We've heard from Bill Fox rarely, if ever. The Cleveland singer-songwriter — whose work with the Mice and as a solo artist has made him beloved by a rabid cult fan base including the likes of Robert Pollard, Jeff Tweedy, and Lindsey Jordan — is famously elusive. He's avoided the spotlight in familiar, career-sabotaging ways: breaking up the Mice right before they left for a big tour in the '80s, ghosting Sire's Seymour Stein after his '90s solo albums became a critical sensation. He's also simply refused to do interviews. The definitive story on Fox, Joe Hagan's 2007 deep dive in The Believer, does not even feature quotes from Fox, "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold"-style. But now, Fox has finally hopped on the phone with a reporter.
A month ago Fox, 59, released Resonance, his first album in 13 years. It was fantastic, as usual. When that album was announced early this year, a journalist named Nate Rogers (who you may know from his bylines for Stereogum) decided to take the latest stab at contacting Fox. To his surprise, Fox consented to an interview, which has been incorporated into a lengthy feature today at Vulture.
The story talks about how, despite hiding from the media, Fox makes lots of outgoing calls due to his telemarketing job: "I've talked for hours like this. I’m not holding the phone up to my head. I got a headset on that’s wireless." He also seems to believe he was "canned" from one of his telemarketing jobs as a result of Hagan's Believer article, a theory that doesn't quite compute to Rogers or me. Fox says he has no regrets about "dissolving" the Mice, though it deeply angered his brother and bandmate Tommy, because he was no longer invested in their music and wanted to move on creatively.
As for why he stopped returning Stein's calls even after going to New York to play a showcase for the famous exec: "I think it goes to the fact that I don’t want to be such a successful artist that a record company depends on me to keep writing in an obligatory way, That’s where I was afraid — I don’t want to subject myself to that kind of thing, because I don’t think it would be best for what I do. For my temperament and my personality, how I make art, it’s just not going to work."
You should check out the full story, which also includes comments from a lot of Fox's fans and associates, right here. And don't sleep on Resonance, which I've embedded below again for your convenience.
