Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Why wasn't "Europe After The Rain" a massive hit?

So it’s September 1981 and a 13 year old Herbert the turbot is tuning into Top Of The Pops, the UK’s biggest music TV show. Amongst the acts that have gained a coveted slot on the show is John Foxx, who performs a sprightly version of his new single “Europe After The Rain”, which is a new entry in the top 40, albeit at number 40.
The single is also being heavily played on Radio One, particularly in the teatime and evening slots, as Radio One DJs such as Janice Long and Richard Skinner are big John Foxx fans. “Europe After The Rain” seems to have captured that late summer mood perfectly, its more organic feel likely to attract new fans who found the Metamatic era too electronic, but at the same time not alienating those who’d followed John’s career since the Ultravox days.

The next Tuesday, Herbert the turbot is tuned into his radio for the rundown of the new top forty, which is announced in a reverse order, ten chart placings at a time. Chart placings from 40 to 31 are announced and John isn’t in there – yes, at last! John’s got his first top 30 hit!
But it gets even better – the single isn’t between 30-21 either, so it must have gone top twenty.
When there’s no mention between 20-11 either, it’s starting to sound incredible; so many people must have been impressed by “Europe After The Rain” that it’s shot up over 30 places into the top ten, one of the biggest chart rises ever! It’s unlikely but not impossible; after all other synthpop acts like Numan, OMD and even Ultravox have become top ten regulars in the past year.

Songs 10 to 2 are read out and still no “Europe After The Rain”. Could it really be that it’s crashed into the Number One slot? Again it sounds incredible, but if some comedy Italian impersonator like Joe Dolce can do it……

But no – the number one is something else altogether; there’s no sign of “Europe After The Rain” in the charts at all. I even listen to the repeat of the chart rundown at teatime just in case the DJ’s made a mistake, but no, it’s not there.

Only when I buy Record Mirror later in the week do I find that, far from shooting up the charts, “Europe After The Rain”, actually fell one place and is now just outside the top 40 and therefore ineligible for further Top Of The Pops performances or heavy rotation on Radio 1.

It seemed amazing then and it still does that John performed his best, most commercial song to an audience of millions on the mainstream BBC1 peak time music show and the song actually sold less copies than it did the week before! Remember this was the days before internet, commercial radio, even satellite television; even MTV was a couple of years away. Hence if you wanted to hear new music, there really was only Radio One and Top Of The Pops; as such both had audiences well into their millions.

You might think; so what – just as well John never made it truly big. He probably never craved massive fame, and when you see what it did to contemporary singers like Adam Ant, Steve Strange and Boy George, it’s probably just as well. And by remaining on the fringes as a “niche” artist, John was able to get away with making music in his own distinctive style rather than selling out and doing bland MOR music for the masses like Simple Minds or Tears For Fears,

Yet deep down, wouldn’t it have been nice just once if John’s music had really made an impact on the mass market and achieved the commercial success it deserved?

It would have been fab, I agree with you Herbert.
Probably shared your experience, to an extent.

Sadly, I'm not convinced that Virgin really, genuinely 'believed' in John Foxx...

Hi Herbert.
What a lovely story about Europe. I also saw it live on TV, god it was a long time ago. I don't think Johns costume did him any favours. I slso felt at the time it would do better than it did.

Even before that with Underpass, I thought it deserved to do better especially has I was playing the vinyl all the time.

Although at 7 minutes long The Garden could have been edited down for a single. I still think that would have done well as a single but it's a classic track that has stood the test of time.

I also wonder sometimes, even though Burning Car/20th Century was a double A side had 20th Century been given more air play would that have been more successful?. IMO 20th Century is another classic. We'll never know.

Thank you for such a thought provoking subject Herbert.

Peter

I agree. EATR was one of Johns finest moments. It was ripe to do better in the charts. cant understand why it did not for the life of me.

It just fit exactly with that period of time, after punk. I dont know whether you could call it a New Romantic, poser moment in time. It was just different.

It was just perfectly, exquisitly appropriate.

I think the thing to remember is that after four singles which were mainly electronic, a song which appeared featuring pianos and acoustic guitars would have been somewhat bewildering to the general record buying public.

A not-unreasonable point but then there was the "transition" single "Miles Away" that preceded it which, while still being predominantly electronic, did feature real drums. And of course there would still have been many Ultravox Mk 1 fans around who may have found Metamatic too electronic.

Also many of John's contemporaries were moving away from synths towards real instruments at the time; OMD were using massed strings and choirs (albeit Mellotron ones) and Numan was going down the slap bass, sax and wailing female vocals blind alley that it took him a decade to find a way out of.

Anyway, in the unlikely event there's anyone on here who's never seen the TOTP performance I'm referring to, have a look on the link below. Doesn't that look like a top 10 hit in waiting to you?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZjYw12Buao

Classic

I always thorght 'Walk Away' the obvious single.

All I can really comment about here is just my experience of it at the time. For me, it sometimes seemed to be the case with John’s work back then, and since (as in the returning early years of John and Louis working together) that I often caught the release of something completely by chance, and perhaps if I blinked I might have missed any promotion of EATR on its release.

I casually turned on the radio one late summers afternoon and there it was unexpectedly playing away about midway through.

Remembering that moment, I really can still recall the tingle of excitement I felt about hearing it for the first time, its lyrical sweep, and music seemingly almost running backwards at times in a gentle psychedelic style. As Herbert points out, we had been primed for this more lush and wistful sound by the Miles Away single having already taken us on that journey away from Metamatic.

I also saw it performed on TOTP’s, and once more, I nearly missed this, having been dragged out to the pub by fellow housemates (I was a student at that time). There was John on the tiny TV above the bar, and although those I was with knew about my Foxxaddiction I still had to strain my antenna to watch it over everyone’s chatter.

I have to agree, but we will all remember that many people were still hung up back then about what they perceived as ‘posing’ or ‘posers’ in music, and seemed unable to get beyond that towards the music, and it’s always a handy criticism if you just didn’t happen to ‘get it’ or clearly weren’t going to be persuaded into liking a particular kind of music. And yet fast forward to now and practically everybody of any musical bent ‘strikes a pose’. There’s long been plenty of avenues of ‘theatricality’ in the music in the charts regardless of its genre or sentiment, and now it’s just intensely commonplace, but I despair slightly when I read a few of the positive reviews of Mirrorball, in particular the references to John and his work, the ‘P’ word has unnecessarily still re-surfaced, why is there still this need to slip in the word ‘pretentious’ (albeit in a friendly way) when summarising some of his output.


I can’t recall if I thought at the time with EATR that “this is it, the moment is right and everyone is going to be into John Foxx now”, but sadly as a single it came and vanished in a flash from airplay to join the rest of those obscure and beautiful sounds someplace out in the ether.

Hi CM,

I didnt necessarily mean posers in any negative kind of way. I just didnt know how to describe the mode of fashion or being then that fit with that feeling of that moment in time.