John Foxx, October 1983
“In people's minds I'm still some kind of frozen electrician but it's not true at all."
When I ran my Ultravox interview a few months ago, I wasn’t expecting such a strong response. There are a lot of people out there who still haven’t forgiven Midge Ure from taking over from John Foxx as the band’s singer.
So, for the diehard John Foxx fans, here’s an interview I did with him in 1983 about his solo career.
It’s interesting to realise that the concept of “design thinking” has got a bit trendy in the 21st century (I hear it a lot these days). Back then, no-one had heard of it unless they’d gone to art school.
GOLDEN SHOT
JOHN FOXX re-designs pop for Penny Kiley
Melody Maker, October 29, 1983
WHAT sort of music would the Beatles have made if they'd been recording today? A ludicrous hypothetical question of course, but it's still interesting to speculate while there are still records being made that bear their influence, and versions of their songs are still reaching the charts.
It's tempting to wonder if they might have come out with anything like John Foxx's third solo LP, "The Golden Section": a record which mixes musical ideas from the "Strawberry Fields" era with musical techniques of the Eighties. Of course it's unlikely, because at this point we must drop speculation and let in some historical perspective: in the context of 1983 pop music, something like "The Golden Section", with its obvious echoes of the past, is actually too backward-looking to qualify.
The new LP has, in fact, been severely criticised - not least in this paper - for that very reason, and it's true that those songs where the influences are the most obvious are the least successful parts of an otherwise quite personal record. It does seem rather strange to find someone who was once in the vanguard of a new form of pop music to be relying so heavily on the past. John Foxx doesn't see it quite like that. His approach to music making, as he explained it, hasn't actually changed even if the music itself has.
It's still a matter of what John calls "design": "It's a recombination of elements. It's how everyone makes music, by choosing what they use, finding something that makes you really excited, and eventually you develop your vocabulary and that makes your sound for a while; it becomes you, it becomes something of your own."
It doesn't stop there though: "Some people tend to do just one design for themselves or their songs and just reproduce it. It's obviously a very sound commercial thing to do but it's also pretty boring.
"There are whole areas of music that I like that I haven't touched yet or am only just beginning to touch. 'The Golden Section' is one area, it's re-doing English pop music like the Beatles did with things like 'Strawberry Fields'. At the moment everyone's using the vocabulary of American soul to make their music, it's a kind of pastiche, and that always indicates to me that there's a dearth of ideas because that music's always there but it becomes dominant again when there's nothing else."
I suggest that what John's doing isn't so different: he's utilising old ideas too even if they're from another source.
"At least my ideas are English - I don't want to use American sounds because I'm not American.
"I think there are whole areas of music that are still being neglected - like the Beatles did with 'Strawberry Fields', some of the things they used like their harmonies and the way they recorded."
His current tour is the first John's done for four years and the first since leaving Ultravox, marks something of a change in attitude, and a more direct approach.
"All the stuff I've done before was meant to be studio orientated stuff, but these are more like live songs so I decided to go out and do them. I did half the album in eight days, just locked myself into the studio, most of it was first take, and that's how I want to work now. There's got to be a lot of sweat and a lot of fun, and it's got to be enjoyable - that's rock 'n' roll."
I wondered whether this return to basics was a kind of admission that the use of technology to make music has gone as far as it can. Does John feel that the electronic format in itself is fundamentally limited?
"I think I was at that point with 'Metamatic'," (the first LP) admits John. "That was as far as I wanted to take it and that was three years ago. What I've done since isn't really 'electropop' - it's got synthesizers in but so have most heavy metal bands these days - it doesn't just slot into any category. I got bored with that kind of electronic format because I only did it for the one album - it was a design kind of idea. In people's minds I'm still some kind of frozen electrician but it's not true at all."
Unfortunately images stick. John still hasn't shaken off the Quiet Man, the persona he invented for that first LP. ("I wanted to do things remotely, in a cold distant way because that was the way I felt, literally like a shadow. I had to invent the Quiet Man as something to live through, I couldn't think of any other way to operate.")
John's ideas about design do tend to reinforce that cold calculating image as well, but that's misleading. "It's just a practical way of thinking. But you design with your heart as well, I must say that, it's not meant to be a cold distant thing. Things like love and affection shouldn't be left out, otherwise it's a bad design."
He explains how it started: "It was when I was about to leave art school that I started to think about design and I thought it would be nice to design a band."
That does sound rather contrived - after all didn't Bryan Ferry do something of the sort after he left art school? - but when you try to pin down the way it works the idea becomes more abstract. Perhaps it's no more than an attempt to demystify the creative process - John is reluctant to use the word "art".
"Everything's a design," he points out, "You design your appearance, you design a way of life - as much by what you reject as what you put in. Every band does it, even though it may be unconscious.”
Designing music, then, as much as anything else, is a matter of choosing or rejecting, combining elements - part plan, part experiment. "It's not a closed thing, it's meant to be something very open. A good design will allow for spontaneity, things that are unexpected, it will allow for accidents and all those other human things."
And the Quiet Man has become human enough to admit uncertainty, and uncertainty admits possibility.
"The only thing you can trust in the end is your own instinct. You carry it out in a practical way, design your approach to it very carefully, but the thing itself is something that you can't rationalise very easily, except in retrospect."
And the real value of design?
"You can have some dreams and not do anything about it, but if you have a few dreams and do something about it, that's the design - making it practical, realising your dreams."
Back in the 21st century
Louder than War have published a review/preview of my (currently unpublished) memoir. It includes an extract from the book - I hope you enjoy it.
Great interview that has stood the test of time 🙏
Nice interview with someone I know little about but who comes across really well. Found the extract from your memoirs on the LTW site really interesting and your friendship with the wonderful Pete Wylie. Managed to see him once, at a terrific gig in Wrexham around 20yrs ago when he was part of Dead Men Walking, with Mike Peters, Glenn Matlock and Kirk Brandon. Really hope you get a publisher, be good to see them in print.