Thanks again for the very warm welcome everyone
I really apologise beforehand if this is an indulgently long post, or if maybe I should be posting this elsewhere or creating a new thread. I’m probably saying things that are not necessarily anything new to hear for lots of fellow fans, and maybe no more particular than anyone else’s experience, but I’ve never joined any kind of fan site ever, I don’t often think “hey, I’m a fan of something, I must get into a club”, but I guess this is my one opportunity to show my appreciation of John, and how his music has been so special to me.
So if anyone does want to read on then this is my road trip from Metamatic 80, to Metamatic 07.
I missed out on original Ultravox completely, and my teenage music tastes included Sparks, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, Bowie, Magazine, and Numan.
At 18 I was a college dropout, working in a Glasgow Off-License store, one evening the radio was on and suddenly I was hearing Underpass on its release, and for the rest of that night I replayed it over and over in my mind, remembering every part of it.
Metamatic appeared, with its gothic futurism and secret life of objects and people in flux, and its full force went straight to my core. It was almost like this is what I had been growing up for, to hear this daunting but accessible sound, punctuated with lyrics about escalators, flip-top lids, estranged relationships and chance encounters.
As a child and teen I’d grown up roaming the local abandoned railway track, and the gradually declining shipyards, living out my sci-fi fantasies of TV and b-movies which had always lifted me up out of the limitations of my childhood and the sterility of my environment. When Metamatic came along I was unconsciously well primed in urban abandonment, and in the romance of these once busy but now quiet inner city places.
I soon became a student once more, and had been living in Leicester when the Garden was released. I had just moved into a shared house, it was the end of summer and still warm, the house was old, uncared for, dark in places and musty smelling, it felt like it had a previous secret life. Patches of light came in through the branches of the overgrown trees outside the living room window, and it was here for the first time that I heard This Jungle, I’ll always remember sitting on an old worn out sofa, hearing it play out on a cheap record player, as I drank a beer in the afternoon with a fellow housemate.
Metamatic became over-written and The Garden went even deeper to the core, and it now ruled as my absolute soundtrack. I became a “glow boy in lipstick and shadow” (well, maybe not the lipstick!) and I played the songs over in my mind as I roamed the Leicestershire countryside in my flea market 60’s style suit, and my JF haircut. I’d never really been into the country much before, as growing up in Glasgow I was a total city person.
The Golden Section arrived at the end of my student years, it wasn’t really what I’d hoped for, not at all like the psychedelic textural Endlessly single, that was the album style I had really wanted to experience… but I still enthusiastically persuaded a friend to drive us to Coventry to see John on his solo tour.
I was almost a college dropout again, having ignored my course, but getting access to video I got to make a John Foxx promo for my final project. My Your Dress video was constructed from cloth, coloured gel, and beads! It has languished now for a few decades on its Umatic and VHS platforms.
In Mysterious Ways came along just as I was moving to Sheffield from Blackpool (where I lived briefly), and into some tough years of unemployment, so IMW’s chirpy melodic outlook really did not gel for me at all as I explored Sheffield’s mid 80’s disused industrial areas, where I often roamed the abandoned workplaces and concrete housing estates.
In 87 I moved to London and my romance with John’s music kind of ‘faded away’, but in the early 90’s the unexpected reminder would echo across my path, the book covers, and the Nation12 single a friend found for me in Manchester, which I played once then left at the back of his wardrobe!
Once also in Manchester, just killing time, I walked into an illustrator’s exhibition, and there on display was Dennis Leigh’s work. And, on a trip to Edinburgh, at a Virgin sale I found a VHS copy of Johns Video’s, never even knew it had existed.
In early 98 I moved to Edinburgh, and poking around HMV I found Shifting City and Cathedral Oceans, what the? What had I missed I thought, but worse still I chanced to read that John had played some low key gigs in London, I couldn’t believe it, the bugger waits till I leave there and then returns with new work! I was actually very, very gutted, and depressed at this news. I played the CD’s a few times, but unmoved by what I heard I kind of put them away, and I even subsequently ignored the release of The Pleasures Of Electricity.
In 2003 on a trip to Manchester, glancing at a poster as I was zooming past, I thought I’d miss-read the words ‘John Foxx’, crikey, he’d been playing there the night before, what the? I’d missed him, no way, but then my heart leapt into my mouth, he was in Edinburgh the next day on the very evening I was returning.
I got off that train with little time to spare, in the small venue there were maybe about 40 people, mostly dressed in black, almost all male, only one or two in their 20’s, everyone was very calm and somewhat serious looking, for me well I too was calm externally, but inside I just could not believe that I was about to see John play again after 20 years!
It was a great performance. I didn’t even realise it was the Crash And Burn tour, the highlight for me was definitely John and Louis performing Drive as white lights spun around behind them. I heard this for the first time and was thinking, my God, this is really John, that’s his sound, his voice, and its really, really good! I’d hardly had time to absorb it all, from seeing the poster the day before to actually seeing him perform, to fully appreciate how fantastic was this moment.
Strangely though, I didn’t go out and buy any of the CD’s I’d missed, after so long a time I found it difficult returning to an old hero, even though there was new music to discover. Perhaps I just wanted to archive my youthful memories of experiencing John’s music, maybe it was now too big a leap to take, jumping back into that particular musical vision again.
In 2006 something started to gradually change all that. Out of curiosity I decided to look up the Metamatic site again, and found out just in time about the From Trash tour, and I got very excited about going to see John once more. I saw the gig in Glasgow in an absolutely packed house, wow! The sheer enthusiasm of the noisy crowd, and the almost aggressive power of John and Louis’s performance persuaded me to go straight out and buy all of their CD’s that I’d missed since Shifting City. I also felt after that gig that for me John really was back, he and Louis were still continuing to bring out new albums and the magic was most definitely there alright, and I was really singing a lot of those songs in my head now.
After the Metamatic tour last year I’ve really appreciated just how much this forum has kept me in touch, bringing a vitality to any news about John’s output, and Its great seeing posts from people countrywide and worldwide who are so clearly entranced by his work, past, present, and hopefully for his future music also.
