Latest news with #Ultravox
Sydney Morning Herald
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
What happens when New Romantics grow old? Just ask Midge Ure
It was so polarising that it led to the group's demise. Undeterred, Ure and Rich Kids bandmate (and influential club DJ) Rusty Egan co-founded Visage, the New Romantic frontrunners who had a hit in 1980 with the song Fade To Grey. In the decades since, Ure has become one of music's most reliable practitioners, successfully proving there is a world in which guitars and synthesisers can co-exist, first with his post-Visage band Ultravox, and then as a solo artist. And though the days of releasing hit singles may be behind him, his catalogue is blessed with enough fan-friendly deep cuts – solo chart toppers such as If I Was and mainstream hits like Ultravox's Vienna – to sustain a healthy touring schedule. In October, it will bring Ure to Australia for the aptly named Catalogue tour, in which he will perform music from throughout his career, including tracks from the ill-fated Rich Kids. (There may also be a few Thin Lizzy songs, given Ure was drafted in by frontman Phil Lynott to replace guitarist Gary Moore on a US tour supporting Journey in 1979.) 'I wanted to avoid 'the hits' tour, so I called it 'Catalogue', but 'the hits' managed to squeeze its way onto the tour poster,' he says. 'You're expected to play a lot of those anyway. But I dug deep and started looking at songs that should have been singles in retrospect, and other key tracks for me. 'They're not all three-minute pop songs. I do things like [Ultravox's] Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again), which is a long, atmospheric, filmic thing.' The idea for the Catalogue tour stemmed from a similarly themed 2023 concert at London's Royal Albert Hall to mark Ure's 70th birthday. Given Ure has now joined the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Robert Plant in the ranks of septuagenarian musicians still going strong, it raises the question: is rock'n'roll no longer just a young person's game? 'It's totally changing!' says Ure. 'I'm reading a book called Hope I Get Old Before I Die [by David Hepworth], and it's all about the fact that at Live Aid, something changed. There were no youngsters on Live Aid, the youngsters were in their mid-to-late thirties. Ultravox and Spandau Ballet were the youngsters. 'McCartney was 48 when he did Live Aid, and we all thought of him as an old guy! So it all changed at that point and became more about whether you were good or not as opposed to whether you were new or not.' No matter the magnitude of Ure's achievements, the spectre of Live Aid – which this month marked its 40th anniversary – and 1984's Band Aid charity single Do They Know It's Christmas? will forever loom large. Ure co-wrote the song with Bob Geldof, who spearheaded the project to fight famine in Ethiopia. 'Bob came to mine with a song he didn't tell me at the time that he'd kind of half written and played to The Boomtown Rats, who thought it was shit,' laughs Ure. 'It wasn't a great song. It felt like we were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It had no chorus, there were no repeating bits, there was nothing that people could latch on to.' Ure recorded the music and arranged Do They Know It's Christmas? over a four-day session in his home studio. Geldof, meanwhile, set about enlisting some of Britain's biggest pop stars to sing on it, including Bono, Boy George, George Michael, Simon Le Bon and Sting. 'Maybe tenacity and desperation of trying to get [the song] done and out there was what drove it through in the long run,' says Ure. 'As a record it worked incredibly well, and that was due to the fact we had some of the best artists that the UK had to offer lending their name and their fan base.' Though well into his sixth decade as a performer, Ure says he will get the same buzz walking onstage at his Australian dates that he felt as a teen watching artists such as Led Zeppelin and The Carpenters at The Apollo in Glasgow. 'If you don't, you're dead,' he says. 'There's something not right. I'm still enthusiastic about it. You know why? Because it's too much like hard work if you don't feel it.'
The Age
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
What happens when New Romantics grow old? Just ask Midge Ure
It was so polarising that it led to the group's demise. Undeterred, Ure and Rich Kids bandmate (and influential club DJ) Rusty Egan co-founded Visage, the New Romantic frontrunners who had a hit in 1980 with the song Fade To Grey. In the decades since, Ure has become one of music's most reliable practitioners, successfully proving there is a world in which guitars and synthesisers can co-exist, first with his post-Visage band Ultravox, and then as a solo artist. And though the days of releasing hit singles may be behind him, his catalogue is blessed with enough fan-friendly deep cuts – solo chart toppers such as If I Was and mainstream hits like Ultravox's Vienna – to sustain a healthy touring schedule. In October, it will bring Ure to Australia for the aptly named Catalogue tour, in which he will perform music from throughout his career, including tracks from the ill-fated Rich Kids. (There may also be a few Thin Lizzy songs, given Ure was drafted in by frontman Phil Lynott to replace guitarist Gary Moore on a US tour supporting Journey in 1979.) 'I wanted to avoid 'the hits' tour, so I called it 'Catalogue', but 'the hits' managed to squeeze its way onto the tour poster,' he says. 'You're expected to play a lot of those anyway. But I dug deep and started looking at songs that should have been singles in retrospect, and other key tracks for me. 'They're not all three-minute pop songs. I do things like [Ultravox's] Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again), which is a long, atmospheric, filmic thing.' The idea for the Catalogue tour stemmed from a similarly themed 2023 concert at London's Royal Albert Hall to mark Ure's 70th birthday. Given Ure has now joined the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Robert Plant in the ranks of septuagenarian musicians still going strong, it raises the question: is rock'n'roll no longer just a young person's game? 'It's totally changing!' says Ure. 'I'm reading a book called Hope I Get Old Before I Die [by David Hepworth], and it's all about the fact that at Live Aid, something changed. There were no youngsters on Live Aid, the youngsters were in their mid-to-late thirties. Ultravox and Spandau Ballet were the youngsters. 'McCartney was 48 when he did Live Aid, and we all thought of him as an old guy! So it all changed at that point and became more about whether you were good or not as opposed to whether you were new or not.' No matter the magnitude of Ure's achievements, the spectre of Live Aid – which this month marked its 40th anniversary – and 1984's Band Aid charity single Do They Know It's Christmas? will forever loom large. Ure co-wrote the song with Bob Geldof, who spearheaded the project to fight famine in Ethiopia. 'Bob came to mine with a song he didn't tell me at the time that he'd kind of half written and played to The Boomtown Rats, who thought it was shit,' laughs Ure. 'It wasn't a great song. It felt like we were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It had no chorus, there were no repeating bits, there was nothing that people could latch on to.' Ure recorded the music and arranged Do They Know It's Christmas? over a four-day session in his home studio. Geldof, meanwhile, set about enlisting some of Britain's biggest pop stars to sing on it, including Bono, Boy George, George Michael, Simon Le Bon and Sting. 'Maybe tenacity and desperation of trying to get [the song] done and out there was what drove it through in the long run,' says Ure. 'As a record it worked incredibly well, and that was due to the fact we had some of the best artists that the UK had to offer lending their name and their fan base.' Though well into his sixth decade as a performer, Ure says he will get the same buzz walking onstage at his Australian dates that he felt as a teen watching artists such as Led Zeppelin and The Carpenters at The Apollo in Glasgow. 'If you don't, you're dead,' he says. 'There's something not right. I'm still enthusiastic about it. You know why? Because it's too much like hard work if you don't feel it.'
ABC News
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Midge Ure on punk, pop and Ultravox and Nina Korbe on opera and advocacy
Midge Ure is a musical chameleon, his career having taken him from boy band, Slik (stable mates of the Bay City Rollers), to punk band, Rich Kids (with ex-Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock), to singer, guitarist and keyboard player with Ultravox, penning one of the great New Romantic anthems, 'Vienna'. For the past thirty years he's been a solo artist with an ever-evolving songbook and later this year he's bringing it to Australia. He talks to Andy about his varied career and why Ultravox was never really synth pop – not when their biggest hit contained a viola solo. Nina Korbe is Koa, Kuku Yalanji, and Wakka Wakka singer and broadcaster. She joins Andy to talk about her operatic and music theatre career on the rise, and her advocacy work introducing kids from her family's traditional lands to orchestral performance. Nina Korbe performs as Musetta in Opera Queendsland's La bohème in September. Midge Ure tours Australia in October. Full dates here. Music in this program: Title: Kanana Artist: Bumpy Composer: Amy Dowd, Mick Power Album: Kanana (due 3 October) Label: Astral People Recordings Title: Vienna Artist: Ultravox Composer: Chris Allen, James Ure, Warren Reginald Cann, William Lee Currie Album: Vienna Label: Chrysalis Title: Forever and Ever Artist: Slik Composer: Bill Martin, Phil Coulter Album: Slik Label: Bell Records Title: Put You in the Picture Artist: Rich Kids Composer: James Ure Album: Ghosts of Princes in Towers Label: EMI Title: If I Was Artist: Midge Ure Composer: James Ure Album: The Gift Label: Chrysalis Title: Shéhérazade (extract) Artist: Nina Korbe, Queensland Youth Symphony, Simon Hewett Composer: Maurice Ravel Courtesy of QYO Title: Somewhere from West Side Story Artist: Nina Korbe Composer: Leonard Bernstein Courtesy of ABC Classic Title: Gone a Long Time Artist: Billy Strings Composer: Billy Strings, Jarrod Walker Album: Highway Prayers Label: Reprise The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Country
Daily Mail
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Live Aid wouldn't happen today because everyone is too glued to their phones, claims Ultravox frontman Midge Ure
Midge Ure yesterday said Live Aid could never be repeated today because everyone is too 'busy looking at screens'. The former Ultravox frontman – who organised the mega-concert with Bob Geldof – says that while technological advances should make putting on such a large event easier, they have also brought with them too many distractions. Live Aid saw rock royalty take to the stage simultaneously at Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia 40 years ago today and was watched by more than two billion people worldwide – raising an astonishing £150 million for African famine relief. Ure, 71, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: 'Everyone's all over the place. Everyone's too busy looking at screens. 'Technically, you could organise it easier, but these days you have so many distractions. 'Forty years ago, music was the be all and end all. You didn't have smartphones. You didn't have the internet. You didn't have 24-hour anything at all. 'There were no distractions. You had no video games. You had none of that stuff. So, you could focus.' He added: 'I can't quite believe I'm still here and the fact that we're still talking about Band Aid and Live Aid at 40 years old, it's quite magnificent. 'It's a life beyond the life we ever thought it would have.' Ure said that the concert was organised over three months using telephone and telex to book artists with Geldof telling white lies about who was signed up. He said: 'I think the reality is that Bob lied, quite blatantly, when he announced Live Aid. 'He said that various people were doing it when they hadn't actually agreed. It was a little bit of Bob manipulation really.' He brushed off criticism which has seen Live Aid accused of 'white saviourhood', arguing that watching millions die of starvation in Africa would have been worse. Recalling when he fronted a radio programme for the BBC about a children's circus in South Africa, he said: 'I was speaking to the person that ran the circus who was trying to integrate all the kids there, all the different ethnicities. 'And I said, "Well, how does that help?" And he said, "Well, if you're 30ft off the ground on a trapeze, and somebody reaches a hand out to grab you, you don't care what colour that hand is". And that's exactly what we did.'
DW
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Live Aid at 40: Hope, hype and hard questions – DW – 07/11/2025
Though often seen as a moment of unity, Live Aid wasn't devoid of cultural blind spots. What is today's view of the global gig that made history? "It's 12 noon in London, 7 a.m. in Philadelphia, and around the world it's time for Live Aid." This television announcement on July 13, 1985, heralded over 16 hours of music that united close to 2 billion people across over 100 countries. Live Aid was no ordinary gig. With the primary aim of raising funds for famine relief in then drought-stricken Ethiopia, it was the largest satellite link-up and television broadcast of its time. It featured an unprecedented lineup of music's biggest names across diverse genres, featuring luminaries — some since departed like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and Tina Turner— all of whom performed for free. Held simultaneously between Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, people around the world watched agog as Mercury cued Wembley's 72,000 fans with those iconic overhead claps during the chorus of Queen's 1984 hit "Radio Ga Ga"; as U2's Bono jumped off-stage and danced with a teenage fan; as Bob Geldof impassionedly urged viewers to donate money. And to set the record straight about the oft-repeated Live Aid lore: Sir Bob said, "Give us your f***ing money." He was misquoted. Conceived and executed by Irish musician Geldof and Ultravox's Midge Ure, Live Aid was put together at astonishing speed, the momentum having come from the 1984 Band Aid single "Do They Know It's Christmas?," a now-contentious song that they also co-wrote. Ure later recalled to how much of the Live Aid planning unfolded on instinct and goodwill rather than strategy or budget. Consequently, it set a template that was later emulated by events like Farm Aid (1985), Live 8 (2005) and Live Earth (2007). Speaking in 2004 when a DVD box set of the event was launched, Geldof said: "We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda and, through the lingua franca of the planet — which is not English, but rock 'n' roll — we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus." While many boomers and Gen Xers may still recall Live Aid fondly as a unique moment of global unity pre-social media, in retrospect it wasn't without its flaws. Especially when viewed through the lens of diversity and representation. Despite being a benefit for Africa, no African performers were featured on stage in 1985. Ditto female representation, where aside from Sade, Tina Turner, Madonna and Patti LaBelle, the line-up was overwhelmingly white and male. Geldof defended the choices, saying the artists were selected based on their star pull to maximize donations. In 2005, Geldof organized Live 8 — a series of concerts that coincided with the G8 summit that aimed to get leaders of the eight major industrialized countries to "Make Poverty History" — but it wasn't representative again. The original line-up featured only Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, with Geldof trotting out the star bankability trope again. Andy Kershaw, the DJ who helped with the TV presentation of Live Aid, said: "This is outrageous and deeply smug. They are saying, 'Don't neglect Africa' — but that's just what they are doing here." Subsequently, the Africa Calling concert was organized. Hosted by N'Dour, it featured prominent African artists like Somali singer Maryam Mursal and Beninese vocalist Angelique Kidjo. Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, was in her late teens when she watched the original concert. She wrote in in 2023, "As a Nigerian born in Lagos and educated in the UK, it took me a moment to realize that the version of Africa that Live Aid was selling the world was very different to the one in which I grew up." She added, "Live Aid remains the unfortunate and inadvertent poster child for a development approach to Africa that still drives much of the sector today; the desire to identify and fix the challenges of poor countries and the belief that money is the primary solution." Consequently, Geldof has often been described as having a "white savior complex," which he rejects. Dismissing a critical comment in last year about how some viewed Live Aid as reinforcing "a patronizing image of Africa as a continent desperate for, and dependent on, Western aid," Geldof retorted that it was "the greatest load of b****cks ever." Live Aid did raise millions for famine relief, with some political ripple effects. It inspired the set-up of the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003. The program was recently gutted following Trump's financial cuts. A current documentary, "Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World," also reveals how Geldof's, and fellow Irishman Bono's, relentless lobbying of G8 leaders saw them eventually agree to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries after Live 8, and promise to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Meanwhile, 73-year-old Geldof, who is currently doing the interview circuit commemorating Live Aid's 40th anniversary, doubts the ethos of Live Aid can be replicated in the age of social media. "It's an isolating technology, unlike rock 'n' roll which is a gathering technology," Geldof told NME. Condemning a recent statement by Elon Musk that the "great weakness of Western civilization was empathy," he said: "No Elon, the glue of civilization is empathy. We're in the age of the death of kindness, and I object." But the rocker remains hopeful: "You can change things, you really can actually change things … the individual isn't powerless, and collectively, you really can change things."
