Midge has driven more-or-less constantly forwards, but he admits that professionally, he’s only recently fully recovered from the fallout of alcoholism. “Maybe it’s the Scot in me talking.” Breath and taxes George was at the top for the majority of his career, whereas mine has had many dips and dives, but it’s the same emotional kick: you feel like the underdog, a second-class citizen.” He laughs ruefully. “For a long time, George Michael was pigeonholed as the guy in the hotpants dancing by the side of the pool in Club Tropicana. “He does it as a put-down and you think, ‘What’s the point? Why do that?’ Once you’re tarred with that brush, it’s very difficult to walk away from it, and the only thing that helps is the passage of time. All these years later, I still feel sometimes the respect given to me is begrudging, because of this one hit from 1976.”Īlthough few people under 50 remembers Forever And Ever, Midge seethes about one Radio 2 DJ – almost certainly Chris Evans – who plays the hit whenever Midge guests on his show. There aren’t many artists who started out in the world I did who were allowed to grow up and do anything worthy: Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, George Michael. “I felt this weight lugging around with me that was never going to go. “With first the Rich Kids and then Visage, the media held it against me that I was ‘that guy from Slik’,” he sighs. But whenever he mentions Slik, he gets just a little twitchy. Midge is a calm and thoughtful interviewee, generally good-humoured about his status in the music industry. Instead, Midge is frustrated at the effect that his brief spell in proto-boyband Slik has on his career, 42 years after the bubblegum popsters spent a week at No.1 with Forever And Ever. In 2018, as Midge Ure hit 65, we talked to the sometime Ultravox frontman…Ī sked which song casts a shadow over Midge Ure’s life, most people would probably guess at Ultravox’s Vienna – the all-time runner-up single which lost out on No.1 to Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face – or Do They Know It’s Christmas?, the best-selling single of all time in Britain, which Midge co-wrote with Bob Geldof: he’s told Classic Pop before how the time spent working on Band Aid and Live Aid lost Ultravox crucial momentum and helped contribute to their demise.

Ultravox vienna synths