From my favorite Roxy Music album, Siren, comes this pair of songs, segued together as one track. The entire album is one strange trip, but "End Of The Line" and "Sentimental Fool" best represent this blend of romance and the surreal, the weird and the beautiful. The violin, harmonica, and oboe lull the listener into pirate ballad bliss to match the cover of Jerry Hall posing as a siren sprawled on the rocks off the northwest coast of Wales. Of course the band's major hit, "Love Is The Drug," precedes this plunge into darkness and wonderment, a video I did some years back to Fellini's "Toby Dammit" segment of Spirits of the Dead (1968) which I currently cannot re-upload to YouTube as it is blocked worldwide by the film's producers. But once the dance track is over, "End Of The Line" finally introduces us to the theme on the cover, at least it does for me. It's back to the sea ... and what is beneath the sea. So as one reviewer remarks that Bryan Ferry uses musical phrases as "images of emotion" these images tell the stories associated with the cover theme.

In actuality, Ferry's intention is that of a romantic loner roaming the foggy streets haunted by lost love. But the music for whatever reason, if not for the ones I have given, beckon us to the sea. Thus, my video may well be an alternative adventure of "End Of The Line" and its segued-in mate, "Sentimental Fool." The latter at one point finally bursting through into typical pop rock bravado, but only briefly, sinking once again beneath the waves as Ulysses and Circe embrace in a loop of bewitching lust. Thus, the musical metaphors I employ in the video pretty much match the emotional tensions of the music. Enjoy.

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