These Foolish Things
The fascinating story behind Bryan Ferry’s version of a classic British song from the 1930s
I’ve always had a thing for cover versions. I like how one artist interprets another’s song, especially when they give something familiar a surprising twist. Today, Radio 1’s Live Lounge has given contemporary artists an outlet for covering someone elses’ songs that reaches a huge audience.
At some time in their career, most artists have covered at least one of their favourite songs. For many, it’s a great way to be creative. There’s little point in doing a straight cover. What’s important is to inject your own personality and give it your own twist. And, often, the more surprising it is the better.
Back in 2015, I remember interviewing the Welsh singer Judith Owen before a gig in Brighton. We were discussing her acoustic cover of Roxy Music’s More Than This which she had reimagined as a piano and bass ballad. “Great songs” she said “are like great bones: you can hang whatever you want on them. If it’s a great song, you can do whatever you want with it.”
Thinking back, two of the earliest albums I can remember buying were both filled entirely with covers: Bowie’s Pin Ups and Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things. By chance, both came out in the same year and as far as I’m concerned, the music they contain stands up as well today as when they were first released.
But this article isn’t about covers per se, it’s about one particular cover and that’s the title track of that Bryan Ferry album These Foolish Things.
Now I have to confess when I first heard Ferry’s version it was the first time I’d ever heard the song. And that’s one of the fascinating things about covers: often you hear a new version before hearing the original. As a result, the cover is the one that sets the tone, at least in your mind. That’s the one, that to you, is the way the song should sound.
So let’s begin by spinning back 45 years.
Back then, Bryan Ferry was the flamboyant lead singer, front man and driving force behind Roxy Music, who by 1973 had enjoyed huge success with their first two albums. Both, still to this day, astoundingly modern records.
Following the release of their sophomore album For Your Pleasure in March 1973, Ferry did something unexpected, something that would herald a career that ultimately would endure way beyond that of Roxy themselves. He made a solo album.
But it wasn’t just a solo album, it was a set of covers of some of his favourite songs. At that time, putting out a covers album was pretty unusual. However, it’s worth remembering that before Roxy, Ferry started off singing soul covers with a band called the Gas Board.
Bryan Ferry’s origins: Ferry was born in the Durham mining village of Washington, (the town crest bears the Stars and Stripes as George Washington’s family hailed from there) His father, Fred Ferry, looked after the ponies at the local pit.
“My dad was a very quiet country guy who started life as a farm worker, ploughing fields with horses. He later looked after the pit ponies at the local colliery.”
But Bryan had no interest in mining and initially saw himself becoming an artist, something he went on to pursue at Newcastle University where he studied fine art.
“When I was a teenager I wanted to study art history. I was encouraged by my teachers to go to art school, and there my passion for all things visual intensified. At the same time, my interest in music became more developed, and I joined a college band. We played covers, mainly R&B songs.”
At 17, he’d formed an R&B band at school and in 1966 when England were winning the World Cup, Ferry found himself fronting an eight-piece soul band, the Gas Board, covering songs by the likes of Otis Redding, Joe Tex and the Tamla Motown stable.
Above all, he loved American show tunes:
“I liked Fred Astaire and Cole Porter, and I’d hear those songs played by Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Billie Holiday. There was a music store in Newcastle where you could go into a booth and listen to stuff. I lived in there.”
Three years later, Ferry left Newcastle for London where he worked variously as a van driver, art teacher and antique restorer. But he’d come down to the capital for music and he spent all his spare time devising what would soon become Roxy Music.
“After university I moved to London, and my dual interests in art and music merged together. I spent the next two years writing my first songs and assembling the band — I decided that making music could be the best way to express myself as an artist.”
By the end of 1970 the foundations of the band were in place. First to be recruited was Andy Mackay, a classical oboist, on sax and oboe; then on synthesizer, came Brian Eno, a sculptor and dabbler in electronics. Next up was ex-Nice guitarist David O’List (who was replaced by Phil Manzanera just before the band found success) Former Gas Board bassist Graham Simpson was the next recruit and finally the band were complete when they were joined by another Geordie, drummer, Paul Thompson.
“While I see my main body of work as the albums featuring my own songs, I’ve always had an interest in performing other material — sometimes from varied musical genres.”
“After we finished For Your Pleasure, the second Roxy album, I thought it would be good to do something different. I loved the recording process and wanted to make an album where I wasn’t the writer but could focus on the singing and producing.”
To record his solo album, in June 1973, Ferry repaired to London’s Air Studios. Curiously, most of the players on it were members of Roxy Music, although by this time, Eno had left and replaced by 19-year-old Eddie Jobson. They were joined on guitar and bass by John Porter, who himself was another former member of the Gas Board.
“I chose some songs almost at random that I thought I might be able to do something interesting with.”
“We made the album very quickly, and the enjoyment of everyone doing it translated into the music.”
These Foolish Things, the atmospheric jazz standard which gave the album its name, was the last track on the record and, by some distance, its oldest. It’s also a song with a fascinating story.
The song’s origins: These Foolish Things was written in 1934 — eleven years before Bryan Ferry was born — by two Englishman, Holt Marvell and Jack Strachey, although it’s sometimes also credited to a third writer: Harry Link.
Holt Marvell was the nom de plume of Eric Maschwitz who at the time was Head of Variety at the BBC for whom he also wrote scripts. The story goes that in urgent need of a song for a late night radio revue, he penned the lyrics to These Foolish Things one Sunday morning at his London flat. He then read them over the phone to composer Jack Strachey and they arranged to meet that same evening to discuss the next step.
These Foolish Things was the first song the pair had worked on together and it went onto to become a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
By the way, the third name on the credits, Harry Link, came about because he modified some of the lyrics for American tastes as certain English words did not rhyme in the American pronunciation.
As to who the song’s about, well, that still remains a mystery. Some believe it’s an ode to the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong whom Maschwitz was romantically linked while he was working in Hollywood. The lyrics are evocative of his longing for her after they parted and he returned to England.
Whoever it was written about, it’s the words that make the song so special. Even all these years later, those wistful memories still stand up to scrutiny. Most important, they work so well when sung.
It’s interesting to note that These Foolish Things wasn’t the only big song that Eric Maschwitz penned. Three years later, he was also responsible for A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, which went on to become a hugely popular song.
That wasn’t the case initially for These Foolish Things. Following its radio debut, the song attracted little attention, Neither did much happen when it was featured in a 1936 West End revue called Spread It Abroad. In fact, the song was still unpublished when it was ‘discovered’ later that year by Leslie Hutchinson who found a manuscript lying on top of a piano.
Known as Hutch, the Grenada born pianist and singer was one of the world’s biggest cabaret stars during the 20s and 30s. As well as being a favourite of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), for a time, he was the highest paid music star in Britain.
Hutch mostly used American material — especially the songs of Cole Porter — but with These Foolish Things he found a native work that suited him to perfection. Just two days after coming across the song, Hutch recorded it. He also found a publisher — and it was he who made These Foolish Things a hit.
That same year in New York, pianist Teddy Wilson, set the song to a jauntier tempo for the then 21-year-old Billie Holiday. While Hutch sang of loss; Holiday sings of betrayal. When she refers to ‘those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant’ she isn’t congratulating herself on her own bashfulness, she’s asking how she could have been such a fool. Indeed, on her lips the title sounds less affectionate and more bitter.
These Foolish Things is essentially a list song. The lyrics with which Maschwitz unfolds his roster of regrets may not be witty, but they are evocative. The very first image is: ‘A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces.’
After a brief snatch of muted trumpet, it continues with the blunt inquiry ‘Oh, will you never let me be?’ before going on to set up the song’s title with a reference to ‘those little things…that bring me happiness and pain’.
Other references to ‘gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow’ and ‘wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo’, are the kind we would all like to be regretting.
Another key memory is ‘the Ile de France with all the gulls around it’, again somewhat dubiously rhymed with ‘the park at midnight when the bell has sounded’. Maschwitz was not always scrupulous in the way he combined his images, but he was a whiz at picking them.
As well as the sights and scents, what also strikes home are the sounds. For happiness, ‘the tinkling piano in the next apartment’; for pain, the universal ache of ‘a telephone that rings, but who’s to answer?’ Fabulous lyrics, just made to become ear worms.
In 1961, These Foolish Things turned up on Frank Sinatra’s album Point of No Return, the last of the six great ballad records he recorded for Capitol. Each of them had its own distinctive mood. This one, following on the sustained angst of Only The Lonely and the bleak hopelessness of No One Cares, settles on lost love recollected in something approaching tranquillity. ‘An airline ticket to romantic places’ being the most savoured line.
And that brings us to 1973 and Bryan Ferry’s version. Apparently, his cover is based on the Dorothy Dickson version of the song. Dickson was an American-born, London-based theatre actress and singer and a member of the Ziegfeld Follies.
The song’s lyrics clearly appealed to him “I always try to pick songs with lyrics that interest me.”
Oh will you never let me be?
Oh will you never set me free?
The ties that bound us are still around us
There’s no escape that I can see
And still those little things remain
That bring me happiness or pain
A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground’s painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me
I somehow knew that this had to be
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings, but who’s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow
Wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
The park at evening when the bell has sounded
The ile-de-France with all the gulls around it
The beauty that is Spring
These foolish things
Remind me of you
I know that this was bound to be
These things have haunted me
For you’ve entirely enchanted me
The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
First daffodills and long excited cables
And candle light on little corner tables
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
How strange, how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
That seem to bring you so near to me
The scent of smouldering leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you, just you
Ferry’s interpretation: Until I heard previous versions, I hadn’t realised quite how different Ferry’s iteration was. He’s always had one of the most distinctive voices, often a combination of sophisticated melancholy and aloof drama. Here he croons with an exaggerated vibrato that makes him sound like a decadent lounge singer. Indeed, alongside the jaunty arrangement with its cod-reggae beat, it’s his theatrical phrasing that makes his version so special. I also love how the Angelettes heavenly backing vocals elevate the song’s ending.
Despite his subsequent solo success, his efforts as an interpreter of other peoples’ songs may mark Ferry’s most enduring post-Roxy work.
Speaking to the LA Times, he said:
“It can sometimes be quite fun to do a cover song. If it’s a new song that you’re doing — of your own — for the first time, it can be quite pressured. But if it’s a song you’ve loved for years, it can be quite interesting to approach it from a new angle, in the way jazz players do. They put their own artistry into it.”
The Musicians: Bryan Ferry (vocals), John Porter (guitar and bass), Eddie Jobson (keyboards and synths), David Skinner (piano), Paul Thompson (drums), John Punter (drums), Roger Ball (alto and baritone sax), Malcolm Duncan (tenor sax), Henry Lowther (trumpet) The Angelettes (backing vocals)
Produced by: Bryan Ferry, John Porter and John Punter
Arranged by: Eddie Jobson
By any measure, the album was an odd collection of tracks. Even so, when it was released in October 1973, it was well received both critically and commercially reaching No 5 in the UK album charts. It did so well, that the following year, Bryan Ferry released a second album of covers, Another Time, Another Place
Naturally stylish and effortlessly cool, over the past 50 years, Bryan Ferry has always had a unique timelessness, something he has proved time and time again when taking on a song of somebody else’s and doing it with the same swagger and smoothness that he does with his own compositions. But perhaps most important, his versions always seem to add something new and unique to the original.
Other covers: These Foolish Things has been recorded by some of the all-time greats including James Brown, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Bing Crosby, Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughn and Frank Sinatra. In more recent times, it’s also been covered by the likes of Rick Astley, Michael Buble, Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart.
But for me, Bryan Ferry’s version will always be the standard by which all others are judged. As someone one said, “He nailed it so beautifully, creating a heartachingly coruscating rendition of loss and yearning.”
That said, having now heard many different versions, I can appreciate the song’s bones in how other artists have interpreted it. In particular, I like a guitar-led instrumental by Orchestra Ben Johnson from 1976.
In complete contrast, in 1966 The Duprees gave it a doo-wop twist:
Peter Mintum’s 2010 version is, apparently, as close to the original would have sounded:
And here’s Rod Stewart’s version from 2002:
In 2005, Rick Astley released this laid back version:
I particularly like this beautiful cover by Emmy Rossum from 2013:
Also from 2013 is this version by Billy Ocean:
In 2017, Bob Dylan covered the song on Triplicate, his 38th studio album:
And other artists continue to record new versions of the song. The newest I’ve found is by Southside Johnny on his 2018 album Detour Ahead.
One of the newest is this exquisite piano cover by Gareth Giles which reminds me of Mike Garson:
But let me end with a fabulous live recording of These Foolish Things by Bryan Ferry at the Royal Albert Hall from 1974 that was released in 2020:
Footnote 1: These Foolish Things composer Jack Strachey moved to Brighton in 1958. He died there on 27 May 1972, just one year before Bryan Ferry recorded his version.
Footnote 2: To mark their 50th anniversary, Roxy Music are reuniting in 2022 for a short tour of North America and the UK.
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
Most recently, he has written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s ‘Still Of The Night’ and Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’. He has also just penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians.
