ROXY MUSIC – “Jealous Guy”
A band who helped define the 70s cover a song from the 70s by a man who barely outlived the 70s – and yet the cool precision of “Jealous Guy” makes it a recording utterly of the 1980s. The record’s attention to clinical detail seems to will compact discs into being: every instrument is perfectly, unhurriedly placed. Synthesiser washes like marble tiles; thick brushstrokes of guitar; the thread of whistling that plays the song out – “Jealous Guy” is immaculate.
But somehow incomplete. There’s a hollow, a loss at the record’s heart – not of John Lennon mind you; there’s been enough mourning, and Bryan Ferry respects the song too much to twist it into an overt tribute. But while Lennon’s hesitant original is recognisably being sung to someone, you don’t get that feeling with Roxy. Lennon’s is a plea for forgiveness; Roxy’s is a post-mortem. Its well-tailored arrangement is futile in its perfection, mocking almost: Ferry is wandering around an empty penthouse, pleading with a lover who won’t be coming back. And so that whistling again, going on so long it’s almost absurd, through romantic to pathetic and ending up the loneliest sound in the world.
7
Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 1,691 views • Share/Save
“there’s been enough mourning, and Bryan Ferry respects the song too much to twist it into an overt tribute”
And then I saw the sleeve!! Bad Bryan, no biscuit.
But it doesn’t sound like ‘a tribute’ on record, is what I mean.
It was a tribute all right. Everybody knew it at the time!
The last of the Lennon wailing is actually a pretty good song, and Bryan Ferry is a better singer than Lennon. He manages to capture the wheedling tone of the original and make it fly. The best tribute there could be, really.
Good that Roxy, who had given so much to pop, should have a number one at last. (I’d rather it had been the superb Dance Away though.)
I’d rather it had been Pyjamarama but hey.
I’m sure I’m not the only Popular poster for whom this was Jealous Guy’s first bow. I was shocked and disappointed by the offhand delivery of the original – “look out baby!” – when I first heard it in the late 80s.
Tom, you’re on the money, she’s not coming back in the Roxy version. Once again Lennon sounds comfortably self-pitying – “I was feeling insecure”? Grow up, brother revolutionary! – while Ferry’s vocal sounds genuinely adrift.
The original fits the Lost Weekend/May Pang miserablism to come, with Lennon always knowing Yoko is there at the end of a long corridor. I still prefer Roxy’s take, and its last rites of the American Gigolo feel.
Oh yeah. Whistling equals jacket-over-the-shoulder Ferry, walking into endless sunset.
I had no idea Roxy Music ever covered that song.
However, I have always loved the Atom Heart version … from the LB album “Pop Artificielle”– it’s a perfect little synthesized gem whose warm and wholly computerized professional exterior reveals gives way to a modestly gorgeous pop song. Check it out.
I think I may like this version better than the original! Could that be possible? Wait … maybe I don’t. I don’t know, I can’t think straight during the holidays! Who would name their white kid Otis?
You know what, I never liked this. It was too long, too pristine, and too bandwagony.
When Rox first started up, they were from somewhere else. This seemed to be a confession that they were ordinary. Like the rest of us, theye were sad about JLennon. Which is fair eneough, and many bands did covers of othere JL tracks around that time.
I suppose it was that situation that a song, overlooked at the time for ’single’ status, eventually making the equilibrium jump into ubiquity.
And it seemed to be around forever. It wouldn’t surprise me if it outsold any of the other Lennon single that were out around that time.
“Who would name their white kid Otis?”
Perhaps he liked Ned Beatty’s performance in “Superman”?
At the time I felt pretty much the same way as #7, but haven’t heard it for so long that I suspect it’d go down better now.
(Of course, it’s possible that Ferry, Manzanera and Mackay, like my friend and I, thought “How can we cash in on this?” and succeeded)
I liked this a lot, and still do. I had no musical interest in Lennon, and his death didn’t inspire me to investigate beyond the posthumous hits. So, no baggage.
I’d loved Manifesto and Flesh and Blood (and only later really dug back into Roxy mk 1) so was receptive to this is the same way as the covers on the latter album. It’s a beautiful, pristine and modern single, albeit one that’s all about the stylings, and it’s stood the test of time far better than one would expect for something labelled ‘a tribute’. Also, as I recall, had a great b side, that eventually made it on to the Avalon album.
As others have said, I was taken aback when I eventually heard Lennon’s original. And not in a good way.
K-Tel watch: the opening track on Chartblasters ’81, followed with the usual incongruity by The Look’s I Am The Beat and Coast To Coast’s Do The Hucklebuck. Highly enjoyable melange of electro pop (Susan Fassbender’s magnificent Twilight Cafe, Landscape’s Einstein A Go Go), novelty (Joe Dolce, Fred Wedlock, Adam & The Ants’ Young Parisians), dream/doom pop (The Passions’ I’m In Love With A German Film Star, In The Air Tonight). All this and Generation X’s Dancing With Myself.
There’s a lot of good comments, which I’d agree with, on this thread already.
I would rather have seen Pyjamarama or the obvious Virginia Plain at number one, being more a fan of earlier Roxy, but I always felt that Dance Away, good as it was, rather spoiled Roxy. Everything after that was bland, predictable, anodyne, safe, smoothie-Ferry stuff. Maybe if Trash had been a bigger hit we may have seen some more variety in their later work.
I have no doubt that this was a cynical attempt to cash in (financially and emotionally) on Lennon-mania. Today, profits would probably go to charity, but back then it would have been a far more commercial decision.
It is a good version of the song, but it is Roxy sleepwalking. Yes you can see Ferry with his jacket slung over his shoulder, whistling nonchalantly. I always took the whistling to be a sort of “Hey-Ho, life goes on” sort of statement, indicating that he knew and accepted that part of his life was over. Or it could have been Ferry being a twat, which by now he was rather good at.
I make this the sixth consecutive duff number one – possibly the worst ever stretch on Popular.
I do really like late Roxy, those three albums seem to me amongst the most grown-up pop music ever made (in a good way – contemplating middle aged concerns of mortality, regret and declining powers, but with the delerious and synasthesic qualities of the earlier group still clearly in evidence, but subtly so)…
BUT their Achilles heel was that if ever a group should have been banned from doing cover versions this was it; ‘Jealous Guy’, ‘In the Midnight Hour’, ‘Eight Miles High’, ‘Like A Hurricane’ – all turned pristine and hollowed out of the feeling of the originals. That tone of knowing ennui sounds wry and worldly wise in Ferry’s songs, but just sounds bored when singing other peoples.
Like many here, I had never heard the original when this was a hit. When I finally did years later, it was a disappointment. Lennon’s version sounded needy… pleading. Where as Ferry’s, indeed, sounds like an apology after the relationship has ended. And yes, I’ve yet to hear a single that hasn’t been improved by whistling.
My eight-year old Billy response – “Who are these old people? Why hasn’t this song got a tune? That man in the blue suit obviously thinks that he’s very handsome”
#2 Watch: A week of Adam & The Ants’ ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’.
re 14: haha i was just thinking that JG gives the lie to the claim you occasionally hear, that mccartney was the crafted melodist, never john: whose songs often have a bit of a shortest-distance-between-two-notes shape
isn’t this version (at least somewhat) about the nature of ferry’s lennon-worship?
Oh God, a thought’s just struck me… Did anyone at the time think that Ferry was singing from the perspective of Mark Chapman?
Ha! I don’t recall anyone suggesting it, but you’ve got a point. How queer.
A friend of mine assumed when he was a kid that somebody “on drugs” would look like Bryan Ferry did as he sang – screwed-up eyes and tropically sweaty demeanour.
Billy at 12: adult pop is right. Over You, More Than This, Same Old Scene and Oh Yeah may not be as lyrically specific as The Winner Takes It All but they surely don’t sound teenage. I like this run of hits (oh, not forgetting the avant-leaning disco of Angel Eyes) at least as much as Pyjamarama etc.
I saw the video on a BBC 4 documentary a few weeks back, and Ferry looks particularly constipated. It’s a pristine clip, however, and this rendering is too. I think it packs a punch and the mannered playing just gives the impression this is a band ahead of the pack, still. Reminds me I need more Roxy than a lone Manifesto LP in my life.
#18 – Ferry does indeed look very pained in the video, and somewhat uncomfortable and twitchy.
p^nk s had an unmatchable description of Ferry’s style (in the “taste of a dead sloane” sidebar link) – “complicatedly failing to mimick cool lounge-suit sung ease” – the vid is a good example.
Roxy’s later singles are a monument to widescreen production – multi-layered but with a space and clarity to the mix and balance of instruments that is breathtaking in its execution.
From “Dance Away” to “Take A Chance With Me”, the Mark II incarnation of the band, while dispensing with the edgier art-rock of first phase Roxy, delivered one sublime single after another. The performances, the arrangements and Ferry’s delivery are simply magnificent.
“Jealous Guy” is no exception. I didn’t know the Lennon original when this came out, and I’ve only heard it once since. Pristine and polished – if delivered with this much panache – can work on an emotional, as opposed to purely aesthetic, level. It’s the combination of the two that makes this such a moving record.
It doesn’t leave me cold; it doesn’t sound like a disinterested, cynical cash-in to me. It sounds like Ferry was deeply affected by Lennon’s death.
10.
Post Lost In Translation this has become the karaoke staple that Ferry makes it, taking the weedy Lennon original and suffusing it with louche cool but cold dread too. As long as you sing it like your voice is just about to crack, and play with the scansion, you’ll bring the house down.
Karaoke amateurs whistle into the microphone, not realising the blowing error they have made.
‘More Than This’ is the karaoke song in ‘Lost In Translation’
I come down on both sides of this one, it is too shiny and pristine (that glassy, echoey piano at the start just screams 80s chrome disco pub to me) which makes it seem almost disconnected from the personal, emotional level of the song, but Ferry does sing it better than Lennon and any song with whistling on it gets points from me — though that makes me think of it as Bryan’s little tribute to Otis Redding too. Overall though, I think it’s a little too tasteful.
Strangely, Ferry on his own is one of the greatest interpreters of other peoples songs (like ‘The In Crowd’ ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’) but with Roxy he usually screwed them up, their version of ‘In The Midnight Hour’ is a real blot on the otherwise great ‘Flesh and Blood’
unlike Ferry’s gleeful deconstruction of ‘Hard rain’ this feels too respectful to me. The song sounds as if it has been embalmed – pristine for ever with all the life drained out of it.
Lee, good point on Ferry as solo artist. I think he’s a terrific interpreter of other people’s songs. I love his version of the Everly Brothers “Price of Love” too. An absolute stonker.
“Midnight Hour” most definitely not Roxy’s finest moment, but I find “Flesh and Blood” very patchy.
No 26 on this week’s chart – Durran Durran (copyright, Tony Blackburn) with “Planet Earth”. Their first week on the Top 40.
Roxy Mk 2 may well have done something that is unique in pop: reconnecting with their original, now adult, fans, thereby pulling off a comeback that extended further than mere nostalgia. I can’t think of any other group who have managed anything comparable, except maybe modern-day Take That.
Of course this is a tribute and it’s so much better than Lennon’s original, which does indeed sound nerdy and whiney. I like the point about Ferry singing this from Mark Chapman’s perspective but don’t really see it myself (“I’m sorry that I made you cry”) Say what, now? (“I didn’t mean to hurt you”) Now, course you didn’t, you freak!
My dad had issues with Bryan Ferry. He thought he looked like Prince Charles. Now that would really be blinding – Charlie belting out Virginia Plain. As Waldo was apt to say: “Well, I’D bloody buy it!”
The only version that I heard of Roxy doing this song was on a 5 or 6 track , recorded live, mini-Lp called ” The High Road ” , which was from a live show in Scotland ( duh ! ). Is this the same track or was there a studio version ?
If you don’t like Roxy covers – do not go near Ferry’s “Dylanesque’ , it’s painful.
It’s a studio recording, six minutes long to boot (at least my mp3 version is, don’t know if that’s the 7″)
Have to say I prefer the Lennon version of this – the Roxy version is far from terrible but it sounds slightly strained somehow, as if the band as a whole haven’t quite decided whether or not to play the cover straight or not. I’ve never heard Manifesto or Flesh and (sorry, ‘+’) Blood but I’ve got a lot of time for Avalon which – along with Steely Dan’s Aja – is one of my favourite albums for airless, ultra-sleek production. (5) for this anyhow.
I can’t honestly say that I consider late Roxy material to be ‘adult’ pop although I accept that a self-consciously 80s adult audience adopted them as (probably) one of the earliest dinner-party soundtracks – to be followed by Moby and Dido in later years – ‘Avalon’ gets a mention in Jay McInerney’s novel ‘Brightness Falls’ in that kind of context.
I enjoy the music as ambient background but lyrically the songs seem drained of significance beyond a few langorous phrases – nothing like the fun of Roxy Mk1
I’d never interpreted the song as “whistling in the dark” before reading Tom’s entry, but it does fit the performance very well. I’d always heard the song as the rather insincere confession of a lounge lizard, perhaps because of Bryan’s persona. Despite/because of this I prefer it to the original, which is perhaps too straightforward, too sincere.
I haven’t heard the other late Roxy covers mentioned – I’m more familiar with early Roxy. I do think Ferry’s early covers of standards like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” are truly painful to listen to. “Hard Rain” is an odd one – I like listening to it despite it having a extraordinarily baffling mismatch of lyrics and music.
Re the original – it’s a bit diffident in its delivery, and shares the lameness of parts of the Imagine album (excluding How Do You Sleep et al) but – it’s musically gorgeous, some weird piano and strings confection which sounds like nothing else. Might be Spector’s greatest Beatle-connected moment.
Some attitudes towards John Lennon on here seem a bit nonsensical one day posters are criticising him for making the ‘grand gesture’ with ‘Imagine’ and a few days later moaning about the fact that his version of this is whining and self-pitying when surely it’d show sensitivity to think such a soul-bearing admission of weakness to be a major point in favour of Lennon’s original.
PS I also enjoy Roxy Music and like this version too – not hearing the Lennon one till years later.
I prefer the Lennon version, FWIW – one of his best songs.
Even better tho is when the piano line from this drops into the middle of Noise Factory’s “Skinteeth” – one of my favourite rave appropriations.
Yes couldn’t agree more….a perfect choice and use of a sample…what a pity there was never a chance in a million that it was going to ever get cleared…
I’m not terribly keen on the Roxy or Lennon versions, but I do really like the Faces’ version on their great live album Coast To Coast.
Suave-n-Sophist Roxy Mark II didn’t connect with me at all until Avalon came along the following year, at which point it all somehow fell into place… but my revisionism never stretched as far as “Jealous Guy”.
I saw Ferry perform this a few years ago, as part of a maddeningly offhand, lacklustre, just-another-day-at-the-office solo show. It was as if the life-draining embalming fluid contained in this recording had seeped out and infected all of his other material. My least favourite Roxy track.
Best Ferry cover version ever: These Foolish Things
Worst Ferry cover version ever: 1993’s The Girl Of My Best Friend, especially the watch-through-your-fingers embarrasing video, in which moody Bryan is cuckolded by a pair of lipstick lesbians.
Billy @ 40: These Foolish Things is about as indestructible as a song can get, I reckon. Just about everybody who has ever taken it on has made a good fist of it. It featured on a tape associated with the music section of my Popular Culture OU course. First professor of Music Richard Middleton – not a gifted singer I’d say – plays and sings it exactly as published in the sheet music, and then Billie Holiday makes it soar. Magnificent.
I think I’d go along verbatim with Mike’s first para at #39. A tribute, heartfelt and reverential no doubt (not an obvious cash-in like the Danny Mirror Elvis tribute – Lennon comes out of this comparison rather better) but not a record that ever really engaged me much. Again, an act where I can think of loads of other tracks that would have better represented them in Popular.
So the past six number ones read – Lennon, novelty, Lennon; Lennon, novelty, Lennon. The time had come for someone to, if you will, shake things up a little.
My favourite version of “These Foolish Things”: Ella Fitzgerald, who else? It was also used to tear-jerking effect in a 1990 French film of the same name (original title Daddy Nostalgie), starring Dirk Bogarde and Jane Birkin as father and daughter.
Rather like Stevie Wonder, one of their worst singles got them the position they had deserved for so long. The public’s obsession at buying up John Lennon records just went on for too long. I preferred Julio Iglesias’s version “I’m just a yellow sky”
John Peel Watch: From a live review (‘John Peel Catches The Ferry To Oblivion’, The Observer, 22 January 1989);
“A low point was reached with an oafish reading of ‘Jealous Guy’, a song which in John Lennon’s original is built on a tangle of anger and regret and here had neither.”
I heard Roxy Music perform this in Sydney, before it was released, just weeks after Lennon’s murder. It was entirely unexpected, coming at the end of the Flesh + Blood set. It may have been an encore.
It sticks in my mind as among the most moving moments in any concert I’ve attended. There was no question it was done purely as a tribute – a musicians’ response to a senseless act.
And, rather than “cashing in” as some suggest, the band’s royalties (at least on the initial release) went to one of Lennon’s favourite charities. And, of course, the songwriter’s royalties went to Lennon’s estate.