..:: audio-music dot info ::..


Main Page      The Desert Island      Copyright Notice
 Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz


Elton John: The Fox

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Geffen Records
Released: 1981.05.20
Time:
 45:39
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): Chris Thomas, Elton John, Clive Franks
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.eltonjohn.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Breaking Down Barriers (E.John/G.Osborne) – 4:41
[2] Heart in the Right Place (E.John/G.Osborne) – 5:11
[3] Just Like Belgium (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:08
[4] Nobody Wins (J.P.Dreau/G.Osborne) – 3:37
[5] Fascist Faces (E.John/B.Taupin) - 5:10
[6] Carla/Etude (E.John) - 4:46
[7] Fanfare (E.John/J.N.Howard) – 1:26
[8] Chloe (E.John/G.Osborne) - 4:40
[9] Heels of the Wind (E.John/B.Taupin) - 3:32
[10] Elton's Song (E.John/T.Robinson) - 3:01
[11] The Fox (E.John/B.Taupin) - 5:11

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Elton John - Lead & Backing Vocals, Piano, Vocal Solo on [1]

Synthesizer Programming, String Arrangement, Conductor
James Newton Howard - Synthesisers, Vocoder, Fender Rhodes, Organ
Rev. James Cleveland - Spoken Voice & Choir on [5]
Cornerstone Baptist Church Choir - Choir
Victor Feldman - Percussion
Richie Zito - Guitars
Jim Horn - Alto Saxophone
Roger Linn - Drum Synthesizer Programming
Reggie Mcbride - Bass Guitar
Dee Murray - Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals
Nigel Olsson - Drums
Mickey Raphael - Harmonica
Stephanie Spruill - Tambourine, Backing Vocals
Alvin Taylor - Drums

Colette Bertrand - French Girl on [3]

Ronald Baker - Backing Vocals
Varl Carwell - Backing Vocals
Chuck Cissel - Backing Vocals
Bill Champlin - Backing Vocals
Clarence Ford - Backing Vocals
Roy Galloway - Backing Vocals
James Gilstrap - Backing Vocals
Max Gronenthal - Backing Vocals
John Lehman - Backing Vocals
Tamara Matoesian - Backing Vocals
Gary Osborne - Backing Vocals
Oren Waters - Backing Vocals

Clive Franks - Producer
Chris Thomas - Producer
Bill Price - Engineer
Karen Siegel - Assistant Engineer
Marty Paich - String Arrangements
Richard Seireeni - Art Direction
Eric Blum - Photography
Terry O'Neil - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


With The Fox, the king of Seventies mass-market pop-rock has finally found a comfortable balance between the churchy turgidity of "serious" efforts like Blue Moves and the irresistible thrust of his finest singles. For a change, there's no glaringly obvious filler, and Elton John's lusty pop gospel singing eschews the earlier extremes of oratorical histrionics and rock & roll brattiness. Tune for tune, these eleven songs make up John's most consistently listenable collection in years.

John also seems determined to regain the grip on the pop mainstream he lost after Rock of the Westies. Six cuts were produced by Chris Thomas, whose success with the Pretenders has made him one of today's hottest aural alchemists. In "Nobody Wins" (the album's only number not cowritten by John). Thomas seals the star's mournful vocal in a metallic casement of flashy sound effects propelled by synthesized percussion. With its brilliant artificiality and jerkily mechanical propulsion, this is high-gloss popular music squarely in the mold of "Bette Davis Eyes" and Blondie's hits.

Because Elton John worked with four collaborators on The Fox (Bernie Taupin penned the lyrics to four tunes. Gary Osborne four, Tom Robinson one, and keyboard virtuoso James Newton Howard cowrote the "Eanfare" instrumental), the LP takes him in several complementary emotional directions. "Heels of the Wind," the best of the John-Taupin compositions, is a hard-kicking anthem about the freedom of the road, in which Taupin refrains from his customary literary heaviness. But "Fascist Faces." "Just like Belgium" and "The Fox" find John's streamlined melodies burdened with pretentious similes, purple imagery and words like "turtlesque."

John's collaboration with Gary Osborne has grown much more assured since the duo debuted with the stiffly portentous lyrics of A Single Man. "Breaking Down Barriers," a frothy love song in the R&B-inflected style of "Philadelphia Freedom," is the pair's most spirited achievement to date, while "Heart in the Right Place," a sour diatribe against rock journalists, evokes rock-star petulance with an amusingly light-handed bitchiness. Lyrically. The Fox high point is a first-person remembrance of a homoerotic boyhood crush. "Elton's Song," which John wrote with Tom Robinson. Unfortunately, the tune is too fragmented to nail down the poignantly direct sentiments.

Will The Fox reestablish John as a triple-platinum powerhouse? Not likely, since the lights are still going out all over the pop circus world this artist helped create and then celebrated with such voracious glee. In his mad dash through the Seventies, Elton John exalted and sent up every major commercial trend, from Philadelphia soul to glitter rock. If the new album doesn't exude the pure, zany adrenalin of his most memorable singles, it's because this dash not only devoured much of what it embraced but was self-consuming as well. In the end, The Fox sounds less like a comeback than a graceful, mature coda to pop's banquet years, when Captain Fantastic ruled the airwaves and the champagne never stopped flowing.

Stephen Holden - August 6, 1981
RollingStone.com



The early '80s were not a particularly focused time in Elton John's career. The Fox (1981) is a reflection of the tentative regrouping that began on his previous effort, 21 at 33 (1979). In fact, a third of the material was left over from the same August 1979 sessions. This results in dithering musical styles and ultimately yields an uneven and at times somewhat dated sound. The reunion with Bernie Taupin (lyrics) that commenced on 21 at 33 is once again sparsely tapped. He contributes the tepid "Heels of the Wind" as well as "Just Like Belgium," which foreshadows the pair's future lightweight efforts such as "Nikita." Slightly more promising, however, is the midtempo rocker "Fascist Faces" - which may well be a nod to David Bowie's infamous "Britain could benefit from a fascist leader" statement. The album's introspective title track instantly recalls the slightly bittersweet "Curtains" coda from Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboys (1975). Gary Osborne and Elton John's collaborations were beginning to yield some impressive results, including "Heart in the Right Place" - which could easily have been a follow-up to the slinky Caribou (1974) track "Stinker." The tender "Chloe" conclusion to the "Carla/Etude/Fanfare" medley became one of two tracks extracted as singles. The other, "Nobody Wins," sports a Euro-beat flavor and was adapted from a French techno-pop hit by Osborne and Jean-Paul Dreau. According to John, the dark and noir "Elton's Song" remains a favorite, and he very occasionally revives it for live performances. Although The Fox isn't a grand slam, it isn't exactly a bunt either. However, the incremental momentum would continue on the subsequent long-player, Jump Up! (1982), before culminating on his '80s breakthrough, Too Low for Zero (1983).

Lindsay Planer - All Music Guide



The Fox is the fifteenth studio album by British singer/songwriter Elton John, released in 1981. The track "Elton's Song" was banned from radio play in some countries due to its content,[citation needed] which included references to homosexuality. The album was produced by John, Clive Franks and for the first time, Chris Thomas, who would produce many more albums with John through most of the 1980s and '90s.

Five of the songs (noted below) were recorded during the sessions for his previous album 21 at 33. All B-sides released around this time were also from those sessions.

French and Quebec releases of the album included "J'Veux de la Tendresse" in place of "Nobody Wins". "Tendresse" was the original French version of the song which Osborne wrote English lyrics for, thus transforming the song into "Nobody Wins".

In 2003, Mercury/Universal and The Rocket Record Company reissued the album on CD, remastered by Gary Moore. The line-up contained no bonus tracks.

Visions, released on VHS in 1982, is a video of all ten songs recorded for The Fox album. It is notable as one of the first long-form video releases of an album. The collection was also released on RCA's CED digital video disc, a precursor to the Laserdisc and DVD, but has not been released since. One of the videos, for the song "Elton's Song", dealt with a teenager's admiration of another teenage boy he yearns for, but is too shy to confront—it was excluded from the UK video release, because the public school it was filmed at objected to the theme of the song. All the videos were directed by Russell Mulcahy.

Wikipedia.org
 

 L y r i c s


Currently no Lyrics available!

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


Currently no Samples available!