Chart entered : 22 November 1986
Chart peak : 30
Ultravox were perhaps the next victims of the post-live Aid pop purge but I think they were pretty much finished anyway.
The Midge Ure line up peaked early when their third hit "Vienna" reached number 2 and became one of the defining records of the eighties. Island capitalised with a reissue of "Slow Motion " from the John Foxx -era which reached number 33. The band then went to Germany to record a more challenging LP "Return To Eden" which saw their commercial stock slip a bit and they settled into a very consistent run of singles usually peaking in the mid-teens. 1984 saw an upturn when "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" reached number 3 and a greatest hits collection went triple platinum. Then came Band Aid and Midge Ure's solo success with If I Was and the album "The Gift ". They fell into the same trap as Blondie; audiences will accept compilation LPs and solo projects but if one follows immediately after the other it sends out a signal the band is over. The band reconvened in 1986 with no one feeling particularly enthusiastic. According to Ure's autobiography they had agreed the next album would be a more organic effort and when Warren Cann showed a reluctance to return to playing real drums the others told him he was fired and temporarily borrowed Mark Brziecki from Big Country as a replacement. Ure concedes it was more of a case of hoping a change of personnel would trigger some inspiration.
The resulting album "U-Vox" has been largely disowned by both Midge and keyboard player Billy Currie as muddled and directionless but there is some decent music ( if not lyrics ) on it and the singles chosen don't give a true representation. The lead single "Same Old Story" ( a dangerous title for a band who've been around a while ) hinted at commercial decline by peaking at number 31.
"All Fall Down" was the second single chosen with an eye on the Christmas market. It's not really an Ultravox record at all. Although the band maintained the fiction of equal credits ( though not for Brzezicki ) on every song, it's a Midge solo effort , a cod-Celtic folk song about the futility of war on which The Chieftains provide most of the instrumentation ( I remember Billy Connolly on Roundtable being appalled that they'd soiled their hands with this ). Billy ( Currie ) and bassist Chris Cross looked uncomfortable when they appeared on Wogan. Midge sings at the very edge of his vocal range and while his conviction's not in question the lyrics are only one notch above Culture Club's The War Song in their banality. Nor do they fit particularly well with the music. Far from challenging from the Christmas number one, it went down from its entry position.
The band dutifully toured the world promoting an album that had already died in the charts. At the end of it Midge told the others he was quitting the band . Following his lead Chris decided to leave as well and pick up his previous career in psychotherapy. This wasn't announced publicly and in the summer Chrysalis belatedly released a third single from "U-Vox", the Live-Aid inspired "All In One Day". Apart from Midge's desultory vocal this one was all Billy , with an overblown orchestration by George Martin. For all the bombast there's really no song there at all and it was the first single since the last of the Foxx-era to miss the charts.
The world generally realised there was no more Ultravox the following year when both Midge and Billy released solo albums. We'll pick up on Midge's solo career later but it's safe to say that Chrysalis's hopes he could become another Sting or Peter Gabriel went unrealised.
Billy's first effort "Transportation" was an instrumental album featuring guitar work from Yes-man Steve Howe. It's fine if you like Mike Oldfield's work but it ran into a stone wall of complete indifference from both press and public , something he was gong to have to get used to for the next couple of decades.
The following year he put together a new group called Humania which featured former Ultravox guitarist Robin Simon, now back from America . They played live and recorded an album's worth of material including re-workings of a couple of Ultravox songs but couldn't find a deal. It was eventually released in 2006 and is a fairly routine stab at epic pop rock like Then Jericho with extra emphasis on the keyboards.
In 1990 he played electric viola on Dead Or Alive's Japan-only album "Fan The Flame". In 1991 he set up his own label Hot Food Music to release his next solo album "Stand Up And Walk" . I've only heard one track "Ukraine" which was developed from an old Ultravox demo and is quite impressive.
Billy then decided he'd be better off trying to revive the Ultravox brand. Warren agreed to give it a go but pulled out long before they recorded anything so Billy was the only original member on the two albums they put out. The first single in 1992 was the rather desperately titled "I Am Alive", a colourless piece of stadium pop that could be Mike and the Mechanics. It got no attention and was a fitting trailer for the album "Revelation" the following year which is terrible. The revelation is that it sounds nothing like Ultravox; only "Perfecting the Art of Common Ground" comes close and it's B-side quality at best. To rub salt in the wound a re-issue of "Vienna" got to number 13 in the UK.
Two years later Billy tried again with a completely different line up . The single "There Goes A Beautiful World" is more recognisable as an Ultravox song with new singer Sam Blue making a credible attempt at sounding like Midge. I've heard most of the album "Ingenuity" and it's not a bad facsimile of classic Ultravox but it didn't do any better commercially. The band were still together the following year when they got do a short set on Live TV and put out a live album "Future Picture".
Billy then dropped out of music for a while when his kids were very young. When he re-emerged in 2001 with the solo albums "Unearthed" and "Keys and the Fiddle" he was making neo-classical music rather than pop although the latter opened with the doomy "Memories Don't Go" featuring Hazel O Connor ( a former girlfriend of Midge ) on vocals.
While Billy ploughed his lonely furrow, Chris got on with working as a psychotherapist. He only appeared in public for Midge's appearance on This Is Your Life , Midge noting that his personality had completely changed from extrovert to a quiet, reserved man.
After working for a time with Kim Wilde, Warren retreated to L.A. and appeared in the obscure horror comedy film The American Scream in 1988 . He had the looks and voice to be an actor but I haven't seen the film so I can't talk about his ability. After his brief reunion with Billy, he dabbled in soundtracks and is credited as musical director on a straight-to-video action film Deadly Currency in 1998. By the noughties he was "doing a boring job with spreadsheets".
In autumn 2008 both Midge and Billy accepted an invitation from Absolute Radio to do an acoustic version of "Vienna" . The two men had generally avoided each other for 20 years but had managed to resolve difficulties without going to court. The response was so positive that their former manager set about organising a reunion. When all four had signified they were up for it the Return To Eden tour was announced ostensibly celebrating the 30th anniversary of recording the "Vienna" album.
My wife and I went with friends to the Manchester gig at The Apollo which Midge informed us was the first one to sell out. Apart from Warren's dyed hair , there was no attempt to disguise their age- Chris Cross looked like the gig had interrupted a board meeting but they sounded great.
At the start of that tour Midge said there were no plans to record new material but two years later they were working on a new album. By his own choice, Warren's involvement was limited so he has no songwriting credits on "Brill!ant" . The album came out in 2012. It's very much one for the fans using analog synths to recreate the old sounds; where they try to be a little more contemporary as on "Change", they come a bit unstuck. The opening track "Live" is really good; they don't maintain that standard and some of the songs are a bit ponderous but it's still worth a listen. It did OK peaking at number 21 but the title track didn't chart; their audience is too long in the tooth to be buying singles.
After touring the album in 2012 they did a four date UK tour with Simple Minds in 2013. Both Midge and Billy have put out solo albums since then . Whether there's any more group projects to come is an open question.
Given that John and Robin only appeared on one hit , achieved in the slipstream of a record with which they had nothing to do, I don't think a lengthy resume of their output is justified.
John re-emerged at the start of 1980 with the seminal "Metamatic" LP which included some music written by Billy, Chis and Warren without being credited which set the seal on their estrangement from their former singer. John's Ballardian vision of an alienated machine-driven world with its harsh metallic sound spawned two hit singles and was a big influence on Joy Division's Closer later that year although few critics acknowledge the debt. I saw him do the album in full in 2007 or thereabouts and that was a pretty good gig too.
He then retreated from that nihilism into a more romantic vein as heard on his last Top 40 hit "Europe After The Rain" in 1981 but didn't really have the voice for it and gradually faded from public view. In the late eighties he began working as a graphics artist under his real name Dennis Leigh and in the early nineties started lecturing in art.
In 1997 he began recording again as John Foxx and since then has maintained a dual career as lecturer and musician with some of his work attracting good reviews if not mainstream recognition.
After the dissolution of Humania, Robin had a low profile ( and probably a day job ) . He was most recently a member of Steve Strange's revived Visage and played on both their albums, "Hearts and Knives" and "Demons to Diamonds", the latter released after the singer's death last year.
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