From New Romantic pioneer to fearless solo artist, Midge Ure reflects on five decades in music, creative freedom, and the cinematic journey behind his bold new album A Man Of Two Worlds. Interview by Melissa Blease. Images: © ToddeVision.
Few artists are gifted with the propensity to turn their innovative creative dreams into the inspired works of art that Midge Ure has produced over the past five decades. But listen to the man himself sharing his thoughts on his forthcoming A Man Of Two Worlds tour – which launches a brand new album of the same name and opens at the Bath Forum on Friday 8 May before travelling across the UK and into Europe – and you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s a relative newbie to the live show scene.
“Standing on a stage with a guitar: it’s kind of what I’ve always done, and I still love doing it,” he says.
Many of us remember Midge (who had his real name Jim reversed by fellow early band member Jim McGinlay to avoid confusion between the two musicians) popping up on Top of the Pops in 1976 when his band Slik knocked Abba’s Mamma Mia off their number one slot with their glam/pop rock hit Forever and Ever. There he was, fresh-faced and slick-quiffed in his American baseball shirt, doing that cool pop star ‘stare’ thing into the camera – and into many a young girl’s heart.
Slik disbanded not long afterwards. But five years later the same but somehow very different boy was back on TOTP with a very different band: Ultravox, who Midge joined as frontman and guitarist after John Foxx’s departure in 1979. This time around, Midge was sombre and broodingly intense, the very epitome of “a man in the dark in a picture frame so mystic and soulful” in the band’s iconic New Romantic-era single and video Vienna. And after that – well, Midge never went away again.
Solo albums, cool collaborations and retrospective adaptations. Band Aid, Live8 and multiple national and international fundraising events. A frank, fascinating autobiography (If I was…, published in 2004). A clutch of illustrious awards to his name, a long-term legacy of gold and platinum selling records: Midge has come a long way from his roots in a one-bedroom council estate flat in Cambuslang on the outskirts of Glasgow (he has, by the way, lived in Bath for almost three decades which is why, if you think you’ve just spotted him the new in M&S, you probably have).
But while most of the few artists who have earned Midge’s status might allow themselves to enjoy some well-earned laurel-resting, he’s chosen to gift his fans with something completely new.
Showcasing his first new material in 12 years, A Man Of Two Worlds features eight instrumental compositions and eight vocal songs across an overall exhilarating double album. The accompanying live show, meanwhile, promises to be one of the most distinctive performances of his career, described as “a seamless and immersive concert experience creating a continuous cinematic musical narrative.”
So why A Man Of Two Worlds – and why now?
“It’s kind of just this moment in time for me, and probably about growing up; I don’t think I could have done this album and any earlier than I have done,” says Midge.
Ah! Is he pondering that illusive philosophy around the getting of wisdom?
“I don’t think it’s wisdom!” he laughs. “But the world has changed, and with it the music industry has changed a huge amount too. As an artist, you’re very much out there on your own now, you’re not part of a team with the backing of a major record label. But on the other hand, the constraints are no longer there either. Now we’re all sailing our own ships, you can do whatever you want with what you do; it’s up to you.”
Midge readily admits that there are benefits and drawbacks within this brave new world of creative independence. But right from the start, he had an innate modus operandi that, in a way, prepared him for new tomorrows.
“We were very lucky with Ultravox, way back in the day,” he recalls. “When we signed to Chrysalis Records, they realised very early on that we knew what we were doing. They allowed us to present them with a finished video, finished artwork, and no artists did that at the time; most of that stuff would have been created by someone else who wrote the script for you. We were lucky because we didn’t have too many constraints. In a way, there are far fewer constraints today; technology has allowed more people to be creative. But we were one of the very few who got signed to a label but were still allowed to do what we wanted to do.”
And throughout his career, Midge has continued to allow himself to do what he does. It’s interesting, though, that in a fascinating full circle move, he’s been reunited with Chrysalis Records, who will release A Man Of Two Worlds under an exclusive licence – and it’s clear that the bonds of trust forged in their previous relationship are as strong as they ever were.
The new album is perhaps as close to the ‘authentic’ Midge Ure as any of his previous albums have ever got. Some moments are peacefully meditative, others invigoratingly bracing, much of it reflective but still strikingly fresh, all of it richly atmospheric; it’s the sound of a lifetime of experience – both personal and commercial – against a uniquely prepossessing aural soundwave.
Could it be described as the soundtrack to Midge Ure: The Movie? “Well Ultravox were always cinematic!”, Midge concurs. “All those soaring melodies, all that grandness – it’s all totally filmic. I’ve always been a fan of cinema and ’soundtracks, and if I go way back to when I was kid, listening to some of the music that was being played on the radio in the 50s and 60s, a lot of that was cinematic and instrumental – just think of The Shadows, for example. Cinematic is a theme that’s always stuck with me, all the way through. I can’t lose it, it’s always there!”
But also always there, for all of us, is a political script that’s being produced and directed by conductors way out of our control – a theme that’s also reflected on in A Man Of Two Worlds.
“The state of the world is dominating our lives right now,” says Midge. “We have more and more madness going on, because we have people who are incapable of finishing a sentence in positions of immense power. As a writer, you write about what affects you, your family and your daily life, and everything that’s happened in the last 6, 7, 8 years has just been just ludicrous, on either side of the Atlantic. It’s as though we have school dunces in charge of the world – it’s a scary, scary, scary place. The current political climate is, to me, like a jumping jack built inside a hot cross bun; it’s lovely on the outside, but inside…” His sentence trails off, leaving us to fill in the gap. Chaos? Havoc? Decay?
Park the troubles at the kerb for a moment! Midge is preparing to take us on a stress-diverting trip.
“In the Man Of Two Worlds live shows, I’m planning to take the audience on a little journey,” he says. “In the first half, we’re going to move seamlessly from an instrumental piece to an album track to a familiar single with no stops along the way, taking people along for the ride with us. You might want to close your eyes and drift off with the atmosphere in the first half and get up and boogie in the second half, and that’s all absolutely fine. But the point throughout it all is that we’re trying to make the best sound and visuals we can and bring it all together.” It’s a valiant promise, for sure – but one that I know Midge Ure will go beyond fully living up to.
Before we say goodbye, our conversation turns back to the past and to London’s tiny, iconic Blitz Club of the very early 1980s in particular, where the careers for many of the cultural icons of today were kickstarted on a wave of defiantly attention-grabbing outfits, egos… and music. “The Blitz crowd created a world that could have been the past or the future; in fact, it had a foot in both,” says Midge – and he should know; he was right there at the epicentre of proceedings.
Decades later, and what sets Midge apart from many of his original contemporaries is that he’s still at that cultural epicentre: a man of many worlds, still playing a big part in ours.
For details on Midge’s new album, tour dates and ticket information visit: midgeure.co.uk