How algorithms are reviving traditional Scottish music for the next generation<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n I was called up by former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and asked to move to London to come and join his band, the Rich Kids. Later I bought a synthesiser, brought it into the band, and it instantly killed the Rich Kids. Half the band hated it, half the band loved it.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rusty Egan [the drummer] and I took the synthesiser and put together Visage, using all our favourite musicians at the time, the guys from Ultravox and from Magazine.\n<\/p>\n
\n Visage was a big band with a great hit \u2013 Fade To Grey \u2013 as well. We thought we\u2019d just make music for the kids who went to a club in London run by Rusty and his mate, Steve Strange, which played this strange European dance music.\n<\/p>\n
\n It was purely driven by passion and the idea of incorporating this new instrument \u2013 the synthesiser \u2013 which had only just become affordable. Until a Japanese manufacturer started bringing them out, a mini-Moog cost the same price as a house.\n<\/p>\n
So when you joined Ultravox you obviously brought with you an ability to write songs that would be hits. Was that a surprise to them?<\/p>\n
\n It was a surprise to me. Up to that point, I hadn\u2019t really written a lot. I\u2019d only written a couple of songs on the Rich Kids album.\n<\/p>\n
\n When I joined Ultravox I was surrounded by these amazing, adventurous musicians, and these guys had been using electronics and drum machines and whatever for a few years prior to me joining, so it was a very creative environment.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
<\/p>\n
\n All of a sudden, I was creating Vienna. When you have the right people around you, you bounce off each other, and this thing just appears, this monster.\n<\/p>\n
Did you know Vienna was a monster when you wrote it?<\/p>\n
\n We knew it was good, yeah, but it went against every rule in the \u201cmaking a single\u201d rule book. It was slow. It was meandering. It speeds up. It\u2019s got a viola solo in the middle of a synthesised thing. It\u2019s four minutes long.\n<\/p>\n
\n What were the chances of getting that on the radio? None. I mean, none. It was a fluke. It was luck. That was nothing to do with us. We made it. Someone else got it on the radio for us.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![\"Left]()
Left to right: keyboard player Billy Currie, bassist Chris Cross, singer Midge Ure and drummer Warren Cann (Image: Getty) When the record label wanted to put it out, they wanted to edit it down to three minutes. And we just said we\u2019d rather not put it out. We just didn\u2019t want this thing that we\u2019d created to be chopped up in order to get out to the general public.\n<\/p>\n
\n They ended up putting it out in its entirety.\u00a0It was just one of those Wuthering Heights, Bohemian Rhapsody moments, where it didn\u2019t matter how long it was, because once people heard that, it did something to them.\n<\/p>\n
Is Ultravox over for you now?<\/p>\n
\n It is. Chris [Cross] the bass player and my big mate in the band died over a year ago now. Warren [Cann], the drummer, is retired out in California. And Billy [Currie, keyboards and strings], I haven\u2019t seen or heard from for quite a few years. Men are just weird, aren\u2019t they? We just walk away from things, and then it\u2019s like, oh, that was then, you know.\n<\/p>\n
Do you spend much time looking back or is making new music still a driving force?<\/p>\n
\n I don\u2019t want to be just a karaoke machine. Though that\u2019s ridiculous saying that, because the tour that I\u2019m currently doing is the Catalogue: The Hits tour, which is kind of karaoke, going back to various points in your career.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the Bandstand I\u2019ll be playing the hits over the years but also some tunes that might have been skimmed over which still resonate with me.\n<\/p>\n
\n I think making new music is always important to me. I\u2019m constantly doing it. I\u2019m just slow at it. I\u2019m more pedantic than I used to be.\n<\/p>\n
\n I don\u2019t have someone knocking on the door going, \u201cHey, what we really need right now is a new album.\u201d People don\u2019t come to see you for a new album. Live is where it is right now, and people expect to hear key songs from your career. You can still play new music there, but they\u2019re what I call the tumbleweed moments. It\u2019s all going so well, then you say, \u201cHere\u2019s something from my new album.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Do you think it would be more difficult to become a success in music now than it was when you were starting out?<\/p>\n
\n I think you have to be more multifaceted these days. If you were putting a band together now, you wouldn\u2019t just go for a great keyboard player. You\u2019d go for a good keyboard player and somebody who\u2019s brilliant at social media.\n<\/p>\n
\n You\u2019d go for a good drummer, but somebody who\u2019s really good at home recording … for a good bass player but somebody who\u2019s really good at doing graphics. You have to be able to do all of those things now.\n<\/p>\n
\n These days you can make music at home and put it on the internet but it\u2019s like trying to find a needle in a haystack because there\u2019s no filtration system. There\u2019s no A&R guys going \u201cthat\u2019s not good.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n We have to do this. Let\u2019s fix this. There\u2019s nobody there controlling it, so it\u2019s just a free-for-all. For anyone putting music out, it\u2019s an absolute bun fight to try and get your music heard.\n<\/p>\n
\n You have to be skilled at all these other things, which means that the core thing you should be doing is being whittled away a little bit because you\u2019re spending so much time on social media telling people what you\u2019ve just made.\n<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t live in Scotland now, but you mentioned a time when acts had to move to London to succeed. Do you think that\u2019s the same now?<\/p>\n
\n No, I don\u2019t think so. When I joined the Rich Kids I was invited to go down to London and I moved there back in \u201977.\n<\/p>\n
\n Simple Minds stayed in Glasgow and did it from Scotland. They built a studio. Zoom Records came along and signed them.\n<\/p>\n
\n When I left, Glasgow had one four-track recording studio, and it was used by accordion bands and stuff. There were no facilities. We had all the talent, but we had nothing to nurture it, nothing to exploit this talent, to let it grow.\n<\/p>\n
\n The moment I got on a bloody plane to go to London, that all changed.\n<\/p>\n
When you got the call from Bob Geldof about starting Band Aid did you agree to help straight away?<\/p>\n
\n I was standing next to Paula Yates about to go on the Tube. Bob called Paula, and she handed the phone to me, that was it.\n<\/p>\n
\n So, Bob was on the phone saying, \u201cI\u2019ve just seen this footage [of the famine in Ethiopia]. It\u2019s disgusting. I want to do something. Will you help?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n I hadn\u2019t seen the footage at the time. You kind of half-heartedly go, okay … until you see the footage. And then you go, \u201cnow I get it. I see what that is.\u201d So you make time. You couldn\u2019t be too busy to do it.\n<\/p>\n
\n I spent four days in my studio taking Bob\u2019s half-baked ideas and my half-baked ideas and recording all the instruments. I played all the instruments on the record, except Phil Collins\u2019s drums. And I spent four days doing that while Bob bludgeoned all the artists to come on board.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
<\/p>\n
\n We set up the Band Aid trust because George Harrison had said, \u201cDon\u2019t do what I did. I did the concert for Bangladesh and all the money got eaten up in overheads.\u201d So we found ourselves responsible for all this money, and that was petrifying. So we set up a board of trustees, a bunch of us sitting around a table.\n<\/p>\n
\n We thought it was going to be a six-month project while we oversaw the spending of this money. We didn\u2019t know anything about high-protein biscuits, or medication or shipping or anything like that, but we knew enough people who did.\n<\/p>\n
\n That six-month project has turned into 40 years plus. All the people who joined the board then who are still alive are still on that board.\n<\/p>\n
\n We get emails every day from projects asking for funding, and we have to analyse and assess them and all of that. So, it\u2019s ongoing, even when there\u2019s no anniversary, when there\u2019s nobody particularly interested in it.\n<\/p>\n
\n READ MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>Pat Kane: Language really matters if we\u2019re to save ourselves from AI overlords<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n The Live Aid event was bigger than I ever anticipated. It felt like a step too far and it was never going to happen. It was too big. But Harvey Goldsmith [the promoter] had put on big concerts before.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bob and I couldn\u2019t tell you how to plug in an amp. But you surround yourself with people who can and we pulled in some of the best.\n<\/p>\n
\n For an industry that\u2019s shark-infested and all about me, me, me, me, me, to turn around and do something for people that you\u2019d never meet, in a continent you might never visit was just incredible.\n<\/p>\n
Do you think the world\u2019s a better place now than it was then?<\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s like a Hollywood horror movie. I\u2019ve just come back from America, and I wasn\u2019t even sure I would get in. People have been stopped by immigration and had their phones taken from them and flipped through.\n<\/p>\n
\n And if you\u2019ve said anything about the big orange thing, you\u2019re not allowed in. You\u2019re turned around and sent back. And that\u2019s just bizarre. Maybe it\u2019s 24-hour news, maybe it\u2019s the internet and all the false information that\u2019s put out there. But the world just seems to be a very, very, very scary place.\n<\/p>\n
\n In America, the haves and the have-nots are much further apart. Politically, it\u2019s scary. It\u2019s like the Pandora\u2019s box has been opened and the vibrations of racism that could have been there for a long time have been let loose.\n<\/p>\n
You were an outspoken opponent of Brexit. Has the reality of that been less bad or worse than you envisaged?<\/p>\n
\n For the music industry, it\u2019s been horrendous. In the music industry, trucking doesn\u2019t work.\n<\/p>\n
\n You know, a lot of companies have had to go and set up their trucking companies in Belgium or Holland or whatever, because Brexit made it almost impossible to take all your equipment from the UK and go to Paris or Denmark or wherever. The paperwork involved in it is ludicrous. We\u2019ve gone back to how it was in the 1970s. You have to list every piece of equipment you\u2019ve got, and you have to show that crossing every single border in Europe now.\n<\/p>\n
\n I have travelled around Europe quite a bit since Brexit happened, the first thing that border guards say is \u201cWe\u2019re sorry you\u2019ve done this.\u201d They didn\u2019t want us to leave. If you tell someone a lie often enough, it will become their truth.\n<\/p>\n
\n And we were sold this whole thing about how we had no control over our country, and all the decisions were being made in Europe and that wasn\u2019t the case. We were part of something that could negotiate with the rest of the world.\n<\/p>\n
\n And now we can\u2019t. I think Obama said about Brexit that we would not be front of the queue when it came to strike [trade] deals, we\u2019d be at the back of the queue because we had chosen to be at the back of the queue, and that\u2019s what\u2019s happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He then went on to have hits with Slik, Rich Kids, Visage, Ultravox and as a solo artist,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-148002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114605032926680290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}