John Foxx
One of the great and frequently overlooked innovators of the late 20th century music, John Foxx could almost be the popular conception of a cult artist – an academic, influenced by film, painting and photography as much as music; leaving his band before they broke big; challenging the very notion of the pop song and achieving a degree of commercial success in the process. Being a cult artist does not bother Foxx: “It means I can pursue what I want to do without having to be bent too much out of shape by other forces.” Foxx’s work remains highly influential.
Dennis Leigh was born in that well-known neo-futuristic metropolis, Chorley in Lancashire. He devoured art and literature from an early age and originally studied to be a painter. Leigh moved to London and, influenced heavily by the Velvet Underground and the New York Doll’s, founded the short lived Tiger Lily with Chris St. John (“An imaginary version of what might have happened in London if the Dolls had been living there”) in 1974. Within a year Leigh renamed himself Foxx and with St. John (now Chris Cross) formed Ultravox!
The group made three groundbreaking albums between 1977 and 1979, working with producers the calibre of Conny Plank, Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno: Ultravox!, Ha!Ha!Ha! and Systems Of Romance. Foxx remains bemused at how influential these became: “It’s always a surprise when people tell me how those albums affected them. Catch me at the right moment and I’ll even admit I find it moving.” However, Ultravox! Was dropped by Island. Foxx left the group, feeling constrained by the band format. His going solo was seen as the death knell of the outfit; akin to Barrett leaving Floyd or Gabriel leaving Genesis (Ultravox! did, like both the groups mentioned went on to have a hit or two…)
His debut solo album, Metamatic reflected the European nature of his work; stark soundscapes and disturbed song structures abounded. “At the time it felt dangerous, as if I’d thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I stripped things down to the point where I might have gone too far. In retrospect I did exactly the right thing.” Foxx had a cast-iron credibility, and his singles from this era, Underpass, No-One Driving and Burning Car found him flirting with the Top 40.
Foxx’s second album, The Garden, released in summer 1981 made a convincing case for pastoral techno, and the lead single, Europe After The Rain mapped out this area perfectly. The album was very much a reaction to the stark futurism that Foxx espoused, “London in the 70s and early 80s was very bleak. I was writing music that reflected the way I was living. Suddenly, I went off to Italy, which was very different to the Germanic axis that I had been travelling along before then. I met a new sort of sensual living. It really had an effect on me.” Although running with some ubiquitous studio hands of this period (Fashion Zeus B. Held and I-level bassist Jo Dworniak to name but two), the music’s timelessness enables it to survive the dating of other records from this era
By the time of 1983’s reflective The Golden Section, Foxx was entirely on the margins of the be-mulleted decade he had so helped influence. The album was a mature work loaded with achingly beautiful melodies, befitting a man who had now been making a living from music for the best part of ten years. His final Virgin album, the introspective In Mysterious Ways, in 1985 managed to take the key even lower. And then…silence. “I suddenly became uninterested in the whole thing and walked away from it. I had other things I wanted to do.”
Foxx concentrated on art and photography (his graphic artwork have appeared on many works of modern fiction), occasionally lecturing on the subject.“ I realised I like to operate on three fronts; articulating verbally, visually and musically. I think music is probably the most fluent one and it’s the most satisfying. But the other two have their place and I cannot do without them.”
The albums Shifting City and Cathedral Oceans appeared as if from nowhere in 1995. Free from major labels (Foxx has established his Metamatic label), Shifting City found Foxx on incredible from, working with fellow musician Louis Gordon who had long been a fan of Foxx’s career. The album was all Beatles harmonies over skewed riffs and an understanding of techno and beats’n’breaks. Foxx could not be more pleased with his collaborator. “Louis is wonderful to work with, very enthusiastic. Because my stuff was part of his background, he instinctively knew where to take it.”
Cathedral Oceans could be loosely described as an ambient release, exploring Foxx’s relationship with church music through a series of echoing sound pieces, similar in part to the second side of “Heroes”. It’s very much a part of an ongoing project: “ It has been developing since 1983 and there’s a lot of it. I chose the bits that worked well together and made an album out of that.” The album was toured in churches and botanical gardens throughout Europe. Foxx also took to the stage on a small-scale ‘pop’ tour with Gordon to support a subsequent-sales-only live album, the 500 limited edition issue Subterranean Omnidelic Exotour.
Although Foxx’s role in music has always been that of a deliberate outsider, he enjoys the significant place it occupies in his life, and is never anything less than full of optimism for his future: “It’s good to be driving on the road instead of the pavement, which I have done occasionally. I know where I’m going now-and it’s a good feeling.”
