An artist who has recieved Ivor Novello, Grammy, BASCAP awards along with a flotilla of gold and platinum records, really needs very little introduction.
Musical success is seldom measured in time spans of more than
a few years, if not Andy Warhol's oft quoted "fifteen minutes", so the fact that by the
time Midge's single "If I Was" went to No1 in 1985 he had already
crammed several musical lifetimes into a 10 year professional career
speaks volumes - Slik, The Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy,
Visage, Ultravox and of course
the most famous one off group in musical history Band Aid had by then all had the
guiding hand of his musical navigation.
Then you have to take account of Midge's musical directorship of a series
of rock concerts for The Prince's Trust, Wicked Women for Breakthrough and in honour of Nelson Mandela; a Lord Provost award for services to Scottish music; record production
for Phil Lynott, Steve Harley and countless others; his video direction of memorable
hits by the Fun Boy Three, Bananarama and others, or a whole swathe of landmark singles by
Ultravox; TV, theatre
and film music credits ranging from 'Max
Headroom' to stage and big screen.
His musical roots were playing and learning the records of the
Small Faces and other rockers who did things very much their own
way, Midge appeared to the wider public in a moment of heady teen success
with Slik.
Their sway-along Bell single 'Forever And Ever' took over at No.1 in the UK from Abba's 'Mamma
Mia' on Valentine's Day 1976. Soon outgrowing Slik's pop dimensions, Midge was snapped
up by ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock the following year for his new outfit, the Rich Kids, who charted
amid an avalanche of press with a self-titled EMI single early in 1978.
By April '79, with his name being added to many musicians' contact
book, Ure had been asked by Billy Currie, Chris
Cross and Warren Cann to become
the new frontman in Ultravox.
The band was a major influence on the new romantic and electro-pop
movements of the early '80s and many an open-minded studio and bedroom
experimentalist since. Their successful trademark was combining Midge's
powerful guitar riffs with sweeping synthesiser motifs, enigmatic imagery
and state-of-the-art visuals. Throughout the first half of the '80s,
they brilliantly combined the responsibilities of top 10 chartmakers and innovative
style-makers.
As interest in the 1980s rises again to a new peak in 2004, courtesy of Duran
Duran's massive success, Ultravox's chart catalogue rewards merits new scrutiny. Tracks like
'Reap the Wild Wind', 'Dancing With Tears
in My Eyes', 'Love's Great Adventure' and 1981's
timeless 'Vienna' were all massive hits the world over as they charted
with awesome regularity, not only on single, but with seven consecutive
top ten albums in just six years.
Even by then, the Midge Ure story had some individual chapters, of course. He wrote
and produced Visage in 1980, then hit the top 10 in the summer of 1982 with his first release under
his own name, an atmospheric take on the Tom Rush song made famous
half a dozen years earlier by the Walker Brothers, 'No Regrets'.
Then came November 25, 1984, a historic day for Midge and all of pop music, as 36
artists by the collective name Band Aid gathered at SARM Studios in west London under Ure's production.
They recorded 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' a song he had just written with Bob Geldof as the industry's
heartfelt and eloquent contribution to Ethiopian famine relief. 600,000 copies sold in its first
week in the UK alone was only the beginning: 800,000 more were bought in the
second week, more than three million world-wide, and the unstoppable emotion engendered by
the project led to Live Aid, the summer 1985 global concert that, all exaggeration
aside, spoke for a generation.
Within months, a staggering £8
million had been raised for the
starving in Africa, and Geldof said that without Ure's initial enthusiasm
for the idea, not to mention his rapidly penned sketch for the single,
neither Band Aid nor Live Aid could have happened. Midge is still to
this day a Band Aid Trustee.
Just two months after Live Aid, Midge was back at No.1 in Britain, this time under
his own name, with 'If I Was', and by the autumn he had a No.2
solo album to accompany it, entitled 'The Gift'. In 1993, that chart-topper
was to lend itself to the retrospective album 'If I Was'. After an initial
solo outing to the Oxford Debating Society where his response to "What
song would you write for Take That" was met with the characteristically witty retort of
"An instrumental!" broke the ice, he supported the album's release
with a 22-date 'Out Alone' tour of Britain, armed only with a couple of guitars
and a keyboard.
In 1996 the new 'Breathe' album was followed by further extensive touring, including
dates in the US as special guest to the Chieftains. The Swatch campaign brought spectacular
renewed international activity for the record in 1998. The album and
eponymous single were subsequently in the top 20 throughout Europe
for much of that year, and No.1
in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland,
where Midge toured voraciously. 'Breathe' sold over half a million copies in Europe alone. Eberhard Schoener invited him to perform at the re-opening of the Potzdamer
Platz in Berlin, in front of an estimated audience of 500,000.
Soon after Midge was busy producing and writing with and for
various artists, both established and unsigned, at his studio in
Bath, and writing music for films. Other duties included the 'Music for Montserrat' benefit
at the Royal Albert Hall alongside Sir Paul McCartney,
Elton John and Eric Clapton, and a performance
for the launch of the Hard Rock Hotel in Bali.
1999 brought
a major Japanese tour and shows for WOMAD in Singapore (where he broke the house attendance record) and Las Palmas, where the band played
to a packed town square in a performance broadcast by Spanish TV later
that year. Yet another new strand to his career emerged when Midge presented shows for BBC Radio on the careers
of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry and Thin
Lizzy, also participating in a 15th anniversary
radio show to celebrate the Band Aid success. He has also recorded
a contribution to BBC Radio 2's 'Electrifying - The History of the
Electric Guitar.'
Whilst completing work on his next studio album 'Move Me', Midge also narrated
a tribute to Alex Harvey for BBC Radio, appeared on BBC1's 'A Question of Pop' with Craig David, and made various
festival appearances, including a performance with Sir George Martin
for 'Wings & Strings', as well as completing another extensive European tour of his own
to support the album release.
Following Midge's appearance on the flagship ITV program "This is your Life" in early 2001,
EMI released 'THE VERY BEST OF MIDGE URE &
ULTRAVOX' which prompted him to
go back out on the road in "rock band mode" 'Rewind - The Greatest Hits Tour' a major fifteen date UK jaunt supported the release and
performed his hits from across the full spectrum of his career. The
show was filmed at the Shepherd's
Bush Empire, and released on DVD through
Eagle Rock. Once again, Midge was instrumental in the video production,
always preferring to keep things under his direct control. Another
important milestone was the opening of the www.midgeure.com online shop;
a vehicle which allows him to release his own product, completely under
his own control. The first exclusive shop release was "Glorious Noise - Breathe Live", followed by "Intimate Moments"; a collection of previously unreleased material. As he
says, "I needed a home for the songs that didn't fit a particular album.
They're my Little Orphans!"
As we move into 2002, once again he combined a series of acoustic shows with
a glorious summer spent performing a series of shows in historic building
across the UK in band format with "The
Pretenders". Another exclusive release also
hit the virtual shelves. "Intimate
Moments" is a candid record of his
acoustic show, captured on a double CD.
Always one to ring the changes, Midge next decided to revisit
his "electronic" roots in the "Sampled, Looped
and Trigger Happy" tour. 35 shows left no corner
of the UK untouched by this amalgam of old and new, the old being
given a contemporary twist sitting comfortably alongside the
new. Songs that hadn't seen the light of day for many a year like Astradyne, Reap the Wild Wind and Wastelands enthralled the audiences. Once again, the shows were
filmed for a future DVD release. There were also two further on-line shop releases.
"One Night in Scotland" from the Flying Brzezicki Brothers tour 1988, and in
a new departure, a multimedia release (VCD) from the US Answers to Nothing Tour- "Once Upon a Time in America"
So, what next? Well, as usual there's so much in the pipeline
it's difficult to keep track! One thing that is certain is that
Midge's autobiography "If I Was" will be published in the autumn. He's also working on
a major TV program
celebrating the 20th anniversary of Band Aid. Then there are contributions
to various other TV and radio shows, such as C4's "100 Greatest Videos", and the Phil Coulter show. Oh and a trip to Poland!
"Uncovered" is his latest live incarnation. Combining his own classic
hits with a selection of songs that have been a major influence on him
along with a smattering of personal reflections, all done in an acoustic
format, it should certainly provide an entertaining evening! But then that's nothing new for Mr Ure!