Idolator
Perhaps Bryan Ferry should be grateful for his low profile here in the states. The former Roxy Music singer—already in semi-hot water for releasing one of the worst album covers of the year—is all over the European press today, thanks to remarks he made during an interview last month:
The 61-year-old singer sparked condemnation from Jewish leaders after he was quoted in a German newspaper describing the aesthetic behind Nazi Germany as "just amazing".
In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Ferry also revealed that he calls his studio in west London his "Fuhrerbunker".
He said: "My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves. I'm talking about Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."
Ferry apologized for the remarks, an act that seems to have calmed down his critics (and inspired such wondrously awful headlines like the one pictured above). And while we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that his statements were coming from an art-history perspective, we can't help but ask: "Fuhrerbunker"? Really? None of us his friends ever took him aside and gently told him that a studio shouldn't be named like one of the bonus targets in Wolfenstein 3-D?
Comments
It's all over now, Bryan F.
Aren't his ex-wife and children all extreme-right wackadoos?
That pic the Brit paper used is very Brideshead-y/collaborationist-seeming. I can picture him getting out of a Rolls in 1936 to have lunch with some Reich apparatchik.*
Plus that Bob Dylan covers record - Zimmerman ist juden, ja?** Very sneaky, Bryan. Lull Bob into complacency then pounce.
* Can I, really?
** by birth, not that whole "Slow Train Coming" period
Check out Ferry on the loud sections of 'Bitter-Sweet,' on his early Roxy Music album 'Country Life', delivered over a thunderous, I have to say goose-stepping rhythm. "Nein, das ist nicht/Das ende der welt ..." Who and what does it bring to mind? It response to Nicolars' post, Ferry's equally bonkers son Otis - 'Said to be dating' Sienna Miller, according to The Times in the UK last month - was a among a bunch of demonstrators who stormed Britain's House of Commons in protest at anti-fox-hunting legislation.
I often think what Bryan's father (who looked after pit ponies) would make of all this.
You'd think he would know better after Bowie's (multiple) faux pas.
What are these people thinking? (no. 897)
In Rolling Stone (March 22 issue), Rufus Wainright describes a recording stint in Berlin, where he was "wearing lederhosen all the time, visiting rococo palaces, getting into German Romanticism and facism ..."
Whaddya mean 'into', dude?
Comment on this post
Reply by EmailLogin with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?