Fischer-Z

Fischer-Z have always been John Watts's vehicle: singer, guitarist and poet, the man who writes the songs and keeps the name alive. The original lineup had Watts up front with Steve Skolnik on keyboards, David Graham on bass and Steve Liddle on drums, and Arista signed them. Going Deaf for a Living, in 1980, is where "So Long" lives, a taut, jittery rock song with Skolnik's keyboards glinting all over it and Watts sounding like a man with more on his mind than a chorus.

Europe took to them in a big way; the albums sold more than two million copies. They toured with the Police and Dire Straits, shared a stage with James Brown in East Berlin, crossed to the US and Canada, and were on the bill for Bob Marley's last festival tour of Europe. Watts put the band on ice in 1982 to go solo, but Fischer-Z never really went away: he has moved back and forth between the two names ever since, cutting records with Peter Gabriel, Steve Cropper and Dexys Midnight Runners along the way, and has piled up 26 albums and something like 4,000 concerts.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.