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He was born in 1953 in the small town of Cambuslang in Scotland. He has come a long way since then!
Barely 20 years old, he already knows success with his first group Slik, which he had just taken the microphone after a name change. For the first time in his career, he reached the top of the English hit parade with “Forever And Ever”, a song that evokes both the Bay City Rollers and the Rubettes! With “The Kid’s A Punk”, another title from their repertoire, the group begins to smell the air of the times and will even end up changing its tune by opting once again for a new name PVC2 and by becoming punk themselves , a little out of opportunism…
The one who had already refused the offer to become the singer of the Sex Pistols nevertheless formed the short-lived Rich Kids with Glen Matlock, once bassist of the same Pistols. The adventure would only last the time of a single album “Ghosts Of Princes In Tower”, released in 1978. If he had always maintained a close relationship with the guitar, Midge Ure then wanted to explore new shores in the company of Rusty Egan, the soul of what would be called New Romanticism but also drummer of the Rich Kids. Are you following?
Together, they discovered the first synthesizers and drum machines and created Visage, relying on the voice (and the plastic) of Steve Strange. By gathering around them, even sporadically, musicians like John McGeogh (Banshees) or Barry Adamson (Magazine, Bad Seeds), they gave birth to Visage and incidentally to the global hit “Fade To Grey” in 1980.
But once again, Midge Ure will take on a new major challenge by replacing both the singer (John Foxx) and the guitarist (Robin Simon) who have just left Ultravox after three albums together. This poker move will turn out to be a masterstroke since the albums “Vienna” (1980), “Rage In Eden” (1981), “Quartet” (1982) and then “Lament” (1984) each have their share of classics of the genre: “Vienna” very tense, but also “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”, “Hymn”, “We Came To Dance”, “All Stood Still” among others…
Author of a solo career that is also prolific, linchpin of Band Aid and its “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” Midge Ure still takes as much pleasure in treading the stages of Europe and elsewhere. When I offered him the photo that illustrates this article, he not only told me that this guitar still has pride of place in his home but that he knew exactly which notes of the album “Vienna” he was playing when he was immortalized with this grin that is so typical of him.
