John Foxx Interviews

The Night I Nearly Joined The Clash - John Foxx Admits All To Johnny Waller

"It was a strange period....there was nothing happening, no bands, when I first came to London - apart from Dr. Feelgood and that pub-rock thing, but I wasn't interested in that although I used to go to the gigs and enjoy the atmosphere. But I just felt there was something more wanted - and you could sense it in the air, there was a real feeling, everybody wanted something but they didn't quite know what it was. And I would see people around, like Mick out of The Clash in his leathers and studs, and I thought he looks great, I wonder if I should ask him to be my guitarist....no, I'm sure he can't play guitar looking like that - he looks too good! We were all aware of each other in 1976, we'd see each other around, but then I got a slightly more clear idea and I formed Ultravox - and everyone else did that as well, forming bands. The Clash - well, they were London S.S. then, terrible name! - they were together and they almost asked me to be their singer at one point...." John Foxx allows himself a wry smile at what might have been and takes a sip of a cool drink on a hot day. casual yet smart, reserved yet articulate, he has the unhurried air of an English diplomat in the tropics; accentuated by his swept-back hair, his measured speech and his beige suit. it's three years since Foxx split from his brainchild - "I wasn't sure whether to give the band the use of the name Ultravox, because I'd originated that, but then I thought it would be good if they carried on in some form, so I just took my bit, which is the name John Foxx, to use as an idenfication for me. I did think about changing my name" (he was born Dennis Leigh, and the artwork on the first Ultravox album was credited to him under that name), "and I even thought about starting another band at one point - with a different name and a different outlook". After he discovered Kraftwerk - "it sounded so new and the thinking behind what they did was immaculate and beautifully considered and I wanted to use what they'd done in the context of English pop music".

The exploration of simplistic synthesizer compositions gradually struck Foxx as self limiting, "so I thought I'd open it up a bit, make it more flexible....because I always like writing songs." The latest evidence of his desire to create pop music in an almost classical English mold is his latest single, 'Endlessly', the melody of which betrays strains of Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play', while the arrangements (backward tape loops et all) recall The Beatles psychedelia of 'Blue Jay Way' and 'Strawberry Fields'. In fact, Foxx had admitted in a previous interview once that the 'Revolver' LP was "Something unique - it had all the freshness and promise of something new". "That's right", he agrees, "It was a definite decision to go back to pop music, because there's a big trend at the moment where everyone is using American soul as their vocabulary for writing songs and that produces some interesting things - but I wanted to use a vocabularty that was English, because I've always liked English music......And even when I took things from Germany, I always put them into an English context. That Beatles era is tremendously unfashionable now, but if you listen to 'Strawberry Fields', they were using electronic techniques of reverse tapes that were very fresh and innovative. There's no nostalgia involved, it's the excitement in the records because they just used to go into the studio and perform - which is slightly different to the way people record now:" But I'd imagine you'd be very clinical in the studio! "Oh yeah, I do things very clinically at times, but I want to try different things to recapture that freshness and vitality, that slightly rough feeling which I think is more beautiful really. I want to try things with that same spirit." Looking back on the punk movement, he reckons "it was a great period for English music, and it only got bad when punk became conservative and stopped growing. that was very sad for me, because I had a lot of hopes for it - it just became a parody of itself and let down a lot of people whe were working class, like me, cos you could just form a band, get up on stage....and it was exciting!".

"I was writting very violent songs at the time, but more kind of Velvet Underground - violent, whereas The Clash were closer to Iggy, but me being an art student, I was really idealistic - and I never want to lose the instinctive feeling you get out of rock music, that feeling of getting excited when you play. sometimes you can lose that a bit by over intellectualising, which I cand do when I'm not careful. I'm always interested in movements, haveing been through one myself, and there's always a point where it seems the possibilites are endless and it's wildly exciting, everyone get really electrified by it......but inevitably it decays or becomes conservative and ossifies, but it's that moment when the possibilities are boundless that you get the promise that is never fulfilled. But I understand now that the main thing is the idea, its the promise......" The vast untapped potential if an idea, of emotion, of energy, manifests itself in many ways, and on 'Endlessly', there's a phrase, "She's Illuminous" which captures this perfectly. It's just a word I invented without realising" he grins sheepishly, "probably illiteracy on my part! It's just how some people at certain times seem to have a light inside them, it's just a feling you get about someone, it's kind of radiance - and it's something that's always intrigued me - it's something I've covered before in songs like 'Slow Motion' and 'When You Walk Through Me'. I like that feeling of calm....It's like William Burroughs summed it up perfectly - 'I had a feeling of stillness and wonder".

Out of the stillness comes action, and at the moment Foxx is a busy man - he recently worked on the soundtrack for Antonioni's Identification Of A Woman' and when not recording he's writing a semi-autobiographical book abouty one of his alter-ego's, 'The Quiet Man'. "I try to lead two - or more -lives, which can be a bit frightening, but I designed John Foxx to be a different person from me, he'm my public image. It's always John Foxx, I always think it's him, not me, that makes the records and appears in the music press - he becomes whatever people think he is. Thats inevitable". Between them, Dennis, John and The Quiet Man will soon release a new LP. Will it be pop music? "Pop? You mean popular? I think all my stuff is popular - I never intended it not to be listened to!" Does that go for all three of you - what about John Foxx? Suddenly the hands clasping the long, cool drink belong to Dennis Leigh and he laughs. "I think John Foxx is more intelligent than I am!"