Urban Fox

Song Info

Music : Chris Barber/Peter Nuttall

Lyrics : Douglas Hunter

Date Written : 14th September 1992

Album : Fear (Released September 1994)

The first iteration of the band consisted of me and guitarist Chris Barber. I liked Erasure. He liked Metallica and Sepultura. Somehow, we met in the middle.

We got together at Chris' house for our first songwriting session. He had Sky TV in his bedroom; the stuff dreams were made of in 1991.  MTV and music videos on tap. No waiting around for Top of the Pops on a Thursday.  All the current music along with actual moving pictures of what these people looked like.  This was the future! 'Remember the Time' by Michael Jackson was on and we had a discussion about how he'd completely lost his way. Then we turned to our own music.

We learned 'Run to You' by Bryan Adams. We had a go at 'Under the Bridge' by RHCP. Chris could sing a bit but didn't really want to and I couldn't sing at all.  So, we were sans vocalist and struggling to make anything we did sound worth listening to.  We wrote an intro; basically me playing long string-pad chords over Chris' picked melody. That eventually became 'Too Late' which featured on the first album.  Then Chris mentioned that he'd written some lyrics and a tune in the preceding weeks to us meeting up.  He unfolded a piece of A4 paper, laid it on the bed, played and sang.

"World War 3's upon us, what can we do? They're gonna push the button now to put an end to you!"

Seeing as this was the first original thing our 'band' had, we worked on it.  I used an auto-chord accompaniment (which was basically a guitar-drum-keyboard backing, programmed into the keyboard at the factory, triggered by playing a chord with your left hand).  Using this we came up with an A-B-C song structure and middle 8.  It was all very Bryan Adams.

We didn't record these sessions. There's nothing on tape from 1991 but I carried it around with me in my head until the next iteration of the band with Doug, Darren and Ian in 1992.  We were sitting in the sixth form common room, trying to think of a name for the band.  My previous attempts at naming the ensemble were 'Psychic Celebration', 'Blind vision' and 'Power Generation'. These were all lyrics in the Erasure song 'Joan'. We remained nameless until one of us (probably Ian) said 'Urban Fox'.  We had a friend, Lee Thompson, who was blessed with unfathomable luck on the pool table.  One of the group dubbed him the 'Urban Fox' for his magical prowess with a pool cue. It worked as a name for the band and stuck!

Doug then suggested we write a signature tune called 'Urban Fox'. The character is embedded in our mythology now; a fox in a suit wearing shades. Doug wrote some words and I brought the 'World War 3' tune along to the second session in 1992 and we put them together. You can hear this by clicking play above but it's worth noting that Darren thought we were in a totally different key so the solo, whilst technically perfect, is completely out of tune.

Doug recalls, "Urban Fox the song came really easy to me lyrically but often when I start I can get a song down form start to finish.  This one really flowed out!  I was steeped in protest songs since listening to Chris De Burgh (my dark secret, so far from the Minneapolis sound) but he writes great songs. I had written what would become "World 4 Our Children" when I was 12 and this was a funkier incarnation.

The idea of this mystical malevolent Urban Fox character that has haunted my painting was so cool. I like to think of him as somewhat of an antihero or maybe some kind of outsider now, as I often paint him watching the Edward Hopper-style cityscape.

It is true, by the way, that I thinned my oil paint with Drambuie for THE UF picture! I was slowly getting drunk as I was painting it."

The 1992 original version of this song has the energy and fun because it's live and we were all very enthusiastic about it. All the versions since have been flat and smothered by the studio. One day we'll update it, regain the energy and probably blow it out of all proportion - which will totally suit us.

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