Sometimes it’s unfortunate how a band is remembered.  Like many people I know the band for their biggest hit, “One Thing Leads To Another.”  It’s a great song and one that any band would have been happy to have as part of their discography.  The issue is that the 1980’s are not a decade that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has tended to reflect upon and this is the only song that is commonly known even though it is far from the only hit, to say nothing of the good songs, that the band created over the course of their career.  I must admit that this is not a band I would have thought to have looked further into because I figured that they were not far from getting a Todd In The Shadows video on them, only to realize that they had four top 20 hits and a career that was well worthy of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  In general, The Fixx demonstrates a great many of the tendencies that make a group more obscure than they deserve to be because the accidents of how songs are remembered strongly influences the legacy that groups leave behind them, to the point where a band’s signature song is thought of as their only hit song, and songs that were well-crafted and well-performed are forgotten except by those fans who continue to enjoy the band to this day.

The Influence Of The Fixx

The Fixx were, and are, a band that has been well-respected by their fans as well as by critics.  Besides their own successful career, a couple members of the band also performed as backing musicians for Tina Turner on her successful “Private Dancer” comeback album [1].  More than being an active influence on other current bands, The Fixx is perhaps most notable as being a part of their times, and a great deal of their music deals with the paranoia of the world of the late Cold War period.  The fact that they were able to have a successful career on both the mainstream rock and pop charts while writing a substantial body of songs that reflected fears and paranoia about the Cold War turning into a hot war of mutually assured nuclear destruction is remarkable.  After all, other bands of their time like Men At Work found their career quickly falter after entering into the habit of writing political songs that sought to address the mood of the times.  They can be considered to be like Sting [2] in being able to have a successful career that involved political and social songs, if not to the extent of his popular success or longevity.  And that is a notable achievement, as the songs are both of their time and worth being remembered as well.

Why The Fixx Belongs In The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

One of the more successful British New Wave acts, they were actually far more successful in the United States than in the UK.  While none of their singles hit the UK top 40, they managed to have four top 20 hits in the United States, including the aforementioned top ten smash “One Thing Leads To Another,” as well as “Saved By Zero,” “Are We Ourselves?” and “Secret Separation,” and two other top 40 pop hits in “The Sign Of Fire” and “How Much Is Enough?”  They managed to achieve considerable success on the mainstream rock charts with three #1 hits on that chart and four additional top ten singles, and even achieved some success on the dance charts.  They had some notable success in soundracks, with a #3 rock hit “Deeper And Deeper” off of the Streets of Fire soundtrack.  Of their albums, 1983’s Reach The Beach has been certified platinum and 1984’s Phantoms certified gold [3], evidence that they were able to succeed beyond merely their biggest hit, and their last album to date has been 2012’s Beautiful Friction, which like the band’s albums as a whole has been reviewed appreciatively [4].  This is a band whose angsty approach to rock and role music and whose high-concept New Wave has a devoted fan base.

Why The Fixx Isn’t In The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

It seems most likely that the band has not been inducted because 1980’s bands are not generally well-regarded by the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Nominating Committee as a whole and because the band’s lengthy discography of ambitious and beautiful songs have not been remembered by the general public except for their biggest hit.  Honestly, though, that’s not a good enough excuse.  One of the main purposes of the RRHOF is to educate general audiences on the music of deserving acts, and The Fixx is deserving.

Verdict:  Put them in, along with a lot of other neglected bands from their era.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fixx

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014/03/10/why-arent-they-in-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-sting/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fixx_discography

[4] https://www.allmusic.com/album/beautiful-friction-mw0002387699