| John Foxx | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Dennis Leigh |
| Also known as | John Foxx |
| Born | 26 September 1947 |
| Origin | Chorley, Lancashire, England |
| Genres | Glam rock, synthpop, New Wave, psychedelic rock, ambient, electronic |
| Instruments | Vocals, keyboards, guitars, percussion |
| Years active | 1973–present |
| Associated acts | Tiger Lily, Ultravox, Nation 12, Blitz, Louis Gordon, Harold Budd, Benge, John Foxx And The Maths |
| Website | metamatic.com |
John Foxx (born Dennis Leigh[1]) is an English singer, artist, photographer and teacher. He was the original lead singer of the band Ultravox before being replaced by Midge Ure, when he left to embark on a solo career in 1979. Primarily associated with electronic synthesiser music, he has also pursued a parallel career in graphic design and education.
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Foxx was born 26 September 1947, in Chorley, Lancashire.[2] His father was a coal miner and pugilist, his mother a millworker. He attended St Mary’s Primary and St Augustine’s Secondary schools.[3] During his youth in the 1960s he embraced the lifestyle of a mod and a hippy.[4] He experimented with tape recorders and synthesisers while on a scholarship at the Royal College of Art in London.
His first band, formed whilst at art college in Preston, was called Woolly Fish.[2][5]
Prior to 1973, he was singing and playing a 12 string guitar, and occasionally supported Stack Waddy in Manchester, from where he later moved to London in order to escape what he saw as a lack of musical stimulus.[6]
In 1973 he formed a band that would eventually be called Tiger Lily, comprising initially bassist Chris Allen (real name: Christopher Thomas Allen) and guitarist Stevie Shears, with Canadian drummer Warren Cann joining shortly afterwards, in early 1974. The band played their first official gig at the Marquee club in August 1974. After the gig Billy Currie was recruited as violinist.
Tiger Lily released a single on 14 March 1975 on Gull Records, the A-side of which was a cover of the Fats Waller track "Ain't Misbehavin'". It was commissioned for (but not subsequently used in) a soft porn movie of the same name. The B-side of "Ain't Misbehavin'" was the group's own song - "Monkey Jive". The small amount of money they received for recording this single was used to buy Billy Currie an electric piano.[7]
Tiger Lily played frequently in London pubs between 1974 and 1975, however their Bowie-esque glam rock sound was rendered superfluous by the advent of punk.
After several name-changes, including Fire of London, The Zips and even The Damned, the band transformed into Ultravox!, with an exclamation mark, in July 1976. The group's style fused punk, glam, electronic, reggae and new wave music. Around this time, Leigh adopted his stage name of John Foxx (while Chris Allen, who had briefly gone by the name Chris St. John, changed his name again, to Chris Cross).
Among the elements that set the band apart from their contemporaries were Foxx's lyrics and vocal delivery, and Billy Currie's violin and synthesiser playing. Once the band signed to Island Records, they released three LPs during 1977-1978. The first Ultravox! single, Dangerous Rhythm, a reggae-styled song, backed with "My Sex", was released 19 January 1977. Their first album (the self-titled Ultravox!) was released shortly afterwards, produced by Steve Lillywhite and the band, with assistance from Brian Eno. The album attracted a lot of attention, but did not sell well. It was quickly followed by their second album Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, which featured a more jagged punk sound, and included the single ROckWrok, although both were commercial failures.. A notable track from "Ha! Ha! Ha!" was Hiroshima Mon Amour which saw the band's increasing use of synthesisers come to the fore and pointed the way for a new musical direction. The song is also notable for its use of a Roland TR-77 drum machine, possibly the first recorded use of a drum machine by a British band.
For their third album, Systems of Romance, Ultravox adopted a smoother sound, and abandoned the exclamation mark in their name. Also missing was their first guitarist, the punk-oriented Stevie Shears, who was replaced by Robin Simon, from a band called Neo. The album was co-produced by Conny Plank, an early associate of German electronic band Kraftwerk. The punk sound of the previous records was abandoned in favour of a sleek, electronic production that was a precursor of the synthpop sound. Two singles were released from the album, "Slow Motion" and "Quiet Men". Sales were modest, but the album did gain the band exposure to a wider audience, including the United States. Systems of Romance is often regarded as the first synthpop album and, as such, it strongly influenced bands that were to follow.
During the recording of Systems of Romance, a song of the same name was written, but the band had no time to record it. It was later included on Foxx's second solo album The Garden. [2] At Systems of Romance gigs, Foxx began to perform with the band three future solo songs, "He's a Liquid" and "Touch & Go" (later included on Metamatic, Foxx's first solo album) and "Walk Away" (included on The Garden album). The latter song was not performed again by Foxx until 1983.[8]
Despite being dropped by their record label at the beginning of 1979 [3], Ultravox undertook a self-financed tour of the United States in February, which was successful in terms of crowd enthusiasm and ticket sales. During the tour, the band performed two new songs, "Touch and Go", which Foxx later recorded for Metamatic, and "Radio Beach", which was never recorded in the studio.[9]
Foxx had informed the band that he wished to leave. The band came to a parting of the ways at the end of the tour on the west coast of the United States, Robin Simon deciding to stay on in New York and Foxx announcing his plan to go solo upon returning to England. [4] Without a lead singer, the band went into hiatus, Billy Currie joining Gary Numan's touring band and contributing to his highly successful 1979 album, The Pleasure Principle. [5] The burgeoning popularity of synthesiser music at this time, and Numan's oft-quoted praise for the Foxx-fronted lineup and song-output of Ultravox, helped revive interest in the band. Billy Currie rejoined the group, while John Foxx was replaced as lead vocalist by Midge Ure, of The Rich Kids, Slik and Thin Lizzy [6] whom Currie had met whilst working with Ure in Visage, Currie being encouraged to ask Ure by Ure's friend and former bandmate (in The Rich Kids), Rusty Egan.. Ultravox then built on some of the ideas explored on Systems of Romance, achieving huge worldwide success with the album Vienna in 1980, after which the band released a series of popular albums and singles. Midge Ure was active in organising, and Ultravox performed at, Live Aid in 1985, and at subsequent Live Aid events. [7] This Ultravox lineup lasted another nine years [8], overshadowing Foxx's concurrent solo career.
After signing to Virgin Records, Foxx achieved minor chart success with his first solo single, "Underpass" (UK Chart Pos. #31) and "No-One Driving" (UK Chart Pos. #32). Its parent album Metamatic appeared in record shops on 17 January 1980. Foxx played most of the synthesisers and "rhythm machines", as they were listed on the sleeve. The name of one of the album's songs, "Metal Beat", takes its name from a CR-78 drum machine sound used on the record. Virgin released the album under the imprint name "Metal Beat Records", which was used for Foxx releases throughout his contract with them.[9]
Foxx's next LP was The Garden, released 25 September 1981. This recording was a departure from the stark electronic sound of Metamatic, bearing a greater resemblance to Foxx’s swansong with Ultravox, Systems of Romance. The Garden's starting point was in fact a song called "Systems of Romance", written by Foxx for the earlier album but not released at the time.[10]
In 1982, Foxx set up his own recording studio, designed by Andy Munro, also called The Garden, housed in an artists' collective in Shoreditch, East London, in a former warehouse also occupied by sculptors, painters and film makers. He produced some demo recordings for Virginia Astley's first album From Gardens Where We Feel Secure [11]. Artists such as Depeche Mode, British Electric Foundation, Brian Eno, Trevor Horn, Bronski Beat, The Cure, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tina Turner, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Tuxedomoon also recorded in Foxx's studio.
In 1983, Foxx provided some music for the soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Identification of a Woman (Identificazione di una Donna) [12]. In September that year, his third solo LP The Golden Section was released. A development of the sound of The Garden, Foxx described this album as a "roots check" of his earliest influences such as The Beatles, psychedelia, and other pre-punk sources.
The album In Mysterious Ways was issued in October 1985. Musically it was not considered a significant advance on the sound of his two previous releases, nor was it a commercial success although the album's lyrics are far more romantic than any of his previous albums. [13]. Foxx later said that at the time he felt divorced from any contemporary musical influences. However, he did produce, co-write and play on Pressure Points, by Anne Clark, the same year [14].
After In Mysterious Ways, Foxx gave up a public career in pop music [15]. He sold his recording studio and returned to his earlier career as a graphic artist, working under his original name of Dennis Leigh. Examples of his work at this time include the book covers of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, and several books in the Arden Shakespeare series. He also continued experimenting with reverberation, vocal treatments and echo in ambient music, working on a project he called Cathedral Oceans.
After about five years "living like a ghost in London", Foxx began to find inspiration in the underground House and Acid music scenes in Detroit and London. With Nation 12 in the early 1990s, Foxx released two 12-inch singles, "Remember" and "Electrofear". The first was a collaboration with Tim Simenon, best known for his Bomb the Bass project. The group also wrote the music for the Bitmap Brothers computer games Speedball 2 (1990) and Gods (1991). He also worked with pioneers in this field such as LFO and made the music video for their eponymous debut single. Around this time, Foxx also taught on the Graphic Arts & Design degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University.
On 24 March 1997, John Foxx made a return to the music scene with the simultaneous release of two albums, Shifting City and Cathedral Oceans on Metamatic Records.
Shifting City was a collaboration with Manchester's Louis Gordon, an updated stylistic return to Foxx's Metamatic synth pop sound which also displayed the influence of 1990s underground dance music and the 'triphop' style, along with the psychedelic Beatles-esque pop first apparent on Ultravox’s "When You Walk Through Me" (from 'Systems Of Romance').
On 11 October 1997, Foxx played his first public gig since 1982 at The Astoria, London. A limited edition CD (1,000 numbered copies only) entitled Subterranean Omnidelic Exotour was available for purchase by ticket holders.
Cathedral Oceans was a solo John Foxx record, an ambient return to his Catholic youth and his love of the cathedrals of England and Europe. Its roots included traditional evensong, Gregorian Chant, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, and German band Cluster. From his own music Foxx drew on such pieces as "My Sex" from the first self-titled Ultravox! record, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" from Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, "Just For a Moment" from Systems Of Romance, and the title track from The Garden. Cathedral Oceans began as a project during the sessions for "The Garden" and has been a work in progress for 20 years before this release, described by Foxx himself as one of the proudest achievements of his career. An accompanying DVD and book of images was made commercially available for the first time during an installation in Hoxton Square, London, in January 2003.
Foxx and Gordon continued to work together, performing live on the Subterranean Omnnidelic Exotour in 1997 and 1998 and releasing a second album The Pleasures of Electricity, in September 2001. Two years later they toured again, to promote the album Crash and Burn, released in September 2003 on Foxx's own Metamatic Records. This continued the Ballardian themes of urban landscape and automobiles present in Metamatic, and was supplemented by the Drive EP. 2003 also saw the release of the second volume of Cathedral Oceans as well as another ambient record, the double CD Translucence and Drift Music with Harold Budd. In 2004, from September through October, a collection of Cathedral Oceans images was exhibited at BCB Art, Hudson, New York, and in the following year Cathedral Oceans III was released.
In April 2005 Foxx guested on Finnish DJ Jori Hulkkonen's album Dualizm, where he provided vocals for "Dislocated" which Hulkkonen had written especially for him. A month later, Foxx appeared on stage at the Brighton Pavilion with Harold Budd and Bill Nelson as part of a concert to celebrate the work of the retiring pianist, which led to the announcement in October that year that Foxx would be involved in collaborations with Jah Wobble, Robin Guthrie, Steve Jansen and Nelson. The following month an album's worth of salvaged Nation 12 material was finally issued under the title Electrofear. Despite its relatively low-key promotion and status as largely a 'work in progress', Electrofear encapsulated many of the original ideas that were more fully realised on Shifting City and, in its turn, From Trash.
In June 2006, Foxx released an instrumental solo album called Tiny Colour Movies consisting of fifteen instrumental tracks inspired by short art films he saw at a private screening. His official website described these as having the "filmic, atmospheric approach" of the Metamatic-era instrumental B-sides "Glimmer", "Film One" and "Mr No". On 18 November 2006, Foxx gave a performance of the work at the Duke of York's cinema in Brighton, where Tiny Colour Movies was premiered as part of the city's Film Festival. Edited versions of the movies were shown on a big screen for the first time with Foxx playing a mix of live and recorded accompaniment from the album. This 'film' was shown again at Fulham Palace in July 2007 and then in a slightly revised format at the ICA and as part of the 21st International Film Festival in Leeds during November that year.
Three collaborative albums with Louis Gordon were released in late 2006: Live From a Room (As Big as a City), a 'live' studio album from the 2003 tour (released in association with an interview CD entitled "The Hidden Man") in October; the studio album From Trash in November; and a further album from the same sessions a few weeks later during the accompanying mini-tour. This two-CD package, entitled Sideways, included ten original tracks plus two extended versions of songs on From Trash. The second disc contained an extensive interview with Foxx describing the making of From Trash which was available only at concerts on the 2006 tour. The album saw a more commercial UK-wide release in April 2007.
A second surround sound DVD of Cathedral Oceans was released in March 2007. This contained his artwork made into a film intended as a "slowly moving, hallucinogenic, digital stained glass window, intended to be projected as big as possible onto architecture and in public places." The work was premiered in November 2006 at the Leeds International Film Festival.
In July 2007, Foxx exhibited some of his Cathedral Oceans artwork as large format digital prints at Fulham Palace as part of the RetroFuture exhibition hosted by ArtHertz. On the opening night, Foxx performed a piano piece accompanying a reading from his unpublished novel The Quiet Man in front of an audience for the first time. In September, a remastered edition of Metamatic was released as a two-CD pack containing the original album plus most of the associated B-sides and extra tracks from the period, including two 'new' songs re-assembled from original music recorded at the time.
On 29 September 2007, a showcase of Foxx's work was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London where he performed another version of Tiny Colour Movies and hosted a question-and-answer session. This was followed by the first-ever live performance of the entire Metamatic album, during which Foxx and Louis Gordon were accompanied on stage by Steve D'Agostino. Later in the evening, the DVD of Cathedral Oceans was shown in one of the ICA cinema studios. In October, Foxx and Gordon toured the UK with Metamatic, culminating in a show at Cargo in London. The year ended with two shows at the Luminaire in London. A live album titled A New Kind of Man, culled from the Metamatic performances in 2007, was released on Metamatic Records on 28 April 2008.[10]
John Foxx presented three different pieces of his solo work in the space of one week in June 2008. This began with a showing of Tiny Colour Movies at the Caixaforum in Barcelona on 14 June 2008, followed by a performance of Cathedral Oceans III inside the Great Hall at Durham Castle, England on the 18th. He then travelled to Italy and presented an extract from The Quiet Man at the 14th Festival Internazionale di Poesia in Genoa.[11]
In March 2010, Berlin producer Mark Reeder was given remixed the track Underpass (Reeder Sinister Subway Mix)[12] for John Foxx's CD/DVD retrospective compilation Metatronic. Reeder not only remixed his versions from the original master tapes in stereo for the CD, but he also made 5.1 mixes of his own remixes and John Foxx's original 1980s version.[13]
In the run up to the John Foxx And The Maths Interplay tour in October 2011, Artrocker ran a series of articles on Foxx, including a newly filmed interview taken at The Garden studios in London. Special features during the "John Foxx Week" also contained quotes and comments about John’s work from a variety of different musicians and film-makers, including The Orb, Vincent Gallo, members of Ladytron and Duran Duran, director Alex Proyas, and Awaydays creator Kevin Sampson. The corresponding printed version Artrocker (Issue 115) also featured John Foxx and Gary Numan together in an in-depth interview. [14]. The magazine contains further tributes by Philip Oakey of The Human League and Jim Kerr of Simple Minds.
In December 2009 the Metamatic website announced the new musical project John Foxx And The Maths, the name given to the work written and produced by John Foxx and Benge.[15]. Benge had already broke the news on his own blog in November calling The Maths "a new album project"[16]. An initial single Destination / September Town was released in December 2009 as download only from Townsend Records[17] and later via i-tunes. The duo continued to work in Benge's studio in Shoreditch throughout 2010 and some new tracks were previewed at the Short Circuit electronic music festival at The Roundhouse in London on 5th June 2010. [18] A new album entitled Interplay was announced in January 2011 [19] and released on March 21st. The album gained much critical acclaim[20] with The Quietus calling it "one of the finest electronic records you'll hear in 2011." [21] The Quietus also launched a remix competition to coincide with the release of the album. Stems of the album track Shatterproof were made available for download, remixing and re-uploading via the Soundcloud site. The competition was won by Dave Poeme Electronique [22][23]. The release of the album was preceded by a remix of Shatterproof on YouTube[24] Another live event featuring John Foxx And The Maths, originally scheduled for December 2010, was held in April 2011. Back to the Phuture was billed as a special electronic music event – featuring live sets from John Foxx, Gary Numan, Mirrors and Motor – plus a DJ set by Mute Records founder Daniel Miller.[25]. Again, a selection of tracks from the new album and Foxx's past works were played. [26]
A cover version of the Pink Floyd track Have a Cigar was recorded for a tribute CD issued by Mojo magazine with their October 2011 issue. It was announced shortly afterwards that the version on the CD was not the completed version and a free download of the finished version was offered via the Mojo website[27]
A nine date UK tour by John Foxx And The Maths was announced in July 2011, plus live performances in Poland and Belgium. A second album The Shape of Things was also announced prior to the tour and was initially only available for purchase at tour venues. [28]
In 2000, a Porcupine Tree release called Lightbulb Sun was issued with cover art by Foxx.
Foxx has more recently taken a senior lecturer position at The London College of Music and Media TVU in London, working with art, media and music students across a range of courses. These include a masters degree in Computer Arts, as well as undergraduate courses such as Digital Arts and Audio Technology. In mid-2005, he took a sabbatical to record new music, write, work on the films which make up Tiny Colour Movies and tour in Europe and the UK.
In December 2007, Foxx exhibited some of his photographic works in an exhibition called Cinemascope at the Coningsby Gallery in West London. The images were part of three collections, "Grey Suit Music", "Tiny Colour Movies" and "Cathedral Oceans".
(Features Crash and Burn, Cathedral Oceans III, Tiny Colour Movies, From Trash, Electrofear and the second edition of the Cathedral Oceans DVD.) The albums and DVD are re-packaged in cardboard wallets, featuring alternative artwork to the original pressings. Six art prints of John Foxx's artwork are also included.
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