After 50 Years, What Does Bob Dylan Think Of Those Bryan Ferry Covers?

It’s no secret that Roxy Music frontman and solo artist Bryan Ferry is a big Bob Dylan fan. He has covered many of his songs on album and in concert. While that might seem surprising given their contrasting vocal and musical styles, perhaps the old “opposites attract” adage applies here.

In a 2007 interview with the Guardian, Ferry recalled that he was “at university [in the mid-‘60s] when Dylan was playing his acoustic guitar, and you had all these students wandering around with a Dylan album as an accessory. I was into Black American music and I wanted everything to be electric, and I didn’t like folk—a bit tame for me. But then I heard ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and it made an incredible impact, not just on me but on music itself, and I realized how clever Dylan was to bring Greenwich Village beat poetry into rock ‘n’ roll.”

No Shortage of Dylan Covers

While Roxy Music began life as an eclectic art-rock group that siphoned in a wide range of influences, Ferry would leave the Dylan covers for the solo career he began cultivating at the same time as Roxy were already making a splash. The very first track from Ferry’s 1973 debut solo album These Foolish Things was his rollicking cover of the folksy “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” He then covered “It Ain’t Me Babe” on his second solo album Another Time, Another Place in 1974. Fast-forward to 2002: Ferry tackled “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” for his 11th solo album Frantic. Then he finally went full bore with an entire album of Bob Dylan covers in 2007 called Dylanesque in which the suave singer lent his atmospheric touches and elegant crooning to his new renditions.

It does make one ponder the question: What does Dylan think of Ferry’s work?

In an interview with this journalist for Mix magazine back in 2007, Ferry was reminded that he had performed “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with a full orchestra, guitarist, and backup singers in Stockholm on May 15, 2000. The event was the annual Polar Music Prize Award ceremony, and one of its recipients in attendance was none of other than Dylan himself, who watched Ferry enthusiastically perform his cover. The three times the video director cut to the famed troubadour watching Ferry, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. After the Roxy Music singer received applause and walked off, he didn’t get to meet Dylan afterward.

“We had to go off at the end,” Ferry told me, “and I think he had to go off in the other direction, so we didn’t get to meet each other. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? It’s strange, but someone showed me a clip of that the other day, [laughs] and he looked rather bored, but I guess it was an awards ceremony. Maybe he was looking at my string section. I don’t know. They were quite good-looking actually. He seemed to be focusing on something.”

Still Haven’t Heard

Fast-forward to 2022 when Ferry and I spoke for Billboard about the Roxy Music 50th anniversary tour. With the two Frantic covers and the Dylanesque album having come out since the Stockholm performance, there were even more Ferry interpretations of Dylan’s work available. Had he finally received word of a Dylan reaction?

“No, I haven’t,” Ferry replied. “I’m obviously a fan of his music and his writing. I’ve never met him, but I don’t really have much of a social life. I don’t meet many people as such. It’s surprising perhaps that I’m very private. I guess Bob Dylan is too, obviously. I haven’t met him, but I’ve enjoyed interpreting the songs very much.”

Had anybody even gotten a reaction from Dylan for him? “I don’t know anyone. … No one’s ever …” Ferry mused. “If you ever interview him, you can ask him for me.”

That looks like a good question to present to the famed singer-songwriter. Perhaps someday a fellow journo will get an answer. Let’s at least assume Dylan enjoys the royalties.

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Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame