* En anglais uniquement
One of the key members of the new wave band
Ultravox, guitarist/vocalist
Midge Ure began his professional music career with Salvation, a Glasgow-based group that became the bubblegum band
Slik in 1974. Upset in the change of direction,
Ure left the band to join
the Rich Kids, a punk-pop group led by former
Sex Pistol bassist
Glen Matlock.
The Rich Kids only released one album, 1978's Ghosts of Princes in Towers, before breaking up later that year.
Ure spent a brief time with
the Misfits (not the American band) before forming
Visage with drummer
Rusty Egan and vocalist
Steve Strange; he left the group to replace
Gary Moore in
Thin Lizzy, who had left in the middle of an American tour. After the tour was finished,
Ure fulfilled an agreement to join
Ultravox as the replacement for
John Foxx.
Once he joined the band in 1980,
Ure helped make
Ultravox a mainstream success; during this time he also worked as a producer, making records with
Steve Harley and Modern Man. In 1982,
Ure released a solo single, a cover of
the Walker Brothers' hit "No Regrets"; it climbed into the U.K. Top Ten.
Ure and
Bob Geldof formed
Band Aid, a special project to aid famine relief efforts in Ethiopia, in 1984. The two wrote the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and assembled an all-star band of British musicians to record the single; it sold millions of copies over the 1984 holiday season and prompted
Geldof to organize the benefit concert Live Aid in 1985.
In 1985,
Ultravox was put on hiatus and
Ure began to pursue a full-time solo career. Recorded entirely by
Ure, his 1985 solo debut,
The Gift, launched the number one single "If I Was," as well as the minor hits "That Certain Smile" and "Call of the Wild." The following year, he recorded the final
Ultravox album; in 1987, the band broke up and he began recording his second solo album. The resulting record, 1988's
Answers to Nothing, was less successful than
The Gift in the U.K., yet it charted in the U.S., which is something
Ure's previous album failed to do. Three years later,
Ure released his third album,
Pure; while it didn't do any business in America, the album featured the Top 20 British hit "Cold, Cold Heart." He attempted a comeback in 1996 with
Breathe, which went ignored by both the American and British markets. Four years later, his score for the Jon Cryer drama-comedy Went to Coney Island was issued by the Evenmore label.
Ure's recording activity during the 2000s began with Move Me (2001), which featured some surprisingly hard rocking material. A few years later, he published an autobiography, If I Was, and then, with
Geldof, arranged the Live 8 concerts, after which he was recognized as an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). Following the release of the covers-oriented
10 (2008),
Ure participated in an
Ultravox reunion and continued to record as a solo artist.
Fragile was issued in 2014, and featured the
Moby collaboration "Dark, Dark Night." In 2017, he collaborated with composer
Ty Unwin on the album
Orchestrated, which featured orchestral reworkings of
Ultravox songs, as well as songs from his solo career. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine