Ultravox: Every Album, Every Song

Ultravox

Every album, Every Song

On Track

Brian J Robb

Sonicbond Publishing Limited www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk Email: [email protected]

First Published in the United Kingdom 2024 First Published in the United States 2024

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright Brian J. Robb 2024

ISBN 978-1-78952-330-0

The right of Brian J. Robb to be identified

as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Sonicbond Publishing Limited

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Contents

Special Thanks

Introduction

1. Ultravox! (1977)

2. Ha!-Ha!-Ha! (1977)

3. Systems Of Romance (1978)

4. Vienna (1980)

5. Rage In Eden (1981)

6. Quartet (1982)

7. Lament (1984)

8. U-Vox (1986)

9. Revelation (1993)

10. Ingenuity (1994)

11. Brilliant (2012)

Bibliography

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Rob Kirby of the re:VOX fanzine and Stu Entwistle of Ultravox Unofficial on Facebook (and across social media) for their much-appreciated editorial feedback.

Any errors or omissions remaining are purely those of the author, as are all opinions expressed.

Introduction

If there’s one track most music fans know by Ultravox, it’s their popular 1981 hit single ‘Vienna’, and the fact that this iconic track was kept from the top spot in the UK thanks to an irritating novelty song by Joe Dolce titled ‘Shaddap You Face’! With four weeks stuck at number two, ‘Vienna’ nonetheless became the sixth best-selling single of that year. Losing the top spot was an egregious injustice in British musical history, one the often- too-serious band never lived down. However, it may have also done them a favour, as Ultravox made an indelible mark on 1980s pop music despite never reaching number one – their only other top-five single was the zeitgeist- capturing ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’, which reached three in May 1984. Between 1981’s ‘Vienna’ and 1984’s ‘Love’s Great Adventure’, Ultravox scored 12 top-30 hits (17 reached the top 40) and seven top-ten albums.

Though their final album (to date) was 2012’s Brilliant, Ultravox have existed in one form or another for the better part of five decades. With their 1980s frontman Midge Ure still enjoying a hugely successful solo career (he’s the hardest-working man in showbiz, seemingly always touring, either solo or with a band), the band’s DNA continues to prosper.

Founded by their original vocalist John Foxx (born Dennis Leigh in 1948) in April 1974, the band – then named Tiger Lily – arrived during the punk years (a musical style some of their early songs toyed with, notably ‘ROckWrok’, ‘Fear In The Western World’ and ‘Young Savage’). They were more interested in the post-punk new wave that swept through music after 1976. Their art-rock poise saw them signed to Island Records, the band now operating under the name Ultravox! (complete with exclamation mark), issuing the trio of late-1970s albums Ultravox!, Ha!-Ha!-Ha! and Systems Of Romance. These albums were diverse, exploring the clash between Foxx’s cold machine-like songs and keyboard player Billy Currie’s classical training and instrumentation. Despite their best efforts and significant support from their live show audiences, early Ultravox! albums and singles failed to reach any UK charts.

Their music evolved with the standard guitar-and-drums approach, supplemented first by Currie’s distinctive electric violin, an early Roland Rhythm 77 drum machine and a saxophone on the prototype synth-pop of ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, the final track on Ha!-Ha!-Ha!. Despite their innovations, the band were largely met with indifference by the music press, as Sounds (19 August 1978) noted: ‘Ultravox! exist in a media limbo. Although they constantly attract big audiences, the general media view seems to be that they are, quite frankly, pretentious’.

The first of several reinventions came in 1978 when they not only dropped that tricky exclamation mark but replaced guitarist Stevie Shears with Robin Simon. Systems Of Romance – the third and final album from this initial version of Ultravox – developed their sound further, thanks to a collaboration with German producer Conny Plank, who’d worked with krautrock outfits like Neu! (who the early Ultravox! had lifted their exclamation mark from) and Kraftwerk. The evolving sound saw a greater use of synthesizers combined with traditional rock instruments and Currie’s classical approach. Several of the Systems Of Romance tracks – including ‘Slow Motion’, ‘Quiet Men’ and ‘Dislocation’ – pointed to the band’s 1980s evolution. Despite the evident innovation at play, Systems Of Romance had no commercial impact (even with positive critical coverage in the often-sniffy music press), and Island decided to cut their losses, finally dropping the band. This saw an increasingly frustrated John Foxx embark on what became a successful solo career, with his first album Metamatic in 1980.

In the wake of the seeming dissolution of Ultravox, Billy Currie took up an offer to tour and record with synth-pop pioneer Gary Numan (an avowed Ultravox fan) in 1979, Canadian drummer Warren Cann went to work with New Zealander Zaine Griff, and bass guitarist Chris Cross played shows with James Honeyman-Scott (of The Pretenders) and Barrie Masters (from Eddie and the Hot Rods). Guitarist Robin Simon had remained in the US at the end of Ultravox’s early-1979 tour. It seemed the band had come to a premature end.

Currie found himself involved with a new project – the studio-only band Visage included among its members the 26-year-old Midge Ure. Ure was an experienced musician who’d already enjoyed a degree of chart success and fame in the 1970s with proto-boy band Slik and also played with the Rich Kids (with Visage drummer Rusty Egan) and Thin Lizzy as a guitarist and later keyboard player. Egan encouraged Currie to recruit Ure to front a new iteration of Ultravox. Ure recalled in Dylan Jones’ history of the New Romantics Sweet Dreams (2020): ‘Towards the end of 1979, I was asked to join Ultravox. There was no plan; I kind of fell into it. When I joined Ultravox, I wanted to be part of a rock band. I wanted it to be something experimental; I wanted it to be art rock … I was allowed to kind of experiment and play and be led by these three other guys who had much more experience in that world than I had’. While Currie and Cann had reservations about bringing in an experienced pop musician (Ure wrote songs, sang, and played guitar and keyboards), bassist Chris Cross was all in favour of the development – as he told Electronic Sound #69 in 2020: ‘I distinctly remember not being flavour of the month, because I was arguing that it sounded like a good idea. Where Midge was coming from was completely different. It was like with the original version of Ultravox, only this was even more different. I knew we were perfectly capable of doing the experimental stuff, but I thought the idea of having someone more tune- based was interesting. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but it all fell into place after that’.

Ure had no particular mission in mind to save Ultravox. He simply saw becoming a member of a band – whose earlier work he’d admired – as a positive next step for him. Ure admitted to Electronic Sound:

The three guys I was joining knew a lot more about the technology and the whole electronic creative process than I did. I wasn’t going in there to fix something or to make something better; I was going in to make the noise I’d heard in ‘Slow Motion’ and ‘Quiet Men’. That sound was so exciting, and I was going to be a part of that … It wasn’t about aiming for success; it was about being a part of something that was so far removed from Slik that it was like being on another planet – and musically, it probably was. Bear in mind that this was three years after Slik had been to number one with ‘Forever And Ever’. All of a sudden, I’m in this synthesizer art-school rock band, not worrying about trying to write three-minute pop songs but thinking about what we could create without any parameters. That was the driving force, and it completely overshadowed any thoughts about upsetting the odd John Foxx fan.

The new 1979 Ultravox fusion laid the foundation for their dramatic (in contrast to the John Foxx years) 1980s chart success. New songs came quickly, and the band were able to issue the new album Vienna (on Chrysalis Records) in July 1980. The first single, ‘Passing Strangers’, saw them finally crack the UK singles chart (only at 57, but it was a start). The second single ‘Sleepwalk’ reached 29 – the band breaking into the top 30 for the first time – while Vienna peaked at number three in the UK album chart. All this was a level of success Currie, Cann, and Cross had not experienced previously, putting to rest any doubts they initially had about teaming with Ure. Things got even better with the 1981 single release of the title track ‘Vienna’, which stayed at number two in the UK for four weeks, gaining infamy evermore for being kept from the top spot by John Lennon and then Australia-based Joe Dolce.

The 1980s were hugely successful for the retooled Ultravox. Each album cracked the UK top ten – Rage In Eden (four), Quartet (six), Lament (eight), and even the fan-derided U-Vox at number ten. The band became one of the most successful acts of the era, capped by their 1985 appearance at the Live Aid concert, partly due to Ure’s involvement with Bob Geldof in the Band Aid project that put the Ure/Geldof co-write ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ at number one in the UK for five weeks across Christmas 1984 and into the new year. In some ways, it was Band Aid/Live Aid that sowed the seeds of the end of the most successful incarnation of Ultravox. Pursuing a solo career,

Ure scored a number-one hit in his own right with 1985’s ‘If I Was’, while his debut solo album The Gift reached number two in the UK. Regrouping, Ultravox produced their final album of the 1980s – the controversial U-Vox – without drummer Warren Cann. Tensions between Ure and Currie were making life increasingly difficult, and the new musical directions evident in the U-Vox material didn’t find favour with many fans. The October 1984 non-album single ‘Love’s Great Adventure’ (promoting the 1984 greatest hits package The Collection, which reached number two in the UK) was Ultravox’s final UK top-30 hit, peaking at number 12. In the wake of the commercially successful yet critically derided U-Vox, the band went their separate ways – Ure to a solo career, Currie to producing his own instrumental albums, Cann to pursue a possible acting career in L.A. and Cross to retrain in psychology.

The 1979-1986 version of Ultravox was distinctive, cultivating a collective image in support of the music. Austere black-and-white band photos adorned the stark cover of the Vienna album, while the title track’s music video broke new ground. Ultravox became known for their iconographic videos, which were often mini films that told a story across three or four minutes (‘Passing Strangers’, ‘Vienna’, ‘The Thin Wall’, ‘The Voice’, ‘Reap The Wild Wind’, ‘Hymn’ and more). Director Russell Mulcahy guided the band through the first few videos, but from ‘The Voice’ through to ‘Love’s Great Adventure’, Midge Ure and Chris Cross were behind the image the band collectively projected.

Inevitably, the 1980s Ultravox were tagged as New Romantics despite their music, videos and image being very distinct from the likes of Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet. Perhaps it was this failure to fit into a clearly-defined New Romantic niche that caused the music press to often keep Ultravox at some distance – they were never embraced in the way some other 1980s bands were, despite turning out hit after hit. As a live band, Ultravox surprisingly proved themselves to be a formidable rock outfit that used not only synthesizers but classical instruments when it suited the music. Each album was supported by significant tours across Europe.

Ultravox also stood out by pioneering the use of clear vinyl for their singles. They’d discovered that – unlike black vinyl – clear vinyl was produced from non-recycled elements, leading (or so the band believed) to a sharper sound. Working with producers like Conny Plank (Vienna, Rage In Eden) and George Martin (Quartet) prepared the band for self-producing their later albums Lament and U-Vox. They also included instrumentals, opening Vienna with the seven-minute epic ‘Astradyne’ and working extended instrumental sections into Rage In Eden. It was the ‘Vienna’ single that typified their unconventional musical approaches, which they maintained across their chart-reaching output through the decade, constantly changing and evolving (sometimes in directions their fans didn’t entirely appreciate). It was a degree of success that was difficult to recapture beyond the 1980s.

After that classic hit-making lineup split in 1986, Billy Currie attempted to revive Ultravox without the participation of any other previous members, releasing two albums featuring two different lead singers (1993’s Revelation with Tony Fenelle, and 1994’s Ingenuity, with Sam Blue, co-produced by Currie), but little notice was taken by either fans or the music press, and the project was abandoned by 1996. It wasn’t until the 30th anniversary of Vienna that a proper reunion of the 1980s lineup took place, resulting in the 2009 Return to Eden UK tour and the 2010 Return To Eden II tour of Europe. While recording wasn’t the band’s intention during the live reunion tours, thoughts soon turned to producing new music, resulting in 2012’s Brilliant album.

The band’s final live performances came in April 2013, supporting fellow 1980s stars Simple Minds for four UK dates. By 2017, Currie – always keen to keep Ultravox alive – finally came to the conclusion that the band had run its course after over 40 years. That same year, Midge Ure spoke to the Daily Express: ‘I think it’s probably finished. It was lovely to come back five years ago and do those shows. It was great to make up again, not that we really fell out, but we’d moved our separate ways. After 20-25 years of heading in different directions, to come back and perform those songs one more time, it was a glorious thing to do’. Ure – the band’s youngest member – celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in October 2023. While he’s still creating new music, repackaging old classics and continuing to tour, chances are the band will never perform or record together again, especially following the death of bassist Chris Cross in March 2024, aged 71. Whatever happens, the classic songs remain, as Ure pointed out: ‘These songs are old enough that they’ve been part of people’s lives for most of their lives. And [the fans are] very precious about those things, just as I am.’

In 2020, Midge Ure summed up the Ultravox legacy