Ultravox to get the Monday lunch hour up and rolling – recorded at Jaap Edenhal in Amsterdam on June 16, 1981 by VPRO.
The earlier incarnation of Ultravox, with John Foxx as frontman, was a harder edge, more experimental group. With production by the German electronics wiz Conny Plank they achieved cult status and an appreciable modicum of cult status by way of Systems Of Romance, which would be the last album by that incarnation. When, after personnel changes and some trepidation over whether Ultravox was actually a group anymore Midge Ure, a former singer with several groups as well as the studio-based Visage was recruited by the remaining members of the former Ultravox and a new Ultravox emerged with a decidedly different focus and direction. It was this literation that established Ultravox as one of the most popular bands to emerge from New Wave/New Romantics era.
Released in July 1980, the Vienna album produced the band’s first UK Top 40 hit with “Sleepwalk” reaching No. 29, while the album itself initially peaked at No. 14. A second single, “Passing Strangers“, failed to reach the Top 40, only reaching No. 57, but the band achieved a substantial hit with the third single, the album’s title track. Accompanied by a highly distinctive video (inspired by Carol Reed‘s 1949 film The Third Man), the single became Ultravox’s biggest ever hit, released in January 1981 and peaking at Number 2 (kept off the top spot by John Lennon’s “Woman” and then Joe Dolce‘s “Shaddap You Face“). On the strength of the single, the album then re-entered the chart and reached No. 3 in early 1981. A fourth single from the album, “All Stood Still“, peaked at No. 8. in 1981, and “Slow Motion” from Systems of Romance was also re-issued, reaching No. 33 the same year.
This was soon followed by Rage in Eden (1981), with the band returning to Plank’s studio in Cologne for what turned out to be a difficult recording session. Whereas the Vienna material had been performed live a great deal prior to a three-week recording process, Rage in Eden took over three months. The album featured a long track in three parts on the second side. The album peaked at No. 4 in the UK, while two singles from the album, “The Thin Wall” and “The Voice“, both made the UK Top 20, reaching No. 14 and No. 16 respectively.
Ultravox teamed up with producer George Martin for 1982’s Quartet, which peaked at No. 6 in the UK and contained four Top 20 hit singles; “Reap the Wild Wind” reaching No. 12 and “Hymn” No. 11 both in 1982, and “Visions in Blue” and in 1983 “We Came to Dance” charting at No. 15 and No. 18 respectively. It was their most successful album in the US, peaking at No. 61.
The band undertook a major world tour, the Monument Tour, which was recorded and released as a live LP and video in 1983, which also reached the UK top ten.
Ultravox then decided to produce their next album themselves. 1984’s Lament continued the band’s run of top ten albums and produced three top 40 hit singles, including the international hit “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes” (UK No. 3), “Lament” (No. 22) and “One Small Day” peaking at No. 27.
After the “Set Movements Tour” in 1984, a “greatest hits” compilation spanning the band’s 1980s output was released entitled The Collection. It was preceded by a new single, “Love’s Great Adventure“, which enjoyed radio airplay late that year and eventually peaked at No. 12 in the UK, accompanied by a popular Indiana Jones-style spoof video. The Collection went triple Platinum and reached No. 2 in the UK albums chart, the band’s highest ever peak.
In November 1984, Ure also co-wrote and produced the Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?“. The four Ultravox-members took a long break from each other, but appeared at Live Aid the following year and played four of their hit singles (“Reap the Wild Wind”, “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes”, “One Small Day” and “Vienna”). Last time they were touring in 1984 they had twenty-two keyboards on stage, and the sound checks alone took five hours, so Ultravox actually chose the songs that they could perform with the least equipment, with no rehearsal and no sound check. With Ultravox being switched in the running order so that Princess Diana could see the Boomtown Rats before leaving Wembley, the start of the Ultravox set was lost to a poor hand-over from an over-running foreign link up. As the concert was never officially archived, this could not be restored to the partial record of the event available on the official DVD. Later in 1985, Ure scored a No. 1 solo hit with “If I Was” and his solo album The Gift reached No. 2 in the UK.
Gary Numan has stated that the original 1970s-era Ultravox was the most important influence on his music] Ultravox was also a major influence on early Simple Minds and Duran Duran.
Along with acts like Visage and Gary Numan, Ultravox was one of the early influences on techno. In his book Energy Flash, Simon Reynolds quotes Adam Lee Miller of Adult: “I always get a kick when people say the first ‘techno’ record was Cybotron‘s ‘Alleys of Your Mind’… To me, it was just a new wave record. It sounds particularly close to ‘Mr X’ by Ultravox.”
For a reminder of their 1981 period – Press Play and crank this one up.
Enjoy lunch.
