WHY I’LL NEVER RETIRE
Ivor Novello and Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, director, philanthropist and icon – Midge Ure is one of Scotland’s national treasures.
The Band Aid founder, who has been making music history for more than half a century, revealed he’ll never retire – because he’s really never worked a day in his life.
The Ultravox singer, whose unprecedented contribution to music and tireless charity work saw him scoop the lifetime achievement honour at our Scotland’s Champions awards, said: “Now I am of a certain age, people keep asking me what I am going to do when I retire? In my mind, I have been retired my whole life. Surely you retire from something you don’t like doing to do something you love. I’ve had it in reverse. I’m never going to retire from performing and do something worse.
“I’m not going to stop until I physically have to stop and I still have my voice. I will be walking on to a stage and doing my thing right up to my very last breath.
“I’m fortunate to come from a generation of musicians who never grew up but who were allowed to grow old and who it is still cool to watch rocking it out in their 70s and 80s.
“Perhaps it’s because our music instantly brings back memories of what you were doing, who you fancied and what you were wearing the first time around.”
Midge, 68, who grew up in a working-class family in a tenement in Cambuslang, Glasgow, said: “There are only a handful of people in the world who get to live their wildest dream and I’m fortunate to still be living mine.
“Like other folk, I used to sit at school and think I’m not really good at anything. I could draw, I could paint and I had a voice but how the hell do you make a living out of that? In reality, the only people I had seen coming out of extreme working- class backgrounds were sports people and I was useless at football.
“Ye a h , you think, ‘ Wouldn’t it be cracking to go in and make a record or be on a stage?’ But even I could not have dreamt up the life I have led. It’s been pure fantasy. I could draw a guitar long before I could touch one so my childhood up until I was 10 was a series of entering competitions on the back of cornflake packets to see if I could win one.
“Here I am, six decades later, having performed on some of the stages in the world with some of the biggest stars and written and produced music for many others.”
Midge, who lives near Bath with his actress wife Sheridan Forbes, has dedicated his life to helping others through his charity work and his committed campaigning to ensure better lives for those in poverty.
His philanthropic streak began nearly 40 years ago in 1984 when he co-wrote and produced Do They Know It’s Christmas? with Bob Geldof in response to the famine in Ethiopia. The single sold 3.7million copies in the UK – the biggest-selling single at that time – and led to Live Aid, the 1985 concert which featured the world’s greatest music acts and raised enough money to save more than two million lives in Africa.
Midge, who is credited with being the mastermind behind the phenomenon, said: “Organising Live Aid wasn’t brain surgery. I was simply asked, ‘Can you sing a song, play your guitar and get some of your mates to come along?’ It is not difficult. The challenge was the heights it reached.
“If I was to blow my own trumpet, I can say it would not have happened if we had not instigated it. Had I not been standing next to Paula Yates on Channel 4 music show The Tube when Bob called her, ranting about the BBC news report on the Ethiopian famine, Band Aid might never have come about. We were the little pebble that started the avalanche but it was the avalanche that made it interesting.
“Then came Live Aid. Bob walked into a meeting with a drawing of the earth and a knife and fork and talked about doing simultaneous concerts on either side of the world – which was a technical impossibility. “From that point to the day of Live Aid, I had a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that it was never
going to happen. It was too massive to comprehend but it did and it was magical.
“In my mind, it will never be replicated. You can put a bunch of songs and bands together and it will be lovely but there was an invisible essence at the time that will not be repeated. Through music, we had made caring cool and made it trendy to be charitable. It united people of all ages to a good cause.”
Midge, who shot to fame in the 70s and 80s in bands including Slik, Thin Lizzy, Rich Kids and Visage, added: “There are a couple of defining Live Aid moments and the rest is pretty vague. Standing on stage doing Vienna and watching the crowd clapping to the drum beat was magnificent and hearing organiser Harvey Goldsmith on the phone arranging for an astronaut on the space shuttle to announce the next band from space was out of this world. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”
Midge, who is dad to daughters Molly, Kitty, Flossie and Ruby, is still affected by the distressing scenes he witnessed in Ethiopia when he helped deliver aid.
The successful solo artist, who has a new instrumental album coming out and is back on tour next year, said: “I visited a small aid camp with 5000 kids which had barbed wire pointing outwards to stop people getting in to the food and medicine. I can still taste and smell it. I was told it was a good day as only three children had died. I came away from there absolutely distraught.
“I felt redundant and realised, apart from shining a TV light on their plight, I was completely useless. My best way of helping was through music and being part of the Band Aid Trust, which is still going strong 36 years on.”
The Save The Children ambassador went on to organisee countless benefit concerts, including Music for Montserratt in 1997, the Live 8 concerts in 2005 and numerous rock gigss in aid of The Prince’s Trust.
But for the little boy who dreamed of making it big in music,, duetting with Kate Bush and jamming in a back room withh Eric Clapton remain some of his most special moments.
He said: “I have lived a fantasy of a life. It’s had its ups and downs, like when I battled alcoholism but I had good people around me who pulled me through and got me to buck up my ideas.
“I’m honoured to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and am glad it’s not posthumous and I’m still alive to see it.
“In my eyes, I’m still that kid longing for his first guitar or the teenager looking up at the very tall stage at the Glasgow Apollo watching David Bowie and wondering, ‘ What if...?’
I was told it was a good day as only three kids had died