Considering how absolutely NUTS I was about the John Foxx-led Ultravox when I was young (the badges I wore on my trenchcoat back then were of them, PiL, Kraftwerk, Nina Hagen, TG and the Psychedelic Furs) it occurred to me over the weekend (while I was blasting their classic Ha! Ha! Ha! album in the car) that we’ve never posted about them on the blog.
Then I took a quick look on YouTube and it was obvious why we hadn’t: Slim pickings. Next to nothing and mostly unwatchable quality. Kind of a testament to how unfairly obscure the first incarnation of the band has become over the decades.
Most Americans, of course, have probably never heard of either incarnation of Ultravox, but we are not concerned here with the Ultravox fronted by Midge Ure—a fey Scotsman with a John Waters-like moustache—that recorded the Vienna album and had many, many top ten singles and albums in the UK after John Foxx left for an influential but ultimately very culty solo career. I hate that group. They probably should have changed the name, but that version of Ultravox had all the hits and can still play double bills with Simple Minds filling football stadiums across Europe (even if they could barely fill a small club here).
Thirty-five plus years later, it’s mostly only going to be rock snobs of a “certain age” who recall the John Foxx era, which is a shame because to my mind, that incarnation of Ultravox made some of the very best music of the late 1970s and it’s still fresh and exciting sounding today. They had a striking, original thing that they did and few groups since have explored the mutant wasteland that their music implied existed.
When Ultravox burst onto the scene in early 1977—not long after the Sex Pistols, it should be noted, they’d been around since 1974 playing as Tiger Lily—they took elements of punk, Kraftwerk, Bowie, the darker elements of Roxy Music (Eno co-produced their first album), Van der Graaf Generator and the New York Dolls and dressed it all up in an image that was equal parts A Clockwork Orange, Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs. It was almost as if they were the sort of post-apocalyptic rock group that Burroughs’ “Wild Boys” would go to see at the Rainbow in between servicing their clients from down the Piccadilly Circus Wimpy bar… or knifing them in the back.
“Come on, let’s tangle in the dark/Fuck like a dog, bite like a shark”
The lyrics were sharp, tart and full of wordy sci-fi blasphemy and violence. Imagine what this number, “Fear in the Western World,” sounded like bursting out of your speakers a matter of months after Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols had been released. Turn this up as loud as it deserves to be heard, okay?
And here’s another exemplary example of what they were all about, the ultra intense “Artificial Life.” How I wish a live performance clip of this one existed…
Amazing right? Ultravox created the perfect soundtrack to what would now be called “cyberpunk” but at that time didn’t really have a name yet. Had Foxx not left after just three albums, today they’d be considered one of the greatest groups of that era, being paid millions to reform at Coachella.
The chilling “My Sex”:
“I Want to Be a Machine”:
A 1977 performance of “Hiroshima Mon Amour” on The Old Grey Whistle Test:
“Frozen Ones,” 1978:
“Slow Motion” live at the Reading Festival, 1978:
“Quiet Men” at the Reading Festival: