Tony Fox Sales

Tony Fox Sales (born September 26, 1951) is an American rock musician and composer. Normally on bass guitar, Sales and his brother, Hunt Sales, have worked with Todd Rundgren, Iggy Pop, and in Tin Machine with David Bowie.

Tony Fox Sales
Tony Sales
Background information
Born (1951-09-26) September 26, 1951
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
OriginDetroit, Michigan, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Musician
  • composer
Instruments
  • Bass guitar
  • vocals
Years active1965–present
Labels
Associated acts

Early life and career

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, a son of 1950s/'60s TV comedian Soupy Sales (January 8, 1926–October 22, 2009) and Barbara Fox (born June 23, 1931 – May 28, 2017), Tony grew up in Detroit, Michigan, with his younger brother, Hunt Sales (born 1954).

His first musical group was with Hunt, a drummer, in Tony and The Tigers. The band also included Jon Pousette-Dart, son of artist Richard Pousette-Dart and later the leader of the Pousette-Dart Band. The band appeared on a TV show hosted by Steve Allen in 1965 and performed two songs, "I'll Be On My Way" and "When The Party's Over," vintage clips of which are featured on YouTube.[1]

Tony and The Tigers released the song "Turn It on Girl," which was a minor local hit in Detroit, and appeared twice on the show Hullabaloo: December 20, 1965, hosted by Jerry Lewis, and April 4, 1966, hosted by their father, Soupy Sales. The band, also opened for The Animals at Steel Pier in Atlantic City in 1967.

Tony and Hunt went on to work with Chequered Past, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Todd Rundgren, Bob Welch, Andy Fraser of Free, Harry Dean Stanton and The Cheap Dates, The Hunt Sales Memorial, Tin Machine (with Bowie), and others from 1989 to 1994.

Career

In 1970, the Sales brothers joined Todd Rundgren in the newly formed group, Runt, and recorded two albums.[2]

They recorded the album Kill City with Iggy Pop in 1975 and provided the rhythm section for Pop's album Lust for Life (1977), which was produced by David Bowie, who also played keyboards The brothers joined Pop on his subsequent tour, recorded as TV Eye Live 1977 and released in 1978.

He and Anulka Dziubinska were married on August 20, 1978, in Los Angeles.[3] He and his brother, Hunt, did some recordings together which were stored away after Tony had a car accident in 1979 so severe that he was all but dead for several minutes before being revived. He was consequently in a coma for over eight months but eventually recovered from his injuries and went back into music.

Sales and Taryn Power, daughter of the late movie star Tyrone Power and actress Linda Christian, had two children, Anthony Tyrone "Tony" Sales (born September 4, 1982)[4] and Valentina Fox Sales (born September 10, 1983).[5]

In 1982, Sales joined a band named Chequered Past, which included singer/actor Michael Des Barres (later of Power Station), ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, and Blondie’s bass player Nigel Harrison and drummer Clem Burke. According to Des Barres, the choice of name was not an idle one. "All the members have been through a lot," he told the Los Angeles Times at his house in Hollywood, including the fact that Sales had fully recovered from a debilitating auto accident.[6] After an album released by Chequered Past in 1984 flopped the band broke up shortly afterward.

Sales joined David Bowie, Reeves Gabrels and Hunt Sales in Tin Machine in 1988. The New York Times said of the band's first album, "Tin Machine sounds as if it was made by people working together, not by a producer with a computer."[7] On November 23, 1991, Tin Machine appeared on Saturday Night Live, which was hosted by then child actor Macaulay Culkin. Tin Machine recorded three albums and did two tours before it broke up in 1992. Bowie later stated that his memories of Tony and Hunt Sales' contribution to Lust for Life led him to invite them to join Tin Machine.[8]

Throughout the 1990s, Sales recorded and produced and was a member of the short-lived all-star band The Cheap Dates, which included actor Harry Dean Stanton, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Slim Jim Phantom.

Sales and Hunt's recordings from the late 1970s were released in 2008 by Perseverance Records as a solo album, Hired Guns. An e-book about them, Quintessentially Soul Brothers: The Sales Brothers In Their Own Words by Stephanie Lynne Thorburn, was published in 2009.[9]

Instruments

Since the middle of the eighties he has used a Vigier Passion Bass.

Discography

With Todd Rundgren

And with Andy Fraser of the band Free, "Till the Night is Gone"

With Iggy Pop

With Tin Machine

Solo
  • Hired Guns (2008)

References
  1. Tony and The Tigers in 1965 on YouTube
  2. "Sales Brothers Interview". Rundgren Radio.com. 2008. Retrieved 2010-01-05.
  3. California Marriage Index, Groom: Tony F. Sales, Age: 26, Bride: Anulka M. Dziubinska, Age: 27, County: Los Angeles, Date: Aug. 20, 1978, Registrar No.: 27014, State File No.: 86878.
  4. California Birth Index, Name: Anthony Tyrone Sales, Date: Sep. 4, 1982, Sex: Male, Mother's Maiden Name: Power, Birth Place: Los Angeles.
  5. California Birth Index, Name: Valentina Fox Sales, Date: Sep. 10, 1983, Sex: Female, Mother's Maiden Name: Power, Birth Place: Los Angeles.
  6. "Pop Beat - Motley Musicians Team Up For Chequered Past." Los Angeles Times. Nov. 13, 1982. p. F 1.
  7. "And Now, The No-Frills David Bowie." The New York Times. Jun. 4, 1989. p. H 24.
  8. Buckley, David (1999). "Strange Fascination: David Bowie - The Definitive Story". Virgin Books. p. 451. ISBN 978-1-85227-784-0.
  9. Thorburn, Stephanie Lynne (2009). "Quintessentially Soul Brothers: The Sales Brothers In Their Own Words". TrueFire.com. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
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