Cheekbones. Whatever happened to them?
Another day, another shudder goes down my spine as I realise how old everyone is getting (including me).
For today it is the 75th birthday of Mr Dennis Leigh - better known of course as synthesizer aficionado, original vocalist and founder-member of Ultravox, John Foxx!
It seems like only yesterday that I almost fell off my chair - electronic music freak that I was (am) - when I first heard this, his magnificent debut solo hit [and almost immediately had to go to Roxcene Records in Newport to buy the 7" single! I still have it.]:
On investigating his career [prompted by the fact he had been cited several times by none other than my idol Gary Numan as being as great an influence on him as Kraftwerk], I came across - and immediately fell in love with - this [the best song Ultravox ever created, in my opinion]:
Somehow we drifted off too far
Communicate like distant stars
Splintered voices down the 'phone
The sunlit dust, the smell of roses drifts, oh no
Someone waits behind the door
Hiroshima mon amour
Riding inter-city trains
Dressed in European grey
Riding out to echo beach
A million memories in the trees and sands, oh no
How can I ever let them go?
Hiroshima mon amour
Meet beneath the autumn lake
Where only echoes penetrate
Walk through Polaroids of the past
Future's fused like shattered glass, the sun's so low
Turns our silhouettes to gold
Hiroshima mon amour
Nostalgia. It ain't what it used to be... Sigh.
Many happy returns, John Foxx (born 26th September 1948)!