FLINCHING FROM THE IDEA OF TRYING TO REPLICATE VIENNA, ULTRAVOX IGNORED THEIR RECORD COMPANY’S PLEAS, DISAPPEARED FOR THREE MONTHS WITH PRODUCER CONNY PLANK AND CAME UP WITH 1981’S RAGE IN EDEN. THEY – AND WE – GOT WHAT THEY WANTED…
By 1981 Midge Ure had already achieved the impossible in music – and, remember, this was well before the heroic antics of Band Aid or Live Aid. He’d enjoyed major success with (boy)band Slik and New Romantic supremos Visage and played alongside iconic rocker Phil Lynott, but this hat-trick of musical masterings, while most impressive, was not his greatest feat. No. That was helping to take Ultravox from the point of closure to world domination with the album and huge hit single Vienna. In the space of a furious few days, guitarist and lead vocalist Midge, keyboardist Billy Currie, drummer Warren Cann, and synth player and guitarist Chris Cross recorded the entire Vienna album which would change their lives – and those who can never remember what track kept Vienna the single from reaching No.1 – forever.
But what to do next? Of course one ‘next’ for Midge would involve writing one of the greatest charity (and Christmas) songs of all time, saving a gazillion lives and having to hang around with Bob Geldof for the next 40 years. Before that though, he and the band would have to follow up Vienna with album No.2 for the reborn Ultravox (their fifth iteration, if you include the John Foxx-led lineup). And despite pressure from their record company executives to knock out another Vienna – “they used to come up and say, ‘You know, ‘Paris’ is a really good city name. We were, like, ‘What, you want us to write a travelogue?’” Midge half joked to Rhino.com in a 2015 interview – the band had other thoughts on their mind for their next album.
The resulting recording, Rage In Eden, is still the band’s most consistent and mesmerising work, one that continues to challenge and reward. It’s a record that offered the band a dark ride out of the Austrian capita, and it still remains a firm fan favourite… and indeed one of the band’s, as confirmed by Midge in the same interview. “I think Rage In Eden was always one of my favourite albums,” he considered.
THE SONGS
1 THE VOICE
In many ways The Voice is everything you want an Ultravox track to be. The ingredients are perfect: powerful Warren Can drums, great Midge Ure vocals, enormous strings and a massive ARP synth solos care of Currie, and rocky Cross guitars and sequences melding that synth-rock formula… and crucially, of course, they all intertwine and combine to deliver the greatest swaggering pomposity – in the nicest possible way – that we all loved (and still love) about Ultravox.
2 WE STAND ALONE
Another track that maintains the swagger, as though Ultravox have seen the future and are delivering you just a glimpse of it, just to tease you. But then it’s also referencing the past of the Foxxled troupe on Systems Of Romance, with several key arrangement flourishes, so it’s something of a time machine of a track, traversing eras like a melodic Tardis, scarves of the band gently wavering in the passing ‘time breeze’ as they stare into the middle distance.
3 RAGE IN EDEN
The title track is a sombre affair with a strippedback feel, its key Ultravox trademarks this time underpinned with electronic drums. There’s a bleakness but also a beauty to it, concluding with eerie radio signals segueing into the next track.
The biggest mystery is the non-mentioned lyrics, a kind of atmospheric chanting chorus of ‘ooh-ahum-oya-ay’ that are apparently the words “Oh, I remember death in the afternoon” backwards (see main text) which is handy, because as soon as that radio stops, this track starts…
4 I REMEMBER (DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON)
In the early 80s everybody thought this was about an impending nuclear strike, but I Remember… is really just another piece of the doom-laden introspection of Rage In Eden. It’s a darkness that is broken, though, when it reaches a huge, midsong crescendo with just about every instrument vying to do a solo, the synths and piano beautifully introducing the battle, with ARP and guitar screaming throughout resulting in just about the best 90 seconds of Ultravox you’ll hear. Worth the hire of the farmyard alone.
5 THE THIN WALL
The first single is not the only Eden track to sound like a song from either of the first two Visage albums… not surprising given the Ure and Currie links between the bands. (We won’t go near the somewhat confusing timeline that both members spent in each, but Ure’s reason for leaving Visage for Ultravox, concerning a hilarious camel caper involving Steve Strange, is well worth looking up when you get a mo.) The claustrophobic nature of the track is greatly enforced by the video; we’ll discuss both more in the box on page 49, but for now we’ll just earmark The Thin Wall as the second greatest track on Rage… but the finest ever to feature the phrase ‘bovine grace’.
6 STRANGER WITHIN
The pomp of the earlier tracks might have lifted you but the dark recesses on Rage will have you reaching for the security blanket, none more so than this stomping, seven-and-a-half minute journey through your inner self. The strings hint at Numan on his Pleasure Principle album (no surprise, perhaps, with Currie’s involvement on it). Overall, though, this serves as a pace changer, a mood swinger if you like. As in, it is a bit long.
7 ACCENT ON YOUTH/THE ASCENT
The last three tracks on Rage segue nicely into one another but these two are clearly cut from the same song cloth. Accent On Youth is a slice of light relief after the marathon of Stranger Within. Ure’s “just let me close my eyes and slip away” vocals are classic Ultravox, as indeed is the rest of the arrangement – the rhythm guitar in the chorus, for example, could have been straight out of at least two previous Ultravox albums. The Ascent, you get the feeling, is the massive breakdown that could have sat at the centre of Accent, a glorious, slowly building, string-laden wonder. And if it had been placed differently, we question, would these two tracks, combined as one, be the best Ultravox track of all time? Well, it’s a thought…
8 YOUR NAME (HAS SLIPPED MY MIND AGAIN)
And suddenly we’re into the last slice of melancholia, the stripped-back Your Name… with its thunderous kick that reverberates around your head, possibly causing the memory loss of the title. Some might say it’s melodramatic and some might say it’s pretentious, but we might say that that’s exactly why we love it – and Ultravox – so much.