Midge Ure comes to Johnny D’s on Saturday, Feb. 21.

By Blake Maddux

Midge Ure was born James Ure in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1953. He joined the Scottish pop band Salvation—later famous under the new name Slik—in the early 1970s. When that group disbanded in 1977, he joined the punk band The Rich Kids, having already turned down an offer to be the lead singer of an inchoate group called The Sex Pistols, of which Rich Kid Glen Matlock had been a member. After cutting the one and only album in the Rich Kids discography, he formed the new wave band Visage, then became a mid-tour replacement guitarist for the Irish hard rock band Thin Lizzy before taking over on lead vocals another new wave band called Ultravox.

The pinnacle of Ultravox’s fine run of artistic and commercial success in Great Britain was probably the 1980 album Vienna, the title track of which occupied the #2 spot on the U.K. single chart for four consecutive weeks. It was held off from the top by the recently murdered John Lennon’s (Just Like) Starting Over and Joe Dolce’s novelty single Shaddup You Face. (Ure is quoted in the book Mad World, an oral history of new wave co-authored by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein, as explaining that the title Vienna was inspired by an inebriated dinner companion’s mishearing of the lyric from Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.)

While still a member of Ultravox, Ure released a solo version of the Tom Rush composition No Regrets in 1982, co-wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas? with Bob Geldof for the all-star charity project Band Aid in 1984, and released his first solo album The Gift—which included the U.K. #1 single If I Was, which was also the title of his 2004 memoir—in 1985. After recording its last album in 1986, Ultravox disbanded in 1987.

Midge Ure (second from the left) with former Ultravox band mates.

Since then, Ure has released numerous albums under his own name, reunited Band Aid in five and 10-year intervals, and recorded one more album with Ultravox. In 2014, Ure unveiled Fragile, his second solo release since 2005, the year that Queen Elizabeth II named him an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Midge Ure’s current U.S. tour in support of Fragile includes a February 21 stop at Johnny D’s. The Somerville Times recently spoke to him by phone in advance of the show.

P.S.: “Midge” is the phonetic pronunciation of Jim, the shortened version of his birth name, spelled backward. He acquired this moniker as a member of Salvation so as to distinguish him from one of the original members of the band who was also named Jim.

The Somerville Times: Was it challenging early in your career to play with so many different-sounding groups?

Midge Ure: Well, I think when you look at it on paper, and you just see a list of bands, it seems like I’m all over the place. But the reality is that I either helped instigate some of the bandwagons that other people jumped on rather than me jumping on the bandwagons that were someone else’s. Slik, my first band, was kind of a teeny-bop band. When that died, I should have disappeared at that point. That’s historically what happens. Very few artists that start with a pop career have moved on to do anything other than that. So when I moved to London to join The Rich Kids, it may have seemed a massive musical jump, but it wasn’t really. To me it was really interesting. I introduced the synthesizer to The Rich Kids in 1978 with a view to incorporating it into the band, and half the band hated it and half the band loved it. But the half of the band who loved it went off and formed Visage with members of [British post-punk band] Magazine and Billy Currie from Ultravox. So through working on Visage I joined Ultravox, so there’s a path that ran all the way through this stuff.

ST: The late Ian McLagan, who played at Johnny D’s last October, recorded with The Rich Kids, right?

MU: Yes. He actually toured with The Rich Kids as well. He did one tour. I’m a massive Small Faces fan. Part of the reason I’m doing this is because of The Small Faces: young, small, cool guys playing big guitars. It was fantastic.

ST: Bands like Roxy Music, The Jam, and Ultravox were always reliable hit-makers in the U.K. without ever really penetrating the U.S. market. What do you think accounts for the difference in taste between the two countries?

MU: When I first came to America, I was doing a tour with Thin Lizzy, who were opening up as a special guest for Journey. America at the time, in the late 70s, had kind of ignored the punk thing that was happening. A majority of America was still listening to Styx and Boston and Foreigner and all of that. It was corporate rock. So it was a very, very different animal from what the small U.K. had. In the small U.K. in 1972, we had David Bowie doing Ziggy Stardust, we had Roxy Music come out with Virginia Plain, we had Cockney Rebel coming out with Mr. Soft. We had all this radical stuff going on. In fact, the American imports at the time that were doing some really cool things were only doing it in the U.K. Sparks, coming out with This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us (1974) were massive in the U.K., it was great. Going the other direction, I can see why America didn’t get Roxy [Music] or The Jam, or Ultravox. The coasts got us, college radio got us, but the big stuff in the middle…no.

I remember doing an interview in America with Ultravox in the very early years when I came over, 1980 or something, to tour with them. The interviewer said, “You guys speak really good English.” He had us mixed up with [German electro-pop band] Kraftwerk! It was so bizarre. We realized that it was never going to happen for us here.

ST: On a list of the greatest singles ever recorded, where do you think Vienna would rank vis-à-vis (Just Like) Starting Over and Shuddup You Face?

MU: I think that public taste is something that is curious to us all. I mean, who knows why someone would buy Shuddup You Face instead of Vienna? It’s just a weird, wonderful world we inhabit. Vienna is a groundbreaking piece of music. I think it’s probably up there [i.e., high on the list]. It’s quite interesting that the BBC ran a massive competition last year in which the people of the U.K. could vote for records that didn’t get to number one but should have. Vienna came in at the top of the list. Vienna was given an honorary #1 because people were still outraged that it didn’t get to number one!

ST: Progressive rock and new wave are pretty dissimilar genres. What inspired you to cover Jethro Tull’s Living in the Past on your first solo album?

MU: I loved the original. When I was making the first solo album, it was just a collection of songs. I didn’t really have an album inside me, as it were. I wanted to do something that was simplified compared to what Ultravox was doing at the time. I had just built my first studio and instead of taking six months lying on a beach somewhere, which I think the rest of the guys [in Ultravox] did, I took a busman’s holiday. I went into the studio and started recording If I Was and some instrumental tunes and Living in the Past was just such a great song that, without having listened again to the original, I played and recorded it how I remembered it being. I remember as a 15 or 16-year-old kid seeing Jethro Tull on television and thinking, “Wow, it’s Fagin with a flute.”

ST: What does having been awarded the OBE mean to you?

MU: When I was given this, I asked other recipients what we do with it. It was [British film director and screenwriter] Richard Curtis who said, “You show it to your mum and then you never use it again. You don’t put it after your name, it doesn’t mean much. You put it in a drawer, and you think, ‘well, that’s something.’”

It’s like being put in a certain class at school, and the headmaster gives you and accommodation or something. It’s a pat on the back from the Queen, which is lovely.

ST: Were you pleased with the success of Band Aid 30’s recording of Do They Know It’s Christmas?

MU: You know what? It’s difficult to try and judge that because I think the song is so ingrained in people’s consciousness. Young people growing up would hear that song since they were born just about. Every Christmas they would hear that song. So it’s in the psyche. It might be more of a challenge coming up with a new song for that cause.

But there’s still a need for that stuff. There’s still a need to jab people with a big stick and say like, “Come on!” I thought it was magnificent they way people rallied to the cause again. Of course, the difference this time was that record sales are way, way, way down if still in existence at all. So the amount of money is very different from how it was 30 years ago. The interesting thing for us was trying to figure out how to monetize something like streaming.

I thought it was great that the record did exactly what it did. The French did their own version, the Germans did their own version, all for Ebola. I know there has been talk over here in American of doing a version or a similar-type thing. So yes, the world needs it, and I think it’s quite satisfying to see that the world can still stand up and be counted. That’s people power. It’s people standing up and saying, “Enough is enough.”

ST: I understand that Bono had his bicycle accident the day after he recorded his vocals for the song. Have you been in touch with him since?

MU: He did, yeah. I haven’t. We don’t text each other every day! (laughs) He never calls, he never writes. (laughs) He thinks he’s saving the world, but don’t we all?

ST: Do you think that your latest album Fragile is a good place for new fans to hear you for the first time?

MU: Honestly, I don’t know. I have to say it’s the most selfish album that I’ve ever done in the respect that I did exactly what I thought was interesting. I didn’t have record company to try and, you know, guide me one way or another. So there was no real thought put into trying to make it commercially palatable. I just made what I thought was interesting and weirdly, I’ve had the best response ever for any record that I’ve ever done. The response has been phenomenal. For someone out there who had no idea of anything I’ve ever done, it’s not a bad place to start. What I do is me. It sounds like me. It sounds honest in a way. I think I went through a very strange phase when I was writing and recording it and what’s come out is something that’s really heart-on-your sleeve honest.

ST: Do you have a preference as to how people listen to your music, whether it is a CD, MP3, or LP?

MU: I don’t think it really matters. The vinyl looks fabulous [when people bring it to me to sign]. There’s something about the artwork, and picking it up and holding it, and the weight of it. In that respect, I am very pleased to see people with vinyl. I can’t hear the difference between vinyl and digital, I have to say. I never have been able to hear it. Some people swear by it, and that’s fine, but you know, it doesn’t matter to me.

Midge Ure. Saturday, February 21 at Johnny D’s. Doors 5:30 p.m., show at 7 p.m. Tickets $20.