John Foxx is the name that Dennis Leigh chose to call himself for his identity in the London rock band Ultravox!. He traveled from Chorley, Lancashire, on a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art. While in London, he met some very intelligent and telepathic musicians and in 1973 formed what was to be called Tiger Lily a couple of years later. The band recorded one 45rpm, the A side of which was a cover of the famous Fats Waller track Ain't Misbehavin', to be used in a soft porn movie of the same name.
Eventually, Tiger Lily became Ultravox!, a tangentially punk/glam/electronic rock band. Other appropriate labels could be robot rock or art rock. It's influences were apparent from the start, like Roxy Music, The New York Dolls, David Bowie with some Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Making one of their earlier names, London Soundtrack, seem especially apt, Ultravox! absorbed everything around them, including disco and reggae music in their first self-titled record.
There are elements set them apart from their contemporaries, not the least of which were John Foxx's vocals and Billy Currie's violin. Ultravox! were there at the beginning of punk, one of its originators but always experimenting a little too much to remain acceptable. Punk became a category, a movement complete with maniphestos, uniforms and a regimented code of ethics.
Ultravox! were signed to Island Records and indeed they made three very interesting and exciting LPs, released in 1976, 1977 and 1978. The first of these was credited as produced by Ultravox!, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite. This is likely the first example of Eno providing a rock band articulation for a thesis, coaxing them through the valleys of what is and what isn't. On the back cover of his diary, 1995, Eno has a long list of things he calls himself and one of them is a drifting clarifier, something he was first for Ultravox!. He performed this function for Devo, for Talking Heads and finally, with real financial rewards, for U2.
Like the German band Neu!, Ultravox!'s identity was partly linked to its exclaimation point. By the third album, Systems Of Romance, dropped was the exclaimation point, for whatever reason, along with most connections to the sounds, visuals and attitudes connected to punk. Also missing was their first guitarist, Stevie Shears, replaced by Robin Simon. The lyrics and music are at their most visual and emotional, exploring interesting psychological states with the synthesizer taking on an expanded role.
A tour of the United States, was very successful in terms of crowd enthusiasm and ticket sales, but it had no financial help from a record label as the band had been dropped from Island's roster. Simon decided to stay in New York and Foxx planned a solo record.
In 1979, continuing his interest in D.I.Y. as a method of making music as well as a way of living a life, Foxx gave up the band construct. He was replaced as lead vocalist by JamesMidge Ure. This next incarnation of Ultravox took some of the ideas explored on the final Foxx-era record Systems Of Romance to huge worldwide success with Vienna in 1980. More releases, arenas and Live Aid followed with Ure. This version of the band lasted another six years.
On television and in print, Foxx-era Ultravox was listed by electropop innovator Gary Numan as one of his major influences when he was having #1 hits in Britain.
Meanwhile, Foxx signed to Virgin Records and achieved chart success with his first solo single, Underpass. It brings the listener to a territory introduced by Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady and United. All three of these achieved chart success in the UK and yet sidestepped a lot of "requirements" thereof. Stranger music seemed like it could hold its own, move units and sell tickets. Because of this power, popular music could go in any direction its makers wished.
The first John Foxx album, Metamatic, remains a mysterious creature. It is released on Metal Beat (Foxx's own label and a subsidiary of the then open-minded Virgin Label) and is Foxx, without a band, playing synthesizers and programming rhythms. Metal Beat, the label, is named after one of the songs from the album (or is it the other way around?), which was also released as a single. In interviews, he expressed enthusiasm in independent labels. Metal Beat lasted from 1980 to 1985 with Foxx alone.
Musically, Metamatic continued some of the stylistic direction as Ultravox's Conny Plank-produced Systems of Romance, and included at least two tracks that were performed live with Ultravox, Touch And Go and He's A Liquid. It sounds less like his former band and more like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Thomas Leer. Heavily influenced by the fiction of J.G. Ballard, the still fresh-sounding, surreal and stripped-down electronic music, Metamatic conjures up moods and images that are of the urban landscape (sex, violence, personal dramas and manias, love, betrayal, isolation, inclusion, cities, abandoned rooms and buildings, car bombs, fog, sunshine, trees, earth, fire, air, ether, water, clouds and skies are all envoked in music, lyrics, melody and atmosphere). Sometimes uncannily like Peter Cook's popstar character in the movie Bedazzled, Foxx, with seeming detachment, talks in a deadpan voice, almost chants the lyrics, at times, but he just as often sings them. The experience of this album, as a whole, serves well as a soundtrack to the photographs of Bill Brandt.
Some say Metamatic is the first proper electropop record. However, it is just as likely that Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle, also released in 1980, is the first electropop record. Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, from 1977 is also, most definitely, electropop.
Every release of John Foxx, alone, with Ultravox or with collaborators, almost always includes powerful accompanying imagery and graphics. This puts Foxx in a category that also includes Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records, Cluster (Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius together, separate or with collaborators) and others on Sky Records, Factory Records, Creation Records, David Sylvian, Can and Spoon Records, Neu!, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Jandek and Corwood Industries, The Residents and Ralph Records, Hipgnosis (which included future Throbbing Gristle member Peter Christopherson), Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music as well as Brian Eno. It wouldn't be a stretch to put all of these in the same level of relevancy as Martin Denny and all that is Exotica, The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol as well as The Beatles in terms of meshing sound and vision as a cohesive statement.
Not surprisingly, Metamatic is also one of the most remarkable of record covers. The album cover's artwork comes from the same world as Bill Brandt, Jandek and Rene Magritte. Incidentally, Gary Numan has said that the cover of his The Pleasure Principle was a tribute to Magritte's painting Le Principe Du Plaisir, but no-one noticed.
The collective electronic pop statement of that one year, 1980, which, it could be said actually spans from 1977-1983, should include, but not be limited to, Numan's The Pleasure Principle, Foxx's Metamatic, Bill Nelson's Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam, Cluster's Curiosum, Judy Nylon's Pal Judy, Cabaret Voltaire's Red Mecca, Cowboys International's Original Sin, Der Plan's Geri Reig, Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats, The Plastic's Welcome Plastics, The Residents's Commercial Album, Tuxedo Moon's Half Mute, Japan's Gentlemen Take Polaroids, Yellow Magic Orchestra's Solid State Survivor, The Normal's Warm Leatherette, Lene Lovich's Stateless, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental's The Bridge, The Human League's Reproduction and Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.
The Garden is like a follow-up to Systems Of Romance, has more of a band feel and even includes Robin Simon on guitar. Foxx set up his own recording studio, called The Garden, housed in an artist's collective, surrounded by sculptors, painters and film makers. The vocoder, or voice-operated recorder, originally created in the late 1930s by Homer Dudley for Bell Laboratories was used so well by Kraftwerk, Herbie Hancock, in American soul music and funk music (especially Roger Troutman of Zapp]], the underground Detroit and New York black music scenes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. On this record, Foxx made it sound like Kraftwerk did, bringing a ghostly effect to the music. On songs like Fusion/Fision and Pater Noster, it sounds ecclesiastical.
In 1983, Foxx provided the soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni's film Identification Of A Woman (Identificazione Di Una Donna). This is another departure and works really well as the images and mood of this movie are very Foxx. A musical reference point here could be Tangerine Dream's Phaedra.
Further singles and albums followed, but none repeated his earlier success, and Virgin became increasingly dissatisfied, pressuring Foxx to record more accessible material. After the release of the, some might say, comparatively lightweight In Mysterious Ways in 1985, Foxx gave up the pop music scene. He sold his recording studio "The Garden", and returned to his earlier career of graphic designer and artist, working under his original name of Dennis Leigh. Please see the book covers of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry. He also began experimenting in ambient music, working on a project called Cathedral Oceans.
Also during his sabbatical from the music industry, Foxx found inspiration in the underground House music and Acid music scenes in Detroit and London, releasing white label vinyl anonymously. This brought it all back to the 1979 feeling of independence where "stars" weren't needed. The rhythms were updated but the methodology for composing and releasing music inspired lots of creative energy. In the very early 1990s, as Nation 12, he released two 12" singles (Remember and Electrofear) with Tim Simenon, who is best known for his Bomb The Bass project.
It wasn't until 1995 that John Foxx released another album, Shifting City, a collaboration with Manchester's Louis Gordon, which was an updated stylistic return to Metamatic. Also, in 1995, the first volume of Cathedral Oceans was finally released.
Cathedral Oceans is really a return to Foxx's Catholic youth and his love of the cathedrals of England, the UK and Europe. One can find the roots of Cathedral Oceans in traditional evensong, the Ambient Series of records by Brian Eno, the track My Sex from the first self-titled Ultravox! record, Hiroshima Mon Amour from Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, Just For A Moment from Systems Of Romance. There's also the 1981 Foxx release The Garden (and its accompanying full-color book of pre-Photoshop photo montages, called Church), the soundtrack to aforementioned Identificazione Di Una Donna, the Metamatic-era Glimmer as well as the In Mysterious Ways-era Enter The Angel II and Lumen De Lumine.
The return of Foxx has been well received by fans, and he and Louis Gordon have continued to work together. Especially exciting is their Crash And Burn available on vinyl and CD, from 2003, on Metamatic Records.
Discography
With Ultravox!:
- Ultravox! (1976)
- Ha!-Ha!-Ha! (1977)
- Systems of Romance (1978)
Solo:
- Metamatic (1980)
- The Garden (1981)
- The Golden Section (1983)
- In Mysterious Ways (1985)
- Cathedral Oceans (1995)
With Louis Gordon:
- Shifting City (1995)
- The Pleasures of Electricity (2002)
- Crash and Burn (2003)
With Harold Budd:
- Translucence/Drift Music (2003)
Links
Metamatic, the official John Foxx web site.