Bryan Ferry / Roxy Music: The Ultimate Collection, 1988
The second comp to join Ferry's solo work with that of his band Roxy Music was my true gateway into both
I’m not sure how I first came across the 1988 compilation The Ultimate Collection, credited to Bryan Ferry with (!) Roxy Music; my best guess is that I saw an import copy from the UK in the stacks of my favorite record store in the fall of 1988, Von’s Records in West Lafayette, IN. Just look at that cover: it’s so stylish. Black and white, Ferry doing his suave motherfucker bit like only he could do. And that red “seal” sticker? Now, that’s aesthetics. Brilliant. I was sucked in.
By this point, I knew Ferry, largely from his two most recent solo albums, 1985’s Boys and Girls and 1987’s Bête Noire, both of which I loved (especially the latter, so smooth, and featuring a Johnny Marr cowrite, the epitome of catnip to me at the time). But apart from “Love Is the Drug” and perhaps “Avalon,” I doubt I was very familiar with Roxy Music. So this seemed like an ideal way to explore the catalogs of both, plus the album’s back cover featured chart positions under each track! For this Anglophilic chart nerd, especially back in the day when it wasn’t easy to find the UK charts? Heavenly.
This was the second time a comp had been released combining Ferry solo and Roxy, the first being 1986’s Street Life - 20 Great Hits, which topped the UK chart and only extends up to Roxy’s recorded end, in 1982. Ultimate takes in the aforementioned Ferry solo records of the ‘80s, along with adding the North American-only “Help Me” (produced by Nile Rodgers, and recorded for David Cronenburg’s film The Fly) and a new cover of the classic Jim Reeves country standard “He’ll Have to Go.” (And oddly, neither of those tracks is on streaming, so I’ve included both below.) It’s also, as the credit implies, more Ferry-forward, with 9 of its 15 tracks solo, whereas on Street Life, a full 14/20 are Roxy records.
Obviously Ferry’s work in the ‘80s was substantially smoother than that of his ‘70s (both in Roxy - fun fact, 1982’s Avalon is their biggest seller in the US - and solo), but Ultimate included just enough of his spikier ‘70s work to whet my appetite for more, opening with his covers of “Let’s Stick Together” (in a lightly up-mixed “‘88 Remix” - don’t worry, it’s not a club thumper) and “The ‘In’ Crowd,” and additionally including the likes of “Tokyo Joe,” “The Price of Love,” and “This Is Tomorrow,” along with Roxy’s “All I Want Is You.” For one whose entry point to Ferry was those ‘80s records, this was an ideal way to pull me in and make me curious about what came before; Street Life, which I came to later, is much more raucous (and also superb, I might add).
Of course - of course - I was hooked once I discovered more of both Roxy’s catalog and Ferry’s. I mean, it’s loads of brilliant glam that morphed into brilliant rock and pop all around; Roxy are one of the all-time greats, and Ferry’s solo work has by and large been consistently rewarding. (Check out my pal Alfred Soto’s review of the 2023 deluxe edition of 1994’s Mamouna, for example. And I’m a huge fan of 2010’s almost-Roxy reunion record Olympia.) When I finally got to see Ferry perform in 2019 (the last live show I saw prior to Covid, BTW), his setlist was just unexpected enough to keep everyone on their toes - I mean, he opened with “India,” a deep cut from Avalon that he’d not played live, solo, until that very tour!
Bryan Ferry is a legend. Roxy Music are legends. I love both equally, and am grateful for the intro that The Ultimate Collection gave this queer midwestern teen in the late ‘80s. For some reason, the collection isn’t on streaming, so here’s a playlist of everything on it that is.