EP.262 - JOHN FOXX

Adam talks with British musician and artist John Foxx, about a few of the pioneers of electronic music, forming the band Ultravox!, working with legendary producers Brian Eno (Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay, etc.) and Conny Plank (Kraftwerk, NEU! Cluster, Harmonia, etc.), the relationship between art, music and comedy, his encounters with Keith Richards and performance artist Leigh Bowery, what he and Fall frontman Mark E Smith would talk about on their drinking sessions together and how his parents didn't screw him up. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 11 March, 2025 List of the music clips used in this episode on Adam's website HERE https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/82dyw29p3may2fa-dwb79-eycgn-fahgj-8yxba-c6hde-7lne6-5kthd-7a97e-9s3a8-yy37e-8nxyt-fzl6s-dyzny-wax8b ADAM TALKS 90s TV AND PLAYS MUSIC @ LONDON LITERATURE FESTIVAL https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/adam-buxton-i-love-you-byeee/ @ Royal Festival Hall, Sunday 26th October 2025, 7.30pm Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ Sign up for the newsletter on Adam's website https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ (scroll down on homepage) RELATED LINKS METAMATIC - SIGNED 45th ANNIVERSARY GREY VINYL https://burningshed.com/john-foxx_metamatic_grey-vinyl - 2025 (BURNING SHED) JOHN FOXX - UNDERPASS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW54X5IEgIk - 1980 (YOUTUBE) ELECTRICITY AND GHOSTS https://johnfoxxbook.com/ The Visual Art of John Foxx - 2024 WENDY CARLOS - VOCODER QUESTIONS https://www.wendycarlos.com/vocoders.html (WENDY CARLOS WEBSITE) STRANGE JOURNEY: THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElnKy244rNo (TRAILER) - 2025 (YOUTUBE) LEIGH BOWERY - SOUTH OF WATFORD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRpaRXjL0wg PT 1 - 1986 (YOUTUBE) LEIGH BOWERY - SOUTH OF WATFORD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDWaW6p0unk PT 2 - 1986 (YOUTUBE) LEIGH BOWERY - SOUTH OF WATFORD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHvFhJUU-0 PT 3 - 1986 (YOUTUBE) MICHAEL CLARKE AND MARK E SMITH ON NEWSNIGHT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAVyBDqLmF4 - 2011 (YOUTUBE) THE DAMNED - NEW ROSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxFQ5QBiYk - 1977 (YOUTUBE) LEIGH BOWERY GIVES BIRTH AT WIGSTOCK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VWV1vsHnJc&list=RD0VWV1vsHnJc&start_radio=1 - 1993 (YOUTUBE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcasters? It's Adam Buxton here. Thank you so much for joining me once again out here on my Norfolk farm track ramble with Doglex, that's Rosie, my best dog friend. She's here in fine fettle and she sends lots of love, don't you, Rosie? I'd be grateful if you didn't patronise me. I apologise. And we're just walking around the noisy part of the fields. Well, it's a rush hour out here in Norwich, so you can hear all the cars on the nearby A11. Hey, thanks a lot if you came out to one of the music shows that myself and the Adam Buxton Band did in Norwich last week at the Arts Centre.

• 1:16Adam Buxton?

  That was great fun. I mean, honestly, I'm having the time of my life. It's a dream come true to play with talented musicians on stage, to be singing my ludicrous songs. And it was lovely to meet some of you afterwards. I hope we'll do a few more shows at some point and I hope you can make it along. It's a fun night. Anyway, listen, I'm not going to ramble too much at this point because I want to tell you a bit about podcast number 262. This one features a conversational ramble with a British pioneer of electronic music. He's a composer, artist, photographer, teacher and author. It's John FOXX. Foxfax.

• 1:56Adam Buxton?

  Born in nineteen forty-eight, John grew up as Dennis Lee in Chorley, Lancashire, an industrial town in the north-west of England, and his early years were the very model, not to say cliché, of northern working-class life in the fifties. Brought up as he was by a mother who was a millworker and a father who was a coal miner when he wasn't earning extra cash as a boxer. But by nineteen seventy-four, John was studying at the Royal College of Art in London, where for one project, he hit on the idea of designing a band. That band was Tiger Lily. They were only called Tiger Lily for a short while; John later renamed them Ultravox!

• 2:40Adam Buxton?

  That's Ultravox with an exclamation mark at the end. And it was around that time that Dennis took on the stage name of John FOXX. Ultravox recorded their first album in nineteen seventy-six with production assistance from a couple of people who would become behemoths in the world of music production: Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno. John made two more albums with Ultravox! Actually, he made one with Ultravox and then one with Ultravox because they lost the exclamation mark. For the final album, there was nineteen seventy-seven's Ha Ha Ha and nineteen seventy-eight's Systems of Romance.

• 3:21Adam Buxton?

  And that last one was produced by Dave Hutchins and the German producer Conny Plank, whose work with German bands like Kraftwerk, Neue, Cluster and Harmonia helped define what was then referred to as the krautrock scene in the nineteen seventies.

• 3:53Adam Buxton?

  That was Slow Motion from Systems of Romance, the last Ultravox album to feature John FOXX, who left the band after a grueling nineteen seventy-nine tour of the USA. And soon afterwards, channeling influences like the artist Marcel Duchamp and the writer J.G. Ballard, John recorded his first solo album, Metamatic.

• 4:15Adam Buxton?

  Released in 1980, Metamatic was one of the very first British electronic pop albums, filled with what John called ‘minimal, primitive techno-punk’. The album, which remains hugely influential forty-five years later, was a success and even boasted a hit single in the form of Underpass.

• 4:55Adam Buxton?

  That was Underpass, from Metamatic. In the first half of the eighties, John released three more solo albums, featuring lusher and less austere musical styles, and set up his own recording studio, The Garden, in East London, which over the years played host to artists including The Cure, Depeche Mode, Tina Turner, and Nick Cave. In the latter half of the eighties, John took a break from making music for a while to concentrate on his graphic design and illustration work, selections of which were collected in the book Electricity and Ghosts: The Visual Art of John FOXX, which was published in 2024. John was drawn back into the studio by the revitalisation of electronic music in

• 5:39Adam Buxton?

  the nineties, and since around 1995, he’s released albums of dance-inflected electronica with Louis Gordon, dreamy atmospheric music with the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, and gorgeous, reverb-heavy ambient piano music, both solo and with the late American composer, Harold Budd.

• 6:13Adam Buxton?

  That was a bit of John FOXX and Harold Budd from the double album Translucent and Drift Music. Since 2011, John has also collaborated with British electronic artist Benj and Northern Irish composer and producer Hannah Peel, who together have produced five albums as John FOXX and the Mathz. Their sixth album is due for release next year, 2026. Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to interview John at the Norwich Arts Centre for the third annual Synth East Electronic Music Festival. And I so enjoyed spending time in John's company with his lovely soothing voice

• 6:54Adam Buxton?

  and his generous and positive take on the past, creativity, his musical adventures and his family, that I invited John to record another conversation for this podcast, which we did in London back in March of this year. And we talked about John's encounters with Conny Plank, Brian Eno, performance artist Lee Bowery and Mark E. Smith of The Fall, as well as London life in the early days of punk, whether Vienna is a dirty word for John, and much else besides. But we began by talking about a few of the other pioneers of early electronic music. I'll be back at the end with a recommendation for a doc about a classic cult movie that I think you may enjoy, but right now with John FOXX. Here we go.

• 8:20Adam Buxton?

  It's strange looking at the charts now and looking at the award ceremonies. I mean, it is dominated by electronic music.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:28Adam Buxton?

  A lot of it made by women as well.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:30Adam Buxton?

  Like, they are the big artists now, Billie Eilish and Charlie XCX and Little Sims and people like that. Well, that's sort of what's exciting in music now.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it's been a boys' club for too long, I think, so it's about time the women came through. And working with someone like Hannah, you know.

• 8:47Adam Buxton?

  Hannah Peel.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, Hannah Peel, yeah, was great education in how good people can be. Then the Seraphina Steer who worked with us as well, who's a very interesting eccentric composer and songwriter.

• 9:02Adam Buxton?

  And before that, well, there was Delia Derbyshire.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 9:05Adam Buxton?

  Who I suppose was a pioneer.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Daphne Oram as well, from the BBC Electronic Workshop.

• 9:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. When did you first become aware of electronic music yourself?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  It was art school, the art school edge that we used to get, you know, people would say, hey, listen to this, you know. Everybody would gather around and have a, and check it out, you know, it's that kind of atmosphere. So you'd hear these records being passed around. There was Terry Riley's record, it wasn't really electronic, but it was beginning to be abstracted in that sort of way, you know, sequenced things. Oh, Wendy Carlos, of course, yeah, that was a big record, that Wendy Carlos, the Switched On Bark one. That's one of the records that changed everything, really, because people began to realise how good a job you could do with synthesizers. Before then, they'd been slightly eccentric toys, really.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  The Wendy Carlos one was evidence that they had to be taken seriously, I think, even by serious musicians. But it was very powerful as well, and it was competing with rock and roll in a strange way, because rock and roll was coming of age, you know, there's heavy metal was just beginning to happen. You know, stemming out of the Kinks and all that, because that was the first power chord work on The Who. So new records really had to compete with that kind of gutsy power. And when you played Switched On Bart really loud, the bass was fantastic. It was really excellent and there was nothing else to match it. It was quite incredible.

• 10:50Adam Buxton?

  Switched On Bart, debut album by American composer Wendy Carlos, 1968. To me, I think the first time I heard those sounds, they sounded sort of comical to me almost.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was always a fine line. I mean, the first time I heard Ultrabahn by Kraftwerk was around this time. And I thought this is just a funny novelty record. It made me laugh because it was also a complete take of Barbara Ann by The Beach Boys.

• 11:14Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  It's the same song, it's the same song, just transposed into German motorways. And I thought it was great. I thought it was very witty.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  So the, the line between novelty records and serious electronic work was very thin.

• 11:48Adam Buxton?

  And the other ones were Perry and Kingsley. Did you ever listen to them?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 11:52Adam Buxton?

  Jean Jacques Perry did Gossip Perpetuo, which is one I really love.

• 12:13Adam Buxton?

  So that's partly electronic, but it's also just a mad edit job that he's done there, I think. I think that's late 60s.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, pre-sampling editing, which is what I saw Connie do later on with Holger Chukai's record.

• 12:29Adam Buxton?

  Conny Plank, this is.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Adam Buxton?

  I just watched a documentary about him, actually.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Ah, I haven't seen that.

• 12:34Adam Buxton?

  That came out a few years ago, 2017, directed by his son.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yes, of course, his son took over these.

• 12:40Adam Buxton?

  Stefan.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:42Adam Buxton?

  Did you go out and work with Conny Plank? This is with Ultravox, you worked with him.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Adam Buxton?

  And did you go and work with him in his studio in Germany?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:51Adam Buxton?

  So what was that like? Whereabouts was that?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  If my memory says me right, in Noyne Kirchen, out in the country, near a lake. And I used to run down to the lake in the morning sometimes. And Connie had a studio in an old barn. And we'd come out of these very rarefied studios in London. Suddenly you're in this old barn with hay bales stacked up in the corner to, as a bass trap and all that. And it was wonderful because Connie knew exactly what he was doing. He didn't need the official version, but everything he'd done to the barn worked beautifully. So it sounded great and it was very true. In other words, when you walked away with the tape, it still sounded the same in other environments, which didn't often happen in London studios, I have to say.

• 13:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, the documentary is quite interesting, made by his son Stefan. He didn't really know his dad very well.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember Stefan when he was very small. He was a toddler when we were there.

• 13:46Adam Buxton?

  He was only thirteen when his dad died.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:49Adam Buxton?

  And it's quite moving because he feels like he didn't really have much of a relationship with his dad. He saw very little of him. And he interviews various people that Connie worked with, including Holger Chukai.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:02Adam Buxton?

  Of Cannes.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:04Adam Buxton?

  And he basically just says, well, your dad didn't really have much time for you. It's quite a hard scene to watch.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Ah, well, I didn't get that experience when I was there because Stefan was running around a little kid and he was watching what was going on. And Krista was there, his mother and so on. So it was a sort of family operation, really. I know when Holger was there, Holger Chukai, because I went in the studio when they were recording that album. What was that called? And there's a Persian love song on it that I remember was lots of edits.

• 14:43Adam Buxton?

  Is that the one with Cool in the Pool on it?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's the one.

• 14:46Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And again, that moves between almost comic, parodic stuff and serious electronics, that album. Holger was very involved and obsessed by what he was doing. And I remember walking into the studio when they were editing tiny pieces of tape together that they got from the radio. And retuning them by putting their fingers on the tape loops to speed them up or slow them down in order to get the sounds in tune with the track. And it was a fantastically complex work they did there, all before sampling.

• 15:20Adam Buxton?

  That's called Movies, that album.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right, Movies.

• 15:24Adam Buxton?

  So for people not familiar with tape loops, because this used to blow my mind, like, I used to hear people talking about tape loops this, well, yeah, we use tape loops. And I thought it was a phrase describing some bit of software, or I don't know, some machine or other, but it is literally a loop of magnetic tape.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you bring it out of the machine, so instead of going onto the reels, you make a loop with a pencil, your finger, a tubular metal chair, whatever. And then if you want to tune it, you pull it tighter or let it go a bit slacker.

• 15:59Adam Buxton?

  That changes the speed that it passes the playhead.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  It changes the pitch therefore, so you can tune to a limited degree. And I remember walking into the studio, it was like a spider's web of loops that were around every available metal chair, stood on tables and so on, and you couldn't walk between them because they're all moving at once. It was great. And I remember listening to it and thinking, God, this is a masterwork, you know, how could you even conceive of doing this kind of work? And they were totally obsessed, they had been working, you know, nineteen hours a day on this thing for weeks.

• 16:55Adam Buxton?

  That's Cool in the Pool by Holga Chukai, produced by Conny Plank. How was it that you came to be working with him?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Um, well, I I like Kraftwerk and also liked, um, Mikael Roeter as guitar work and and, um, Neuer particularly. I mean, Neuer was the one that really got me involved in listening to German music properly.

• 17:18Adam Buxton?

  N E U exclamation mark.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Exclamation mark, yeah. So I pinched the exclamation mark for Ultravox.

• 17:24Adam Buxton?

  That's where you got the exclamation mark.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, uh, my theory was that psychedelia had fled to Germany after it became declared uncool by, uh, John Lydon. Cause he said he hated the Pink Floyd and I thought, yeah, that's fine, but there's a lot of stuff there that needs to be reviewed at some point. And, uh, the Germans got it and changed it into something else because they allied it all with synthesizers properly and made a spectrum of music that goes from Kraftwerk right over to Klaus Schultz and Tangerine Dream and all that via Neuer, which was, and Neuer were punk before punk and they were one of the reasons I started the band.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Um, the New York Dolls and, uh, and Neuer were the two precipitants, if you like, uh, for Ultravox, really.

• 18:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because it has that very insistent beat, that so-called motoric beat.

• 18:25Adam Buxton?

  Which is very punky.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yes, it is, yeah. And oddly enough, that is reputed to come from the Shadows. From, it's called the Apache Beat. Because, uh, all the German guitarists were fond of the Shadows, you know, they'd, they'd all listened to Hank Marvin in their youth and picked up guitars.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And in England, it's the same thing. Jeff Beck and, uh, Jimmy Page and everyone will tell you one of the reasons they started was because of Hank.

• 19:06Adam Buxton?

  The Shads.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, unsuspected seminal artists. The interesting thing about them also is for me was that that they were written by European immigrants from the war coming over and getting work in Timpan Alley in London, Denmark Street. So it was a fantastic mixture of cultures there. And it was totally focused in London at that point. Soho music, really. A combination of Italian guitar effects with the echoes. And then the guitars were American. And then Hank was very English. And the authors of the music were probably Jewish European immigrants escaping Hitler's Germany.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  So you had this fantastic combination of cultures that made that music. So Wonderful Land and Frightened City and Man of Mystery, all my favourite tracks when I was a tiny kid.

• 20:03Adam Buxton?

  These were all the Shadows.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, these were all the Shadows tracks because they were sinister. They sounded sinister to me and mysterious.

• 20:10Adam Buxton?

  And sort of cinematic, almost like the theme tune to a thriller or something.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. I always used to think of them as music from the film. And the film was in my head. So they they were terrific prompts to imagination for a wee kid like me. Who loved science fiction and, you know, Forbidden Planet was coming out about the same time. I think I was about eight, so it would have been about nineteen fifty five or six.

• 20:36Adam Buxton?

  Right. Who did the soundtrack for Forbidden Planet?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, um, yes. Dee Dee and.

• 20:43Adam Buxton?

  Googling. Soundtrack album by Beebe and Louis Barron.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Barron, yeah. And they were experimenting with oscillators. They were almost uncontrollable at that point because they weren't attached to keyboards. So they, it was randomised music and I found it really thrilling when I heard that. I didn't know what it was, but it was very exciting. And the film was, is a beautiful film. Forbidden Planet is gorgeous to look at.

• 21:32Adam Buxton?

  Forbidden Planet soundtrack, 1956.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:35Adam Buxton?

  The first entirely electronic score for a film.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I can still remember the night I went to see it at the Plaza in Chorley, Plaza Cinema. I remember walking up to the cinema and then walking out in a daze after I'd seen the film.

• 21:48Adam Buxton?

  Did you go and see it with pals?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  No, I saw it with my parents. We used to go about three times a week to the cinema then.

• 21:55Adam Buxton?

  Did you?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  And there were five cinemas in Chorley at that point. So you had a great choice. And it was pre-TV really. I mean, they did exist, but we couldn't afford one. But you could afford the cinema. There's only one on six to go in.

• 22:07Adam Buxton?

  What did mum and dad make of Forbidden Planet?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Oh, they liked it. They just loved cinema. And if it was technicolor and beautiful, they really enjoyed the whole thing. So it was like a night at the opera for them.

• 22:21Adam Buxton?

  It's a great film. I mean, it really is so curious and part of the reason it seems totally out of time is because of that soundtrack.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:29Adam Buxton?

  Which creates this really strange atmosphere.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:33Adam Buxton?

  One of the jarring things about seeing it now is that Leslie Nielsen is in it.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:38Adam Buxton?

  Who later became famous for the Naked Gun films.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yes, that is strange, isn't it?

• 22:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  I remember seeing a rerun of it recently and thinking, oh god, yeah.

• 22:47Adam Buxton?

  You keep expecting him to do a joke or fall over or

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:51Adam Buxton?

  Set someone on fire by accident.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yep. It's very difficult for comedians to make transitions, isn't it?

• 22:58Adam Buxton?

  Tell me about it, John.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Ah, an old friend of mine from Chorley was a guy called Phil Cool, who was a comedian.

• 23:05Adam Buxton?

  The rubber face man.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we were at school together. And I used to go with him on his early gigs. And it was a bit like Billy Connolly. He started off as a folk singer. And then began to tell jokes. And the jokes got better reception than the songs eventually. So he became a comedian.

• 23:23Adam Buxton?

  Is he still around, Phil Cool?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he retired. He he he just got tired of the whole thing and he made enough money, so he legged it off to a place near the Lake District up in Lancashire.

• 23:33Adam Buxton?

  He won. Good for you, Phil. He was doing really well for a time. I remember like when I was growing up in the eighties. You couldn't get away from his rubber face.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I remember getting a panicky phone call from him because he got this TV series via Jasper Carrot.

• 23:49Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  And um he'd been doing his act for a long time around working men's clubs, you know. And I said, how's it going, Phil? And he said, bloody hell, I've run out of material. I've only done three shows. And he had a six week run, you know. And he said, I'm going to have to get a script right. I've never done that before. And you didn't realise how much material TV used up.

• 24:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  And you can't repeat it. Whereas when you're playing live, a live circuit, you go around and then six months later or a year later, you come back and people still laugh at the same jokes. You tell them in a slightly different way and move things around and the whole thing becomes slightly different. But on TV, it doesn't work like that. It's all rigid and recorded and people say, I've heard that one before. So you you can't tell it again.

• 24:33Adam Buxton?

  Well, it's even worse now because of YouTube.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:36Adam Buxton?

  So every single thing you do ends up online. I mean, I say that it's only a problem if you're really huge, I think, and people are are looking it up. There's loads of stuff I've done that's floating around, but it's, you know, like two people have looked at it or something. So no one really, you can carry on doing it and no one's going to complain too much.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Adam Buxton?

  But, yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it must be quite tough because jokes are such singular things, aren't they?

• 25:01Adam Buxton?

  I always felt like it, you know, you go and see a band play and you want them to play the hits.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Well, exactly.

• 25:08Adam Buxton?

  And so why is it that different with comedy? You know, you you especially if you're familiar with a routine, like, I don't know, um. Uh, trying to think of a comedy routine. All I can think of is Woody Allen hitting the moose in his car.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:23Adam Buxton?

  And so if you go and see Woody Allen back in the day, you'd be thinking, come on, do the moose routine.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, or John Cleese whipping the car with a branch, you know, that's it's that sort of thing.

• 25:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Where you you long to see it again and it's still funny.

• 25:37Adam Buxton?

  I think so, and there are some comedians who, like, there's a comedian called Brian Regan, who's huge in the States. And he will have a section at the end of his live show where he takes requests.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 25:49Adam Buxton?

  And people will call out, do the thing about the whatever, and he'll so he'll do the bit.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting.

• 25:56Adam Buxton?

  But the idea, I think, with most comedians is you can't repeat jokes because it relies entirely on the surprise.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Adam Buxton?

  And once you've heard the punchline once, that's it, it's done.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:06Adam Buxton?

  I don't think that that's necessarily true because it's it's about the performance. If you're into the performer.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Something like, say, John Cleese whipping the car is not a joke, is it? It is a routine.

• 26:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, exactly. That's like a.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  It doesn't have a punchline or anything like that, where whereas a joke does.

• 26:21Adam Buxton?

  Sure, a joke joke.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Depends on that moment of surprise, doesn't it, really?

• 26:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  It's the same with songs, isn't it? Because people like to hear songs again. And bands always, when when you talk about it with other musicians, and they say, big mistake last tour, I played all the new stuff.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Nobody wanted to hear it.

• 26:41Adam Buxton?

  Everyone goes to the bar.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, even people like the Stones, you know, they they bring out a new album, no one wants to hear it.

• 26:47Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  You just wanna hear satisfaction again, you know.

• 26:49Adam Buxton?

  Of course. But then you get people like Bob Dylan, who are determined to frustrate all the audience's expectations.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:59Adam Buxton?

  And even if they do songs from their back catalogue, good luck recognizing them.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:04Adam Buxton?

  Would you get fed up of playing the hits at any point? I mean, presumably you still go out and play now and feel under pressure to play Underpass.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Oh, always, yeah.

• 27:14Adam Buxton?

  And do you think, oh, God, it's Underpass time?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  No, I know, I've never, I've actually always enjoyed trying to do it as well as I can in my own way. Maybe you move something around and you discover something new about the song sometimes. But it's a matter of enjoyment. There are a few ones I don't enjoy because they're too complicated to enjoy. And they get discarded. So it's the kind of simple effective ones that work best live and they're the most fun to play as well. So everyone enjoys, the audience enjoys it and I do as well.

• 27:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  But I know, I remember Pete Townsend complaining about having to play My Generation. Because sometimes people get pinned into a certain time or a time of their lives that they don't want to repeat. So I can understand that too.

• 28:05Adam Buxton?

  Especially if you've written a song like My Generation, which is basically all about, this isn't gonna last, this is a flash in the pan.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Hope I die before I get old.

• 28:13Adam Buxton?

  Hope I die before I become some old twat who has to play this song over and over again to make a living.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yep. There you are.

• 28:20Adam Buxton?

  And every time it's back slapping you in the face.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Everyone shouting for it.

• 28:23Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. Play the one about what a twat you are for still playing this song even though you're old.

• 28:32Adam Buxton?

  Hello my friend, it's good to see you again. I've got to say you're looking great. I love what you've done with your nipples and your knees and your shiny bald pate.

• 28:53Adam Buxton?

  Okay, I'm gonna play a clip. Tell me about the memories it brings back and anything else that you think of.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Oh, that's enough.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that was the first, one of the first records we ever made. And um.

• 29:31Adam Buxton?

  Nineteen seventy five.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was done to make enough money to buy Billy a keyboard.

• 29:38Adam Buxton?

  Billy Curry.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Billy Curry, yeah, because we didn't have any money at all in those days. And it was supposedly the soundtrack of a sort of weird porn film. That was a collection of nineteen twenties. If you can imagine Charlie Chaplin with his trousers down.

• 29:58Adam Buxton?

  I have imagined him many times.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And so it was all culled from illicit film from about nineteen ten to nineteen twenty, I think.

• 30:06Adam Buxton?

  Who made the film?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Well, we had a manager and he had a friend who made this film and uh they needed some music for it, so they said, how about getting your guys to play it? So we did.

• 30:17Adam Buxton?

  And this is when you were called Tiger Lily?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, just briefly. I mean, we changed the name every week about that point. So that was one week we were called Tiger Lily.

• 30:25Adam Buxton?

  Were you still at art school at the time?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Adam Buxton?

  This was the Royal College of Art at this point?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Adam Buxton?

  And so it was there that you kind of got into movements and ideas like Fluxus, for example?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:37Adam Buxton?

  And through that thought, I'll tell you what I could do is rather than paint a picture or do a performance piece and in that way is make a band, is that right?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah, yeah.

• 30:49Adam Buxton?

  What was Fluxus?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Uh it was a group in New York who did performance art, but it covered a wide range from what Yoko Ono did right through to people who would become comedians and actually do a spot in a nightclub. But they were fabricated comedians, if you like. They were actually artists who were performing um as comedians. So it was a kind of interesting, mischievous infiltration.

• 31:15Adam Buxton?

  That sounds like Andy Kaufman's kind of thing. Do you know what I mean by Andy Kaufman?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yes, I do, yeah, yeah. It's similar to that sort of thing where you actually do the thing properly and as well as you possibly can. It's like Mrs. Merton as well, you know, it's the English version is a bit like that, isn't it, where someone does a subversive act and you have to figure out what they're up to.

• 31:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And it's fun. I mean Bowie was a bit like that, wasn't he? He was swapping personas all the time and saying he was an actor, not a rock and roller really. So there are all those kinds of edges. And even in what you might call a genuine rock and roller, there's a lot of, it's not really acting, it's making yourself into the sort of person you'd like to be and live the kind of life you imagine you'd like to live. And of course, when you do attain it, it's a tragedy usually. But it's, it's great fun. The pursuing of it is great fun, I think.

• 32:13Adam Buxton?

  Because it was around that time that you assumed your name, your stage name, John Vox.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Because the lad from Chorley wasn't adequate enough, really. He was a lad from Chorley. And I needed someone who was a bit more urban and better lit and better looking and more intelligent, really.

• 32:31Adam Buxton?

  What were the other names that you considered?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Oh, John Vox was one, of course. And then there was, well, the names for the band, there was The Damned.

• 32:40Adam Buxton?

  Oh, you got to The Damned before the-

• 32:41Speaker 01

  And then we discovered, no, that The Damned had already got it.

• 32:44Adam Buxton?

  Oh, okay.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  The Damned were one of the very first of that generation of bands. They were around before anyone else. And we, I had a great respect for them. When I found out that there was a band called The Damned, I thought, that's a damn good name. So I have to find out more about them. And I did, and they were brilliant. And I remember their record that came out before anyone else's, New Rose. And there was an actual video made in Super 8, which floored me. I thought it was fabulous.

• 33:11Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, that's them down in some sweaty club, isn't it?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. It's a great piece of work, you know, the whole thing. It set the tenor for the whole punk movement. It's brilliant. And they did it way before anyone else.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  London was pretty dead, really, at that point. Everything had fled the streets and gone into the hit parade, leaving a vacuum behind. So I, I came down to London with all these plans and went clubbing. And there was nothing going on at all. There was a band called The Winkies, who I thought were pretty reasonable.

• 33:48Adam Buxton?

  Was that Eno in the Winkies?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Well, he produced a record of theirs a bit later, yeah.

• 33:52Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And then Kilbin and the High Roads, who I thought were interesting, but.

• 33:57Adam Buxton?

  With Ian Dury?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought they were they were good, but it wasn't my kind of music. It was going towards jazz, really, which is what I wanted to avoid. And I wanted things to be a bit rougher than that. And the Feelgood's were were a good band as well. So there were good bands around, but they were not quite what I wanted to.

• 34:14Adam Buxton?

  It was pub rock, wasn't it?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  It was pub rock, yeah. There was nothing else around, really. That was one of the reasons I started the band. To make something that would have a scene. And then suddenly, everyone else is doing the same thing, you know, the. I remember going to Let It Rock on King's Road, which was what became Sex later on.

• 34:33Adam Buxton?

  Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood's shop.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they were selling Keith Richards type clothes, you know, velvet trousers with wine stains and that kind of thing.

• 34:43Adam Buxton?

  Harvey Weinstein. Um, yeah, like old.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  You could say, you might say.

• 34:49Adam Buxton?

  Rock, old rock guy clothes.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:51Adam Buxton?

  So they hadn't gone into all the bondage and zip stuff yet.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  And then they changed overnight into Sex and it it became a different scene. And then they wanted a band to publicise that and and work with it. And that's Sex Pistols, of course.

• 35:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I forget, what was the thing that catalyzed that switch for them? How did Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood suddenly get into all the zips and the torn clothes and all that stuff?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  I I really don't know. I remember just going in there with Billy, actually, when we were, the band was just beginning and investigating it because it had changed and we thought we'd go in and see it. I remember chatting to Jordan when she was in there. And having a feel of the rubbish stuff that felt like skin. It was really strange.

• 35:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that weird latex stuff.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  And I I could imagine being zipped up in it, but I'd no wish to be, you know, it wasn't my kind of thing at all.

• 35:42Adam Buxton?

  You didn't want to get zipped into one of those gimp outfits and then inflated with a punk.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And I'd seen Alan Jones artwork, you know, which was the appealing side of it. Very, very beautiful women.

• 35:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Involved in that kind of thing. Uh, but this was the more sordid end of, of, of it. So it didn't really interest me that much. But I thought it was an interesting scene. You know, there were people floating in and out at that point. And I remember seeing Lyden and Mick Jones and a few others at gigs, particularly. There was a Patti Smith gig that was one of the first punk gigs and all that lot were there. And you could pick them out of the crowd because they all looked different to everyone else who was there, really.

• 36:24Adam Buxton?

  What did you look like at that point?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I was pretty, uh, sort of normal. I had, I was very fond of grey at that point. So everything was grey. And I had a floppy hairdo, a bit like, um, a sort of Bowie hairdo, I think, really.

• 36:38Adam Buxton?

  David Sylvian type do.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was that, it was that kind of period. It wasn't punky.

• 36:43Adam Buxton?

  Office shirt, top button done up.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. It was that, it was that kind of thing, yeah.

• 36:47Adam Buxton?

  Metamatic, uh, front cover.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, pre-metamatic, yeah.

• 36:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  So I was trying to be not long haired and dandy, which was, I was against. And I'd, I'd been through a sort of James Dean phase. I'd also done a ripped T-shirt one way before, when I was in the first year at Royal College, should be seventy three. I'd seen On the Waterfront for the first time and it really struck me. So I immediately got a leather jacket and a T-shirt, which I ripped holes in. And I used to walk around London wearing that.

• 37:19Adam Buxton?

  What made you rip the holes in them?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Well, it was the fight scene in, at the end of Brando's experience along the waterfront, you know, when he got battered. And he was, he had this ripped T-shirt and I thought, wow, that looks great. So I ripped my T-shirt in sympathy. And I was, in my head, I was a young Brando walking about down Bond Street.

• 37:38Adam Buxton?

  Maybe Vivienne Westwood saw you and thought, hello.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Well, oddly enough, there was an encounter on the tube with Vivienne Westwood. When I saw her heading towards me and I knew who she was and I fled. Because I, she was too intimidating.

• 37:53Adam Buxton?

  You thought she was gonna zip you into a thing?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I wasn't sure what she was up to. And she was doing a lot of fashion shows and wanted models, so she might have been interested in something like that. And I didn't want to get involved in that kind of thing.

• 38:05Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Because one of the models, when I was at Royal College, was a life model. It was a very beautiful girl we used to draw. And she used to do fashion shows and she always wanted me to come do some modeling with her, which is a great compliment. I thought it was lovely. But I had no wish to do that.

• 38:22Adam Buxton?

  Really?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 38:23Adam Buxton?

  I mean, you did. You looked extraordinary, though. I mean, you have a very strong look anyway, but you did look very angular and model-y.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:32Adam Buxton?

  In that way.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I suppose I did, but it's not something I could ever do. I was too self-conscious.

• 38:36Adam Buxton?

  Aha.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  It's hard enough being on stage.

• 38:39Adam Buxton?

  Well, I was gonna say.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  That's why I had to invent John FOXX to do it for me.

• 38:42Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Because the Dennis Lee wasn't capable.

• 38:45Adam Buxton?

  And with John FOXX, with two X's, why did you put the extra X on there just for extra?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Charlie and Inez Fox.

• 38:54Adam Buxton?

  Ah.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Who I saw supporting The Rolling Stones in nineteen sixty-four, I think, at Wigan. I went to the gig and they came on first and they were great. Mockingbird and all that.

• 39:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Great songs. And it was really seminal because they reminded me a bit of that Chuck Berry era, but more elegant. I remember Charlie had this great white sparkle suit on. He looked fantastic and I thought, yeah, that's a great look, you know. I always enjoyed that kind of dark glamour somehow, you know, that kind of slightly sinister glamour. It's what David Lynch got right. It was glamorous, but there was some kind of sinister undertow.

• 39:32Adam Buxton?

  The seedy underbelly.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And.

• 39:35Adam Buxton?

  But you didn't dress up in sparkly suits with Ultravox, though, did you?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  No, no, that was very different. Not really punky, but sort of, it was more kind of homemade stuff, really, I think.

• 39:46Adam Buxton?

  What did you want to sound like? Did you have some template in your head that you were emulating when you played those first Ultravox gigs and those, made those first albums?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  There are always things that you aspire to and feel pleased when you get near to it. And there were bits of Roxy and bits of Noya and bits of Roy Orbison and bits of Shadows, Echoes and bits of more outlaw things, you know, like Link Ray and The Who as well and so on. It was a bag of stuff that you carried and you had to sift it all and that took a couple of years. It does with every band usually. And then you kind of eliminate the stuff that's unnecessary and the stuff that's inappropriate and the things you look foolish doing and you find in the end you distill what you're about. And that usually takes three albums and it certainly did with us.

• 40:42Adam Buxton?

  Because Magazine, who were around at the same time, Howard Devoto's band, they were writing songs that sounded quite similar structurally. I love that band.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 40:53Adam Buxton?

  And so, did you listen to them in those days and did it put you off that they were on the same sort of musical patch or did you feel encouraged by it?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  It is encouraging, but I wasn't conscious of them when we were around because there's a lot of instances where people come on to the same sort of thing independently.

• 41:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  And that happened with electronic music, for instance, because when I made Mathematic, this is jumping way ahead of course, but I didn't know there were people around who were like the Human League and Cabaret Volterra was conscious of actually. But there were pockets of people all over the place who were beginning to make electronic music at roughly the same time. It's because it's something in the air that you sense and we all sensed it.

• 42:24Adam Buxton?

  Speaking of Brian Eno though, how were you able to get in touch with him? Because he had released his first solo album in 1974, having left Roxy Music. Here Come The Warm Jets, I think was the first one. Was he someone that you met in your travels at art school then?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  No, although he used to drop into the Royal College when I was there because he was going out with Carol from Ceramics.

• 42:47Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  And I'm sure I remember him coming in with the feather outfit that he'd...

• 42:53Adam Buxton?

  The feather outfit that he wears on top of the pots for a Virginia plane?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 42:58Adam Buxton?

  Maybe he just comes from the pots.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Maybe it's a false memory, but I've got a feeling it did happen.

• 43:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  That no one took much notice because things like that happened anyway.

• 43:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  It was an art college, you know, so you were expected to dress like that for lunch. Then I met him shortly afterwards because when we signed to Island Records, he was signed to Island Records too. And he was wandering about in the canteen one day. And the canteen was a big place, full of Rasters and Bob Marley's crew and all that, you know, because they were all... They always come in every day and smoke ganja for a couple of hours before going out in the evening.

• 43:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because it was mainly a reggae label at first, wasn't it?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was Chris Blackwell's West Indian Connection because that's where he came from and that was the kind of music he loved, you know, so... He signed Marley and all the crew, really. So it was a big social place and we used to go and hang out there.

• 43:53Adam Buxton?

  Whereabouts? Is that west London?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, in St Peter's Square in Hammersmith.

• 43:56Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  A nice old big Georgian house. It's a beautiful place. So, hanging about in there, saw Brian a couple of times, said hello and all that. And then said, "Would you like to produce us because we're just rehearsing at the moment?" And he said, "Okay, well, I'll come down, have a listen."

• 44:12Adam Buxton?

  And this is when your Ultravox with an exclamation mark?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yes, we just started.

• 44:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just named ourselves and got going.

• 44:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  So Brian came down with his little recorder, recorded a few songs. And then called us up and said, yeah, okay, let's go ahead. So we uh we got the budget, ten grand, I think, and went into the studio a couple of weeks later and started.

• 44:34Adam Buxton?

  And was Steve Lillywhite involved at that point?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, Steve had made, we'd already made about half the album with Steve. Because we used to sneak into Marble Arch Studios, which was at Marble Arch, just overlooking Hyde Park, wonderful location. We used to sneak in in down, what was called downtime, when there was no one else in, in other words, which is usually at the weekend. Sunday mornings or Saturday evenings or something. And we recorded and Steve was then virtually a tape op and apprentice engineer, you know, you switch the tape machines on and off and that kind of thing.

• 45:07Adam Buxton?

  Um, he went on, of course, to become one of the biggest producers of the eighties.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was great, even right at the beginning, he was, he was wonderful. And we all got on, he was like one of the gang, you know, so we always used to go and pile in and make some music and then go out and have a drink. It was, it was good fun. I took those tapes over to Ireland, got a recording deal and a writing deal, which my writing deal provided the wages for the band, so it was a good um arrangement for everyone, really.

• 45:35Adam Buxton?

  When was it that you were sharing studio space with the Rolling Stones?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Stones, that was underneath the, the, the socializing space in St Peter's Square, Hammersmith. The studio was underneath and Blackwell knew Jagger, I think, and Jagger wanted a place to do some recording. I think they were assembling a live album, so uh we were the cover band. The studio was booked in our name.

• 45:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And they gave us half the money and they took the nights and we took the days. And I would wheel Keith Richards out of the control room in the morning, because he was always fast asleep in a chair.

• 46:12Adam Buxton?

  Like, was he putting in the hours?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did, he did all the work.

• 46:16Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  At that point, anyway. And Jagger would drop in with Jade, his daughter, who was a wee girl at that point.

• 46:23Adam Buxton?

  Keith was comatose whenever you would encounter him. You didn't have any chats?

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did. He used to come in and grab his things and say hi and, you know, and have a very quick chat and then he'd drive off in the Bentley.

• 46:36Adam Buxton?

  Right, and so he was friendly?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a lovely guy. He was great. He was a very pleasant character.

• 46:42Adam Buxton?

  How long was the recording process with Eno and Lily White then?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Three weeks.

• 46:47Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really? Quite quick.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And during that time was when Bowie rang Brian to come and do Low and all that.

• 46:54Adam Buxton?

  Oh, wow.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  He got the call. That was seventy-six September, I remember, because we finished the recording on my birthday. So it was, it would have been sometime in September.

• 47:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Seventy-six, yeah.

• 47:05Adam Buxton?

  Right, of course. And then he, so then he, you know, goes off to Paris. And they record outside Paris and release Low early in seventy-seven.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:15Adam Buxton?

  There you go.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  And I, I remember, this might interest you as a Bowie fan.

• 47:19Adam Buxton?

  As a super nerd?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Was, uh, when Brian came back, a mutual friend of mine and Brian is Russ Mills, who's an artist.

• 47:28Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Who does record covers.

• 47:30Adam Buxton?

  He did a book called More Dark Than Shark.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  That's right, with, with Brian.

• 47:34Adam Buxton?

  With Eno, yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he's an artist anyway, but he gets asked to do covers and he's, he's done lots of things from Nine Inch Nails to Japan and so on. What Brian brought back was lots of tapes of yarning that went on after recording. Everyone would sit around, have a drink, and stories would be told. And there were various session guys who were telling stories about their encounters with famous rock stars. And, um, everyone was sitting around with lots of hoots of laughter and surprise and so on. About Roy Orbison's dad, for instance, and legendary stories, which I cannot repeat.

• 48:12Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  I cannot repeat. But Brian brought these all on cassette. And, um, Russ had some of these and we used to play them at night and have a listen to Bowie and Co. sitting around telling stories about their past.

• 48:25Adam Buxton?

  Oh, my god.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Hilarious, you know, there's some, they're all dead fruity. So you can imagine, Roy Orbison's now is a particularly plum one.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  But that's as far as I can go.

• 48:40Adam Buxton?

  And those are all taking place in the sessions below?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:43Adam Buxton?

  Wow, so incongruous. So you were working with Eno on the first Ultravox album?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Adam Buxton?

  And was he up to any of his kind of studio tricks with the oblique strategy cards?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we used those and they were interesting and useful.

• 49:00Adam Buxton?

  So these were the cards that he created with an artist called Peter Schmidt?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:04Adam Buxton?

  That were supposed to help people get beyond creative blocks? Or just introduce different ways of thinking about the creative process? You'd pick a card at random and read what was written on it? And then respond however you felt to that command or that suggestion? And some of the commands were, "Honor thy error as a hidden intention."

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a famous one, Brian.

• 49:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's a good one. Repetition is a form of change.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were a help because in a studio, it's very much a psychic hot house, isn't it? And there's a lot of pressure on you to finish. People can get into arguments about how things should sound and so on. Because everyone's passionate about what they're doing. So it's good to have that kind of randomness come in and say, "Okay, we're stuck. What do we do?" And you bring a card out. And even if you don't react to it or you hate it, or, I mean, you must react to it in some way. And that's the interesting thing. It's like tarot cards, isn't it? The value is that they force you to make a decision just by their presence. And maybe if they weren't there, you wouldn't make the same decision. So they do have an effect and it's interesting.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Um, oblique strategies work in that way, that no matter what they say, you must react somehow. So they can free the dam, you know, they can make you change direction slightly or make you see things in a slightly different way, allow you to see things in a slightly different way. Just as tarot cards or any of those other randomized so-called magical things do.

• 50:33Adam Buxton?

  Were all the band on board with those kinds of artistic games? Or did some people find it sort of infuriating?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  No, we were fine because Warren, Cam, the drummer, and I were reading The Dice Man. By Luke Reinhardt, I remember, uh, which is about a man who decides to run his life by a throw of the dice at every point. So it was the same sort of thing, really. We were quite used to that idea.

• 50:57Adam Buxton?

  That was huge, that book, wasn't it?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very, very interesting idea and, and it leads into all kinds of mad situations, of course. So when Bleak Strategist came out, we thought, oh yeah, that's another, another dice man, isn't it? Let's have a go.

• 51:10Adam Buxton?

  So after working with Conny Plank and Brian Eno, you never felt like you needed to go back and do more stuff with them and?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  No, not really, because it's a learning process, isn't it? You pick up lots of things. And then I always find with every album, I'm impatient to get on with the next one because that's done. When you've finished it, it's finished. And everything you've gathered from that, all the mistakes and the, the things you want to improve on, you're just dying to get going on the next one. So I, I never wanted to go back. It's like going back to an old lover, isn't it? You don't want to do it, really.

• 51:48Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but every now and then you get-

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes.

• 51:50Adam Buxton?

  Have a couple of drinks and then. So similarly, I suppose a desire to keep things fresh made you think after three albums with Ultravox that you were leaving, you're taking your exclamation mark with you. Actually, you'd already removed it by that point, hadn't you? You and I spoke on stage at the Art Centre in Norwich. You were talking about the fact that you just didn't necessarily love the lifestyle after a time and then-

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:17Adam Buxton?

  Being on tour in America just got a bit dreary and repetitive. Is that right?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, touring's hard work and, um, I mean, some people love it. Some people love being on stage. Many people do. And I noticed there are lots of different kinds of rock and rollers. Some who really enjoy that public persona and going out on stage and they come alive. It's like the rest of their life is a, is leading up to that moment. And then there are the others who find it hard work, or find it-

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Intimidating or difficult in some way. I'm more like that, I think. And I found that going on stage was fine. I could do it and I could even enjoy it. But all the other stuff, you know, the twenty-two hours of sitting in a vehicle or trying to amuse yourself in an hotel room somewhere or wandering around a foreign city, which can be fun, of course, but it gets tedious after a while and you feel like you could use that time in a better way. And that's how I felt. And I could see my life slipping away on tour, because we did a lot of it. And I used up a couple of years of my life sitting in vehicles and sitting in hotels. And I thought, that's enough. I've got to get on with things now. You also do get locked into this thing of album tour,

• 53:36Speaker 01

  album tour, write the stuff, record, album tour again. And it is a treadmill. No matter how famous you are, how much money you might make out of it, or what kind of wonderful life it might be initially, it does grind you down into a pulp.

• 53:55Adam Buxton?

  I'm sure. Were you also wrapped up in the band's profile? Were you sort of going, why aren't we bigger? Were you frustrated by things like that? Or were you happy just to keep doing what you were doing?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there was an element of frustration because you always had the record company wanting a hit record.

• 54:13Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  And of course, there's always that pressure because they've invested in you and they want their money back. And they don't just want the money back, they want it back quintupled or a hundred tupled or whatever it could be. So there's always that pressure. And it's uncomfortable. You feel you're in this machine. And it does feel like a machine. It is a machine. And it's a great one. It's produced lots of wonderful things. But there are also other avenues. And it was interesting to watch Eno, for instance, negotiating his way through it all in various ways. And I was always more interested in that kind of music, that kind of slightly. Off-centre bit. It comes from art school, doesn't it, where you like the fringe

• 54:58Speaker 01

  things and you you like the odd stuff and and you you're always looking for things that don't quite fit and do things that aren't recognisable immediately.

• 55:07Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  That's always the challenge. And of course, that's death in pop music.

• 55:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not what you want to be doing to get the next hit single.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:15Adam Buxton?

  You want to do stuff that sounds a bit like everything else.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:20Adam Buxton?

  And well, the thing is, it's so tantalising, isn't it? Because the ones that hit really big and have the longest life are the things that are nothing like anything else.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:27Adam Buxton?

  So that are totally original and everyone's like, whoa, what's that? And that really sticks in the mind. And then thereafter, everyone is chasing that thing.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:35Adam Buxton?

  Do a thing like that.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Adam Buxton?

  And doing slightly worse versions. But yeah, it's always more fun to be the one who's trying to do something weird.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And you pay a penalty for that because there is this thing of familiarisation in a a media.

• 55:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  World, isn't there? It takes a while for everyone to get used to it, in other words, and to figure it out and then enjoy it. And there are very few things that are totally original that hit right away.

• 56:01Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  They're usually recognised after some years.

• 56:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, well, nothing's totally original, isn't it? But it's all, something seems very original because it's used bits of things you weren't aware of previously.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 56:15Adam Buxton?

  So it's all to do with timing as well, isn't it?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:19Adam Buxton?

  It's like, when is the right moment to appropriate this thing from 20 years before that everyone's forgotten about?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Adam Buxton?

  And suddenly, bang, it hits.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Adam Buxton?

  And it catches fire.

• 56:48Adam Buxton?

  I said to you at the beginning of our conversation that I was just going to fire random words and phrases at you. I haven't really been doing that. We've just been talking more naturally. But one of the words I was going to fire at you was Vienna.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:20Adam Buxton?

  That was a record that Ultravox Mark II

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Adam Buxton?

  made with Conny Plank.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:25Adam Buxton?

  I didn't realise that was him.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:27Adam Buxton?

  And then, of course, that hit pretty big in 1981.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:32Adam Buxton?

  After you'd said goodbye to the group and said like, keep the name, good luck to you, and parted ways. But was that a weird experience, being surrounded by Vienna in early 1981, having left the group?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Not really, but I think it was an interesting moment because you realise two things. One thing, I really enjoyed the fact that the basic design had gone on to be really successful.

• 58:00Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  It had carried on, it had a life of its own, in other words. So the whole project was successful in that sense. Also, the other side of it was that it gave all of us what we wanted in the end, which I thought was a wonderful thing.

• 58:15Adam Buxton?

  How did you be?

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Well, I got my experimental bit sorted and with enough money and exposure to do what I wanted. And that was a great gift, you know, it's a great gift to be able to do what you want to in life. And I could do that. And the band had done that too. And the band, particularly Bill, I remember, wanted some hit records. So that was the whole thing, go off and do that. So we both got what we wanted out of that whole situation. It's not often you can do that with four or five people. It's the magical thing about bands is that you can all devise a new existence for yourself, if you like. And we could do that. It was a wonderful moment, that.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  And I remember getting a glimpse of that when Gary Newman had his first hit. Because that was really the moment everything changed. And I knew everything was changing. Because Gary had been around and I remember hearing his first record. Actually, it was Russell Mills who played me his first record and said, "We like this because it sounds a bit like you." So I said, "Okay."

• 59:19Adam Buxton?

  And that would have been Tubway Army back then, would it?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I listened to it, it didn't sound, to me, it didn't sound like me at all. But I thought it was a good record and I enjoyed it. And then he had that massive hit, it was number one for ages.

• 59:31Adam Buxton?

  Our Friends Electric.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fantastic.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  And I thought, God, it's a great sounding record and this is it, you know, the doors are open now, all the electronic stuff, people, record companies will now take it seriously and get interested. And that's what happened. The press still didn't like it, of course, and that was also interesting. But there were whole scenes built around it, you know, Blitz and all that started off after that.

• 1:00:08Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Rusty was great because he was the first modern DJ.

• 1:00:13Adam Buxton?

  Rusty Egan.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Rusty Egan, yeah.

• 1:00:15Adam Buxton?

  And Steve Strange were the architects of the Blitz scene.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Steve was the face, you know, he had the clothes and the look.

• 1:00:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, Steve Strange of Visage.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, really inventive.

• 1:00:25Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Moment.

• 1:00:26Adam Buxton?

  Did you used to hang out at the Blitz?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  No, no, I went there once. I knew Rusty slightly because he used to turn up at gigs sometimes. And Billy was very much in that scene, he liked it. I've never been a scene person, you know, I never joined in with any scenes. I visit them and I love them, but I never feel like I want to be part of them. Whereas Bill was straight in there, you know, he loved it. And then they did Visage and that was a success as well. The real sea change was Gary's record though. That really altered everything.

• 1:00:57Adam Buxton?

  That's great. And he was obviously so influenced by you. He was listening to Systems of Romance and thinking, oh my God, how can I sound like this?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was a great thing because he said that.

• 1:01:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And that was very useful. Often, people will hide their influences, I imagine, because they want people to feel like it was all them, or they're insecure. It's usually insecurity, isn't it?

• 1:01:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Where they don't want to be accused of copying someone, you know. And of course, we all copy each other like crazy all the time, and that's what makes things interesting.

• 1:01:32Adam Buxton?

  He seems like a sort of, in the best way, quite a guileless person, Gary Newman.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  He is, yeah. He's totally honest and clear about everything. And it's a delight talking to him because you always get the truth. It's wonderful.

• 1:01:47Adam Buxton?

  I'm gonna go back to my firing names at you thing now. Lee Bowery.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Lee Bowery, yes, brilliant, yeah, a real artist, I think, and a lot of fun. I remember seeing him dressed as a huge black and white polka dotted pelone first time in the fridge in Brixton. And I was really impressed by what he'd done, so imaginative. And then there's a great film of him walking around New York, he in this, he's suddenly elevated himself to about eight feet tall. As this kind of robotic doll and you could see all the reaction of the passersby. It's just a wonderful piece of film. And that, again, this is like fluxus ideas too, where you become something else, you change your whole personality.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  And even your physical shape, which he was a genius at, I mean, that was his real talent, wasn't it? To transform himself into these strange creatures. He would be full glitter one night or, you know, the spotted pelone or something. And then he gave, I remember when he gave birth to his wife.

• 1:02:55Adam Buxton?

  I remember that too.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Really.

• 1:02:57Adam Buxton?

  That was amazing.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Phenomenal.

• 1:02:59Adam Buxton?

  I'll post a link to a video of it in the description of this podcast, but it's so good. And it was an act he did quite a bit.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:03:07Adam Buxton?

  He comes on and he's dressed as a large woman, then he sort of lies down and.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  He starts to grunt and groan.

• 1:03:16Adam Buxton?

  Grunt and groan.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  People think he's ill or having a fit or something.

• 1:03:20Adam Buxton?

  Spreads his legs and then from between his legs, from between this kind of latex pair of tights that he's wearing. Emerges this other woman who's skinny and bald.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Often painted red.

• 1:03:36Adam Buxton?

  And she comes out and she looks confused and then, and he's kicking his legs around and, and then they got married.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  That was his wife.

• 1:03:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Adam Buxton?

  That was amazing.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And then, of course, Lucian Freud picks him as a model, which is really a wonderful validation of what he did, I think. And it brought him into a completely different world. And now, of course, he's legendary, which is how he should be. He inspired lots of people. A spirit like that on a scene makes it into something else. It's when London became remarkable, you know, it was London with an exclamation mark suddenly. It became a magical place just because there was an imagination like that operating in it. And I remember meeting him for the first time to say hello to him when he was doing that thing with Michael Clarke, there was a thing called I Am Curious Orange.

• 1:04:32Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, with Marky Smith.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  With the Fall, yeah, because I was having lots of drinks with Marky Smith. That was the drinking period of my life with Marky Smith. We used to spend whole nights getting absolutely kale-eyed together.

• 1:04:48Adam Buxton?

  Well, I've got to ask you about that in a second.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  He was, he was playing the music. He and Bricks, his wife, were playing music for the show. So I went down to see it a couple of times. It was great.

• 1:04:57Adam Buxton?

  And what was Lee like? Was he a sort of fairly straightforward person?

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Yes, he was. He was very pleasant. He knew my music and he said he liked it and he shook hands and had a chat and all that.

• 1:05:07Adam Buxton?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Very civilized, yeah.

• 1:05:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. How did you get to know Marky Smith?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we were in Venice. When I sold the studio.

• 1:05:16Adam Buxton?

  This is a studio that you bought in the East End?

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Garden Studio, which was on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Hollywell Lane, right at the end of Shoreditch High Street.

• 1:05:27Adam Buxton?

  And you had that at the end of the seventies and into the eighties?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And when I gave up rock and roll, I sold it. And to celebrate the sale, I took my family, kids and wife, off to Venice to stay in the hotel that Death in Venice was shot.

• 1:05:45Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Hotel de Ban, on the island there. So I was there feeling very happy and miles away from England, when who should walk in?

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Marquis Smith and Bricks. And they just signed a deal with some record company and got a huge advance. So they'd gone there to celebrate with John, their manager. So the three of them walked in and you got a Vaparretto to go into Venice from the hotel with a guy who looked like a sea captain, all dressed in white.

• 1:06:18Adam Buxton?

  Vaparretto being a little um.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Motorboat, but a very posh one.

• 1:06:22Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  With a chap dressed like the captain of an ocean liner, but all in white.

• 1:06:27Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  With gloves.

• 1:06:28Adam Buxton?

  Very nice.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  So he would take you in when you wanted to go to and visit Venice. So I remember being in that with Mark and saying, this is most unlikely place to see you. And we got talking and then we used to go off in Venice, get drunk together, which was great fun.

• 1:06:43Adam Buxton?

  What would you chat about with him?

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Oh, lots of things about his dad, about his, about being a northerner mainly and what a strain it was and how much fun it can be sometimes.

• 1:06:56Adam Buxton?

  What did he have to say about his dad? Was that a figure that ruined large in his life?

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he said, I always dressed smart. I always wanted to dress smart because my dad dressed smart. And you do, don't you? You don't want to go down to the pub not looking smart. It was that kind of thing, you know, he had this whole ethos worked out for his life, his daily life. And he was great fun. He was a real contrarian. He just liked to take the opposite view to whatever was happening at the time. And that was great fun. I don't have the courage to do that. I mean, I might get sticky sometimes, but not, I'm usually fairly affable. And he's completely opposite. But when we got together, I used to enjoy doing the same to him if I could. And I remember him throwing a very heavy ice tray at me one evening when I accused him of singing like Iggy Pop, you know.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  So we used to have this to and fro, but he was just great fun. And his wife, Bricks, was lovely as well. She came from quite a well-off family, so her mother had given her all the addresses to visit in Venice, like Harry's Bar and all that, you know, so.

• 1:08:02Adam Buxton?

  She's American.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  And she's American, yeah. So it was a lot of fun. It was a great fun period, until they broke up and then that all, that was about a year or two later. So in that year or two, I used to meet Mark all the time. He used to come around when he was at Loose End and we'd get the drinks out and we'd stay up all night chatting.

• 1:08:21Adam Buxton?

  Would you listen to music together?

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Not much, no, but we'd talk about it a lot, mainly about what we didn't like.

• 1:08:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. That's not totally surprising.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Adam Buxton?

  So that's the mid-eighties, is it?

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Late eighties.

• 1:08:36Adam Buxton?

  Late eighties. It was getting Manchester-y.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Oh, it was before that, yeah, it was before that.

• 1:08:42Adam Buxton?

  Before that, okay.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  All that happened a bit later on, yeah. He was always very critical about anything that was orthodox. He accused me of sounding like Peter Gabriel at one point, so we had a long argument about that. And that went on, I remember that was an all-nighter.

• 1:08:58Adam Buxton?

  There's worse people to sound like.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I've got a great respect for Peter, but it's not quite my area.

• 1:09:05Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  So I had to tell Mark exactly what was. And, but he always got back to saying, well, keep it simple.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Whenever anything got too complicated, you know, get rid of it. And it's not advice, it's just the way he lived his life, I think. You can always see that in his work. Whenever things got more complicated, he'd get rid of things. Until he was just left with a couple of guitarists or, you know, he'd abandon people on the motorway and that kind of thing. And he'd start again. And he was a real tyrant as well with his artists. And very hard to work with in the studio, I think. I went down to a couple of recording sessions and the engineers would be tearing their hair out, you know, quietly. And he would never be clear about instructions. He'd say, I want that less woolly.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  And then he'd go to the pub and he'd say, come and get me when you've done it.

• 1:10:01Adam Buxton?

  Because he was a menace, like onstage, you could see him wandering around and randomly unplugging people or turning them down or just sabotaging them. It was all about like, how can I sabotage everything?

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And again, I recognize the symptoms because it's that kind of fluxus thing, isn't it? It's performance art. And he would never admit to that, but he actually knew what he was doing. The whole thing was a performance. When he was giving interviews, he knew that was a performance. When he was on radio, that was a performance. And he never dropped that. Even when he was drinking, he was, he was on.

• 1:10:37Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  You know, I remember meeting Hilda Baker once. She was a comedian from the 1950s, legendary, made films and all that, very British, like George Formby, that kind of era, but not quite so famous. And a friend of mine, Daryl, had a flat off Tottenham Court Road, and he said, you'll never guess who my landlady is. And I said, no, I can't guess. And he said, well, come up and have a drink tonight. So I walked in and there was Hilda Baker. She was about three foot six tall, ferocious woman, and always what they call on, always acting. She's always in the part. She was singing songs that she'd written. She said, are you in music? And I said, yeah. And she, she immediately went into this

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  song from the 1930s that she'd written and carried on. And she was telling jokes and always on. And Mark was like that. Mark was one of those characters. He was like a music hall character, but genuinely, absolutely like that. If he'd been born in another era, he would have been a music hall character, and he would have done the music halls, and he would have been very good at it. And it would have been in his instinct to do that. I always felt that about him. But he was a modern version of it, and he did it beautifully. It's like Lee Bowery with the dressing up, you know, he was the same kind of figure. He was a kind of theatrical, in any other era, he would have been Oscar Wilde or something like that.

• 1:12:03Adam Buxton?

  That must have been an amazing show, the I Am Curious Orange show. Did you ever see it in the end?

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a couple of times, actually. It was, it was really good. I like Michael Clarke, too, because I, I just think he had very good ideas. Because ballet's kind of interesting but suffocating.

• 1:12:18Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  All these things are ossified. It's like classical music. You get this repertoire, and it's hard to move out of that. But when someone does, it's magical. And Michael Clarke had all the skills. And yet he could bring it into another ear and he's very fond of punk and all that as well, so it made for something magnificent, really, I think. And then Lee Bowery on board, and you've got all the visuals worked out, no problem.

• 1:12:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, and then swap a little Markie Smith cherry on the top.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Markie Smith music, what a combination.

• 1:12:47Adam Buxton?

  Crazy.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 1:13:19Adam Buxton?

  Uh, when we spoke in Norwich, we were talking about your upbringing and your childhood in Chorley.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:25Adam Buxton?

  And I was fascinated by the sound of your parents. I suppose because I'm so used to, well, I love my parents, but I do complain about them. Actually, no, I don't complain about them. I just talk about them a lot.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:39Adam Buxton?

  And I'm sort of, on some level mildly, you know, trying to work through various hang-ups or screw-ups about them.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Oh, well, everyone, everyone does that, don't they? We all do that.

• 1:13:47Adam Buxton?

  I suppose so, but it didn't sound like you did. It sounded like you had a more or less straightforwardly lovely relationship with your mum and dad.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I did. They were good sorts, you know, and I got great love and respect for them. They're marvellous people. And I come from a very good family. They were a big family of sort of Irish origins, but Irish Lancashire, Yorkshire mix, you know. And when I look back on it now, because, you know, I've only had that one family, so I don't know what it's like to have another. But I do value it. I, I realise how in moments of instability, it can really ground you. And it grounds you anyway, because if you try to be a bit pretentious about anything, you get shouted down right away, no messing. And I remember going back home and saying, "Mum, I'm on top of the pops tonight." And

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  she looked at me, she said, "Oh, yeah. Do you want a cup of tea?" And it was totally unimpressed, you know, so we sat and watched it. She, "Hmm, not bad."

• 1:14:48Adam Buxton?

  How old were they when they had you?

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Uh, twenty-eight, because my dad came back from the war a bit late. He came back in forty seven, forty, no forty eight, the beginning of forty eight. And they got married right away. And I was born in September.

• 1:15:06Adam Buxton?

  Right, so he'd been in the war and was he a coal miner before he went to the war?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was also interested in being a mechanic.

• 1:15:13Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  And he was very mathematical, he was, he had a good mind, really. So he became a mechanic on an aircraft carrier. He joined the air force and repaired planes. And he was on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf.

• 1:15:26Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  So he saw quite a lot of action. And he did describe some of the things they had to do. Planes would come in and crash on the deck because they'd been shot up and they'd burst into flames and the pilot would be uh burnt and they had to clear the deck, so they were, they had to push these burning planes over the side into the sea to allow the next plane to come in that was always equally shot up as well. So they had this terrible job to do.

• 1:15:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's beyond horrific.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  It is, um, it's terrible. But then there were good moments in the war when they'd get to Sicily and they'd all go for a swim and that kind of thing, you know, so it was, um, fifty fifty, great camaraderie and all that, you know. And then dad came back, uh, went back down the mines again because the wages were good.

• 1:16:14Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  And we had a corner shop that mum, who worked in a mill, then ran. So she became a shopkeeper or we became shopkeepers. And that was the, the centre of the street, really, because there was a shop on every street then. And you get all the mill girls coming in the morning and then the guys from the sawmills would come in a bit afterwards. All the factory people came in and then you'd get knocked up at night, people would be knocking on the door saying, have you got any milk? I've got my milk's gone, you know.

• 1:16:44Adam Buxton?

  Did you get free sweets?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but uh, there was a philosophy about sweets which my uncle Ezekiel, he used to have a toffee stall on the market, on Chorley Market, instituted. And he'd say to any kids who came to help, he'd say, eat as much as you like. And they'd only do it once.

• 1:17:02Adam Buxton?

  Right, it's like the smoking thing, like you have to smoke a hundred cigarettes and then you never want another one.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was my introduction and and the end of my love of sweets. It lasted about two days and that was it.

• 1:17:13Adam Buxton?

  And in addition to working down the mine, your dad was a fighter, a pugilist.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yes, he was a good one too, yeah. And the Latin he was, hundred and ten fights, lost one, drew two, I think.

• 1:17:27Adam Buxton?

  Amazing. And that brought in extra cash.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was also something he liked to do. He was, he was good. He wasn't an aggressive man. Not at all, but he had this kind of innate confidence. People knew he could handle himself. It's that kind of dignity that fighters have, which is a thing I love to see. And I can spot it a by the way, because my dad was like that.

• 1:17:52Adam Buxton?

  And you were never like that? You never wanted to get in the ring?

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  I was never dignified.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  No, I did get in the ring once and and that was it, you know. Uh, yeah, it was a disaster. I stood there all spindly with these big boxing gloves on, wondering what to do. And then this kid zipped over and pummeled me immediately and I fell over. Although I could, I I did get into fights and I never lost a fight.

• 1:18:15Adam Buxton?

  Oh, good, I'm glad.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  But that was what you did.

• 1:18:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  I mean, that was the way we were brought up, you know, you had to fight.

• 1:18:23Adam Buxton?

  And that's, I mean, that's so alien to me. I did everything I possibly could to avoid getting hit.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Fistfights, yeah.

• 1:18:29Adam Buxton?

  Anything like that. It was like, who was it? Oh, yeah, I'm reading this. I'm still reading a book about Lyndon Johnson, the president, and he was something of a physical coward as well. And there's a very um damning description of the way he would defend himself whenever he got into aggressive situations and he would kind of lie on the bed and just flail his arms around in his college dorms or whatever if he'd antagonized someone. And they came over and they were like, come on then, Lyndon Johnson, let's, let's start punching each other. He would lie on the bed and flail his arms and say, if you hit me, I'll kick you.

• 1:19:07Adam Buxton?

  He was just a total coward.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  It wouldn't go down well in Chorley.

• 1:19:10Adam Buxton?

  No, but I was thinking, I think I'd probably be like that myself. And then did your parents, was there any question of them thinking, what are you doing getting into this fae pop music situation? And why don't you get a proper job?

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  No, no, but well, by that time, my dad died when I was about 10 years old.

• 1:19:32Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  That was, that side of it had gone. He wouldn't have approved. I remember when I wanted to have a red shirt when Elvis came out.

• 1:19:40Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  And I thought, wow, I want a red shirt and blue jeans, you know, that's the way to dress. He wouldn't have a red shirt, you know, I had to keep mine in the shed and sneak into it and climb over the wall to get out of the house to wear that red shirt.

• 1:19:55Adam Buxton?

  Your shed shirt?

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  But mum conspired in that, you see, she dyed it red for me secretly and stowed it away in the shed. So she was always into that because she, when she was a kid, she used to love clothes, you know, and she always dressed well. I had good taste, you know, very good taste. So she was always supportive. She loved George, for instance, and she liked all that glamour and dressing up and stuff like that. So there were two sides, you know, the mum's side and dad's side, which was much more serious and tough, tough guy stuff.

• 1:20:27Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  He was Humphrey Bogart, really, that's my dad.

• 1:20:30Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  That's how he wanted to be.

• 1:20:32Adam Buxton?

  You were 10 when he died?

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:35Adam Buxton?

  Man, that, I mean, I can't really think of a worse age for your dad to die.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:20:40Adam Buxton?

  How did you deal with that? How did he die, if you don't mind me asking?

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Well, he had an accident in the pit and it broke his back and he, he died as a result of that later on. So he's ill for quite a while. Yeah, it was pretty bad, really. But again, you only have one life, so I, I wouldn't know what it's like to have another one.

• 1:21:03Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  And I think kids can deal with things in ways that adults are not so good at. But it takes a while, doesn't it? Of course, these things. But I remember having an odd dream where I was him after he died. And I could see things from his point of view. And it solved the whole thing in a way for me. It was a kind of, one of those things that happens in life in a crisis where you come through something. Because of, I don't know, I always thought he'd he directed the dream somehow, but I don't want to get into all that, but there was something of a kind of resolution about it.

• 1:21:45Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Which was important. And these things happen in life. We all have these experiences occasionally.

• 1:21:52Adam Buxton?

  He sounded like a good guy.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  He was.

• 1:21:55Adam Buxton?

  When you were telling me about him and you, what was the thing about going to London?

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Oh, well, he would save up, he saved up for two years and then took us to London and blew the lot and enjoyed every minute, got taxis everywhere, staying in Victoria Hotel, which was expensive, at Victoria, you know, big old Edwardian hotel, wonderful place. So we had a wonderful time and we went to restaurants and shows and all that.

• 1:22:24Adam Buxton?

  Swam in the bath?

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  And swam in the bath, yes, the bath was big enough to swim in when I was a wee kid. It was just marvelous. Because our bath was a tin bath on the yard wall, you know.

• 1:22:35Adam Buxton?

  Back in Shirley.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  It was really like that.

• 1:22:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Filled up with a kettle every night when dad came home on his bicycle from the pit. That was before pithead showers were instituted. There were no showers. So he was covered in the black stuff.

• 1:22:52Adam Buxton?

  Wow. I mean, that's like the Monty Python sketch, isn't it?

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  I mean, my life is like that, you know, it could be a sketch and you would laugh, you know.

• 1:23:03Adam Buxton?

  Thank you very much indeed, John.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my, my, my pleasure, Adam. Thank you.

• 1:23:13Adam Buxton?

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee, wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and concerned. And you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace. But because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month, and I look forward to getting enraged by that, so I should hope. Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace, and the website

• 1:23:55Adam Buxton?

  does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right, a Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing. Anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 1:24:41Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:24:52Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcast. That was John Fox talking to me there, and I really enjoyed sitting down with him and hearing his stories and just sort of luxuriating in his temperament, if that's not too creepy. And even if it is.

• 1:25:10Adam Buxton?

  In today's description, you will find links to signed vinyl copies of the 45th anniversary edition of Metamatic. There's a video for Underpass. There's a few Lee Bowery videos, including an episode of South of Watford from 1986, hosted by Hugh Laurie. Hugh Laurie seems a little bit alarmed by Lee Bowery. And there's also a video of one of Lee's performances, of him giving birth to a woman who then became his wife.

• 1:25:46Adam Buxton?

  At Wigstock, back in the day. What else is in there? A link to Wendy Carlos's website. That video of New Rose by The Damned, which John felt was such a pivotal part of the early punk scene. Still looks good, I must say. Anyway, there you go. Hope you enjoy some of those. And thank you so much to John for making the time to come and talk to me. Before I say goodbye today, I have a documentary recommendation. I feel like I've seen a few good docs recently. I won't dump them all on you at the same time. This week, I wanted to mention one that I thought maybe might appeal to some people who were, you know,

• 1:26:30Adam Buxton?

  aficionados of that Blitz scene and the world of Lee Bowery and things like that. And it's about a cult classic movie. Which one do you think I'm describing here? A flat tire leaves Brad and Janet stranded on a stormy night. They experience strange incidents when they seek shelter in a nearby castle belonging to Frank Enferta, an eccentric alien transvestite. Yes, it's F1 the Movie. No, it's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which started life in 1973 as a hit stage musical conceived by British/new Zealand actor, writer, musician, and later, original Crystal Maze host, of course, Richard O'Brien.

• 1:27:16Adam Buxton?

  And now, a new documentary called Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, tells how the stage show became a massive hit, first of all in London and then Los Angeles, and then a massive flop on Broadway, and then an even massiver flop when it was turned into a film, and then a much more massive phenomenon when midnight movie audiences of misfits and outsiders took it to their hearts, turning screenings into a blend of film, theatre, and audience interaction in a way that none of the show's creators could ever have imagined. Strange Journey, which you can find on various streaming platforms now, is directed by the son of Richard O'Brien, Linus.

• 1:28:00Adam Buxton?

  And that adds, I thought, quite a nice, personal layer to Richard O'Brien's story. But it also means that pretty much everyone involved with Rocky Horror back in the day, at least those who are still with us, turns up to reminisce alongside celebrity and non-celebrity fans who talk about how much the show and the film meant to them and how important it was in their lives. Richard O'Brien is there, of course. Susan Sarandon is there. Even Tim Curry appears, despite having been debilitated by a stroke in 2012, which I don't think I realised, I just sort of hadn't heard much from him. But it's good to see

• 1:28:41Adam Buxton?

  him there. He's still sharp and funny, and it's inspiring to see him involved with the doc. I must confess, Rocky Horror passed me by. It was never something I got involved with or particularly understood. I remember there was people at school who used to go and catch every performance and dress up and do all the things, but I was never one of those people. That wasn't my scene. I saw the film on TV years ago and was, I must confess, a little bit baffled. But actually, watching this doc was really fun, and it helped me understand much better what all the fuss was about. And I look forward to

• 1:29:23Adam Buxton?

  seeing it properly in a theatre with lots of weird people one day. But yeah, I had a similar experience of kind of going, oh, now I get it, with another documentary that I saw the other day. But I'll tell you about that on another podcast in the next few weeks. For now, I just want to say thank you very much, once again, to John FOXX. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his always invaluable production support. Thanks to everyone who works so hard at Acast liaising with my sponsors. Thank you very much to Helen Green. She does the beautiful artwork. But thanks, most of all, to you. Hey, don't forget, if you're

• 1:30:04Adam Buxton?

  listening to this in time, I'm at the Royal Festival Hall this Sunday, the 26th. Show starts at 7.30. I'm being interviewed by Miranda Sawyer about my book. I love you. Bye.

• 1:30:17Adam Buxton?

  Reminiscing about the 90s TV scene, showing a few goofy clips. I'm gonna play a couple of my songs in the second half of the show with a member of the Adam Buxton Band. And then afterwards, I'll be signing books. There's a link in the description for tickets, I hope some of you can make it along. I'm looking forward to it. Until next time, we share the same aural space. Please go carefully, it's still all disorganised out there. And for what it's worth... Oh, right, sorry, I forgot. Hey, come here, come on, hey. Good to see you. Look after yourself. And in case it makes any difference at all, I love you. Bye!