BAND IN A BOX
A CONVERSATION WITH MIDGE URE
Midge Ure needs no introduction. Either as a solo musician or a member of Ultravox, Midge Ure has been groundbreaking and one of the most popular and respected musicians during the last 50 years. And he continues to explore with music and technology. Beginning in 2020, Ure used his Patreon platform to begin his now famous “Backstage Lockdown Club”. Not only did this allow him to perform in his studio, but also have Q & A sessions with his fans. The shows were beautifully filmed and sounded fantastic. He has recently announced a tour of North America, beginning on August 7, 2024, at Daryl’s house in Pawling, New York, and ending over a month later on September 12 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. During the tour, he will be playing Toronto on August 16, at the famous El Mocambo.
I had the opportunity to speak with Midge Ure, via Zoom recently and he talked about the new tour among other things. He is very excited about his “Band In A Box” tour, as it is something a little different for him.
“The ‘Band In A Box’ thing is something I didn’t intend to do,” Midge explained. “Whenever I come over to North America, I don’t have the wherewithal to bring an entire band. We were never fortunate enough to have that level of commercial success. So, 90% of the time when I come to North America, I do it acoustically or whatever. A couple of years back, Howard Jones, an old friend of mine said ‘I’m going to America on tour, and I would love to do an electronic thing. Would you come on tour with this package with me?’. And we tried to figure out how we would do it but the fees that Howard was getting were covering all of his expenses, the fees I was getting just about covered me on my own. So, I figured out a way to do this, with one of Howard’s keyboard players (Charlie Round-Turner). The ‘Band In The Box’ is a synth, drum loops or whatever, whereby two of us on stage play keyboards and guitar as well and singing. It enables me to play lots of choice Ultravox, Visage and solo things. So, it sounds like a band, but it is just two of us up there making this racket. Kind of like a glorified Pet Shop Boys,” Ure laughed.
In many ways, this technology and method of playing is allowing Ure to dip into all aspects of his incredible career. But it also allows him to dispel some myths about how some in North America perceive his music and concerts.
“I think there is a preconception, for those who never saw Ultravox, and we only toured North America a handful of times, if they had seen us, they would have seen we were a rock band using technology. Technology mixed in with traditional rock instrumentation. That is what it is all about. People have a preconceived idea, if they haven’t seen you, as an acoustic artist and they don’t know you play electric guitar. There is a power to what I have always done. There’s always been. So this enables me to get up there and perform “I Remember (Death In The Afternoon)” or “All Stood Still”. Things you couldn’t possibly do with an acoustic guitar. And it’s a way of getting around that hiccup, where you can’t do it if there isn’t the right amount of finance there to do. This is a hybrid, I suppose.”
Following the North American tour, Ure is heading out on yet another tour, but something different, which enables him to consider all aspects of his career, such as his short stint with the now classic band Rich Kids. A band that included Matlock and future Visage member Rusty Egan.
“I’m doing a U.K. tour later in the year, and it is quite extensive, it is a catalogue tour, where I am looking at my entire catalogue from the Rich Kids onwards and thinking “Marching Men” it could be very interesting, an update on that and sadly it is still relevant. It is quite a powerful song. I have no aversion to doing Rich Kids stuff at all. In fact, I probably have a better appreciation of those years in the last few years since I was doing it. It was exciting at the time.
BAND IN A BOX NTH AMERICA ’24 TICKETS
“How brave was it for Glen Matlock (who had left The Sex Pistols) to choose me to join the Rich kids. Because I had baggage. I came from what could be perceived as a teenybop band (Slik) and that made it really difficult for The Rich Kids to be accepted by the music media. You look at it in hindsight, it was a really brave thing to do. I owe him a huge thanks.”
Ure is also no stranger to making things work when there is little or no support. Upon joining Ultravox after John Foxx had left the band, they went about recording five influential and brilliant albums, including the revolutionary Vienna.
“When we think about the technology we used, I bought a synthesizer with the Rich Kids and it broke the band and we formed Visage out of that broken band. When I joined Ultravox, I thought they were a really technical band. They had a drum machine, and Billy [Currie, violin and keyboards] had an electric piano and synthesizer. I think Chris [Cross, bassist] had a synthesizer and his bass guitar. That was it, that is the bones on which we made the Vienna album. It wasn’t high tech, we had hardly any money at all to make it. It was the ideas and the challenge. It was pre midi, the machines didn’t talk to each other, not like now, where you plug a cable between them, and they understand each other. In those days they didn’t. John Taylor of Duran Duran said to me a couple of years ago and he said to me ‘We played the Vienna album, and I can’t believe it, it swings, it feels real.’ I said, ‘Yeah, because everything is slightly out of time because we played everything manually. We played everything by hand. There was no machine doing it. It was humans doing it. It was humans using the most basic technology to make something from it.’ It was not about throwing money at something.
It was also Midge experimenting with technology that led to his first solo album, The Gift, back in 1985. The Gift also was given the deluxe treatment last year. It gave Ure the opportunity to reflect back on his debut solo album, originally released nearly 40 years ago. “It does to a certain degree. I am absolutely useless with times and dates and timelines. Everything to me happened a few years back, whether it was 40 years ago or 20 years back, it is still in my mind that it was recent. It takes you back to why you did it in the first place, and how you were allowed to do it. With The Gift, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had produced before in other people’s studios. But I had just built my own studio, so The Gift was the first thing I was trying out. I was reading manuals to see how the board worked. ‘Why do the drums sound distorted, well it’s because the needle is in the red. Okay. How do we fix that?’ It was a process of learning and what we say over here, it was a busman’s holiday. What does a busman do on his break, he goes on a bus tour. So, we had six months away from each other in Ultravox and I started working on a new album.”
And the presentation of the band and as a solo artist has always been important to Ure. Along with making sure the music is the best quality it can be, the sleeve design and packaging of Ultravox and solo records has always been top of the line for Ure.
“You get the music right, that is the key to everything and spend the time and effort in that, but we always thought once it goes into a sleeve don’t forget it doesn’t stop there. The sleeves are important, the videos are important, the live show, the stage…you want an object of desire. It doesn’t just all go on that bit of plastic. It doesn’t stop when you come to the studio, and I have always tried to maintain it. That is why AI is so horrendous to people, The fact is you spend your entire career controlling the quality, and no all of a sudden something can come along and create a new thing that is a bit like you, voice is a bit like yours, without any overseeing, it is really odd.”
“If you perform for the majority of your life, and that is taken away from you, it is like a hole in the floor opening up and you fall into an abyss. You have no facilities to see you through that. I had my family; my equipment and I could keep on writing but that is only part of it. The major part of what I do is dragging my backside around the world and going on various stages and singing to people. And having not chosen not to do it, that was the key. I didn’t choose, it was taken from all of us, and this Backstage Lockdown Club was a way of getting round that massive obstacle.”
I think with age comes indecision. I have been working on a lot of stuff and I think because I have been working on it for such a long time, I have gone off it. I listened to what I was doing recently, and I thought it all sounds the same, but that’s me. I am my own worst enemy. Next week I will probably feel differently about it. It is a funny thing; I don’t want to stop writing but I keep feeling I don’t want to put anything out that I think is substandard. I would rather not put anything out rather than put anything out that I know in my heart of hearts is not up to scratch. And I can’t make my mind up about that right now.”
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