put out between solo records and Roxy music, it’s astounding. Your Dylan interpretations especially, like you covered “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

FERRY:“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” that was the first solo thing I did. It was maybe the best cover I ever did, actually. [Laughs.] It was all downhill from there. But it really worked because it was a very small band, and everybody was into it. It was really great. And that was done in AIR Studios I guess, with that piano, because we were in Studio Two.

What makes Dylan such a fun and challenging artist to interpret his songs?

FERRY: Wonderful lyrics. Wonderful songs. On the first solo album I did [1973’s These Foolish Things], I just thought, “Oh, well, I’ve sort of made an impression as a writer with Roxy Music with the first two albums,” and I just really wanted to make another album straight away after the second album with Roxy. And I didn’t have any songs, but I just thought, “Hmm, maybe I should do a solo album of covers of songs I really like.” And so I did that, and one of them was a Dylan song. It was quite an eclectic bunch of material, and including of course, the title track, “These Foolish Things,” which is a wonderful old standard from the 1930s. 



And yeah, I should have maybe done more of those things early on, but I waited and gradually picked off one or two songs throughout that career. Whenever I’ve done a solo album, I’ve sort of thought, “Maybe there’s a Dylan song I could do.” And I love so many of those, especially the early things.

You covered “Make You Feel My Love,” too, which is a standard. And lyrically, that’s one of the ones that is so subtle and beautiful.

FERRY: It’s a great song. It’s very nuanced, and it’s different from his general catalog. I enjoyed doing that one.

Have you ever heard if Bob has either listened to or liked any of your covers of his music?

FERRY: I shouldn’t think so. [Laughs.] He’s probably as grumpy as I am. [Laughs.] I think my sons actually know more of his work than I do. Two of my sons see a lot of his shows whenever he comes to Europe. They’re aficionados.

But I’ve only seen him play once, actually. Maybe that was at Brixton Academy; I think it was in London. He didn’t play guitar, it was just keyboards. But [he had] a great band. And I like the way he reinvents his repertoire.

Almost Recording “Don’t You Forget About Me” (mid-1980s)

There’s lore that you almost recorded “Don’t You Forget About Me,” which Simple Minds eventually cut for The Breakfast Club. Is that true?

FERRY: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We were trying hard to finish [1985’s] Boys And Girls, one of the solo albums, the one I did after [Roxy Music’s] Avalon. We thought we had a couple of singles — which we did with “Slave To Love” and “Don’t Stop The Dance.” At that time I was so into trying to finish that album. We’d [gone] over in time by months.

And I got this cassette from Keith Forsey, who wrote the song, asking if I could do it. I loved the chorus, but I wasn’t sure about the verses or something, I don’t know.

It was too distracting at the time. But Simple Minds made a great record of it. And I must have the demo of it that Keith Forsey did somewhere; I think he sang it himself. One that got away. [Laughs.]

Were there any other songs or near misses that you were asked to record but couldn’t, for whatever reason, that later turned out like that?


FERRY: Not really. That’s the only time I think that I can think of.



Teaming With David Gilmour For “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” From Legend (1986)

It’s you and Tangerine Dream on the soundtrack. How did you end up recording that song?

FERRY: I guess Ridley Scott. I can’t remember how it came about. I think Ridley [said] they wanted a song for the film or for the credits or something. And I had something that I thought might work, and so I worked on the thing [and] completed it. Something that was half-finished; that’s how it works. And yeah, David Gilmour played a great solo on it. It was okay. I would mix it different now, I think.

Oh really?

FERRY: Yeah. When I’ve heard it, it’s a bit shouty for me. But I like the verses. I think they all sound good, and the solo was really good. And there’s a good soprano sax [on it] this guy Iain Ballamy [played], I think.

“The Right Stuff” Featuring Johnny Marr (1987)

“The Right Stuff” is based on the Smiths B-side “Money Changes Everything.” Were you a fan of the Smiths? How did that come about?

FERRY: The [person who] played bass and guitar and co-produced with me [on] the first solo album was a guy called John Porter. John was producing one of the Smiths’ albums.

I worked with John a lot. He was at college with me, actually. So, we go back a long way. Then he moved to America and lived in L.A. and then in New Orleans for some years recording blues albums.

Anyway, John is a great musician — really cool, very funky. And I went to visit him, and that’s where I met the Smiths. And then, years later, somehow, I can’t remember how it happened, maybe Johnny was playing on maybe Bête Noire, I think it was. And then he played me this demo for something he’d done with the Smiths and [asked], “Can you write words and make something different out of it?” And I did.

He’s great, Johnny. He has such great energy, and he’s such a nice guy. And he loves music. He lives and breathes music. He’s great. He played on a few things I did.

And seeing him live, too, you’re right. He’s so positive, too. That’s what also shines through.

FERRY: Oh, totally. Yeah. And he and I both come from the North, so we have that sort of in common. [Laughs.] Sense of humor.



Wearing Suits By Legendary Designer Antony Price

I have to ask you about Antony Price, obviously.

FERRY: Oh, yeah. I saw him yesterday.

Oh, did you? How’s he doing?

FERRY: Oh, he’s doing all right. He’s such a character. He’s a one-off. [Laughs.] He’s very eccentric and has become more so over the 50 years I’ve known him. [Laughs.] I met him in London. I saw him at a party, and I somehow met him maybe a week later at this club all the musicians used to go to called the Speakeasy. This was, I guess, ’71, beginning of ’72 maybe. I had just finished the first Roxy album, and I thought, “Hmm, I’ve got to do the cover. What should we do?” And I knew he was this brilliant guy who graduated from the Royal College of Art Fashion School. He was a star student. And he was working in this place doing these very unusual clothes. I thought, “He could be great to do this with.”

And it really worked. I wanted it to not really be a group shot of the band standing in a dark alley or something, which is what most album covers were at that time. [Laughs.] And I thought [about doing] something glamorous and eye-catching and with a touch of Hollywood about it or something. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted, but I had an idea. And he developed that. And he had a picture with Kari-Ann [Moller], who was one of the models he worked with and with this really good photographer called Karl Stoecker, who is an American guy who lived in London. He was actually married to Errol Flynn’s daughter.

He was very cool, Karl. And Nick de Ville, a friend of mine from art school, he helped me with the typography and the layout. It all came together, and it seemed to somehow weirdly fit with the music. I’d written the songs for the first album, and this was the image that I’d sort of produced.

It led to a series of album covers with Antony doing clothes and helping set [them] up. I wanted the albums to look good in a series, and they did, featuring glamorous women in different situations. Amanda Lear’s on the second [album’s] cover [1973’s For Your Pleasure], and it seemed to capture the mood of the album, this kind of futuristic city in the background, and then this extraordinary woman with a black panther on a lead. There’s something interesting about it.



Covering Robert Palmer’s “Johnny And Mary” With Todd Terje (2014)

Speaking of dapper people: You covered “Johnny And Mary” by Robert Palmer with Todd Terje. I love the redo of it because it’s such a different take on the song. Tell me a little bit about it.

FERRY: I thought it was a great song, and I loved his original version. It was my favorite of his work. And when I had done a few solo albums of covers, I was vaguely on the lookout, every now and then, for a song, and I thought, “Oh, yeah. I love that. Maybe that could be a good one to try.”

[Todd] came to my studio, and we did a few things together. He did most of the music for it. I mean, I played a little bit of piano on it and did it dead slow. It had a mood. It’s always good for music to have a strong mood.

I met Robert Palmer a couple of times out in Nassau, Compass Point Studios. We did parts of Avalon there, and Boys And Girls and also Bête Noire actually. And Robert lived out there, so he would pop into the studio. He was great.

The Jazz Age With The Bryan Ferry Orchestra (2012) & The Great Gatsby – The Jazz Recordings (A Selection of Yellow Cocktail Music) (2013)

You mentioned jazz earlier, and I wanted to ask you about The Jazz Age with the Bryan Ferry Orchestra and when you did The Great Gatsby. I loved how you took songs from your catalog and modern songs by Jay-Z and Amy Winehouse. What was the biggest thrill to do that then and revisit something that you loved for your whole life in this new kind of form?

FERRY: The first band that I ever saw — I think we worked out, [it was] when I was nine years old — was Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, which was an English trad band playing New Orleans music. That led to me discovering people like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and then Charlie Parker was a huge hero figure for me. I thought he was like the best thing ever. I loved certain people in the jazz world. [But] I didn’t really listen to jazz much after I started Roxy really — until, I suppose, comparatively recently, I started listening again to things and rediscovering stuff.

I met Colin Good, who is this brilliant pianist and arranger; he was like the band leader. We picked all these different musicians that he knew from the jazz world in London who played old jazz. And I thought, “Well, it’d be great to do an album of my songs as if they were kind of done by Duke Ellington,” or whoever from that sort of period of the ’30s. And it worked. It was an experiment that I enjoyed. And I did an album before that called As Time Goes By, and Colin played on that. That’s when I first started getting these players into the studio. And the idea came after that album.

And that makes perfect sense. Logically, it just works.

FERRY: When you have a long career, you want to diversify and keep it interesting. And for myself and for my audience — I guess some of them always want you to do the same thing, but it’s not what I want. I always want to try different avenues and, “Mm, let’s go down this road for a bit and see what’s happening there,” and how that could lead to something. And yeah, it leads us right back to this album, Loose Talk, and here’s another kind of avenue to explore for me, where I can once again step back—like on The Jazz Age, when I wasn’t really singing—and concentrate on, in this case, on new music and my music and these great texts.



Roxy Music’s 50th Anniversary Tour (2022)

Were you satisfied with how things wrapped up with Roxy Music and everything doing that final tour?

FERRY: Yeah, I was. We originally put it together to do these dates in America — which we did, and they were great. And then the last three were in the UK. By the time it got to the last show, I thought it was really good. [Laughs.] We finished in London, which seemed the right thing. Phil Manzanera was great, and Andy Mackay was great. Paul Thompson was great. And I was okay.

I worked a lot with a team of guys here, down in one of the rooms, on the videos for the big screens that we had. There was some visual stuff going on. It was hard work to do all the visual stuff because we normally didn’t play in such big venues. We were more [usually playing] smaller places; I sort of prefer to be a bit closer to the audience, maybe. We played in bigger venues, so we had bigger screens. 



But, yeah, everybody played great, actually. It was good. Doing it brought back a lot of memories and good memories of the tour, too. The audiences were really great. It’s all good.

Just like how you have stuff in your vault for your personal use and solo music, is there anything in the Roxy Music vault? Any odds and sods?

FERRY: Ahh, there’s not much there, really. But I suppose there’s some shows that maybe some live versions could be. …you know, there’s some shows that could be put out one day maybe to collectors, or people who like that kind of thing.

Releasing Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023

When you were putting together this retrospective, was there anything that stood out to you that you’re like, “Oh, this sounds better. I would like to do a do-over”? What was your take re-listening to that stuff now?

FERRY: It was interesting to put them into categories rather than do it chronologically. There were five discs, and so one of them was the well-known songs, and then the other one was the self-written ones, my own compositions. And then, disc three [had] interpretations, that’s covers. One was the jazz stuff. And then the disc five was the rare things that maybe people had never heard before. It’s quite an interesting way to do it. And I just thought, “Mmm, there’s a lot of work.” [Laughs.] And then, at the same time I thought, “Mmm, I didn’t do enough. I must do more.” [Laughs.]

I love it.

FERRY: There’s always more.

Loose Talk is out now via Dene Jesmond. Stream or purchase it here.