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The Fox (Elton John album)

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Released
  
20 May 1981

The Fox(1981)
  
Jump Up!(1982)

Release date
  
20 May 1981

Length
  
45:39

Artist
  
Label
  
Geffen Records

The Fox (Elton John album) httpsimgdiscogscomHzugpMa8CcR5zvWbk2aDWEvXs

Recorded
  
August, December 1979January–June 1980at Super Bear Studios (Nice, France); Sunset Sound Recorders, The Village Recorder and Devlon Studios (Los Angeles); Abbey Road Studios (London).

Producer
  
Chris Thomas, Elton John, Clive Franks

Genres
  
Rock music, Pop music, Pop rock, Soft rock, New wave

Similar
  
Elton John albums, Rock music albums

Elton john the fox 1981 with lyrics


The Fox, released in 1981, is the fifteenth official album release for Elton John. With sales of approx. 300,000 US copies, it was one of Elton's poorest-selling albums in the United States.

Contents

The track, "Elton's Song", was banned from radio play in some countries due to its content, 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.

Track listing

Side one
  1. "Breaking Down Barriers" (John, Gary Osborne) – 4:41
  2. "Heart in the Right Place" (John, Osborne) – 5:11*
  3. "Just Like Belgium" (John, Bernie Taupin)– 4:08
  4. "Nobody Wins" (Jean-Paul Dreau, Osborne) – 3:37
  5. "Fascist Faces" (John, Taupin) – 5:10
Side two
  1. "Carla/Etude" (John) – 4:46*
  2. "Fanfare" (John, James Newton Howard) – 1:26*
  3. "Chloe" (John, Osborne) – 4:40*
  4. "Heels of the Wind" (John, Taupin) – 3:32
  5. "Elton's Song" (John, Tom Robinson) – 3:01*
  6. "The Fox" (John, Taupin) – 5:11

(*): Recorded in August and December 1979 and produced by John and Clive Franks. Chris Thomas produced the other tracks.

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. On the 2003 reissue and remaster (and European) CD, "Carla/Etude", "Fanfare" and "Chloe" are combined into one track, making it a nine-track album.

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".

After 1981, only "Chloe", "Just Like Belgium", "Nobody Wins" and "Elton's Song" would be included in Elton's Jump Up tour in 1982. While "Chloe", "Just Like Belgium" and "Nobody Wins" have never been performed again since that tour, "Elton's Song" was performed a few times on a solo tour in 1999. Since then, however, Elton has also stopped performing that song.

However, since the album's release, Elton would perform "Carla/Etude" frequently, making it the only song off the album that is still occasionally being performed as of 2015.

Visions: The videos from The Fox

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.

Personnel

  • Ronald Baker: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Colette Bertrand: French girl on "Just Like Belgium"
  • Carl Carwell: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Chuck Cissel: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Bill Champlin: backing vocals (1, 8, 9), tambourine on "Chloe" and "Heels of the Wind"
  • Rev. James Cleveland: spoken voice and choir director on "Fascist Faces"
  • Cornerstone Baptist Church Choir: choir on "Fascist Faces"
  • Victor Feldman: percussion on "Fanfare" and "Chloe"
  • Clarence Ford: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Roy Galloway: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • James Gilstrap: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Venette Gloud: backing vocals on "Breaking Down Barriers" and "Heels of the Wind"
  • Max Gronenthal: backing vocals on "Chloe"
  • Jim Horn: alto saxophone on "Just Like Belgium"
  • Elton John: lead vocals, backing vocals (1, 2, 4, 5, 9), piano (1-3, 5, 6, 8-11), vocal solo on "Breaking Down Barriers"
  • Roger Linn: drum programming on "Nobody Wins"
  • John Lehman: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Tamara Matoesian, now Tamara Champlin: backing vocals on "Breaking Down Barriers" and "Heels of the Wind"
  • Reggie McBride: bass guitar (2, 8)
  • Dee Murray: bass guitar (1, 3, 5, 9, 11), backing vocals on "Chloe"
  • James Newton Howard: synthesizers (1-4, 7, 9, 10), vocoder (2), synthesizer programming (4, 10), string arrangement and conductor (6, 8), Fender Rhodes (8), organ (11)
  • Marty Paich: string arrangement on "Chloe"
  • Nigel Olsson: drums (1, 3, 5, 9, 11)
  • Gary Osborne: backing vocals on "Chloe"
  • Mickey Raphael: harmonica on "The Fox"
  • Stephanie Spruill: tambourine and backing vocals on "Breaking Down Barriers" and "Heels of the Wind"
  • Alvin Taylor: drums (2, 8)
  • Oren Waters: backing vocals on "The Fox"
  • Richie Zito: guitar (1, 3, 5, 9, 11)
  • London Symphony Orchestra: strings on "Carla/Etude" and "Chloe"
  • Production

  • Producers: Chris Thomas (Tracks #1, 3-5, 9, 11); Clive Franks and Elton John (Tracks #2, 6-8, 10).
  • Engineered by Bill Price
  • Assistant Engineer: Karen Siegel
  • Art Direction: Richard Seireeni
  • Photography: Eric Blum
  • Elton John Photo: Terry O'Neill
  • Songs

    1Breaking Down Barriers4:40
    2Heart in the Right Place5:13
    3Just Like Belgium4:08

    References

    The Fox (Elton John album) Wikipedia