Comments on: ROXY MUSIC – “Jealous Guy”

By: seekenee

seekenee — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:31:56 +0000

Bryan Ferry played this at Live Aid, with Dave Gilmour on guitar, there were a handful of Lennon covers that day methinks.

By: Alfred

Alfred — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 03:55:26 +0000

I don’t think anyone’s pointed out (a) how lovely Manzanera’s part is in its controlled melancholy (b) how terrific Ferry’s outro synth part is too. He’s so rarely given credit as a keyboardist.

By: Conrad

Conrad — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:27:35 +0000

Witchita – I have a recording of Tony Blackburn playing the full 6 minutes plus on the Top 40 countdown, and magnificent it sounds too

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:46:23 +0000

Well, so we were! From memory, the whistling got faded pretty rapidly by dj’s at the time. And the contemporary copy I bought was the truncated version on K-Tel’s Chartbusters ’81. Short on the whistle is how I recall it.

By: hardtogethits

hardtogethits — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:55:24 +0000

#47 How fantastic you comment on this when we were just speculating elsewhere about songs being replaced at radio with newer versions. Here’s one! The original 7″ was over 6 minutes long; the only version we hear on the radio now (from Greatest Hits cds etc) is under 5:00.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:23:35 +0000

It’s a shame this wasn’t the single that kept Vienna at no.2, as that would be payback for Ultravox’s walloping great steal of Both Ends Burning on Hiroshima Mon Amour. I can’t believe this has only just been pointed out to me – it’s basically a cover version (right down to the squeaky sax) with new lyrics.

By: David G

David G — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:41:48 +0000

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.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:43:24 +0000

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.”

By: Malice Cooper

Malice Cooper — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:31:03 +0000

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”

By: mike

mike — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:54:46 +0000

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.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:19:41 +0000

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.

By: rosie

rosie — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:57:41 +0000

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.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:36:15 +0000

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.

By: mike

mike — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:48:34 +0000

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.

By: Martin Skidmore

Martin Skidmore — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:19:45 +0000

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.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:24:45 +0000

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…

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:08:36 +0000

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.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:07:01 +0000

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.

By: Matthew K

Matthew K — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:30:10 +0000

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.

By: The Lurker

The Lurker — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:59:19 +0000

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.

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:14:34 +0000

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

By: Gavin Wright

Gavin Wright — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:53:13 +0000

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.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:33:26 +0000

It’s a studio recording, six minutes long to boot (at least my mp3 version is, don’t know if that’s the 7″)

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:01:51 +0000

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.

By: peter goodlaws

peter goodlaws — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:18:46 +0000

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!”