Bryan Ferry launched his solo career during the first flush of Roxy Music's fame. As some members played on his solo recordings, one must assume his dual role did not cause undue friction within the band. After the space-age art rock avant-gardity of Roxy Music, the musical direction of Bryan Ferry's first solo albums was something of a surprise, ranging from Billie Holiday's My Foolish Things (the title track of her first album) to Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Dobie Gray's The In Crowd and the Platters' Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, all of which were extracted as singles. It was a long way from Virginia Plain and Pyjamarama.

The album Let's Stick Together came out in 1976 in time to capitalize on the success of the single it was named after. It was an extremely useful mopping-up of all the non-album tracks released to date, including Extended Play (a freshly released EP of cover versions comprising The Price Of Love, Shame Shame Shame, the extraordinarily lightweight Heart On My Sleeve and Beatles cover It's Only Love) and You Go To My Head, another Billie Holiday standard from the thirties given the Ferry makeover treatment. It also had one previously unreleased track, Casanova, an original Ferry composition that had previously appeared on Roxy Music's Country Life album in 1974.

The other four tracks are all alternative recordings of songs that appeared on the first Roxy Music albums, and were re-made as B-sides of his solo singles between 1973 and 1976. I recall Bryan Ferry remarking at the time that he didn't like a song to be represented by just one recorded version of it, that would always play identically to the time before and be set it in aspic, and therefore liked to tackle songs he had previously recorded. Chris Spedding is the guitarist, and Roxy Music alumni Eddie Jobson, John Wetton and Paul Thompson provide colour and backbone. Bryan Ferry had not quite found his own voice on the first album and these versions are more confident, if less idiosyncratic than the group versions, and of course lack Eno's unique input. 2HB, Chance Meeting and Sea Breezes are otherwise relatively faithful re-makes of the originals, Sea Breezes being particularly effective, but Re-Make Re-Model from 1975 has been re-made and re-modeled into a blue-eyed soul funk groove for the B-side of You Go To My Head, and has perhaps dated less well. Incidentally, Roxy Music's own non-album B-sides have yet to be compiled onto CD.

All in all, this makes an ideal companion piece to the albums These Foolish Things and Another Time, Another Place.

This is a hidden treasure. Great music, great musicians and great recording. The whole CD is special and deserves greater credit. The giutar playing and drumming are simply first rate, the singing aint too bad either. The only thing missing is some of the other covers he did around the same time that were released as singles B sides and never got released on LP. Music I give this 93% and recording it gets 90%.

Released as a stopgap after Siren, Let's Stick Together consists of outtakes from Ferry's first two covers albums, and remakes of Roxy songs. The latter songs are not especially necessary, but they are more accessible (and Ferry's vocals are less histrionic) than the originals. The covers are uniformly excellent. This album may not be a stunner, but is very consistent and fun, and would work as a good starting place for newcomers curious about both Ferry and Roxy Music. (Ferry's pencil mustache on the cover is hilarious.)

Bryan Ferry in the Seventies hadn't completely given way to the "wallpaper effect" that marred his later solo albums (and resulted in three very bland Roxy Music albums between 1979 and 1982) and on this collection of "ready-mades"--Ferry's own term for covers--he goes all out. The remakes of some Roxy Music songs are a mixed bag, with "Sea Breezes" being the best and "Remake/Remodel" being the worst. The title cut, though, is a steamer with some of Ferry's best rock 'n roll singing and "Casanova," the only Roxy cover here NOT from that band's first album, is given a funky beat and sent dancing in the grooves. The jaded-man-of-lost-romance schtick that has been Ferry's trademark forever hasn't yet worn out it's welcome and while Ferry doesn't hit any emoltional home runs on this album, he does make being jaded seem entertaining.

On his third solo outing, Bryan ups the ante by mixing originals in with covers. Or more precisely, covers of his own (previously released Roxy Music) songs mixed with covers of other peoples' songs. One of his very best albums, and the first of three-in-a-row solo records that towered above the competition. Simply put, if you don't have "Let's Stick Together" "In Your Mind" & "Bride Stripped Bare" then you don't have a complete collection. If you cannot appreciate Ferry at his best, well, then, I guess your mind has been stripped bare and stuck together.