Bryan Ferry - Dylanesque Live
Mark Burnell
2007-06-25
Dylanesque Live is a straightforward live-in-the-studio recreation of Mr. Ferry’s most recent studio album, and despite the fact that Ferry would never top anyone’s list of Great Dylan Interpreters, there is quite a bit to recommend here.
While not at all similar in any way whatsoever, Ferry’s voice is every bit as distinctive as Dylan’s is, and that definitely works to this collection’s advantage. The best songs here are ones when Ferry takes a song and makes it entirely work within his rumpled (and now slightly aging) European smoothie routine. The result is more Ferry than Dylan, but at least it produces mostly interesting results. It helps that he is accompanied by a crack band that includes such luminaries as Guy Pratt and Chris Spedding, and Ferry himself provides some terrific (if unexpected) harmonica solos. Unfortunately, it doesn’t all work, but by and large, that’s simply the result of the song choices.
Dylan’s more obscure moments seem to provide better source material for Ferry. There’s a tremendously atmospheric take on “Gates of Eden” that has some beautiful slide guitar, and “Make You Feel My Love” fits Ferry so perfectly it’s hard to believe it’s not his own song. The slinky funkiness that propels “If Not For You” wouldn’t be out of place at a tasteful European discothèque, and “A Simple Twist of Fate” provides a more up-tempo delight with some very nice interplay between Ferry (on harp) and the slide guitarist. On the better known songs, Ferry stumbles a bit. There’s an atrocious reggaefied “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” that fits Ferry as well as a purple tutu, a pedestrian “All I Really Want to Know” that veers into adult contemporary territory, and a completely forgettable stab at “All Along the Watchtower.”
Is Dylanesque Live worth buying? Certainly if you’re a Ferry or a Dylan fan this is a must-have, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag for the rest of us. Nevertheless, the format is refreshingly simple (no frills live in the studio-- albeit a very nicely lit studio), there’s a bonus of Ferry’s wild video from 1973 when he covered “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” and there are a couple of songs here that are really damned good. However, for the most part, this release feels less essential and more like something you’d quite enjoy if you stumbled across it accidentally on PBS late one Saturday night.
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