Interviews & Exclusives, The Big Stage

Interview: Midge Ure

Midge Ure is playing at the Phoenix in Exeter on 12^th December.  We caught up with Midge and here is an exclusive interview

Is your new album Move Me very different from your last album Breathe?

I’ve put a lot more of me into this record than I did the previous one.  I mean it’s a lot more guitar-oriented.  I’ve gone back and grabbed my synthesisers with great gay abandon again and I’ve started making all those lovely noise and atmospheres.  It’s very different to Breathe but it’s still very much a Midge Ure record.

The lyrics to this album seem very personal – is there a common theme throughout the album?

I still write about things that affect me – you know things that go on in my life, things that affect me from books, from watching television, from seeing the news.  You know there’s a real wide range of subjects on the record.

It’s a series of my thoughts and feelings over…it’s like documenting what I’ve been through over the last 5 years.  The good and the bad. It’s the highs and lows of life.  That’s what I write about.

What about “Vienna” – what are your thoughts on that song today?

I could never think of “Vienna” as anything but what is was.  It was an interesting piece of music that became immensely successful commercially, and I’ve got to thank it for that, cause I don’t think I’d be here doing this today if it wasn’t for that.  Because it turned Ultravox from a small kind of college, hardly known electronic pop band/rock band into this huge world wide known act, and that is just amazing.

Is there any advice you’d like to give young artists starting out today?

Not really, you learn from your mistakes.  The thing that’s worrying right now about the state of the industry I think is a lot of the bands aren’t actually bands, they’re not real. They haven’t gone out and played all the sleazy clubs with all the graffiti on the walls and no toilet backstage and all of that stuff. You’ve got to go out and do that because that’s how you learn how it works.

Are you looking forward to being on the road again?

Yeah definitely.  We have been looking at dates in Europe, and possibly doing some proper dates in the UK, which I haven’t done for a long time, you know maybe start out with four or five up and down the country just to show the new band in action. So we’re looking to coming to Germany, I think it’s in November, a few weeks after the release of the new album.

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Tags: exeter phoenix, midge ure, The Big Stage