Saved By Zero by The Fixx

Album: Reach the Beach (1983)

Charted: 20

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After a failure you start from scratch with nothing. A clean slate. It's the same sentiment Bob Dylan proposed in "Like A Rolling Stone" with the line, "When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose." The song was written by the band and released on their second album.

Like most songs by The Fixx, their lead singer Cy Curnin wrote the lyrics. "When you're on the floor, you can't fall further, you can only go up," he told us. "Life was starting to get more full with distractions, and I'm a sort of minimalist at heart. I always fight for that space. So it was a sort of a mantra that came from some of the teachings that I was learning back then with my earliest dipping into Buddhism. It was East meeting West for me. It was Eastern ancient philosophies that people live as a daily code over there to necessity. And we in the West absorbing this Buddhism, at the time it wasn't a necessity for functioning life, but it was a necessity for calming the mind and getting to a place of no mind and losing frustration and ego. So that's where it was for then." (Here's our full Cy Curnin interview.)
The video for this song was a favorite in the early days of MTV. In the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, Fixx lead singer Cy Curnin talks about the making of this video: "We had Brian Grant chosen for us to shoot 'Saved By Zero' by the record company. By this time, MCA had woken up to the fact that videos were important. They had been penny-pinching our earlier efforts, but now opened the vaults and in came the 'professionals,' with huge expense accounts that afforded us lunches, massages, and 14 stylists to make us look like proper rock stars! The aftershock of the huge price tag to the 'Saved By Zero' video was that the record company agreed that Ostoj and Hine were in fact very talented at a third of the cost."
The first four Fixx albums, including Reach the Beach, were produced by Rupert Hine, who also worked with Tina Turner, Howard Jones and many other popular artists. In our 2011 interview with Rupert, he talked about coming up with the distinctive sound for The Fixx. Said Hine: "We came up with this very aggressive bitey but sort of shiny guitar, which was very different than any other bands at that time. And that certainly was a huge part of the band's success. I mean, the amount of interest that went into the guitarist was huge - quite rightfully, I think. Also the whole production technique we came up with was very new at that time. And still in a way sounds unique."
In America, this was used in 2008 commercials for Toyota, who used the song to promote their 0% financing offer.
Cy Curnin has learned over the years that many people have come up with their own interpretations of this song, which he considers equally important to his own. Among numerologists and mathematicians, it relates to the often under-appreciated number. Zero was the last of the digits to be discovered/invented. First (a couple of centuries B.C.) as a place holder in numbers and afterwards (a few centuries A.D.) as a number itself. Today zero is considered neither positive nor negative.

Curnin told us: "There has been the invention zero as a number by the ancient Indian mathematicians. Without that, calculations would have been completely wrong. Because we were following the Roman rhythmic calendar which believed that one was the first number. In fact, zero is the first number. Because what stops one being minus one is zero. It's nothing. That's a number. That's a plus unit. It's not negative one. There's no such thing as a negative zero, there's just zero, which is this side of the line. Which is lying in the decimal point. You have 0.1 and in the binary code and in all the other codes. Not that I was thinking that when I wrote 'Saved By Zero.' But, you know what, I'm taking it anyway."

Comments: 10

Sammich from SpokaneSaved By Zero is almost as depressing as any of The Cure's songs.
Michaelbrenden from Dc, MdBTW, for _much_ more on the Kabba/Illumi aspects, check out freemantv () com and watch Freeman's videos on youtube. They're a decent jumping-in point to an endless expanse of learning that apparently totally eludes 99.9999999% of humanity. I also recommend MUSICAL CULT CONTROL paper by Dr. Leonard Horowitz, and also Dave McGowan's excellent INSIDE THE LC series, both of which deeply examine (with sources, some military/navy) the incredible role music has in shaping culture, thought, and how that fact has been fully exploited by the powers that be. "Listen to the wrong kind of music, become the wrong kind of person" - Aristotle // this is also interesting (cymatics, dr. masaru emoto, dan winter's research, the work of meru () org and this site i just googled up: http://cynthiaspeaks.webs.com/laughingelvis.htm ) a lot of this is deeply explored on a site called East Ghost
Michaelbrenden from Dc, MdPaul's Kabbalah insight very good. Who could miss the "slashed" pyramid that's practically central background figure throughout the video. That's so different from masturbation, from Renato money man, and from the "who cares" attitude! LOL, the best part of really great music is how wildly different its meaning among people! I happen to love the haunting "space" throughout, the way the band, instruments and sounds seem to pull together out of the black aether. Saw them in concert with wife and good old friend August 2012 in Virginia, still friggin excellent. Excellent.
Matt from Colorado Springs, CoWell,just to show how my mind works.I assumed he was singing about eventually becoming rich as in the amount of zeros on your bank statement.Saved by zeros : no longer concerned about money.Everyone dreams of a day when you have 6 or more zeros at the end of a single digit.Hahaha
Paul from Boulder, CoActually, they're referencing "Ten sephirot of nothingness, ten and not nine, ten and not eleven" Ten=0

Jewish Kabbalists that accept the entity state that it is not a Sephirah are considered evil. In the Jewish tradition, the idea of an eleventh Sephirah is tantamount to blasphemy, as stated in the Sefer Yetzirah.

9 10 11 --> "saved by "0"" the 0 saves us from the surrounding 911... enough said. It's been going on for centuries. 911 was an act of sacrifice just like all others in history... look it up, you'll see.
Melanthe from Denver, CoNoel, I think you're thinking with your little head. Ski's comment echoes what other reports have said, that zero means rock bottom, the place where there's nothing else to lose and the only way is up. Zero is the place of all beginnings, of new creation. What's sad about your comment is that it comes up in Internet searches, which gives people a false impression of what the song is about.
Kayla from Winnipeg, MbI don't care what the song is about to be honest, I just love the music so whatever lol
Ski from Boston, Ma"The song was written from the point of view of the release you get when you have nothing left to lose. It clears your head of all fears and panics and illusions and you get back to the basics, which is a Buddhist mantra, which I practiced back then, and which I still do," [Cy Curnin] said. "The idea of the song is how great it is to get back to zero."
Matthew from Philadelphia, Payou people are dense the song was written for Renato Zero because before they made it big they were broke and this guy gave them money, among other things.
Noel from Boston, MaAt a concert in Foxboro, Massachusetts the Fixx's lead singer stated that "saved by zero" meant masterbation. The "zero" is the circle made by a man's hand when he grips his member! Hey, at least thats one way to save yourself!

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