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LONDON (Reuters) - British singer Bryan Ferry apologized on Monday for remarks he made in an interview with a German newspaper in which he praised the Nazis' iconography as "just amazing" and "really beautiful".The 61-year-old lead singer of Roxy Music told Germany's Welt Am Sonntag newspaper last month: "The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!
"I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags -- just fantastic. Really beautiful."
In a statement, Ferry said he was "deeply upset" about the negative publicity the interview triggered, and added:
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View Slideshow"I apologize unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective.
"I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent."
Jewish leaders in Britain, some of whom had condemned Ferry's comments and questioned whether he should be dropped by the Marks & Spencer retail chain that employs him as a model, welcomed Ferry's clarification.
"We do welcome the fact that he has issued a swift comment that there was no intention to condone the Nazi regime," said Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council
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I know "Inquiring minds want to know". Within reason, I could care less about the personal lives of the artists I dig and would rather just keep Rocky Road about music.
I found Ferry's apology credible and acceptable.Of course, he could have and should have, as a public figure with some media experience, been more circumspect about his comments. Reporters would crucify their own mothers for a byline. That's just the nature of the business, and the beast.
But I don't think his comments are offensive. A bit insensitive? Yes. But then, the US government didn't have any qualms about hiring Werner Von Braun, did it? And I doubt that anyone would find fault with that decision today.
I have seen Riefenstahl's (spelling???) "Triumph of the Will"; it is an astonishingly effective piece of propaganda and a tour de force in the iconography of authority. It is an exemplar, and a cautionary lesson, in the political power of images. The DNC and the RNC, apparently, agree.
Speer's architecture fuses the classically monumental with modern industrial efficiency. It creates an almost irrestibible impression of power and permanence.
OK, so this means I'm a Nazi sympathizer, right? Judge for yourself.
Ferry, naively, and inexplicably, put himself at the mercy of ther meretricious media, always on the lookout for the next sensational headline, always willing to utterly destroy anyone and anything, in its never ending search for the next big headline.
Hell, I don't even LIKE Ferry's music. He owe's us more of an apology for IT, than he does about his "pro Nazi comments."
If you want to get down and dirty about it, the number of countries and corporations that have learned from or plain copied the Nazis is innumerable.
It wasn't just their scientists that were wanted after the war, it was the entire machinery of their "marketing".
We still live with the inheritance.
Agreed, dave c.In the Ferry case, what we have is a guy who got a bit too comfortable with his interviewer and said some impolitic things. I hope folks don't demonize the guy for merely stating what is true.
On the other hand, if he turns out to have belonged to some unsavory organizations, or subscibed to some fringe magazines, then ...
And you can bet on it: ambitious press reps arre already scouring thte earth to turn up another headline on this vis a vis Ferry.
I used to friends with a guy played in Roxy and I never heard anything like that.
Lennon's line was so obviously twisted by people with a much stranger agenda than any muso that I am amazed it had 1/100th the effect it finally did.
Record burning????
You couldn't make that up!!!
Nazi iconography/aesthetics was banal, formalistic, simplistic, and vain. It figures that Ferry finds it attractive.
Virginia Plain in Naze regalia.
bleep
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