Timing is the whole lot. And that was actually the case with Bryan Ferry’s fifth solo set, The Bride Stripped Naked. Issued on September 1, 1978, its arrival was overshadowed by the information of Roxy Music’s three-year hiatus coming to an finish – with the newly-reunited band prepared to start engaged on its high-profile comeback album, Manifesto.
On reflection, it’s additionally truthful to say that The Bride Stripped Naked was onerous to shortly perceive merely because of the range of its contents – regardless that Bryan Ferry all the time supposed it as a automobile for an eclectic gathering of songs.
“I wanted it to be extracts, if you like, of various styles and moods,” he mirrored in an interview reproduced on the Viva Roxy Music web site. “And to get into the art-conceit of the title, which is taken from a work (The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even) by the (French conceptual) painter Marcel Duchamp.”
He added, “The original Bride Stripped Bare… was full of strange elements adding up to one thing, one statement. To me, that’s what this album is. It has an Irish folk song, some early Memphis things, an Al Green song and a Lou Reed song. I’ve always wanted to do a Lou Reed song. I like playing about with other people’s songs.”
Recorded in wintry isolation at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, The Bride Stripped Naked featured musicians comparable to guitarist Neil Hubbard, bassist Alan Spenner and saxophonist Mel Collins, all of whom beforehand appeared on In Your Thoughts. The studio ambiance leant in the direction of melancholy, with the temper additional knowledgeable by Ferry’s latest break up along with his girlfriend, the Texan mannequin Jerry Corridor (beforehand the quilt star from Roxy Music’s Siren). This life-changing occasion fueled a number of of The Bride Stripped Naked’s most resonant self-penned songs such because the world-weary “Can’t Let Go” and the wonderful “When She Walks In The Room”: an expansive ballad which someway reconciled Rick Marotta’s nervy, reggae-style drumming with Ann O’Dell’s wonderful string association.
Certainly, it’s to Ferry’s credit score that he was in a position to channel his private heartbreak right into a string of improbable performances on The Bride Stripped Naked. The punchy, new wave-inclined “Sign Of The Times” caught him in a extra reflective temper, whereas the terse, chromatic ambiance of the layered, synth-led “This Island Earth” presaged the delicate sound of David Sylvian’s Japan. He additionally poured his coronary heart and soul right into a number of covers, and whereas they have been drawn from disparate sources, Ferry’s remakes and re-models of The Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On,” Sam & Dave’s “Hold On (I’m Coming)” and even the standard Irish air of “Carrickfergus” have been by no means lower than convincing.
The Bride Stripped Naked had its high-profile champions, not least the U.S. music critic and writer Greil Marcus, who declared it to be “comparable, in its way, to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, John Cale’s Vintage Violence, or Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks” in a glowing Village Voice overview. A protracted-term favourite of the artist himself (who has since referred to it as “a very, very emotional album”), it’s a report deserving of way more kudos and it stays ripe for rediscovery at this time.
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