Singer/songwriter Bryan Ferry perennially embodies the epitome of cool. Best known as the suave, seductive frontman of Roxy Music and a pioneer of art rock, the English performer has built a genre-defying solo career over five decades that fuses glam, pop, jazz, and experimental soundscapes — all delivered with an unmistakable air of elegance and edge.
At 79, Ferry is still chasing creative breakthroughs. His latest project, Loose Talk, is a collaboration with performance artist, writer, and painter Amelia Barratt. The two first connected when Ferry attended one of her spoken word performances and was struck by her ability to linger on intimate, everyday details. That spark led to a deeper creative relationship — beginning with a recording of her audiobook at his studio, and eventually, this full-length album.
A moody and meditative spoken-word album, Loose Talk layers Barratt’s poetry over Ferry’s atmospheric compositions, including one piece originally composed during the For Your Pleasure sessions in the early '70s. It's only the second album in Ferry's career where he doesn't take the lead on vocals, following 2012's The Jazz Age.
The new project arrives on the heels of Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023, a five-CD box set spanning five decades of Ferry’s work, from solo hits and orchestral arrangements to rarities and unreleased material. It also includes the equally pulsating and ethereal "Star," the first track he created with Barratt, co-written with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
In a conversation with GRAMMY.com, Ferry reflects on his enduring creative process, working with Barratt, and the piano he’s written nearly his entire catalog on.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Amelia’s poetry lingers on simple and intimate details of people's lives and their interactions. Was that something that attracted you to her work?
Yeah, it just rang a bell somewhere. I thought, I really like this. It's kind of everyday scenes, but it's very cool. There's something intense about it, and the delivery is really good. It's kind of detached, and underlying it's passionate as well. [It’s] the first time I've worked with somebody else's words on new music. It's exciting and really been rewarding for me. The first thing we did together was actually "Star." I was struggling with the lyrics, and she really nailed it. I was very impressed by that.
Did you ever imagine you would do a track with the front man from Nine Inch Nails?
[laughs] In my wildest dreams. Sometimes the unexpected things happen and they're great.
Aside from three tracks on here, with your vocals drifting discreetly in the background, you're not singing on Loose Talk. This is only the second time you've had an album where you didn't really sing. The other being The Jazz Age.
The Jazz Age was another interesting project for me. It's sometimes nice in your career to do something left field and surprise yourself. My voice is in the background of some of the [new] things because musically most of the pieces started with a piano demo, which I would have done normally at home.
I always have tapes lying around of things that you haven't completed and there are a few things like that where my voice is in the background and it's me on my piano. It's this old Steinway that I've had since 1973 actually, and I've written most of my songs on that piano. I bought it from a harpsichord player I knew. It's been a really great friend to me. It's funny how you can get attached to an instrument, but actually all grand pianos sound different from each other. They all have a personality. So the pieces start in a very intimate fashion, just me and the piano late at night, kind of doodling.
Some of these pieces have found a home and have been developed over the past year or so in my studio with me on other keyboards and other musicians coming in. I think Guy Pratt plays [bass] on a couple of things. Maxwell Sterling, who's a very good electronic musician — he works with those modular synths with spaghetti wires everywhere. It reminds me of the old days with [Brian] Eno in Roxy where he had wires coming out of everything. And a few guitar players. Andy Newmark plays drums on some things. Paul Thompson plays drums on one track. And a guy called Tugg [Nathan Curran] who is an electric drums player, more of a modern thing. It's great to have a combination of real instruments and synths and so on. I like to experiment with sounds, and this project is ideal for me.
You said that one of these new tracks originated from Roxy Music’s For Year Pleasure sessions back in 1973.
It's "White Noise," and it was '73 or '74 in our studio. I lived in a studio virtually for quite awhile. That was a great studio on Oxford Street, center of London, and it had windows you could look down and see all the people going to work. We were up in this studio on the top of this building. It was a great place, George Martin’s place [with] old-fashioned engineers with white coats. It was the real deal. It had a lovely piano, and that piano is on "White Noise." I really liked that tune, and every few years I'd hear it on a compilation of unfinished pieces. I thought, One day I'll find a place for that. About a year after I played the piano bit, maybe two years, I put the bass on it with [the late] Alan Spenner who was a brilliant, great bass player. He played on Avalon, he played on "More Than This," Flesh and Blood, Manifesto. Masterpiece of bass playing on Manifesto. So when I hear that I remember him, and it's moving for me. Amelia’s words work great with it.
Some of the piano recordings sound less polished than one normally would expect from you. They’re raw and sound slightly distant, like you're sitting in a nearby room listening to it.
It's badly recorded, but that's part of its charm. I quite like that. I think there's a haunting quality about her text and her performance of the text, and I think that distant thing of the sound goes with it somehow.
At the 2025 GRAMMYs, Roxy Music landed their third nomination – Best Immersive Album for Avalon. You also did a Dolby Atmos mix for your first solo album Boys and Girls. Bob Clearmountain remarked he wished that back when he was mixing Avalon that there were more speakers as stereo didn't really capture the essence of it. Are there new things that you've heard in the new mix?
Not really, because he mixed the original Avalon and Boys and Girls in stereo. He did it beautifully. His use of space in mixing is renowned, and rightly so. He's fantastic. I still like stereo. I mean, I like mono. Most of the time I can listen on a cassette player quite happily. I'm not really into high fidelity particularly, and yet we're known for making high quality sounding records. Bob is amazing. We've done a few more. We did Mamouna and Bête Noire, and we’re doing more as time goes on. I'll be doing more this year with him. He's a master of the craft.
There are a lot of standout tracks throughout your Roxy and solo careers that are different — the psychedelia of "For Your Pleasure," the Renaissance vibe of "Triptych," the tango of "Bête Noire," and the ghostly sounds of "Hiroshima." Have you ever stopped to think about the through-line of all these different styles of music in your career?
I guess they would connect through me, but I had such great influences. There was so much great music out there to listen to, and there still is. I still haven't really scratched the surface listening to classical music. It's something I didn't pay much attention to when I was a teenager. I was into Little Richard and Stax records. Now that I'm old I listen a lot to radio, classical stations just in the background. Sometimes you hear things and think, Wow, I never heard that Mozart horn concerto before. Recently, I went to a couple of classical concerts and had such a great time. I went to see Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs". That was at the [Royal] Festival Hall. There's a lot of music out there which I still haven't heard yet.
When Roxy started out, you had a certain musical naivete. You guys hadn't done records. How have you kept that curiosity alive across these decades? What fuels your creativity now?
I don't know. I love the process of making records. I was just downstairs — the studio’s below here — listening to some guitar things that we had to edit. There’s always something to do. The detail I like. I love working with great people, soulful people, who can help me with my vision to try and make new stuff all the time. For any artist, it's something you don't retire from. You just do it for as long as you can. You try and bring something beautiful into the world, something that moves you and share with people. I certainly had that from Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, all these great musicians I listened to over the years. I try to do my version of life in music.
Did you learn anything working with Amelia? Did she teach you anything?
She's very disciplined, and she works very hard on her painting and her writing. I don't see her much because she lives in Scotland, but it's a great working relationship. There's no kind of ego battle, not yet. [laughs] It's fabulous.
This is your first time directing music videos. What was that like?
I feel like an art student again. It's so cool. Obviously, Amelia is a young artist. She studied painting as I did, but [we’re] miles apart generation wise, so it's good for me to feel I'm doing a project where I can use my creativity as well. I was behind the camera and Amelia is in front of the camera, and then James, my sound engineer, does the editing. We edited together, so it's just the three of us involved. In the old days, you'd have a crew of 30 people on a video in some cases, and we didn't really have much involvement in some of the videos I did. Now, I’m totally in there with it, so it's quite fun and rewarding for me.
You've worked with a lot of talented guitarists over years — Phil Manzanera, Nile Rodgers, and the younger Oliver Thompson. They bring their own personality to their music, yet they fit in with your oeuvre. How much do you find them adapting to your signature sonic style?
[chuckles] Maybe I will them to play something I like. We're usually in the same room. Most guitarists nowadays play in the control room. They can hear better, and they have their pedal board and everything. You just try and get involved — try the wah pedal on this, or maybe a delay on that. It's good to be involved in every aspect of the making of a record right up until the mastering. Then you've got to do the cover and film it, and so it goes on. Then you talk about it and try and justify it.
Read more: Living Legends: How Roxy Music Went From "Inspired Amateurs" To Art Rock Pioneers | GRAMMY.com
After all this time, what's the most valuable life lesson you can impart?
I suppose to follow your own instincts is very important. And to make the most out of every day. As you get older, you think, Why didn't I do more when I was 30? I guess you were busy doing other things as part of your life. Integrating work into living is sometimes difficult. I think musicians sometimes find that because music is very time consuming and very absorbing. Work is really important to me. I'm happiest when I'm doing that.
Is there any one song throughout your career that you think is underrated?
I always liked "Can't Let Go" – maybe that was because of the great string arrangement that Ann Odell did which is absolutely amazing. Her arrangement still sounds so fresh today. And "When She Walks In The Room" — she also did the strings. It was a very good thing we had going there with those strings. They were both on The Bride Stripped Bare album [1978]. We did most of that in Switzerland with some great players — Waddy Wachtel, Rick Marotta, Neil Hubbard, Alan Spenner. That was a great record for me, and I really enjoyed doing that. A very soulful record.