All Of My Heart. ABC. 1982. Mercury.

The new wave theater that Sheffield’s ABC helped export to the States with their 1982 debut record The Lexicon of Love has its genesis in Bryan Ferry’s celebrity. The cool, romantic figure who, with Roxy Music, helped fuse together the Frankenstein monsters of Elvis and Bogart in the lab that Andy Warhol built was also keenly aware of the value of his solo persona. After the combined galvanizing fire of the first two Roxy records, Ferry retreated into the cold, hard rock image of Sinatra iconography, post Ava Gardner. Gazing at photographs of Ferry from this period onward, it’s virtually impossible not to be reminded of the great crooner’s In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. What so many new wave artists overestimated in their appreciation of Ferry’s influence on their aesthetic was his sense of theater. Like any other serious rock star, Ferry indulged in theatricality—what is glam rock if not extravagant theater—but he also understood the camp essence behind glam; it’s what he refers to in Do the Strand as “mashed potato schmaltz.” ABC drew from this well of camp, too. It’s what makes bearable lyrics like “No happy ever after now we’re friends” and “You hook me up a rendezvous at your place.” That arch self-awareness of the importance of artifice gives The Lexicon of Love its vestige of modern tension, without which all that remains is the condescending half-truths of self-importance. The opposite of rock and roll.


Dec 22 021

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