OUTER LIMITS
They were the synthpop pioneers who worked with krautrock producer extraordinaire Conny Plank, had a massive hit with a catchy little tune called Vienna, and their singer Midge Ure almost ended up producing Rush. They might mean nothing to you, but we hav
They released albums produced by krautrock legend Conny Plank, the UK music press dubbed them the ‘the new Genesis’, they wrote three-part songs and they played real instruments. Which begs the question: how prog were Ultravox?
Midge Ure can’t pretend he’s a massive prog fan, but he does have a good prog-related story. “I was once asked to go and meet Rush, with a view to producing them. They were big Ultravox fans.
So I flew over to Toronto, and we had a lovely dinner. Then we got round to talking about their album. They asked what my take on it would be, if I were producing. And I said, ‘I would simplify it.’” He laughs heartily. “Suffice to say I was on the plane home the next day! It was fine, though; I had to be honest. They were brilliant players, and we’d have made a great record together…”
What might have been. While Ure recalls his big brother playing Yes’
Roundabout a lot in the house growing up, he muses, “Too many notes, as they said to Mozart in the movie. Though it’s not too many notes at all; it’s just a skill I do not have. I simply couldn’t do what the prog rock guys do. I asked my friend who played drums in a prog band once what it was like, and he said, ‘You count to 19 and a half, then hit a cymbal.’ Tell you what, though,” he adds, “Billy gets very into textures and augmented ninths and integration of classical structures…”
He does, too. Billy Currie and Midge Ure are here to talk about the 40th anniversary deluxe edition of the
Vienna album, the band’s commercial breakthrough, usually referred to as a “synthpop classic”. It’s rather more than that narrow definition implies. While it did contribute to breaking the charts’ barriers against synthesisers, and that single became a watershed, it was a profoundly original and forwardthinking record in its own right. From the seven-minute instrumental opener
Astradyne to the prescient electro of
Mr X, the band were fusing sounds and styles in groundbreaking ways.
Alongside the underrated multi-tasking of Chris Cross and Warren Cann, Ure and Currie broadened the vocabulary and palette of rock.
Ultravox had already done something of a Lazarus act. When Island dropped them in ’78 and John Foxx and Robin Simon left, despite the brilliance of the first three albums, they were finding the dawn of the 80s daunting. Currie (violin, viola, keyboards) was playing with Tubeway Army. Ure, nothing if not versatile, had endured, rather than enjoyed, a pop chart topper with Slik, gone on to minor success with Rich Kids, and filled in on guitar on tour for Thin Lizzy. The pair were now collaborating on studio project Visage, a New Romantic concept fronted by Blitz Kid Steve Strange.
“We worked well together in Visage,” says Currie. “That’s why I asked
Midge to join Ultravox. This line-up integrated more, pooled our ideas. In retrospect we found our own sound; other ‘electronic’ bands weren’t using ‘real’ instruments alongside synths. At the time I wondered why not. We were so pleased to still be carrying on as a band that we pulled out all the stops, and it was great.”
Chrysalis snapped up the revitalised group, but what’s half-forgotten now is that Vienna itself was only the third single – after Sleepwalk and Passing Strangers – from the 1980 album.
And it wasn’t until that came out in January 1981, infamously kept at No.2 by John Lennon’s Woman for one week and Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face for three, that album sales soared. “It was gratifying, yes,” says Currie, “but it’s such a strange thing. It’s a miracle it was a success at all! When the label suggested releasing Vienna, I got protective, thinking of it as a great album track, and was saying no… I didn’t want it getting slagged off! Then it goes out of your control, selling 30,000 a day: it’s an odd feeling. Anyway it seems to have stayed in people’s minds, 40 years on, and of course that’s nice to know.”
Back then, Ure was less fazed about replacing Foxx than he was excited about joining a band he thought were “way ahead of the curve. They made the kind of sounds I’d tried to pursue with Rich Kids, but my buying a synthesiser in ’78 had basically broken that band in two. So Rusty
Egan and I put together Visage, and got in one of our favourite musicians – Billy. We’d been playing [third Ultravox album] Systems Of Romance in clubs like the Blitz, and through big speakers that stuff sounded fantastic. I loved what they were doing with technology. And in Ultravox, I was the newbie. Their nucleus was there. I didn’t come in to upset the apple cart, but just by being there I changed the dynamic.
So it carried along a line, but there was a marked difference now.”