John Foxx remembers Antonioni

Pop culture lore is not exactly thick with tales of rock musicians not getting along with Michelangelo Antonioni, but still, they're surprisingly common. The great Jeff Beck, guitar-smashing Yardbird in a pivotal scene from Blow Up, has referred to the director as a "pompous oaf," and told the maestro to "stuff it" when he suggested that Beck bust up his Gibson Les Paul rather than the Hohner axes he was repeatedly destroying on the set. Beck was no dummy—the Les Paul was out of production at the time.

Then there are Roger Waters and David Gilmour, former Pink Floyd-mates, who both expressed frustration and befuddlement when recalling working with Antonioni on Zabriskie Point. Most notorious of all, there's iconoclastic guitar hero John Fahey, who writes of Antonioni in his book How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life. Detailing, among other things, how Antonioni would show him no other footage from the picture aside from the desert lovemaking scene he wanted Fahey to score, and how one final conversation between the two in which Antonioni gave voice to a number of anti-American sentiments ended with Fahey punching him out.

I thought I might get a different perspective from John Foxx (pictured), who scored Antonioni's little-seen 1982 picture Identificazione di una donna (Identification of A Woman). Foxx, who began his career in the post-punk band Ultravox and did some pioneering solo work in a minimalist/electronic vein after leaving the group in the late '70s, is part of a generation of musicians whose aesthetic was at least partially shaped by European cinema of a slightly earlier "New Wave." I contacted Foxx via his website and recieved in reply a very generous set of reminiscences and reflections, which can be read in their entirety below. Thank you, John Foxx.

When I learnt of his death, I was surprised he'd lived so long. This longevity was more evidence of his extraordinary vigour and tenacity. Yet I never saw him evince any of the usual postures that might announce these qualities.

When I first met him, over quarter of a century ago, he appeared physically fragile. I was contacted in by Dante—appropriately Antonioni’s emissary—to make some music for his new movie Identificatzionne Di una Donna (Identification of a Woman). Dante seemed to know about and to like my music—particularly the Metamatic album. He'd suggested me to Antonioni. He came over to London. I remember we went to a party given by Anthony Fawcett, who'd just returned from being Lennon's PR in New York. We met Julian Temple and his beautiful Japanese girlfriend. Genesis P. Orridge was busy projecting super 8 circumcision films over the food table. Dante enjoyed every minute. Loved loony London.

I was excited and intrigued at the prospect of working with a director who was so fundamental to that period of European Cinema. I'd seen Blow Up and Zabriskie Point and L'Avventura, and was very aware of his status. European Cinema was a strong influence on me and on my music - still is. Antonioni seemed to be aware of the value of making a connection between youth and change and his movies via new popular music.

I wondered how much he was aware of how the context had shifted since the 1960's.

I recorded a few preliminary tracks. Dante heard and liked them, so we went to Italy.

I stayed in an hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I've always enjoyed the city. Most evenings we went out en masse for a drink and dinner. There seemed to be a sort of floating posse of people who would drift across central Rome. Elegant restaurants and bars. I enjoyed some of the local customs - got my bum pinched by a series of very attractive older women. Felt right at home.

We'd occasionally go to Antonioni's apartment for aperitifs. There was a magnificent view directly over the Tiber, and Monica Vitti lived in the apartment below. I was intrigued about their relationship. Of course Antonioni gave nothing away. That, I began to discover, was his central style - never explain/ Never complain. I discovered where the second part of this came in later.

I vividly remember the first time I visited Cinecitta studios to meet him. Walked into a cinema-sized room. Only two seats in it. Antonioni rose with a little difficulty. I found out later he'd lost some use of one arm. That side of his body seemed weaker and he appeared fragile.

He showed me some rushes of the scenes he wanted me to compose for, on the huge cinema screen. They seemed almost incidental, very modern but detached, difficult to relate. He wouldn't even attempt to explain or describe their role in the sequence, nor would he give any indication of their order or of the general narrative of the movie. Just waved a hand and carried right on if I asked any questions. I began to discover how tough and tenacious he actually was. His capacity for concentration was immense. On several occasions I saw him deal with very heavy business types - large men in dark blue suits. There would be lots of shouting and violent physical gesturing, then pregnant pauses and pacing before the next outburst. Outlaw Opera. Antonioni would emerge and walk back into the cutting room, completely unruffled. Carried right on working. Never missed a beat.

Cinecitta felt institutional. The place was a little dusty and neglected. It seemed vast to me. We would look through scenes sitting by an old chipped green editing machine. Canisters of film and tapes piled all around. Antiunion seemed unconcerned with sequence and asked me occasionally if this music was mine or not. Everything was altered anyway when the film came out.

Making movies seems to depend on a distinct sort of unstated psychic carnage. I've seen variations of this several times since. Lots of invisible geometries in play. A transfer of unwitting energies to the last man standing. Antonioni, damaged but resolute, would always be that last man.

That sort of concentrated, hungry chaos, the essence of the work, began to wear me out. When the solar spaceship scene was being shot, everyone went to the country location. I was invited to go too, but felt it was time to leave. Got called off the plane at least five times for interviews. The last time, I stayed on.

I saw the film when it was released in London.

The music was intended to be almost innocuously ersatz—like background music that might be used in an hotel or bar—a slightly elevated elevator music. Somewhere those characters might meet.

He used the context of the middle classes as his grammar. Mundane becoming extraordinary through the elegant and always unexplained removal or addition of a single element—a person or what we assume to be a part of the context.

I can see this evident in recent films, such as the middle-class plot devices and context in Hidden, the displacement of identities in David Lynch movies, even in novels, such as that occasional metaphysical thriller element and the subtle nuanced and unresolved characters and events in some Paul Auster novels.

Antonioni was unique but also firmly a part of European Cinema. That grammar gradually informed the rest of the western world. We now have Wenders, Lynch and a few others in succession. There seems to be some hint of a revival for European Cinema and its distant extensions, through the cheapness of digital technology, and its ability to make domestic formats such as even Super 8mm usable by conversion.

Young directors such as Gondry, the Dogme group, and, in America, Spike Jonze and Jonathan Caouette are just beginning to emerge, natural inheritors of that grammar, able to examine themes and ideas of their own devising.

The film era of Cinema appears to be rapidly passing, along with the first great directors, the inventors of that universal language. We can now begin to view it in perspective and Antonioni is clearly one of the cornerstones. Part of the foundation. Let’s hope that this emergent new digital era will also allow a new generation of directors to tell the stories that Hollywood cannot.

Comments

[bill]

At first, I thought that headline said "Jamie Foxx Remembers Antonioni". I thought, "I was hoping he'd say something publicly! Now if we can only get Casey Affleck to shares there reminiscences of Bergman..."

[bill]

"Their", not "there". And "his", not "their".

[birdsong]

Thanks for posting this fasciating interview. John does so many like this that just stay hidden on the net. It's an absolute joy researching and finding these.

I have copied the text for the archive (but it won't be reproduced) and made a note of the date for the timeline we are making.

best wishes