Chords for Electrospective John Foxx Interview Part 1 of 3

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Hi, I'm John Fox and my _
[E] relationship with electronic music is a fairly long [C]-lasting one.
_ _ It's [G] been going on since I was about [N] seven years old, I think.
So we've got to know each other [A] reasonably well by now and still haven't got divorced.
What started off at seven years [G] old?
[C] _ _ American science fiction films that featured _ _ _ [Am] theremins,
which were [C] _ probably one of the first, at least, electronic instruments.
And I didn't find out what these things actually were until I was about 13,
when a friend of mine made one from a transistor radio.
He'd been reading electronics mags.
There's a guy called Tony Bassett and he's still [A] making these things.
And his first theremin was a converted transistor radio.
And it was either going to be a musical instrument or a burglar alarm,
because it worked by proximity.
[G] So in other words, the nearer you went, the louder it screamed,
which I thought was [A] wonderful.
And _ I was [G] fascinated because you didn't touch anything.
It was an electromagnetic [Em] sensor, in [Eb] effect, and it sensed your nearness,
[F]
which I thought was magical and very science fiction.
[C] So I got turned on all over again by that sound. _ _ _
[A] And oddly enough, even now, we still haven't got to use in proximity fields enough.
And [N] I think, it's one of my little theories, that these have got to come into play yet.
iPads have just used touch sensitivity.
[C] And I think the next phase is proximity.
So we'll see.
Can you talk [A] us through some different technological equipment
that you've been involved in over the years or that you particularly [C] liked?
Or is there anything you would like to talk about [G] specifically?
Yeah, I like anything [A] that's easy to use.
If it's difficult, I tend to bypass [Fm] it because I'm always in a [C] hurry.
So _ there are a few things that I didn't get enough into, like all this.
Because, A, because I [N] couldn't afford it, and B, because it was too _ complicated [C] to learn.
And I wish I had sat down and learned it.
But I couldn't do that because you'd have to spend [F] months in a studio with it.
And that would have been wonderful, but I didn't have the time or the money
or the inclination [A] in the 70s to be able to do that.
So I got [N] smaller synths as well, exactly like the one I use,
[A] which are condensed versions of all this, actually, and that's where I started.
But I realised that there was a new world beginning to happen
[C] because these things were available and they're like electric guitars were to the 60s.
In other words, they made it all possible.
I can imagine what the Beatles and the Stones felt like
when they bought their first cheap electric guitars and it made all the 60s possible.
So cheap synths made the 80s possible.
And the influence in [F] music [G] with synths?
Well, it's changed everything.
[A] Everything has _ gone over to that way of working.
It's [C] very interesting.
_ [G] Even the way studios were designed,
which is not [A] very interesting to people who don't work in studios,
has been altered by synthesizers,
because you worked in the control room most of the time, not outside. _
_ [N] So it altered the whole way of working.
And [A] that first generation of synths and the second generation, the smaller ones,
is now coming back with a great deal of force
because digital technology came in, [C] wiped all that out very quickly
before it could be explored properly.
And now, thank goodness, this generation has just got hold of them again
_ and because we can hear what's happening through modern sound systems,
is making better use of them than the original people did.
So we've got a whole new generation using older equipment
and making the best out of it with modern digital means.
So you have the perfect marriage of control and organic wildness that they supply.
So it's a really interesting moment again, this.
And I'm fascinated [Gm] by it.
And [A] it's great to be able to participate in it too. _ _