Ultravox - The Island Years POLL (John Foxx/Island era 1976-1979)

Man, I fucking love the way 'Distant Smile' lulls you into a false sense of security with that extended piano intro, before battering you around the head when the drums kick in. Ha!-Ha!-Ha! has this real ballsy, snotty attitude to it which I adore.

was listening to this stuff on the bus and O MY GOD i'd forgotten about the noisy version of hiroshima mon amour

also young savage feels like the place where the first simple minds album was invented

xpost:

I love that version as much as the album version! One of my favourite things about this era of Ultravox is the way Billy Currie used to take his violin and make the most offensive, noisy racket he possibly could with it. 'Fear In The Western World' is a great example of violin abuse.

Hadn't listened to the debut in years and years, til today. Had forgotten how completely Roxy-esque much of this is.

Oh yeah, there's definitely a Roxy influence in there, alongside other stuff. Brian Eno is credited as a co-producer on Ultravox!, but according to Warren Cann from a lengthy and very detailed interview he did in the '90s...

We produced the record, gave Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno credit as co-producers, and all they ever say is "produced by Eno." It makes me angry because it is no more accurate than it is true. The record company had a "name" involved with the record, so that's what they pushed in order to boost its interest and sales.

Brian Eno was a very interesting gentleman and a great character. Our experience of working with him was quite enlightening and a pleasurable experiment. I do not regret it and I'm sure the others would agree. But it was absolutely not what we had actually envisaged. We had been under the impression, due to Brian's image from Roxy, that he was a real "technical-type" who had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve regarding the studio and in the realm of production technique. We were hungry to learn how to push the boundaries of the studio environment and we thought that he would be just the man to show us how to go beyond the conventional guitar/piano/bass/drums approach that was so prevalent at the time. We wanted to pick his brains. What we discovered was that Brian was - at that time - actually quite naive in the area of technical expertise. It was not his forte. In the first days in the studio together (Brian came in after we'd already recorded the bulk of the material), I remember looking at his Mini-Moog synthesizer. It was the first one I'd ever gotten my hands on and he had all these little pieces of tape stuck by the keys with the names of the notes written on them, plus little pictures stuck on adjacent to some of the control knobs. I pointed to a cute picture of a sheep and asked, "What's that mean?" He replied, "Well, I don't know what that knob does but, when I turn it, it makes the sound 'wooly,' so the picture of the sheep (sheep...wool...get it?) reminds me..." I was quite taken aback. I didn't know what to say to that! I think I just nodded and said, "Umm... good idea!"
From that moment on, I had a very strong suspicion that Brian was not the technical master we'd had in mind!

Eno was far more of a conceptualist - an ideas man. He was quite bold about not giving a damn about what the final result sounded like. He was only interested in the process (which is great for learning, and fine if your musical future doesn't hinge on public, rather than private, reaction to the "final result"). While we immediately acknowledged the importance of "the journey" as opposed to "the destination," in our case we were more pragmatic - the "final result," which would be released for people's listening pleasure, mattered very much to us! We agreed that it was very cool to do all sorts of unusual things via the recording process, but it still had to end up sounding good. There wouldn't be a second album for us to make if the first one was less than we were capable of, and all we might say was, "But it was a gas to make!"

We had our most productive and interesting times together when the tape wasn't rolling, when we would just sit round in the control room and talk about music and art. We appeared to be very much on a similar wave-length as each other, but he was far more articulate in his expression of the turmoil of emotions an artist has to contend with. He seemed to have thought matters through much further than us, whereas we were still trying to pull all the pieces together. We loved listening to him and I believe that it was, overall, a very good idea. He only worked on three or four songs at the most, and we didn't use any of his mixes (we thought it polite not to mention it).

To be fair, his name did help bring about some attention that might not otherwise have been paid to us concerning that first album, but it had never been our intention to do that. It's just very irritating when critics later stated, regarding particular songs, "The hand of Eno is stamped all over this track, blah-blah-blah...." When, in fact, the song was written and performed with no participation by Brian at all. Lazy journalism strikes again.

A pdf of the full interview is here, it covers the entire Foxx period plus the Vienna album and then it stops there. It's a shame he didn't go much further into the Midge period, because I particularly would have loved to have heard his recollections of working with George Martin on Quartet and the overall vibe in the band post-Live Aid, but it's definitely well worth reading for fans of the Foxx years.

http://www.ultravox.org.uk/ImageFolio43_files/media/History_of_Ultravox/Ultravox-History_Print_v1.1.pdf

Oh yeah, the layout is designed to be printed out and folded up into a book form, so it may be a bit of a pain in the arse to read without printing it out.

Feel like this compilation did a really excellent job of compiling all the highlights of those first three albums. I have all three of them but this would probably do instead.

Not sure what to go for. Just For a Moment or Hiroshima Mon Amour are the first two that stand out.

I love them all but am gonna go for "Slow Motion". Thanks for that interview, Turrican!

"Slow Motion" all the way - one of the best songs of the new wave era - should have been a big hit.

I love the three Foxx-era albums. They're all quite different from each other. First LP has that art rock Bowie/Roxy feel. Second is half punk rock and half screechy new wave. Third is icy cold synths...inching towards pop.

Underrated.

I still haven't decided what to vote for yet, but 'Slow Motion' is definitely a Foxx-era standout for me and I agree, it really should have been a big hit. Perhaps if they hadn't carried on with Midge and they'd reissued it after Numan hit it big with 'Are 'Friends' Electric?', it would have been the hit it should have been, but perhaps it was just a little too ahead.

Yeah, ended up voting for 'Slow Motion'.

One thing that never seems to mentioned about this incarnation of Ultravox is that those early albums pretty much kick-started Steve Lillywhite's production career!

Geoff: How did you first get into producing -- did you start as an engineer?

Steve: Well, I started as a tea-boy, really. I worked my way up from assistant engineer to engineer, and I suppose my first break in production was that if no one had the studio booked on weekends, you could take your own projects in and do your own thing. So we all had our own little projects, and one of my projects was what was to become Ultravox -- with John Foxx as lead singer, although they were called Tiger Lily at the time.

So I did these demos with them, and they thought they were really good, and they signed a deal with Island. Now the band wanted me to carry on working with them on their first album, but Island said they'd need a name producer, because obviously I hadn't really done anything before. Surprisingly enough, the third production credit on the album was Brian Eno!

The credit on the sleeve was "Produced by Brian Eno, Ultravox and Steve Lillywhite." But Eno wasn't there all the time -- I was there most of the time. Then I was offered a job by Island -- I was still staff engineer at Phonogram Studios at the time. I dropped everything and went to work for Island for four years during which time I worked with various people.

Did you do the other two Island Ultravox albums as well?

I did the second one, which was Ha! Ha! Ha!, and then they went with Conny Plank to do Systems of Romance, which was a really good record. And that was when John Foxx split and they were dropped from Island and were picked up by Chrysalis.

So I'm working for Island as a mixture between A&R, producing and engineering. I was working with Johnny Thunders on a solo album of his, and while we were in the studio Siouxsie and the Banshees' manager came down, liked what he heard and asked me to do their first single, which I did. It was "Hong Kong Garden," which is one of their biggest hits still.

That's what really started it off. Then after the Banshees came a lot of other punk bands -- some of which were successful: the Members, XTC, early Psychedelic Furs -- Penetration I did an album with. There seemed to be a lot happening around that time...

and he even mentioned Ultravox! as being one of his 16 "career-defining" records in an interview/article in 2011...

“I was a young tape operator at a studio. Basically, a tape op is the guy who presses the buttons and things like that. In those days, you could get promoted from tape op to engineer, and one way to do that was to bring in bands on weekends to engineer on your own. If the studio boss saw you could handle things, chances were good you’d get promoted.

“So I brought in this band called Tiger Lily - they would change their name to Ultravox - and we did some demos which landed them a deal with Island Records. As luck would have it, they told the label they wanted me to produce their album.

"It wound up being a three-way production between me, the band and Brian Eno. The label said the band needed a name guy, and because they loved Roxy Music, they chose Brian. This would be my first time working with him.

“The great thing about Brian is, he comes in, does his thing and leaves - whereas I’m there all the time and micro-manage. It was a good learning experience. The album was critically acclaimed, but it didn’t have that all-important hit single. This was during the early days of punk, when attitude was everything. Ultravox came from punk, but they were more art-rock.”

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Genuinely surprised at the tracks that didn't get a vote here!

I voted for Young Savage in the end, but had Ultravox! on in the car this morning and damn it I think I should have voted for The Wild, the Beautiful and The Damned.