Along with his debut solo album The Reward lately reissued as a lavish boxset, Midge Ure remembers his annus mirabilis – when not even Joe Dolce might cease him hitting the UK prime spot…

If rock stars have, to borrow Neil Tennant’s well-known phrase, an ‘imperial section’, then 1985 discovered Midge Ure scaling the dizzy peak of his.

It was a 12 months that started with Band Support’s box-fresh Do They Know It’s Christmas? at No.1 within the charts, and closed out with a triumphant present at Wembley Area.

Between these festive bookends, the 31-year-old singer, songwriter, musician and producer had additionally launched his debut solo album, landed a No.1 single and helped pull off “the best present on Earth” as one of many architects of Reside Support, at which he additionally carried out as a part of his day job fronting Ultravox.

“They have been heady instances,” says Ure, with no small understatement, when Traditional Pop catches up with him over Zoom at his residence studio in Portugal, some 4 many years later.

“Typically these items simply come collectively. Band Support would by no means have occurred if I hadn’t constructed a recording studio in my backyard in Chiswick.

“That’s the place the tune was conceived, and with out it, I’m unsure it could ever have seen the sunshine of day. In order that was fairly one thing, and that sort of put every little thing else on ice.

“We did Reside Support, then I went on my solo tour. It was staggered and damaged up. There was no timeline for any of this.”

Midge’s solo album, The Reward – which is being reissued as a deluxe boxset subsequent month – was equally unplanned and spontaneous, and equally in debt to that backyard studio.

“It was by no means meant to be an album,” Ure explains. “It had been my lifelong ambition to construct my very own studio, and I used to be in the midst of making an attempt to determine the way it all labored.

“Mainly, I purchased a load of manuals, and a few tools got here with it,” he laughs. “So I began dabbling – doing a little instrumental bits, and no matter. And when the document firm heard it, they stated, ‘that’s an album’.

“I instructed them it wasn’t. I stated it was a bunch of instrumentals and a few pop songs – songs that have been a bit lighter and fewer intense than the Ultravox stuff. However they insisted. So I made an album with out truly realising I used to be making one.”

The Reward got here collectively in a relaxed, ad-hoc method, with the singer recruiting Danny Mitchell, of Scottish new wave duo Messengers, as his songwriting wingman. “Messengers have been my guinea pigs,” says Ure.

“I had Danny and Colin [King] down from Glasgow, in doing demos whereas I used to be taking part in at being an engineer. And it simply sort of morphed into working collectively on the album.”

With the serendipity that got here to outline all the course of, one of many demos his home company left behind was a bit quantity referred to as If I Was.

“I’d achieved a few of the instrumental stuff first, as a result of that’s the simple bit for me,” says Midge. “The music simply appears to come back out, whereas lyrics take a bit extra focus and energy.

“So, sitting there in my very clear new studio, with out an concept in my head, I began going by way of some tapes, and one in all them was this tune of Danny’s. I took it and rearranged it and sort of turned it inside out, and that turned the monitor everyone knows.”

The tune’s breezy bassline was offered by Stage 42’s Mark King, one in all a number of star gamers – Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory and Massive Nation’s Mark Brzezicki additionally make appearances – recruited by Ure for the album.

“I ran into Mark in Swansea Prime Rank, of all locations. I believe we have been there for a Radio One Roadshow, or one thing like that, so I requested him if he’d are available in and play.

“He ended up taking part in essentially the most simplistic bassline you could possibly consider – it was extremely fundamental for him. He confirmed nice restraint by not slapping throughout it.”

Launched as a single in September 1985, If I Was topped the charts within the UK and Eire, and breached Prime 10s all over the world (although not in the USA, which continued its cussed indifference to all issues Ultravox-related).

All this from a person, after all, who had beforehand had probably the most notorious near-misses in chart historical past – when Ultravox’s Vienna was saved off the highest spot by Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face.

Did If I Was lastly lay that specific ghost to relaxation? “That ghost won’t ever be laid to relaxation,” laughs Midge. “It’s the novelty issue. That’s why persons are nonetheless speaking about Vienna right now. If it had bought to No.1, no-one can be bothered…”

The album, in the meantime, was denied pole place by Kate’s Bush’s Hounds Of Love, which is unquestionably much less galling than Shaddap You Face.

“I purchased Hounds Of Love, so I most likely shot myself within the foot there,” smiles Ure, who went on to document a duet with Kate for his 1988 follow-up album, Solutions To Nothing.

Regardless of the shortage of a tenet – “there was no idea to the album, as a result of it wasn’t purported to be an album” – Midge is pleasantly shocked by how nicely the document (which was blended at his home within the non-more 80s pop star hangout of Montserrat within the Caribbean) has aged.

“Going again and listening to it, for the reissue, I’d say it kinda nonetheless works,” he says. “It’s nonetheless this bizarre hybrid of simplistic pop songs and instrumental music, which shouldn’t work. Nevertheless it form of does.”

As with Chrysalis’ ongoing Ultravox reissues, Ure had hands-on involvement with The Reward deluxe set, which expands the album to a whopping 58 tracks throughout 4 CDs.

“They actually dig deep,” he says. “They’ve been by way of the archives and located these previous tapes coated in spider’s webs and cleaned them up and digitised them. It’s sort of a Frankenstein factor – they stick some electrical energy by way of it and up pops this factor that sounds completely spectacular.”

It’s not simply the unique album that’s had a bolt of lightning by way of it – a treasure trove of demos and remixes have been spruced up, too, together with Midge’s first solo hit – a 1982 cowl of Tom Rush’s No Regrets that was additionally a 1975 success for The Walker Brothers – and his tackle David Bowie’s The Man Who Offered The World.

Initially recorded for the 1983 movie Get together Get together, the latter has gone on to have an sudden afterlife, racking up greater than 26 million streams on Spotify, because of its use on the online game Steel Gear Stable V.

The fourth disc is a whole recording of that December ‘85 Wembley present. “I turned it down initially,” remembers Ure. “It was [promoter] Harvey Goldsmith who satisfied me to do it. And it was a pleasure.”

Songs from the Wembley setlist featured on the album embrace Fade To Gray – co-written by Midge throughout his days with Visage – and, surprisingly maybe, a festive encore of Do They Know It’s Christmas?

“I’d fully forgotten about that, I’ve no recollection of it in any way,” he says. “It’s a whole clean.”

Arriving for the present, Ure discovered a touching notice from his Band Support co-creator, Bob Geldof. “This was not lengthy after Reside Support, when Bob was a spokesman for a technology.

He was a quasi-politician – he was on the market speaking to the UN, he was accosting Margaret Thatcher… He was probably the most well-known folks on the planet.

“And backstage, earlier than the present, there was an enormous bunch of flowers, with a notice from Bob that simply stated, ‘You fortunate bastard – I want I used to be you’. And I believed that was fairly poignant – as a result of he’d been taken away from what he was lower out to do.

“He wouldn’t be allowed to do this once more for a very long time as a result of he was now this political determine, whereas I used to be comparatively unscathed by the entire Band Support factor.

“He was larger and taller and louder than me, and he was out the entrance, whereas I managed to sneak out of the again door and return to being a musician.”

And a extremely in-demand, chart-topping musician at that. So how did the remainder of Ultravox reply to his solo success? “I believe they wore a really gracious face,” smiles Midge. “I can think about there was a little bit of fear. However I had no intention of leaving. I liked being in Ultravox.”

Because it turned out, the band’s subsequent album, U-Vox, can be the basic line-up’s final for greater than 25 years. And Ure is below no phantasm that these ‘heady days’ of the mid-80s precipitated the band’s fracture.

“I couldn’t have anticipated Band Support coming alongside and disrupting every little thing,” he remembers. “I couldn’t anticipate that that will be the start of the top of Ultravox. You simply needed to sort of roll with all of it. And all of it culminated in that one interval, which was fairly hectic.

“I suppose that interval additionally possibly rang the loss of life knell on me as a workaholic,” he provides. “I didn’t have a household at the moment [though he was a newlywed: somewhere in his frantic schedule, Midge had found a window to marry his first wife, TV presenter Annabel Giles, on 30 December, 1984], so I might simply consider me.

“I used to be like, ‘Yeah after all I’ll produce your document, after all I’ll direct your video…’ When any individual permits you the keys to the toybox – after they open up the doorways of Hamleys – you’re not going to say no. And I had a ball.”

As somebody who had spent the primary decade of his life in a one-bedroom tenement flat in Glasgow’s Cambuslang, did the jet-set rock star life really feel much more extraordinary?

“You adapt extremely shortly,” admits Ure. “The hedonism of immediately having cash, is loopy.

“And also you do go a bit mad. However the novelty wears off fairly shortly, if you realise it’s all simply… stuff. And even on the time, I believe I knew I wasn’t going to remain  at this stage for the remainder of my life. You’re using the crest of a wave.”

And waves ultimately crash? “Yeah. There are moments in life the place you’ll get these sort of elations – after which the following week you’re not in favour. Typically you’re a genius and the following you’re a moron. That’s how life is. You possibly can’t take any of it too severely.

“So for me to sit down right here, nonetheless being allowed to do that job and nonetheless on the market doing my stuff, I really feel extremely fortunate. I assume we’re the primary, or possibly the second technology of musicians to truly do it – 30 years in the past, you couldn’t have dreamed of seeing an 80-year-old rock star taking part in Glastonbury.

“On my headstone, if I ever have one, it’ll say I used to be a working musician,” provides Midge. “As a result of that’s what I’m. And it’s a job that may take you into the realms of stardom or obscurity – generally week by week.”

Pushed to select a private favorite from The Reward, Midge opts for the title monitor – an angular paean to the Scottish architect, designer and artist Charles Rennie Waterproof coat that captures one thing of Vienna-vintage Ultravox’s stately atmospherics.

“He was a genius,” says Ure of his muse. “He didn’t simply design buildings – he designed each door deal with, each handrail, each hinge. Then he turns his hand to portray, and he’s distinctive.

“And also you assume, ‘My god, what sort of a mind can try this?’ At a time when every little thing was darkish and Victorian and sombre, he turned the sunshine on.”

James Ure OBE, ventures Traditional Pop, is a little bit of a Waterproof coat himself: a person who not solely writes, performs, sings and produces the songs, however will paint the studio partitions and wire up the blending desk first.

“Possibly – however I very a lot doubt that somebody will write a tune about me in 100 years’ time,” he demurs.

You say that, however The Reward is already closing in on 40 years previous, and right here we’re, nonetheless speaking about it.

“That’s true,” says Midge, with a smile. “Solely one other 60 to go…”

All photographs (c) George Hurrell