1. John Foxx was born on Dennis Leigh; 26 September 1948 and is an English singer, musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, writer, teacher and lecturer.
34 Facts About John Foxx
1. 2.
John Foxx was the original lead singer of the new wave band Ultravox, before leaving to embark on a solo career in 1980 with the album Metamatic.
3.
John Foxx's father was a coal miner and pugilist, his mother a millworker.
4.
John Foxx experimented with tape recorders and synthesisers whilst at the Royal College of Art.
5.
John Foxx is much more intelligent than I am, better looking, better lit.
6.
Chris Allen, who had briefly gone by the name Chris St John Foxx, changed his name again, to Chris Cross.
7.
John Foxx left the band at the end of the tour, and returned to solo work.
8.
John Foxx played most of the synthesisers and "rhythm machines", as they were listed on the sleeve.
9.
John Foxx then worked on dozens of tracks for two projected albums, and one of these tracks, "My Face", was released on a flexi-disc given away with Smash Hits in October 1980.
10.
In 1982, John Foxx set up his own recording studio, designed by Andy Munro, called The Garden, housed in an artists' collective in Shoreditch, East London, in a former warehouse occupied by sculptors, painters and film makers.
11.
John Foxx produced some demo recordings for Virginia Astley's first album From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.
12.
In 1983, John Foxx provided some music for the soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Identification of a Woman.
13.
John Foxx later said that at the time he felt divorced from any contemporary musical influences.
14.
John Foxx sold his recording studio and returned to his earlier career as a graphic artist, working under his real name of Dennis Leigh.
15.
John Foxx began to find inspiration in the underground house and acid music scenes in Detroit and London.
16.
John Foxx worked with LFO and made the music video for their eponymous debut single.
17.
Around this time, John Foxx taught on the Graphic Arts and Design degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University.
18.
On 24 March 1997, John Foxx made a return to the music scene with the simultaneous release of two albums, Shifting City and Cathedral Oceans on Metamatic Records.
19.
On 11 October 1997, John Foxx played his first public gig since 1983 at The Astoria, London.
20.
The second disc contained an extensive interview with John Foxx describing the making of From Trash which was available only at concerts on the 2006 tour.
21.
John Foxx has performed and recorded with a variety of artists and musicians since returning to the music scene in the mid-nineties, most notably with Louis Gordon but with Harold Budd, Jori Hulkkonen, Robin Guthrie, Ruben Garcia and The Belbury Circle.
22.
In July 2007, John Foxx exhibited some of his Cathedral Oceans artwork as large format digital prints at Fulham Palace as part of the RetroFuture exhibition hosted by ArtHertz.
23.
In 2005, John Foxx appeared on stage at the Brighton Pavilion with Harold Budd and Bill Nelson as part of a concert to celebrate the work of the retiring pianist, which led to the announcement in October that year that John Foxx would be involved in collaborations with Jah Wobble, Robin Guthrie, Steve Jansen and Nelson.
24.
In June 2006, John Foxx released an instrumental solo album, Tiny Colour Movies, consisting of 15 instrumental tracks inspired by short art films he saw at a private screening.
25.
On 18 November 2006, John Foxx gave a performance of the work at the Duke of York's cinema in Brighton, where Tiny Colour Movies was premiered as part of the city's Film Festival.
26.
John Foxx presented three different pieces of his solo work in the space of one week in June 2008.
27.
John Foxx then travelled to Italy and presented an extract from The Quiet Man at the 14th Festival Internazionale di Poesia in Genoa.
28.
In March 2013, John Foxx took part in the On Vanishing Land project, a work by British sound artists and theorists Mark Fisher and Justin Barton.
29.
In 2015, John Foxx contributed to the soundtrack of the feature-length film Blue Velvet Revisited, with Cult With No Name and Tuxedomoon, which consists of footage shot during the making of David Lynch's film Blue Velvet.
30.
In December 2007, John Foxx exhibited some of his photographic works in an exhibition called Cinemascope at the Coningsby Gallery in west London.
31.
In November 2020 John Foxx published The Quiet Man, a collection of short stories.
32.
Special features during the "John Foxx Week" contained quotes and comments about his work from a variety of different musicians and film-makers, including The Orb, Vincent Gallo, members of Ladytron and Duran Duran, director Alex Proyas, and Awaydays creator Kevin Sampson.
33.
In June 2014, it was announced that John Foxx was to receive an honorary degree from Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire.
34.
John Foxx was made an honorary Doctor of Philosophy during the ceremony at the university on 21 July 2014.