Interview:Midge Ure
There are very few musicians who can genuinely say they’ve helped shape the sound of a generation.
Midge Ure is one of them.
From Slik and The Rich Kids to Visage, Ultravox and, of course, co-writing one of the most important songs in British music history, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, his career has spanned more than five decades and shows no sign of slowing down.
Yet despite all those achievements, what struck me most wasn’t the list of famous names or the extraordinary stories.
It was how grounded he is.
Within minutes, we were talking about growing up in a one-bedroom Glasgow tenement, sleeping in the same bed as his brother and a mum who quietly changed the course of his life with one simple sentence:
“Follow your heart.”
It seems she gave him very good advice.
You grew up in a one-bedroom tenement until you were about ten years old. Did living in such close quarters make your family particularly close?
“I think it probably did.”
Midge smiles at the memory.
“There wasn’t much choice.”
“My brother and I shared a bed, while my mum and dad slept in the living room with my little sister between them. My dad left for work at six every morning driving a baker’s van and rarely got home before six or seven at night, so we didn’t see a great deal of him during the week.”
Looking back, he believes those early years shaped the family they would become.
“You inevitably become closer as you get older, and thankfully we’re all still very close today. Then you pass that closeness on to your own children.”
Your parents had encouraged you into an apprenticeship. What made you walk away from it and choose music instead?
“I felt incredibly lucky to get the apprenticeship,” he says.
“Neither my brother nor I were particularly academic, so my parents wanted us to have a trade that would set us up for life.”
Music, however, had other ideas.
“I’d been playing guitar at school and formed a band with some mates. About halfway through my apprenticeship, our keyboard player was auditioning for a well-known Scottish band, so I went along to support him.”
He laughs.
“They asked me to play guitar alongside him…”
A pause.
“I got the job.”
His friend didn’t.
Breaking the news to his parents wasn’t easy.
“I told them I’d finish the apprenticeship if that’s what they wanted me to do, but my heart was in music.”
Then his mum said something he’ll never forget.
“She simply told me to follow my heart.”
Who were your biggest musical influences in those early days?
“There were loads,” he says.
“The Small Faces were probably the first band I remember seeing on television and absolutely loving. Then there was the British blues boom, early Fleetwood Mac and Cream.”
He pauses.
“Then you discover David Bowie…”
Another smile.
“And everything changes.”
What excites you musically today?
He thinks for a moment before answering honestly.
“Very little, if I’m being truthful.”
“I don’t listen to much music on the radio anymore. I find a lot of it repetitive.”
I wondered whether that was simply something that comes with age.
He laughed.
“Probably!”
“But even young musicians are still discovering Hendrix, Cream and Led Zeppelin. I just don’t connect with much of today’s music.”
One thing that really surprised me was discovering you’d played with Thin Lizzy. Considering you were standing in for Gary Moore, that must have been terrifying! How did that happen?
“Thin Lizzy were delighted,” he laughs.
“I’m not sure I was.”
At the time, Midge had only recently joined Ultravox and was finishing the first Visage album when the telephone rang.
It was Phil Lynott.
“Gary hadn’t turned up for a couple of shows and was out of the band. There were three weeks of the American tour left, and Phil asked if I could fly out the following day.”
His head and his heart gave him two very different answers.
“My head was saying, ‘You’re nowhere near good enough to replace Gary Moore.'”
He smiles.
“My heart had already packed a suitcase.”
When it’s just you and an acoustic guitar, what song do you find yourself playing?
“Usually not one of mine.”
Without hesitation, he names David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.
“The chord structure is incredible.”
Even now, after all these years, he’s still learning from it.
“The more I play it, the more I’m in awe of just how musical Bowie was.”
“You never stop learning.”
Most people would probably assume singing ‘Vienna’ at Live Aid was the defining moment of your career. Was it?
“In terms of audience size, yes.”
Then he surprises me.
“But it isn’t actually the performance I remember most.”
There simply wasn’t time.
“We only had eighteen minutes on stage. There’d been no soundcheck, everything was played live, the equipment looked as though it might fall apart at any minute and before you knew it… it was over.”
The moments that stay with him happened away from the headlines.
“Sitting in a room playing guitar with Eric Clapton.”
“Kate Bush singing a duet with me.”
“Those are the memories that stay with you.”
Of everything you’ve done – performing, writing or producing – which gives you the greatest satisfaction?
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“Performing, I think.”
It’s not the answer I was expecting.
After writing some of the most recognisable songs of the last fifty years, I assumed songwriting would come first.
Not so.
“Writing songs is hard work,” he admits. “I worry about it constantly.”
He laughs.
“I know people who can sit down and write brilliant songs in an afternoon. I’ve never been one of them.”
For Midge, writing and producing happen simultaneously.
“Every lyric has to make sense. Every musical part has to earn its place. It takes me forever.”
He isn’t exaggerating.
“Sometimes I spend five or even ten years working on something.”
Then comes the reward.
“The funny thing is, I usually don’t appreciate it until I’ve finished. Then I’ll hear it unexpectedly somewhere and think… ‘Ah… now I know why I spent all those years doing it.'”
Performing, however, is much more immediate.
“You walk on stage.”
“You either do it well or you don’t.”
He smiles.
“I don’t have an off switch.”
“I give everything I’ve got every single night.”
“When it works…”
He pauses.
“There’s no better feeling.”
You still have the famous Burberry coat from the ‘Vienna’ video, don’t you?
“I do!”
He laughs.
“It’s one of the few things I’ve actually kept.”
Far from gathering dust in a wardrobe, it recently took pride of place in an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland.
“The Burberry mac, the silk raincoat, the sunglasses I wore at Live Aid and the guitar were all displayed together in a glass case.”
It must have been quite surreal.
“Very.”
If someone else could perform ‘Vienna’, who would you choose?
The answer comes almost instantly.
“Freddie Mercury.”
Then, without missing a beat…
“And Brian May to play the guitar solo.”
He grins.
“Can you imagine it?”
“I think they’d have turned it into this incredible operatic version.”
I have to admit…
I’d have loved to have heard that too.
Your daughters have grown up with a dad recognised all over the world. Are they proud, embarrassed… or a bit of both?
He laughs before I’ve even finished the question.
“Definitely both.”
“When they were younger, I think I made them cringe a bit.”
Like most teenagers.
“But now…”
His expression softens.
“I think they’re proud.”
When people look back on your career, what would you most like to be remembered for?
This time, he doesn’t smile.
Instead, he gives the answer that, for me, sums up the man I am interviewing.
“That I stuck to my guns.”
He takes me back to the beginning of his career with Slik.
The band had a number one single.
Most musicians would have celebrated without question.
Midge saw it differently.
“My voice was on it.”
“I played on it.”
“But I hadn’t written it.”
“I hadn’t produced it.”
The success never truly felt like his.
“I promised myself then that nobody would ever manipulate my career again.”
It’s a promise he’s kept.
“Every decision I’ve made since then, whether it’s been good or bad, has been my decision.”
No managers.
No record companies.
No compromises.
“I’ve lived with the consequences.”
He pauses for one final moment.
“But they’ve always been my consequences.”
As our conversation came to an end, I found myself thinking back to something Midge had said right at the beginning.
His mum had encouraged him to follow his heart.
Looking back over a career that has taken him from a Glasgow tenement to Live Aid, from Ultravox to Band Aid, from playing alongside Phil Lynott, Eric Clapton and Kate Bush to writing songs that have become part of our musical history, it’s difficult to imagine where he’d be had he ignored her advice.
Success hasn’t come from chasing fashions or following the crowd.
It’s come from trusting his instincts.
After speaking to him at length, I suspect that’s exactly how Midge Ure would like to be remembered.
Not simply as the man who sang Vienna.
But as someone who stayed true to himself.