John Foxx
1948– · English musician and artist, a pioneer of British electronic music
Dennis Leigh, known as John Foxx, was born in Chorley, Lancashire, in 1948. He is one of England's first solo electronic musicians and the first singer of the new wave band Ultravox, with which he rose to prominence in the 1970s. His significance lies in bringing synthesizers to the forefront of British pop at a time when punk dominated the scene.
As a young man he was a mod and a hippie, and he was drawn to record sleeve design, the experimentalism of Pink Floyd, futurism and surrealism. After trying his luck in Manchester, where he later said there was no music scene to speak of, he moved to London and studied at the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. In 1973 he formed Tiger Lily, which soon became Ultravox!, a group that mixed glam, art rock and elements of progressive rock. Their first three records, with an increasingly electronic sound, sold poorly, and in 1979, tired of internal tensions, Foxx left the band in the middle of a tour of the United States.
As a solo artist he released Metamatic in 1980, a synth pop album featuring the track Underpass, and the following year The Garden, with the single Europe After the Rain. The Golden Section (1983) and In Mysterious Ways (1985) followed. He then withdrew from popular music for eleven years, a period in which he devoted himself to painting, graphic design and photography, and to projects such as Nation 12, inspired by the house and acid scenes of Detroit and London. In 1996 he met Louis Gordon in Manchester and returned to music with Shifting City (1997).
His legacy is most visible in Gary Numan, who has acknowledged Ultravox's influence on him and whose album The Pleasure Principle shares traits with Metamatic. The actor Vincent Gallo has also expressed his admiration for Foxx's work with Ultravox!.