When Bryan Ferry covered Bob Dylan song ‘Positively 4th Street’
Few singers are more capable of taking on a classic song than Bryan Ferry. The supreme leader of Roxy Music, Ferry, has crafted a career not only out of his own songwriting but by manipulating the work of others into his own style to create something entirely fresh and new. One singer who has most often been on the end of these artistic reimaginings is Bob Dylan.
One of the greatest songwriters of his generation and beyond, the Nobel Prize winner, Bob Dylan, has been covered more times than he’d care to remember, with hundreds of released covers on ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ alone. Most of the time, these covers pass by without much fanfare; however, on the odd occasion, they can not only arrest their audience with a sense of enjoyment but even add new emphasis to the potency of the original.
Link most of us, it is no surprise that Ferry has immense adoration for Dylan. Brian Ferry once said, “When you get music and words together, that can be a very powerful thing,” but later added, “I find them difficult.” While his discography seems to imply that lyrics came easier to him than he lets on, leaning on Bob Dylan is a great crutch if they were a strain. And he’s done so on a fair few occasions.
While his takes on ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ are the most famous of his Bob Dylan covers, Ferry hasn’t reduced himself to those tracks. In 2008, the former Roxy Music man took on Dylan’s triumphant piece, ‘Positively 4th Street’ and gave it a fresh lick of paint.
The song is one of Dylan’s most vicious, and was allegedly directed at socialite and model Edie Sedgewick. She was the poster girl of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and despite losing her life so painfully early, at just 28 years old, she lived it to the fullest and cut herself out as a prominent figure in the New York art scene. This high-flying lifestyle of parties, possessions, and the crowd she was in has led many to believe that Dylan was taking aim with his empowered go forth and multiply rebuke.
The beauty of this juxtaposition, where Dylan both wishes he could be a part of Sedgewick’s life and also notes that it would kill him if he did, is accurately portrayed within Ferry’s arrangement. Backed by strings, his delicious vocal is given the ample backing it requires to truly soar.
Hear Bryan Ferry cover Bob Dylan’s song ‘Positively 4th Street’ below.
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