Fox (band)

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Fox was a British pop / soft rock band that was successful from 1974 to 1977. The group was founded by the songwriter Kenny Young and shaped by the Australian singer Susan Traynor (born December 8, 1944), who appeared under her stage name Noosha Fox .

Band history

The initiator of Fox was the American songwriter, producer and guitarist Kenny Young . During the 1960s, some of his compositions were successful, such as Under the Boardwalk for the Drifters (1964), Just a Little Bit Better (1965) and Don't Go Out into the Rain (1967) for Herman's Hermits and as a co-author together with Ben Yardley (pseudonym for Estelle Levitt) Captain of Your Ship for Reparata and the Delrons (1968). On various labels he also released single records under his name or pseudonyms, most of which have an animal name: The Seagulls, The Squirrels.

In the USA, Young already worked now and then with Susan Traynor, who had a small success as an unofficial member of the "Charmettes" with the title Please Don't Kiss Me Again produced by Young . In 1968 Traynor and Young went to England together. There Young discovered the Northern Irish singer Clodagh Rodgers during a television appearance . This resulted in three successful years with hit singles like Come Back and Shake Me (1969). In the early 1970s, Susan Traynor was a singer in a folk group called "Wooden Horse", which released two albums before they broke up in 1973. As "Amanda" Traynor was also involved in Kenny Young's solo album Last Stage for Silverworld (1973).

After his success with Clodagh Rodgers, Young founded the group Fox with the Irish singer and guitarist Herbie Armstrong in 1974 and also hired Traynor as lead singer, who then adopted the stage name Noosha Fox. The other band members were Pete Solley (keyboards, vocals), Jim Gannon (guitar, vocals), Gary Taylor (bass, vocals) and Jim Frank (drums, percussion, vocals).

Her first single Only You Can - released on GTO in February 1975 - was a worldwide hit parade. In Great Britain the song reached number 3 in the singles charts , in Germany number two and in Switzerland even the top position . The debut album , simply titled with the band name, was released in the spring of 1975 and entered the top 10 of the LP charts in Great Britain. This also included the follow-up single Imagine Me, Imagine You (Top 10 in Germany) and He's Got Magic , another small hit for Fox in Germany. The rest of the LP was more of a collection of older song material written by Kenny Young. Clodagh Rodgers had made demo recordings of some of these songs years earlier .

Noosha Fox, with a mysterious image based on the model of Marlene Dietrich , always pale complexion and wrapped in long, elegant clothes, performed the songs she sang with a slight exaltation and a nasal voice. The hit parade soft rock arrangements with weird ingredients and the abundantly convoluted song texts about patient tigers and babies in the constellation of Pisces ( Patient Tigers , Pisces' Babies ) let the group and their songs sometimes come close to art glam rock.

On the follow-up album Tails of Illusion (1975) Kenny Young took over the lead vocals for most of the songs, which probably irritated parts of the audience, who until now had associated the group Fox with their hit singles and Noosha Fox's voice. With an unfavorable mix of songs from art rock à la 10cc , folk rock as in the group America and even blues ( Howdja ), the album could not convince critics and music fans alike. Roger Taylor of the rock band Queen sang backing vocals on the song Survival , as Queen was working on recordings for her album A Night at the Opera in the same studio . The third and final Fox album Blue Hotel (1977) contains the surprise hit SSS single Bed , which was released in August 1976 ; 4th in the UK and number one in Australia. Noosha Fox sang most of the lead vocals again, but this time too there was no commercial success for the LP.

Noosha Fox left the band after Blue Hotel and began a solo career. Her first single, Georgina Bailey , written and produced by Young, reached the UK's top 40 in 1977. However, there was no release of an already planned solo album. Later singles from her were no longer successful. The Heat Is On , which she brought out in 1979, four years later in the version with Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA hit. Herbie Armstrong and Kenny Young initially continued in a band called Yellow Dog . Armstrong worked with Van Morrison and Pete Solley later joined Whitesnake . He recently took part in an English talent show and made it to the semi-finals.

Noosha Fox tried to record some singles in the early eighties (with the Earlobe label), but all of them flopped. She then noticeably withdrew from the music business, but stayed in England. Fox themselves teamed up for a short time in 1980 to record a wave influenced song called Electro People , which was also used on British television. In 2007 the BBC radio station reported that Noosha Fox would record a solo album with electro-pop pieces and also have its own website.

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Fox
  DE 47 05/15/1975 (4 weeks)
  UK 7th 
silver
silver
05/17/1975 (8 weeks)
Singles
Only you can
  DE 2 March 24, 1975 (26 weeks)
  AT 7th 07/15/1975 (12 weeks)
  CH 1Template: Infobox chart placements / maintenance / NR1 link 06/06/1975 (13 weeks)
  UK 3 
silver
silver
02/15/1975 (11 weeks)
  US 53 08/30/1975 (8 weeks)
Imagine Me, Imagine You
  DE 7th June 23, 1975 (14 weeks)
  UK 15th 05/10/1975 (8 weeks)
He's got magic
  DE 48 October 27, 1975 (3 weeks)
SSS single bed
  UK 4th 04/10/1976 (10 weeks)

Albums

  • Fox (GTO 1975, Cherry Red 2002)
  • Tails of Illusion (GTO 1975, Cherry Red 2004)
  • Blue Hotel (GTO 1977, Cherry Red 2006)
  • Only You Can (1996)
  • The Very Best of Fox (1998, 2003)
  • Images 74-84 (Cherry Red double CD, A's & B's & rarities 2014)

Singles

  • Only You Can / Out of My Body (GTO 1975)
  • Imagine Me, Imagine You / If I Point at the Moon (GTO 1975)
  • He's Got Magic / The Love Ship (GTO 1975)
  • Strange Ships / Little Brown Box (GTO 1975)
  • SSS-Single Bed / Silk Milk (GTO 1976)
  • My Old Man's Away / Magic Machine (GTO 1977)

Singles from Noosha Fox

  • Georgina Bailey / Pretty Boy (GTO 1977)
  • The Heat Is On / Some Enchanted Evening (Chrysalis 1979)
  • Skin Tight / Miss You (1979)
  • Hot as Sun / The Cheapest Nights (1981)
  • More than Molecules / Odd Peculiar Strange (Earlobe 1981)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Noosha Fox - Georgina Bailey in the Official UK Charts (English)
  2. ↑ Fox albums in Germany on Chartsurfer.de
  3. ↑ a b Fox in the Official UK Charts (English)
  4. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
  5. ↑ Fox singles in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA on Chartsurfer.de