Time To Listen: Midge Ure reveals the 5 songs that mean the most to him
Including Kate Bush, David Bowie and Japan
Last updated 18th Nov 2019
Following revelatory interviews with Adam Clayton, Sam Fender and Skunk Anansie’s Skin, Ultravox frontman and Live Aid co-founder, Midge Ure, has featured on Absolute Radio’s current series Time To Listen to discuss the songs that mean the most to him.
Time To Listen explores music’s positive impact on our mental health and, during Danielle Perry’s evening show from 7pm on Monday to Thursday, a guest musician picks a song each day that has made a difference to their lives.
A special omnibus half-hour show with all of their choices from throughout the week, plus an extra fifth choice, airs each week in The Sunday Night Music Club from 8pm.
Listen to Midge Ure on Time To Listen:
Commenting on the sheer power of music, Midge Ure told us it’s “a healer” and has the capacity to help you during turbulent times in your life.
“When I write a song, I write a song that says what I’m thinking and feeling at the time. Now, I can’t make that translate to other people but somewhere, someone in the world is connected to what you’ve just done,” Midge explained.
“The emotions, the emotiveness of music is a healer – that’s what it’s meant to do. That is what you turn to in moments of sadness, in moments of joy. Music is there a bit like a soundtrack to a movie. So, if you’re feeling down and you want to feel a bit more down you put on a particular piece of music that enhances that. If you want to feel up, you put on something you can dance to, it’s helps you get through those really dodgy moments. That’s what we all turn to.”
Revealing a specific moment when he discovered his own music with Ultravox had an impact on someone else’s life, Midge said it happened with the advent of emails in the 1990s.
“When emails started coming through there was a guy who wrote to me and said he was born in Lebanon,” Midge said. “During the war in Lebanon in order to get away from the bombings and the chaos that was ensuing around him, as a kid he used to sit in the bombed-out basement in his house and put on his headphones and he would play some Ultravox music. And that got him through life. He went on to become a doctor and have his family and all that stuff.
“You cannot foresee that something you’ve written can help someone in that situation. Y’know just when you think ‘I need to drown out life, I need to take away this madness, I need to take away this bad stuff’. You put on your headphones, you play a piece of music and it takes you somewhere else.”
Midge Ure’s five song choices were as follows:
David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes (1980)
“I was there in The Blitz Club (legendary venue in London’s Covent Garden. The Tuesday club night from 1979 to 1980 was pivotal to launching the New Romantic subcultural movement) the night David Bowie walked in. All these cool kids melted, running around like headless chickens because David Bowie, the master, was in the club. And he went out the next day with a handful of Kids from The Blitz and shot the video for ‘Ashes To Ashes’. So, it means a lot to me.”
Black ‘Wonderful Life’ (1986)
“This next song ‘Wonderful Life’ by Black (late Liverpudlian singer Colin Vearncombe) I absolutely loved. Sometimes someone crafts a song that you kind of wish you were capable of writing or having written. And I have to say, even though I’ve written quite a few songs in my time this is one I would have loved to have got my hands on.”
Kate Bush ‘This Woman’s Work’ (1988)
“People use the term ‘genius’ a lot when it comes to individuals in the music industry. Now this woman does deserve that accolade. I first her back in the seventies when she did the ‘Wuthering Heights’ album, (I) absolutely fell in love with her. And then I heard this. It’s just outstanding as a song.”
Midge Ure – ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ (1982)
“Things happen to you during your life, during your career, that you don’t instigate. Just something happens. The phone rings, you bump into someone and you’re presented with an opportunity. I got a phone call back in the early 80s from a film company who were making a movie called Party Party (1983 British comedy film about three friends and their North West London crowd) and they wanted the soundtrack of this movie to be made of cover versions of other people’s songs. So, contemporary artists doing cover versions of their favourite songs. They didn’t care what song it was, so I grabbed this opportunity with both hands to do my interpretation of David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold The World’. Suffice to say, the movie wasn’t successful, and the track disappeared… until recently when the track appeared again, this time on a video game (2015's Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain). I have had millions of people download this and listen to this track and stream it live online because sometimes you make a piece of music that doesn’t have the look, the time, the sound associated with it. It’s just a piece of music and when you see it out of context, or hear it out of context it takes on a whole new life.
“When you do someone else’s song, you have to be careful that you don’t ruin it. It’s a petrifying thing – you want to do something different with it but you don’t want to sully the music. So, I looked at this from a completely different angle from the original recording. I had to show the utmost respect, and I think when you hear this track played you can tell this is done with love and respect.”
Japan ‘Canton’ (1981)
“My next choice is an instrumental from the band Japan. It’s called ‘Canton’. It came from the ‘Tin Drum’ album (Japan’s fifth and final album in 1981), which was a pivotal piece of music back in the eighties. Certain bands used technology and they mixed it with traditional rock instrumentation. Japan was a classic example of those guys. They had this wonderful experimentation. They didn’t seem to care whether the record was three minutes long, five minutes long, ten minutes long. They wrote pieces of music and this is what this is.”