Renowned for the atmospheric qualities of their music, it’s sometimes too easy to think of Ultravox purely in visual terms: four men walking down a cobbled street, a white horse entering the foreground; the soundtrack to a video stopping so the singer could catch his breath; or mirrored sunglasses reflecting a swaying throng…
But there’s much more to Ultravox than that. Lazily labelled as a New Romantic act, they were, in fact, pioneers of electronic rock, as far removed from many of their contemporaries as their critics were from them.
Comprising Lancastrian John Foxx (originally Dennis Leigh), Londoner Chris Cross (Chris Allen), Canadian escapee Warren Cann, the classically trained Billy Currie and guitarist Stevie Shears, they sped through a host of names – The Zips, Fire Of London and London Soundtrack – before alighting on Tiger Lily. A chance encounter between Warren and polymath John Marshall, whom he described as “a quintessential educated eccentric”, led to him securing a deal with the Gull label for a 1975 single release.
While they could record a new song for the flipside, Gull wanted an A-side recording of Ain’t Misbehavin’ to promote an up-coming period film. Recorded at Zomba Studios in Willesden, no one seems to be sure if their quirky interpretation ever made it onto the film due to its lack of success, or whether a contemporary recording by George Melly took its place instead. It also appears that only a few copies were initially issued in sleeves, when the single was first quietly released in 1975. Though it was later reissued during 1977, this was only after the band ha been signed by another label. It seems that some later additional processing was also applied to the mixes to give them a coarser,‘punk’ sound.
Soon after, the band met a young engineer called Steve Lillywhite, who began recording demos with them at London’s Denmark Street Studios under their new name Ultravox! (complete with the exclamation mark in homagé to Neu!). Though many tracks were written and recorded during these sessions, none of them have ever been released.
After signing to Island, Lillywhite assisted again, working alongside Brian Eno to produce 1977’s Ultravox!, which mixed a wide range of styles. In an era drowned out by the two-note chord, such musical diversity wasn deemed uncool, and early critical acclaim soon turned to accusations of pretentiousness and posturing. As Billy later put it, Ultravox! seemed to have a natural tendency to move into areas that others had abandoned, which was either commendably experimental or commercially foolish, depending on your viewpoint.
In contrast to its predecessor, the follow-up album, Ha! Ha! Ha!, was a more cohesive but far bleaker affair. After a record-breaking run at the Marquee, followed by the live EP Retro!, Ultravox (now sans ‘!’) travelled to Germany to record with the legendary Conny Plank (whose credits ranged from Kraftwerk’s Autobahn to Neu!, Ash Ra Temple and Cluster) at his Neunkirchen farmhouse. With guitarist Robin Simon’s smoother fret-work replacing Stevie Shears, a new energy returned to their studio work under Conny’s tutelage, as they began treating the studio itself as an instrument. The resulting experiments on Systems Of Romance pushed Ultravox up another level creatively but, like its predecessors, the album yielded no hit singles.
A well-received appearance at 1978’s Reading Festival followed, but the continued lack of chart success proved the final straw for Island, and they decided to drop the band rather than wait any longer to recoup their investment. Rather than splitting up at this point, Ultravox opted instead to tour the States, but while they drew good audiences, a dispirited John Foxx felt trapped within the confines of the band format and decided to leave.
With Robin Simon also staying in the States, this left Currie, Cross and Cann with two rather large problems: firstly, the band still owed Island a considerable amount of money for recording costs that had not been recouped through their records and, secondly, they no longer had a singer or guitarist. Determined to save Ultravox from extinction, everyone fanned out to earn money working with other artists. While Warren worked with Zaine Griff, Billy made the most high profile appearances as part of Gary Numan’s stage band and on both TOTP and Old Grey Whistle Test. He also appeared with Gary’s band on their second and final John Peel session in May 1979.
Salvation was to come from an unexpected source. James ‘Midge’ Ure had briefly entered the Scottish music scene with one of many club-performing covers bands, before being thrust into the limelight with Slik – a Bay City Rollers-type band, albeit one with a sharp line in American football clothing. When Slik imploded in 1977, Midge briefly cut a single as PVC2 for the legendary Zoom label, having turned down an earlier approach from Malcolm McLaren to join Sex Pistols.
Later that same year, by a strange coincidence, Midge found himself teamed with ex-Pistol Glen Matlock, Steve New and drummer Rusty Egan to form The Rich Kids. Signing to EMI, the new power-pop quartet soon began suffocating under the weight of expectation generated by an overactive hype machine. While their eponymous single narrowly missed the Top 20, it did become one of the first singles to be issued on coloured vinyl (red) in the UK.
Good press and a dynamic stage presence couldn’t save the Kids from an early bath. But by now, Midge and Rusty had discovered that they shared a similar interest in electronic music, such as Kraftwerk and, ironically, Ultravox. Having purchased a synthesiser, they began trying ideas out in the studio. When The Rich Kids disbanded, with studio time still owing, Midge proposed that they encourage a few friends in the industry to form a new studio band.
Now a leading DJ at Billy’s, in the heart of the growing Blitz movement, Rusty introduced Midge to a regular visitor, Billy Currie. With the addition of ex-Magazine men Dave Formula and Barry Adamson, John McGeoch (who later worked with Siouxsie & The Banshees), and with the club’s flamboyant promoter Steve Strange taking centre stage, they formed the New Wave era’s first supergroup, Visage. Initially releasing an early version of Tar in 1979 through Martin Rushent’s Genetic label, by 1980 they had signed to Polydor and resumed recording to complete their debut album.
Meanwhile, Billy realised that Midge was showing far more than a passing interest in Ultravox. Suggesting that he met up with the others, the meeting was a roaring success: not only had Ultravox found a singer who could play both guitar and keyboards – removing the distance between singer and band that Ultravox felt had hindered them in the past – they had also found someone with equal amounts of studio and songwriting experience.
It didn’t hurt that Midge had already had some contact with Morrison O’Donnell, whom the rest of the band decided to contact while Midge helped CMO out when Thin Lizzy found themselves a man down during a US tour. Ultravox and Ure had something in common – contractual difficulties – which, in Midge’s case, amounted to owing EMI for three Rich Kids albums that were obviously not going to be forthcoming.
Having found their man, Ultravox booked themselves into rehearsal rooms upon Midge’s return, and began writing the songs that would turn their fortunes around beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. After Foxx’s departure, the others had been keen to institute a more democratic process. While a few songs were generated entirely by one person (Warren actually wrote Sleepwalk, Passing Strangers and All Stood Still, as well as contributing quite heavily to the lyrical side of Vienna, for instance), songwriting credits would now be split equally, regardless of the balance of input on any given track.
With contractual loose ends now dealt with, various record company A&R men sat in on the sessions, particularly during the writing of Vienna. Taking themselves off to America for a successful multiple-date US tour, Ultravox thoroughly roadtested the new material, while performing several new versions of Foxx-era classics (Slow Motion, Quiet Men, Hiroshima Mon Amour, I Can’t Stay Long and Dislocation). Returning to the UK, a showcase concert was arranged for any interested record company, though only Chrysalis showed up with a suitable deal (and the band promptly started to record with purpose).
Refusing to waste time in the studio cutting any demos, Ultravox insisted that they would only record a finished track, choosing the Warren Cann-penned Sleepwalk for this purpose. Booked into RAK Studios, the resulting recording would be later remixed – to ensure that, sonically, it matched the rest of the debut album – and then released as a single in July 1980, prior to Vienna.
While Sleepwalk was the only Chrysalis single not to be supported by a commercial 12” version, it did introduce an additional new format that every future Ultravox single release would adopt: clear vinyl. Having discovered that clear vinyl could only be pressed from virgin material, unlike black vinyl, which often contained recycled elements, Ultravox opted for the extra sonic edge it could afford them. From now on, every 7” single would initially appear in clear vinyl, alongside the usually black pressings (most also came in thicker, often laminated, card sleeves to begin with, with later copies in thinner paper sleeves). It was the start of a fruitful relationship between the band and limited releases.
Once the remainder of the album had been recorded, Ultavox reunited with Conny Plank in Germany to complete the final mix-down. Better known as Vienna, a few test pressings for Ultravox’s first Chrysalis album had featured sleeves bearing the name Torque Point. Bravely making their intention clear by opening the album with the lively sevenminute instrumental Astradyne, the LP was packed with energetic performances of tour-honed tracks. The nine tracks were perfectly sequenced, with a three-song segue starting with the almost entirely synthetic, and mysterious, Mr X (and ending with the title track), to the all-out electro-rock of New Europeans and Private Lives.
After a long-running battle, Chrysalis relented and title track Vienna appeared unedited – except for a truncated introduction and fractionally shortened fade-out – in January 1981 as a four-and-a-halfminute single. Spending no less than 14 weeks in the charts, it was ultimately blocked from the No 1 slot by Imagine and Woman, the latter two of the three posthumous John Lennon hits released in the wake of his untimely death, and then by the ghastly Joe Dolce novelty hit Shaddup You Face.
Slowly building to a crescendo, with an open, sparse sound, and a piano-and-strings middle-eight, it was not only the unconventional sound of Vienna that caught the public’s attention; the release was accompanied by the moodily-shot widescreen video that more-or-less gave the group carte blanche with all their iconic videos thereafter.
The first fruits from Ultravox’s return to Köln hit the shops in August, when The Thin Wall burst out as the lead single from the forthcoming Rage In Eden, the album which contained some of the most intricate music the the group would commit to vinyl. A richer, more textural sound again demonstrated the subtlety that Conny and Ultravox could achieve.
A bold album sleeve, abstracting a classical female head into a surreal, stylised image, dominated record shop displays. Though the band had already collaborated with designer Peter Saville on the single sleeves to Vienna and All Stood Still, this was his first opportunity to make an impact with one of their album sleeves. Taking its inspiration from 50s European advertising posters (particularly for Gitanes cigarettes), when it was claimed that Saville had strayed too closely to the design of several posters that had inspired him, the threat of legal action from the widow of one of the original poster designers forced Chrysalis to reissue Rage In Eden in a new sleeve.
With George Martin as the new referee at the mixing desk, Ultravox decamped to Montserrat to record their next album, Quartet, which appeared as both a standard album and marbled picture disc, initially housed in an overprinted clear plastic sleeve. Quartet had a distinctly open and airy sound (fittingly, as it had been partly recorded at Air Studios), in contrast to the intensity of Rage In Eden.
In 1982 the band was the main attraction on the 5 December broadcast of Whistle Test, performing an energetic three-song set, with backing vocals provided by support act The Messengers. Somehow they managed to cram in a hugely impressive array of instrumentation, and as much of their mammoth Monument tour stage set, as the BBC studio could take.
In February 1984, a very cold band could be seen lip-synching on the video to One Small Day, surrounded by the Callanish standing stones on the isle of Lewis, very much reflecteing the Celtic flavour of some of the more atmospheric songs on the selfproduced Lament LP. Having co-produced every previous album and self-produced almost every B-side, the move was seamless and, with no immediate candidate to oversee them, obvious.
With the industry now engaged in a wave of promotional one-upmanship, One Small Day spawned two different 12” remixes (the second in a numbered sleeve). When it was realised that the silk-screened matt black card sleeve for Lament, with a grid of glossy black squares (all but invisible from a distance), was taking a horrendous amount of time to dry, later copies came in a glossy sleeve, with a modified cover incorporating the photo from the original inner sleeve. With the cassette adding one bonus 12” mix to each side, Ultravox’s first simultaneous CD release went one better with three additional remixes. Posters were then the name of the game. While the 7” of May’s Dancing With Tears In My Eyes initially came in a gatefold sleeve, the 12” tucked a fold-out poster into the other side of its gatefold, as did early copies of the Lament 12” in July, which was also issued as a gatefold on 7”.
Another elaborate stage set was designed for their Set Movement tour, though, ironically, the original intention had been to produce something easier to construct than the previous Monument-era one, Ultravox were at least able to offset some of the cost, thanks to sponsorship by Levi’s (a burning Levi’s contract, given out by the devil, appears as an in-joke in the video to Hymn) after Midge and Chris had produced an award-winning soundtrack to their popular Rivets campaign the previous year. A joint sponsorship deal with Sony also allowed Ultravox to include a free interview cassette in with the tour programme. Their Levi’s work, including scoring a second commercial, Threads (abandoned after creative interference), then led to a commission to record the soundtrack for the oft-repeated Channel Four movie Max Headroom.
Needing a rest after this constant cycle of recording and touring, Chrysalis suggested compiling a greatest hits collection. Though not initially keen on the idea, Midge and Chris suggested their rejected Levi’s demo could make the basis of a new song. Tthough taken for granted now, placing a new song on a Greatest Hits album had never been done before, and Love’s Great Adventure was the result that October.
When the Ethiopian famine struck, everything changed. Midge played an essential role in Bob Geldof’s passionate quest to raise relief money, drawing on all his skills to complete the whirlwind recording that propelled the powerful Do They Know It’s Christmas? into the shops in time to become that year’s Christmas No 1. Joining the newly-formed board of trustees, Midge found himself in the middle of Live Aid six months later. With Ultravox being switched in the running order so that Princess Diana could see The Boomtown Rats before leaving Wembley, the start of Ultravox’s set was lost to a poor hand-over from an overrunning foreign link-up. As the concert was never officially archived, this could not be restored to the partial record of the event now available on DVD (missing out opener Reap The Wild Wind and third song One Small Day).
In between the two charity events, Midge began working up some new material, which culminated in his solo album, The Gift, with If I Was giving him another No 1 (Slik’s Forever & Ever being the first). This may have irritated the rest of the band and, while they had started to record some tentative new demos, all was not well. Warren wanted to return to a mainly acoustic kit and was also learning to play guitar, which created tensions exacerbated by Midge’s absence. When Midge returned, Warren found himself in a position where he was obliged to leave. Rather than ending the band, however, they chose to soldier on, hiring Big Country’s Mark Brzezicki (using a mainly acoustic kit) for the next album.
Same Old Story might have presented ever-vocal critics with a copywriter’s dream, but if they’d cared to listen to the first single to emerge from this turmoil – complete with female backing vocals and a jazzy interlude on that taster single (with album track Moon Madness taking the jazz angle further) – it was clear that the 1986 version of Ultravox was now a very different entity. In fact, with The Chieftains dominating the Celtic-flavoured follow-up, All Fall Down, in November, and a full orchestra taking over May 1987’s final chart-skipping single All In One Day, they had almost become an acoustic trio. With no less than three producers across nine tracks, it was less an album and more a series of experiments showcasing each individual’s interpretation of what Ultravox could become. Housed in a die-cut pinksleeve, U-Vox was probably the least satisfying album they committed to vinyl and, after a full tour, Ultravox faded out of the public eye, before quietly disbanding several months later.
In the wake of Ultravox, Chris left the music industry, while Warren tried his hand at acting (as well as writing for music technology magazines such as Sound On Sound), and Midge resumed his solo career. Billy produced a storming solo instrumental album, Transportation (featuring Yes’ Steve Howe), for IRS, before setting up Hot Food Music (later replaced by Puzzle) to distribute albums; later forming two entirely new line-ups of Ultravox, firstly on Revelation (which spawned the single I Am Alive) in 1993, and then with vocalist Vinny Blue on Ingenuity in 1995. Neither album dented the charts.
Continuing interest in the band’s back catalogue – much of which had been short-sightedly deleted by the early 90s – began to spur the release of new CDs, such as two B-side compilations Rare1 and Rare2; and the original Island albums. Vienna was chosen as one of the Chrysalis 25th Anniversary CD boxes in 1994, while the If I Was compilation joined a series of such releases that year. Including several Ultravox songs, with further tracks spread across a double-pack Vienna CD single, the album acted as a pretty handy sampler of most of Midge’s solo activities to date, and was released by Chrysalis in America in expanded form (both booklet and CD), thanks to the efforts of consultant Vincent Vero.
It was, however, a misconceived Ultravox compilation issuing from Music For Pleasure that led to the involvement of official fan club Extreme Voice, culminating in a staggered series of upgraded remasters through EMI Gold, as well as two new compilations stuffed with material previously unavailable on CD.
Following 2001’s TV-advertised Best Of Midge Ure & Ultravox (dominated by no less than 14 classic singles), EMI Gold’s recent album sampler, Finest, and some excellent upgrades of all their Island albums in July 2006, the timely arrival of this major (and long awaited) re-evaluation of their extensive Chrysalis catalogue means that there’s never going to be a better time to rediscover the true value of the band; a pioneering group, unjustly maligned for far too many years.
With thanks to Cerise Reed and Robin Harris at Extreme Voice, and Rodney Meiklejohn for the extracts from his interview with Warren Cann
RETURN TO EDEN THE ULTRAVOX REUNION
Whenever any well-respected band gets back together, there’s always going to be accusations of large pay cheques having been waved. “Well, it’ll be nice to do a tour where we aren’t going to lose money,” laughs Chris Cross. “That definitely makes a change.”
In reality, the idea to re-form Ultravox came from Chris O’Donnell, who had formed part of their management team at Morrison/O’Donnell in the early 80s. Now working at Live Nation, O’Donnell floated the idea in an e-mail to Midge, Billy, Chris and Warren last summer. The suggestion certainly came as a bit of a shock, but after “we chewed on it, and digested it, people came round to the idea” Billy Currie says. “It wasn’t an immediate, ‘Alright, yeah,’ kind of process, but it had a warmth about it. It also shelved the past, because of Chris O’Donnell’s involvement with the band at an early stage and, as he wasn’t around by the time it all went pear-shaped, he reminded us all how good the music could be. It’s exciting – and a surprise, as it didn’t look like we’d ever do this again.
“Midge and Chris came round to my place,” Billy continues. “Quite quickly, actually, and it was a bit like – yikes! Very soon after that, Midge got in touch and hit me with another bombshell. ‘Look, I’m helping to open Absolute Radio, do you fancy coming down and playing an acoustic version of Vienna?’ So that blew my mind and I just said yes. I haven’t actually spoken to Warren yet, but I’m chatting to Midge and Chris at the moment.” Since his departure from Ultravox, Chris has been working as a psychotherapist. “Someone said that I was swapping one bunch of nutters for another lot instead! There’s an element of truth in that, I think (laughter).”
Chris Cross also reflects on how effortlessly everything has fallen into place. “If you’d have asked me nine months ago if it could happen, I would have said no way! My initial thought was, ‘As long as it’s fun.’ That was it, really.”
It was much the same for Billy too: “All my friends are absolutely shocked. It’s exciting, but it’s like, ‘God, we’re doing it so soon,’ so we need to get all the work in to make sure it’s good.”
Billy and Chris both have similar thoughts on listening back to the EMI remasters. “I was putting them on,” Chris now recalls, “and I really started to like it; almost as if I’d never heard it before! I do have a certain nostalgia, particularly when I listen back to our very early stuff. But it’s doesn’t always sound like I expect it to. I really like the work-in-progress stuff, though, particularly when you can hear how something started.”
Billy: “Occasionally I’d bang on a CD, just for old times’ sake, especially if I was drunk. But I just stopped doing that over time. It’s quite nice to come back to the music totally fresh. I’m not just slavishly learning to play it again, though. You’ve got to reprogramme it, remake the sounds… I’m not going to just stand up there in front of an audience and perform it as we did before. In any case, we just can’t get some of the sounds anymore.”
With no grand re-launch master plan, when the Absolute Radio appearance happened it seemed the ideal way to set up a buzz about what the band were up to, especially since Midge and Billy hadn’t performed together live since the U-Vox tour in 1986.
The two YouTube clips also quickly set the internet alight with rumours about whether a reunion was imminent. “We were talking about video diaries, and that’s where the concept came from,” Chris explains. “And from the questions that we get sent by Cerise and Robin from the Extreme Voice website. I’m not sure I should say who the cameraman was at the moment. It’s mystery man!” Mr X, perhaps?
With rights to use the iconic artwork for Rage In Eden again, it seemed obvious to utilise that striking image as the central image for the Return To Eden tour. Currie is very pleased about that. “It’s a nice piece of artwork. O’Donnell came up with Return To Eden. Because we haven’t been together for so long, sometimes it just takes someone else to point out a good idea and, because he was there at the time, he can look in unhindered.”
Much like a marathon runner, Billy is building up a regular practice regime again. “My friends have been winding me up, saying that this is the first bit of proper work I’ve done in 15 years (laughs).” After spending “a whole month of programming on the synthesisers through January” – apparently, mainly software synths, with a few older keyboards thrown in, having worked out “what synthesisers would work best for what parts” – Billy is now “going through the songs” daily and “trying not to stop so much”, he admits. “To build up my physical capability and to know what I want to do with the set before we get into rehearsals in a few weeks’ time. Obviously, it’s a big job that I have to do on the keyboards, but if I don’t keep my hand in on the violin too, I can’t expect that to come back to me in a couple of weeks.” He had just had a new electric violin re-stringed as a viola the very afternoon that we spoke.
For Chris Cross the culture shock has been even greater. “For the last couple of years I’ve been making guitars out of bits and pieces and, because of that, I’ve been playing quite a bit. Having said that, for all intents and purposes, I haven’t really played for years. Actually, I said to Billy the other day that, when I started running through the songs – I’d been playing along to the CDs – I hadn’t a clue what happened at various points in them I couldn’t remember playing it, and it was a bit like one of those Keith Moon moments when you thought that someone else must have done it.
“Now I’m running through stuff every day, just working out how we’re going to do everything. In the old days we had so much bloody machinery, and then you had to have a spare – and a spare spare! Its like Midge was saying recently, he counted them up once and he thinks we had 27 keyboards at one point. All that’s a bit redundant now.”
Billy promises a varied set-list beyond just the obvious highlights. “We wouldn’t have a long enough set just sticking with the hits, and we wouldn’t ever do that anyway. It’s a good mix of album and single material,” with Chris noting that the show would focus on “our first four albums” covering Vienna to Lament; diplomatically avoiding the U-Vox album recorded after Warren’s departure.
Soon after the tour announcement there came news of an extra show at London’s Roundhouse. When EMI arranged to film that show, it was a chance to remove one major regret.
“From talking to EMI,” Currie reveals, “we realised that there hasn’t been much for the fans as regards live material. I find it a bit sickening, actually, that we don’t even have any film of the Lament tour. We’d grown as a band and got to such a high standard of presentation by then – and we did some nice open-air concerts too – so it’s a pity that none of those were filmed.”
Chris is glad that The Roundhouse was chosen too. “I used to go there a lot when I was 16. For me, it’s one of the best gigs in London, though the Hammersmith Apollo is good too, and another fantastic one to play as, again, you’re never very far away from the audience from the stage to the seating.”
Just as Madness discovered after Madstock, when they hit on the idea of occasional shows in-between all their other individual activities, not being signed to any record label has a certain advantage, as Ultravox are now finding out. Billy readily agreed that the Madness route “might be a good way of doing it. We want it to be an ongoing thing, but we want to be sure that we don’t do too much”.
That’s not surprising, especially given their past popularity across continental Europe and Japan, while future tours seem likely too. After hinting as much in a recent Yamaha podcast, Billy readily confirmed that, “We’ve got offers coming in now, but what we want to do is to get this tour under our belts first and to brush off the cobwebs! I mean, god, the last time this line-up worked together was 1984! It’s a long time.”
Chris also admits that it’s possible the band may end up back in the recording studio at some future date, especially if new ideas start getting sparked during soundchecks and rehearsals, as of old. “We haven’t even dared to think about that yet, but it can easily happen.”
ULTRA FOXX
John Foxx formed Ultravox and was their vocal exclamation mark. As his former colleagues reform, he talks to Ian Shirley about his solo career
Don’t you think the wrong Ultravox are re-forming? Some of us want you to go through those classic first three albums, with you as the front-man.
Oh no, that second version was far more popular. I’d never think of doing a revisited V1, though there have been some serious offers. You know, I’ve got a lot of respect for that early unit – Bill, Chris, Warren, Rob and Stevie (Shears, guitar on first two albums) – and always will, no matter what. After all, we learnt our respective crafts together, built our own way out of a very grey 70s post-industrial Britain.
When we worked together we were beginning to break sonic territory no one had visited before. It was the sound of London wired into Europe. Getting out from under the baggage of Americana, all those cliches that were so dominant in popular music at the time. Even punk came from America. But this certainly didn’t. We were suddenly the first New Wave band. A sort of prototype without realising it.
By 1978 we were out on our own, way away from the London scene, which was exhausted, caricature punk. Everyone else followed, but much later. And I mean everyone. After you’ve been through something like that with a set of people, you don’t forget.
Who were the influences on the band when you formed?
The Velvets – I think I wanted to be in a scene like The Factory in New York at the time. Roxy Music, Kraftwerk, some Bowie, Can. Iggy was always inspirational. Neu! were a big one, Phaedraera Tangerine Dream were in there too. Billy Fury and those echoing 50s pop records by Joe Meek – Telstar and Johnny Remember Me. A few 60s-era remnant memories – Syd-era Floyd, The Who’s feedback tendency. Tomorrow Never Knows – the first electro-psychedelia. That was a major one.
Also a lot of French and German pop music from European juke boxes I heard when hitch-hiking – that minor key torch song stuff, bits of Piaf and Jaques Brel. Add in Walter Carlos and a couple of ghostly visits from Satie, plus some Futurist and Cagean theory about noise as music. Took quite a while to boil that lot down into something practical.
How did you get the Island contract?
Fran, a lovely friend, mentioned us to someone there and I went in with a demo we’d made in Tin Pan Alley, plus some of the stuff we’d just recorded with Steve Lillywhite. We all used to go into Marble Arch studios at the weekends, when it was empty. Fenella Fielding used to make tea. Island made us an offer. We wanted Lillywhite in for the first album. They agreed. Then Eno was around at the Island studios and we got talking.
The first album was done in a couple of weeks. Well under budget. It was Year Zero and we were all learning as we made it – and I think that would include Lilleywhite and Eno, who were both unique. They made a fine complimentary team. There were lots of great ideas around – and a determination to experiment and take all sorts of chances.
Ha! Ha! Ha! really showed a band that was finding its musical feet.
Yes – it all came together right at the end. We were still trying out possible versions of ourselves – rabid sonic assault being the main item at that time. But right at the end I got confident enough to play through that second version of Hiroshima, then a first stab at I Can’t stay Long, and I knew what the next album was going to be. It all began to take shape during that very last afternoon session.
I saw you several times in 1977/78. Ultravox were a great live band.
Thanks. That means a lot, and it’s not often mentioned. At that time we were fully intent on creating the most intense live experience possible – violent, angular noise, howling feedback, blinding strobes. Audience a smoking heap of ash. I still think there wasn’t a band anywhere who could match us live at that time – and I saw them all.
Why did you go to record at Conny’s
Oh, the Brit scene at that point was a bit Alf Garnett – landfill punk, way past its sell-by date. Germany was far more interesting – and we really liked Neu! and Can and Kraftwerk. We were right in that scene in 1977/78.
The next wave of bands, such as Joy Division, got there years later. Ian Curtis even copped our style – blank shirts and Euro haircut etc. We really liked that blank, Eastern Bloc style along the Berlin Corridor and adopted it. By 1978 we’d been playing Berlin regularly for a couple of years, as well as Dusseldorf, Köln, Hamburg, etc, and had done a residency at Club Gibus in Paris. Europe was where we lived. Everyone else was way behind at that point.
Around that time we’d drop in to Conny’s on tour and Eno would be working on Music For Airports or Devo, or Holger Czukay would be recording there. It was a good, interesting, intelligent and chance-taking scene. A good five years ahead of the game. There was nothing remotely like that in England at the time. Conny had worked with everyone on that scene and made many of the most significant records, from Kraftwerk to Can.
He really got the sound we were looking for. Understood all the links between electronics and psychedelia that had been utterly overlooked in Britain. He enjoyed taking chances too – and his craftsmanship was second to none. A very generous, deeply intelligent and perceptive man. He gave us permission to explore, then had the skills to consolidate it all.
The remixed version of Quiet Man on 12” predates remix culture.
We wanted to make a dance version for clubs that would play as loudly and powerfully as possible. We’d listened a lot in European clubs and talked to cutting engineers about maximum power from records. It was important that your record kicked the previous one in the face. I went to several cutting rooms to find out how to do it. Turns out that the only way was to spread a single track over a 12’’ album format. We managed to persuade Island to do this. We remixed it specifically so Warren’s metal beats would shred speakers.
Systems Of Romance is brilliant, blending rock and early electronics – did you write all the songs, or was it a collective?
Songwriting was my job. I would bring in the the basic songs – chord structure, vocal melody, lyric and theme tunes. Then we’d rehearse them and add any parts – key changes and arrangements and so on. Then I liked to finish the lyrics properly during playback, as everyone was putting their parts down in the studio. Still do. You can better accommodate all those lastminute changes of texture and rhythm and emphasis that way.
There were a couple of interesting exceptions to all this, though – one was Slowmotion. I’d arrived at the first day of rehearsals with 10 songs, so I knew the album would be fine, but wanted the band to do a song of its own too. I had to go off to some meeting and asked everyone to put something together. When I got back they had a couple of interesting chords and Chris had done that great fivenote theme. We all went to work on it.
When we took a break, I sat down with Robin and he proceeded to rip out that magnificent guitar figure. Billy replied with his usual ingenious synth wrestling, then he and I did the ‘No reply’ synth melody section. Later on I managed to sort the verse and chorus tunes and lyrics – meanwhile Warren added that nice, meaty beat, straight in there and solid as a rock. And there we had it. Top of the range.
Dislocation was interesting too – an ARP and sequencer linked together at Conny’s. When Billy turned it on there was this riff. I could tell immediately that there was a song in it and suggested we turn it down an octave and put it through a Marshall stack to give it more power. Warren dubbed the drums with various echoes so it really kicked, then I finished it with the vocals. Chris finally added those nice disorienting chorus zooms on his EMS. Another wee beauty for the collection.
How do you feel about bands and artists who now cite the original Ultravox as an influence?
Isn’t that the very best possible compliment? And deeply pleasing that something that was so out on a limb during its time has finally arrived. Only took 30-odd years.
You went solo to explore the synth and Metamatic is now seen as an early electro classic. What were you trying to do?
Make a language for the synth and drum machine – one that didn’t depend on any of the usual rock clichés and stances. Also an attempt to redesign myself closer to what I really was. A sort of lost urbanite dressed from Marks & Sparks.
Were you shocked by the success of Ultravox with Midge Ure in front of them?
No. When I heard Vienna, I knew it would be successful. The time was right. Midge consolidated everything very skilfully. That was what the band wanted and Midge and his management achieved it. Why did you take a long break after 1985? Ran out of road. The scene in Britain had got very stale again. Awful white soul this time. Groan. So I went off to do other things. The art thing was something I had long needed to see through, far away from anything to do with John Foxx and music. And it all worked out. I was quietly pleased as punch. Musically, things picked up again when acid house began around 1988. Synth squelch and 909s, plus dark psychotropia. Perfect. Did some work with Bomb The Bass and the video for LFO’s brilliant track. Felt right at home again.
Simultaneously, I’d met up with Harold Budd and others via Russell Mills and Eno. Russell maintained a pivotal, intelligent scene in Vauxhall over that period – I’ll always be grateful to him for that. There were several ghost years in between, then Louis Gordon arrived so, overall, everything stayed on course.
What are your plans for the future?
Make more films. I realised some time ago that the next phase of film will be cut-ups – like sampling in music; re-editing films into each other to make new stories from existing material. Re-purposed hypermovies. It’s all very practical now. The legal side will be hell, of course, but there’s a good precedent from music sampling and remixing.
As well as all that, I’ve begun to get very interested in stories and writing. The Quiet Man book will actually be published in a year or so, and that seems to be leading into all sorts of new territories. We’re in discussions with some excellent filmmakers and things are looking very positive.
There are other kinds of music being worked on too – more with Harold Budd and Ruben Garcia, new adventures with Vincent Gallo, Steve Jansen, Theo Travis, Paul Daley from Leftfield, Steve D’Agostino, Robin Guthrie and others. Working with Dubterror and Karborn has been very inspirational – Karborn’s a VJ, artist, remixer and general media athlete. There are so many excellent artists around at this time. You can’t help but want to edge into the conversation.
Glimmer: The Best Of John Foxx is out now. www.thequietman.co.uk; www.metamatic.com
