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From Slik and The Rich Kids to Ultravox and Band Aid, Midge has produced consistently innovative and excellent pop music. Fronting Ultravox, Midge had nine top 10 albums and sold in excess of 20 millions records in the UK alone before moving on to an equally successful solo career. His most successful song though remains the multi-million selling Do They Know It’s Christmas, which he co-wrote with Bob Geldof.

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.

As we moved 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 and the shows were captured on the tour DVD, If I Was.

Midge’s services to both music and charity were finally recognised in the Birthday Honours list in 2005, when Midge was awarded a long overdue OBE!

He also released his autobiography “If I Was” through Virgin books, and undertook a promotional tour of bookshops where he did a short acoustic performance and a question and answer session.

He’s also received honorary doctorates from both Edinburgh and Dundee Universities, mainly in recognition for his work with Band Aid and Live 8, which took up a lot of 2006! Midge actually managed to fit in a performance at the Edinburgh Live8 show in Murreyfield in July where he played with Eddie Izzard on piano! Surely a first!

Midge and band have just performed a show with Level 42 and the Cutting Crew for legendary German TV show “Rockpalast” which was recieved with great critial acclaim! The show was broadcast in early January. He has also performed with German icon Xavier Naidoo at his recent O Livelait show. He also travelled to Korea with old friends WOMAD and performed with Troy Donockley and AD Chivers there. He has also just narrated a documentary about the Cavern Club which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

“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!

 

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