ULTRAVOX
THE OTHER FAB FOUR
AS ULTRAVOX’S QUARTET ALBUM GETS THE DELUXE REISSUE TREATMENT, MIDGE URE AND BILLY CURRIE RECALL THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF ITS CREATION WITH LEGENDARY PRODUCER GEORGE MARTIN
PAUL KIRKLEY
How’s this for a musical time capsule? It’s the summer of 1982, and in Air Studios, high above Oxford Circus, Ultravox – who are recording their latest album with producer George Martin – are invited into the next-door studio to witness a product demonstration of an exciting new music format called the compact disc.
“I think McCartney was in there as well,” recalls Midge Ure, four decades on. “I can’t remember if it was Phillips or Sony, but they played this thing and we all went, ‘Wow, that sounds amazing’...”
And if that’s not pure, distilled 1982 enough for you, mere weeks after Duran Duran had sailed around Antigua in pastel Antony Price suits shooting the video for Rio, Ultravox decamped to mix their new record on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.
“It was spookily beautiful,” says Billy Currie, the band’s multi-instrumentalist keyboard wizard. “I remember, just after we’d arrived, turning a corner and finding the entire road covered in about two feet of mangoes. I went a bit further, and came across some people who were living in a tree – actually living up there. It was pretty far out.”
In the 80s, of course, such lavish excess was par for the course for any band who were filling their label’s coffers. And in 1982, Ultravox were at the top of their game: after failing to catch fire commercially with original frontman John Foxx, their fourth album, Vienna – the first with Ure as vocalist – had become a huge hit on the back of its iconic title track, with follow-up Rage In Eden also doing great business.
But when the four-piece – Currie, Ure, drummer Warren Cann and bassist Chris Cross – convened to record what would become Quartet, certain eyes at their label were already moving on to the next prize: America. “I’m not sure if it was ever said at the time,” says Midge. “But I tend to think this was the album they thought might catch the American market.”
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