Tony Cox (born 1945, London) is a British record producer, arranger, orchestrator and composer. He was influential in late 1960s folk rock developments and the fledgling progressive rock scene.
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Career
He entered the music business as a performer in 1966, and as a duo with Douglas MacRae-Brown released The Young Idea LP in 1967, and had a UK top ten hit single with a cover version of the Lennon-McCartney song "With a Little Help from My Friends". (The album was re-issued on CD in 2009 with previously unreleased tracks.) He continued performing in the studio with various acts he produced such as Trees and Mick Softley. He was an early adopter of the EMS VCS 3 synthesizer and in 1971 played on the Spirogyra album St. Radigunds, and Mike Heron's album Smiling Men With Bad Reputations. In 1972 he played piano with The Bunch alongside Sandy Denny on vocals, and in 1976 played synth on Martin Carthy's Crown Of Horn LP.
In 1974 he founded Sawmills Studios in Cornwall, one of the first residential recording studios in the UK.
In 1978 he married the singer-songwriter Lesley Duncan, and produced her single "The Magic's Fine". In 1979 produced and arranged the charity single "Sing Children Sing" for the International Year of the Child. In 1982 he produced Duncan's cover version of Bob Dylan's 'Masters of War' single. In 1996 they moved to the Isle of Mull, Scotland.
From 1988 to 1990 he worked for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group as music supervisor, overseeing various shows.
Recently Cox has been composing for instrumental ensemble, creating a uniquely distinctive sound by utilizing unusual modal scales and unorthodox harmonies, mixing rigid compositional rules with John Cage like chance elements.