Archive Article: Steve Strange & Ultravox

It is, after all, just about five years on, give or take a couple of months. Popular mythology has it that rock moves in five year cycles, whatever about mysterious ways, and it simply means that the time has come round again. Will the circle be unbroken? Of course it will, it’s just the start of another lap.
Five years ago I began to become gradually aware that there were some combinations like pink and black which were, to my undernourished intellect, just not what yer average hip young dude-around-town should be wearing, and particularly not in his hair. Neither were the merits of vinyl and plastic as body-covering materials immediately obvious, nor were these harsh minimalistic sounds I was beginning to hear on club systems what I saw my musical tastes heading towards.
However, he who hesitates is lost, and nowhere is that more true than in rock.
Fortunately I’ve always been the impulsive type, and so it was that by the end of 1976 I was standing on one side of the most significant divide to have reared itself in youth culture generally since 1967, looking back without much regret at the denim monsters on the horizon. Attitudes were permanently polarised and passing of times has only deepened the ravine.
But like every revolution in history from the Roman Empire onwards, the zealous purity of the new tends to quickly become an impotent and toothless old hag little better than what it replaced, and so it was with punk. The ferocity with which it was born became unsustainable once the battle had been won and it became an autistic parody, as futile as a 30-minute drum solo.
As usual, while everyone was agonising over what would come next, it was already taking place beneath their noses. While nobody (much) was looking, a whole new set of kids were once again rewriting the rules to suit themselves, and like a snakes skin, quietly growing inside the shell of punk finally to burst through in a riot of poise, theatrical style and pan make-up.
Never has George Melly’s ‘Revolt Into Style’ seemed more prophetic. The revolution is not just about music, but then neither were any of it predecessors in their initial phases. From Little Richard and Screaming Lord Sutch through Jagger, Swinging London and Mod, Sgt. Pepper, Hendrix, Queen and Kensington Market, T. Rex, Iggy, the Dolls and of course Mr. Jones of Beckenham, rock has always had as much preoccupation with peripherals such as fashion and rituals as with the music itself. There has always been a thread of glamour, of decadent and suspect sexuality, and all that’s happened now is that it’s back again, this time aligned to a narcisstic romanticism that’s been missing for a few years.
Welcome back, Adam, take a Bow, Wow, Wow, a pirouette, isolated clubs and are on the rampage, sweeping the buzz-saw-boot-boy version of him that punk has become before it was abandon. As usual, those not involved at the outset are distrustful and resentful, but equally as usual, this time next year they’ll be wearing Robin Hood costumes in the streets in Cork and Carlisle, in Abergavenny and Athlone, and everyone will remember how much they were really into it at the time.
Musically, the rest of us already owe a significant debt to the champions of the new mode – the introduction of warmth into electronic music, for better or for worse the principal way music will be made in the future. No longer does electronic music mean the severity of the mid-70s German contingent. No longer is it designed to send us into paroxysms of abject despair. Ultravox’s 'Vienna’', belatedly a hit, is probably the best and most widely accepted example, and Visage’s Steve Strange is probably the man of like-minded musicians from certain other much respected bands of the last few years. Here Steve Strange talks about the motivation behind the whole movement, and Ultravox present the perspective of where they fit in.
The inclusion of Ultravox in this brief glance at the emergent phenomenon currently spreading outwards from London is neither to imply that they are empty hedonists nor that they see themselves as being ringleaders. In fact, when first mooted as a possible cover the reaction in the office was that if anything they were relatively faceless, and apart from vocalist Midge Ure’s spiv moustache and sides, they are.
They’re adopted by new stylists and they’re closely involved in and partly responsible for the movement but individually they exhibit less sartorial chic than the average busker. Their significance is down to their ground-breaking work in popularising electronically-inclined music that doesn’t sound as if it just came in from the Russian steppes in mid-winter.
Ultravox of course are not a new band – their first album was released in 1976 and a glance at its sleeve will quickly show how far ahead of their time they were then, despite various personnel re-arrangements that have taken place then.
"It’s the human element that separates us,"| states Midge emphatically. "We still use a lot of guitar, we put natural emotion into it. A lot of these electronic bands seem to think it must be totally feelingless, soulless, you must stand there going drr-bleep. I find that really dull; the only band who can get away with that is Kraftwerk and they know what they’re doing, they’ve got their tongue in their cheek. The rest of those bands take it far too seriously."
"The whole thing about Ultravox is that, although they use new technology fairly liberally, they are thought of as bleak and grey because they are," asserts Midge. "Most of them are incredibly boring because they think that’s what it’s meant to be about, machines and all that, it’s just crap. We’re just using different technology to make music but we’re still musicians in the accepted sense. We shy away from being called an electronic band – we’re a band that use’s electronics."
Ultravox’s chart-topping single 'Vienna' (hell; Joe Doteful doesn’t count and John Lennon is a special case) is so far the definitive example of what Midge is saying and what the whole movement is about. Opening suspiciously like so many doom-laden electronic dirges it breaks into a surge of soaring romantic power the like of which has never been heard before on anything outside the overblown swagger-pop school of Barry Ryan or, latterly, John Miles. The two opposing elements of excess – the stark backing in the verses rescues the chorus from maudlin melodrama while the operatic chorus relieves the danger of sterility in the verse, and that, in a nutshell, is what this whole purge of punk is about.
Billy Vurrie: "One of the reasons why 'Vienna’' is like it is, is because Numan epitomised that whole robotic thing and he had said that we’d been his major influence. I think 'Vienna' sounded incredibly fresh when it came out because Gary had painted himself into a corner, he’d diluted himself so much. But I’m happy to acknowledge that it was a gracious and a difficult thing for him to do, to champion us when he was up and we were down. There’s not many who’d do that."
Vienna the album, Ultravox’s fourth, was released almost eight months ago, and ‘Vienna’ the single is in fact the third off the album, it’s predecessors ‘Sleepwalk’ and ‘All Stood Still’ conforming somewhat more to normal expectations of an "electronic" band like Ultravox. The band do not accept, however, that the single has finally taken off on the momentum of the Spandau/Visage waves. "It’s worked because there aren’t really any other bands with that particular kind of surge at the moment," says Billie.
Ultravox have come into their own but it’s taken time, and time has taken its toll. Formed five years ago as a five-piece fronted by John Foxx they were persistently dismissed as mysterioso dillettantes through three album for Island (Ultravox, Ha! Ha! Ha! and Systems of Romance) before John Foxx parted from the rest of the band under less then ideal conditions two years ago, leaving the whole show at a very low ebb.
"It’s just built up over a period – kit was a mutual separation," say Chris Cross. "We were planning on him leaving. If he’d been positive and left before the American tour there would have been no problems, but unfortunately it did come to a head on that."
John took with him the remaining traces of Teutonic austerity as well as "the money," as Chris says.
"He had lots of ideas about not being on major labels and not using big recording studios etc. – he was all for minimalism when we felt it was time for us to develop as instrumentalists.
"But his whole thing of being anti-big establishment companies seemed so naïve to us and it came as no surprise when he did exactly the opposite when he got going." Adds Warren Cann grimly – the water is not yet completely under the bridge, it would seem.
Enter one diminutive Scot, veteran of pop-rock fame (Salvation and Slik), hard rock sessioning (Thin Lizzy) and new wave pop semi-acclaim (The Rich Kids), the irrepressible and highly un-serious Midge Ure.
"After the break up of The Rich Kids I was disillusioned and I’d make up my mind never to join another band. That was my firm commitment to music – and now look what’s happened!’"
"Well, the one thing that we were adamant about after John left was that we were going to incorporate an instrumentalist, and we didn’t manage to do that either," adds Warren.
Midge had actually joined over six months before it was generally revealed because the band was embedded in a seemingly insurmountable set of problems – basically ‘’No money, no management, no record company and serious legal problems’’, as Warren remembers. ‘’We were definitely in line for the Bad-Businessmen-of-the-Year award.’’
And it’s here that the entanglement with Visage begins. As concisely as possible, what happened was as follows.
When Glen Matlock formed the Rich Kids after leaving the Pistols, he brought in Midge and fellow Scot Rusty Egan on drums.By the time the Rich Kids had split, Rusty ion particular had befriended Steve Strange and was part of the still-germinating style set, working with Steve on Billy’s and most of Steve’s other ventures of the time. The Visage idea was in the process of being born out of necessity (no appropriate sounds – therefore, make ‘em yourself) when notorious man about town Billy Currie gradually got to know Midge through hanging out at the same clubs.
"The idea for Visage was already there," Billy recalls. "Midge, Rusty, and Steve had already got the basics worked out and it appealed to me, and also I personally didn’t even want to think about Ultravox at the time, we were in so many problems."
This was all happening at the same time the Rich Kids had split and John Foxx had left, and in a way it’s thanks to Visage that Midge ended up in Ultravox, and, presumably, that we ended up with a song like ‘Vienna’.
"To me success came when I had the chance to join Ultravox through the Visage connection," says Midge. "I mean, just the band staying together, just me being with it, that was as far as I wanted to go, and everything that’s happened in the last two months is like buying a car and just getting a couple of optimal extras. It’s taken me five years to get here from Salvation – now it’s just public success.’’
Had the rest of the band anyone else in mind as vocalist at the time?
"Chrissie Hynde," retorts Chris.
"One thing we didn’t want was a lot of vocal effects – we wanted to dissociate from the previous album’’, Warren adds. "This was a new Ultravox."
The Visage album in fact, to which both Midge and Billy were major contributors, was recorded before ‘Vienna’ and it was as the result of the working relationship established between Ure and Currie on the Visage sessions that Midge joined Ultravox. Three of the Visage tracks were laid down in the summer of 1979 and the whole thing was completely by the end of the year, only to be held up for almost a year before finally being released. ‘Vienna’ on the other hand was recorded and released in the first half of the last year but was only picked up on eight months later.
"It’s quite frightening that songs we put together up to 1 ½ years ago are only just being picked up on now," says Midge. "Most of the ‘Vienna’ stuff was worked out on the American tour when we’d only started – so what the hell are we gonna write now – does it mean no one’s gonna buy the next album until next year?"
The next album, on which the band are currently working, is much more of a studio-conceived work than ‘Vienna’. ‘’With ‘Vienna’ we took ideas that we knew would keep our identity, that we knew would work, and involved them on the road – now we’ll experiment much more’’, explains Warren.
But there’s no question of conflict or confusion between Ultravox and Visage, according to Midge. Firstly, although the other two aren’t involved in Visage, there’s no feeling of being left out. ‘’It just means we get twice as many holidays as they do’’, Chris jokes. Both Chris and Warren in fact are pursuing individual projects as well, Warren’s involving noted German keyboard-player and producer Hans Zimmer, the man behind ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ and the Radiator’s ‘Dancing Years’.
And neither will Visage become a repository for subtandard or unwanted Ultravox material. "After all," says Midge, "Only two out of six currently in Visage are in Ultravox and we write separately. In any case, the line-up of Visage is very flexible, the name is really a loose umbrella. Obviously we want the same people to do the next album but if they’re not available, well then they’re not. Polydor have made us sign something to effect that where possible we will use people who are compatible, but I mean that goes without saying.’’
Furthermore, Midge doesn’t see Visage developing an autonomous life of its own, though his views are somewhat at variance with Steve Strange’s on this point.
"Visage is not a band as such, people don’t seem to understand that. Visage won’t come and play at your local town hall or appear at the Hammersmith Odeon. It’s forum, a project. If the next album’s gonna sound like a string quartet there’s no point in having Rusty play drums on it. Visage is not going to cause Ultravox any problems because it’s not going to take the two fo us away for six months of the year."
It must be galling for the detractors of the new movement to face the fact that its protagonists are so damnably equable and reasonable. Midge Ure is chirpy and unassuming, impatient when anyone tries to lay any suggestions of pretensions on him.
Billy and Chris are quietly friendly, belying their extravagant social life, and Warren though more guarded than the others, possibly because of his American background, is still well on the right side of all right. Long-time followers of the band will know not to expect the next album to be ‘Vienna MK2’, and as Warren has it, those who only picked up on them with the single will just have to find out.
Are they going to move their sphere of influence even further-east-Belgrade?
Warren: "Hawaii"
Chris: "Dubrovnik – because it does mean nothing to me.’"
To typecast Ultravox because of ‘Vienna’ would be a big mistake – all that can be said with certainty at this juncture is that they are likely to remain a pleasantly subversive force in music for some time. And whether they remain in favour with the Blitz Kidz is entirely dependent on their own musical decisions.