Midge Ure is well aware that if someone unfamiliar and uninitiated were to peruse his CV, his career would look pretty weird on paper. “A lot of people see these spurious dots that aren’t joined up, or don’t seem to be joined up,” he laughs. Even Ure himself describes his professional trajectory as “bizarre.”

From fronting the short-lived, Bay City Rollers-associated Scottish boy band Slik to joining Glen Matlock’s post-Sex Pistols supergroup Rich Kids, and then leaving Rich Kids to explore his new fascination with electronic music and eventually making history with Ultravox, Visage, and Band Aid — with a tenure in Thin Lizzy along the way — Ure looks back on it all now and shrugs, “I don’t understand any of it at all,” admitting that he’d assumed his “Andy Warhol-esque 15 minutes was up” when Slik split in 1977.

Instead, Ure’s career has lasted more than 50 years, and he may have even unwittingly paved the way for other former boy-banders-turned-serious musicians, like his Band Aid comrade George Michael. But he remains humble, confessing that he still feels “like mentally the youngest person in the room,” and as if he doesn’t “quite belong,” when working alongside greats like Phil Collins and Eric Clapton. And he claims that it doesn’t really bother him that, despite all of his accomplishments, he’s always flown a bit under the radar. “Maybe it’s a self-deprecating Scottish thing,” he chuckles.

Nowadays, Ure isn’t feeling all that nostalgic, after releasing his first solo album since 2014, Man of Two Worlds, earlier this year. He even resisted his record label’s idea to put out another anthology, this month’s Chapters – Best Of, until he learned that the project would include new remixes by artists he admires. So, this seems like the perfect time to catch up with the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and new wave pioneer about not only this new chapter in his life, but also his many past colorful chapters — as well as what future chapters might hold for him, depending on what happens politically over the next few years.

“I think my life’s a bit of an open book,” Ure tells Lyndsanity, speaking via Zoom from him home in Portugal. “I tell everyone everything, the good and the bad. I suppose to sum it all up, even the bad bits were good. I chose to do this when I was 18. I chose to leave regular work and go full-time into a band, not knowing where it was going to take me. And for it to still happen and still excite me and still surprise me is a greater gift than having a No. 1 in America or the platinum and gold discs and all of the back-slapping, all the glittering prizes that come along with it. The big glittering prize is being allowed to carry on doing it.”

LYNDSANITY: We chatted two years ago when your Band in a Box tour was happening and covered a lot of ground, but you have way too long a Wikipedia page to discuss everything you’ve done in just one interview! There are other nostalgic things I’d to talk about this time, because you’re putting out a new retrospective, Chapters – Best Of. But I understand you weren’t initially interested in wanting to release another compilation. Why?

MIDGE URE: It’s raking over old ground again, especially as I’ve been working towards the new album — and then six months after the new one’s released, we’re going to release an old one? It’s not a greatest-hits thing; it’s a kind of compilation of a certain period in my weird background, the early Chrysalis years of solo recordings. But when they suggested that I do this, I thought, no, it’s of no interest to anybody at all.

Well, that’s untrue, obviously.

A lot of this stuff was recorded on analog tape, and of course now you can do so much sonically with sounds. I though, OK, we could translate it, to turn it into digital files. You’ve got all these wonderful plugins, these wonderful things you can do with sound that you couldn’t do back then. Then the thing that really got me was that when we were talking about it, someone said, “Wouldn’t it be really interesting getting some of your friends to come along and take a track each and [remix] them?” Get them to do something that they might feel associated or connected with somehow — someone like Craig Armstrong, who’s a film soundtrack guy. He was in my band touring America, and he chose a song that we played during that set [“That Certain Smile”], because that’s one of his favorites. And then you get the guys from Japan [Richard Barbieri and Steven Jansen] doing “After a Fashion” [as well as “Sister and Brother”], which I did with Mick Karn because they were in a band together. So, these lovely connections all started coming together. And of course, I did nothing with them; I wasn’t guiding them or telling them what to do, otherwise I would’ve done it myself. I was fascinated to listen to what they were doing… because what you end up with is their view on you. Some guys had me sounding like Erasure, and other guys had me sounding like it was like a film soundtrack. And somewhere, amongst all of this, is me.

Aside from your Chrysalis solo years, Chapters does feature a new recording of Visage’s “Fade to Grey,” which surprised me a bit, given your seeming resistance to nostalgia right now.

Well, there’s a story about it, They’ve said it’s new recordings, and they are, but they’re live. Because I do a thing called the “silent stage,” so when I perform live, there’s no amplifiers onstage. Technology has really caught up, so the guitar goes through a processor, the keyboards go straight into the digital mixing desk, [as well as] the electronic drums. If the person out front, the sound person, just pulled the main faders down on the desk, you wouldn’t hear anything coming off the stage, nothing. My voice might be somewhere in the background, and maybe a violin, but other than that, everything else is straight into the mixing desk. And of course, these days you stick a little memory card in the side of the mixing desk and you can record just about every show you do. So, when Chrysalis — who did this behind my back — said, “I want you to hear something,” and they played it for me, I said, “Who is this? Who’s playing this? Because that’s exactly the same version that we do live.” They said, “It is you!” But without all the ambient mics, without the audience mics, you take those mics down and you’re left with just these direct signals in one vocal. And it sounded great to me. It sounded really chunky and different from the original “Fade to Grey” — not better than, because there was nothing wrong with the original “Fade to Grey,” but it’s just the live version that I do.

Didn’t U2’s Adam Clayton come up with the bassline for “New Year’s Day” from listening to “Fade to Grey”? I read that somewhere.

Yeah, I heard that. Bono told me something similar — that they were trying to jam something. I think they were trying to jam “Fade to Grey” and something grew out of it, but I could have that completely wrong. But yeah, there is some very, very tenuous connection with “Fade to Grey.” I can’t hear it in “New Year’s Day” at all, but they claim it was!

So, I think at one time you were at least in three groups simultaneously, if I’m not mistaken. You were in Visage, and there was some overlap with Ultravox, and there may have been some overlap with Rich Kids. And there maybe even was some overlap with Thin Lizzy, so you may have technically been in four bands at once!

I was in Rich Kids same time we did Visage. I was with Ultravox the same time we did Visage, but I’d left Rich Kids at that point. And while Visage and Ultravox were working, that was when I did my little stint with Thin Lizzy. So, no more than three bands at one time.

Oh, OK, just three!

Just three.

But it’s interesting that you left Rich Kids because you saw the future — that synthesizers and electronic music were where you wanted to go next. And that wasn’t the direction Glen Matlock wanted to go in.

I’m not sure I saw the future, but I certainly was very enthused by the idea of incorporating this synth thing. Ultravox had just done Systems of Romance, which was the last album they did with John Foxx and Robin Simon prior to me joining. And it was fantastic, it was a great combination of traditional rock instrumentation and synthesizers, so it was a really good balance — not what came later, which was band saying, “Oh, we only use synthesizers, drum machines, and synths.” That’s really limiting yourself to the extreme. I wanted to do that with the Rich Kids, and they didn’t want it, understandably. But Rusty Egan and I took the idea and grew that into Visage, working with our favorite musicians, hence ending up joining Ultravox because Billy Currie, the keyboard player, was one of our favorite musicians, and he ended up doing the Visage thing. … But [Matlock and I] did an interview together a few years back, and he now says maybe he was a bit remiss about the synthesizer! Maybe he gave the wrong call. He didn’t see it at the time, but in hindsight, yeah.

Regardless of the chronology, you were a member of what I would consider to be several supergroups — Visage, Rich Kids, and I’d classify Band Aid as a supergroup too. What made you, early on in your career, such an in-demand musician? Even the fact that you played with Thin Lizzy — a lot of people would read your credits and say, “This does not seem like the same person did all this.”

I know! I don’t understand any of it at all. I didn’t create it. You go back and the Rich Kids thing was the most bizarre, because I’d been in a band that had been successful for a very short period, a pop band [Slik]. It was like a Rollers type of thing —that’s what everyone saw you as, because the songs were written and produced by the same people that did the Bay City Rollers. So, for Glen to pick up the phone and inquire about me, which all came through Caroline Coon, who was a journalist for the Melody Maker… she’d seen me perform with Slik, and Glen was struggling to find a frontperson, the fourth person for the Rich Kids, and she said, “He’s the guy!” Then he took her word on it and invited me down to come and do it. That’s a huge step for someone. That’s making his life more difficult, because I’d already been tarred by that brush — by the Slik brush.

We didn’t get to talk about Slik in our previous interview. I admit I don’t know much about Slik. That was a teen idol kind of thing?

Yeah, it was the girls’ magazines and stuff, pinup stuff like the Bay City Rollers. It was the end of that [1970s] boy-band era, because new wave was just about to blow everything out the water. It was the antithesis of what was going on in the charts. … So, that is the most surprising thing. The rest kind of falls into place. Once I’d been given the opportunity to move to London and join the Rich Kids and spread my wings a little bit and come up with the idea of the synthesizer… the idea of growing into Visage and joining Ultravox, I had nothing to do with those. They just happened. Rusty mentioned, “Wouldn’t it be great having a band with all favorite musicians?” And I just said, “Great, let’s do it.” And we did, and that turned into that whole thing. It was like the planets aligning; everything had to be in the right place for it all to work. It wasn’t just about the music, it was about Steve Strange, it was about the fashion, it was about the change and the accessibility of technology.

The Japanese manufacturers were creating synthesizers, which were much cheaper than the American manufacturers. So. all of a sudden these things became accessible. But the thought process behind someone buying a synthesizer and a drum machine, who didn’t know how to play keyboards, was the same thought process as picking up a guitar and joining a punk band three years earlier. Everyone’s still trying to do it with two fingers or whatever, but they were creating something that felt new and fresh and different, and just as radical as punk was when it started. … It was the same thing. You find yourself with this tool, you’re not really sure how to play it, but the naivety got you through it. The excitement of the noises you could make got you through it. The DIY-ness was so intriguing.

Speaking of boy bands, some people have argued that the Sex Pistols were a boy band, because they were young guys put together by a Svengali of sorts. And for a very brief moment, you almost were in the Sex Pistols. I assumed that’s how Glen Matlock knew about you, because Malcolm McLaren had scouted you.

I’m not sure Malcolm McLaren would’ve even known who I was a year after they asked me to join the band. It’s not like I was already famous. Slik hadn’t happened. Slik was just about to happen. So, I’m not sure he put two and two together. He mentioned it in his book somewhere, but that could have been in retrospect, maybe. No, Glen didn’t know anything about me, I don’t think. … It was a big step for Glen to take.

Have you ever asked Caroline Coon why she recommended you to him?

No, I haven’t seen her for a long, long time. Our paths never really crossed an awful lot after that. But she was the instigator.

That’s very cool. I hope she knows that. I’m starting to think you might have been one of the original boy-band guys who breaks out and becomes credible later, like Harry Styles, Robbie Williams, or Justin Timberlake. It’s definitely the exception to the rule. Did you always have your eye on something bigger?

Well, you have to transport back in time, back to Scotland in the early ’70s. For a small country with a fairly small population, we punch way above our weight. We have a wealth of great music. We’re great at engineering. We’re great at creating things. We’re great at medical stuff. We do a lot of things that are world-changing. But what we didn’t have was the infrastructure that London had in the music industry. We had no recording studios. The only recording studios up there were for accordion bands, traditional Scottish music, bagpipes, all of that stuff. Independent labels didn’t happen until Simple Minds came along; Simple Minds stayed in Scotland, stayed in Glasgow to make the first record and get signed, because the whole new wave thing had happened. So, back in the early-to-mid-’70s, it was like a musical desert. There was nothing there.

The band I was in, we were quite a well-known band in Scotland, and went to see Dirty Harry one day and cut off our long hair and came out with a James Dean quiff and changed our name from Salvation to Slik. We were rehearsing in one of the venues that our manager up in Glasgow owned, and one of the writers and producers from the Bay City Rollers happened to be in the building and heard us doing Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” — and he thought it was the record! He stuck his head around the corner and saw these four young guys doing this thing, because in Scotland you had to play the top 40; we didn’t have a pub-rock circuit like you did in London. You couldn’t survive playing proper venues. So, we were doing this thing, and he offered us this record deal.

So, Slik were not a “boy band” in the sense of being manufactured.

No, we’d been touring the Scottish circuit for three years at this point, so it wasn’t a manufactured band at all. But when we turned up to make our first record, they’d already made the record! They got the session guys in, the same guys who played on the Bay City Rollers’ records. We walked in, and there’s this music playing — we were only expected to sing on it.

This is like the Monkees!

Yeah, exactly, exactly. We had four Mike Dolenzes in the band. We could all play. We all knew what we were doing. But it was the only deal we were ever offered. We were naive enough to think, “Well, we’ll do it for now, and then we’ll grow out of that and be allowed to grow out of it” — which you’re not allowed to. But you’re quite right, I am one of the handful of people who started off with that kind of beginning and was allowed to grow up, a bit like George Michael or whatever.

Did you and George Michael ever talk about that? Obviously you worked together in Band Aid.

No, not at all. I don’t think I’ve actually spoken to anyone about it! But when you think about it, there are only four or five artists that spring to mind that have gone on and been allowed to grow up. It took a long time. Those resentments last a long time. People like to bring it up 30 years later, 40 years later. And that’s fine. They can carry on doing that. But it’s not the sort of thing you sit down and have a chat with someone about.

Oops, I’m sorry I brought it up! But was there actually a time where you were worried that perhaps shortsightedly taking advantage of this seemingly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to sign the Slik record deal, had ruined your chances of having a future long-term, serious career?

Yeah, my Andy Warhol-esque 15 minutes was up. I’d done it, and we broke the record contract. We couldn’t deal with it anymore. When new wave started, the writers insisted on writing all the songs because that’s where all the money was. And they wrote a song with a nod to what was going on, and it was called “The Kid’s a Punk.” And it was horrendous! The opening line was: “Hey, hey, hear what they say/He looks just like James Dean.” I just said, “No, I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore.” And we packed up and went back to Glasgow and broke the contract, hoping to get re-signed. But by that point, everyone was trying to sign new wave bands, punk bands.

But then you joined the Rich Kids, so it all worked out.

I was lucky. As I said, my 15 minutes was up, and I got a lifeline thrown to me from Glen Matlock.

Well, your career has gone in so many directions, and could have gone in so many other directions. You could have been in the Sex Pistols, after all!

Yeah, but I wouldn’t have been right for the band at all. I’d be tuning the guitars and stuff, which is what my task was in the Rich Kids: to teach them how to tune the guitars! I would’ve been like an old fuddy-duddy. I wouldn’t have been right for that situation at all. And I get itchy feet, I think — itchy fingers, itchy feet, whatever. I want to explore something new, and there’s only so much new stuff you can uncover and create, so you use the tools you have. It’s not about whether it’s guitars or synthesizers. It’s about trying to keep your mind working and find a more interesting way of saying something, or find a more interesting song than you wrote in your last album.

But then, less than 10 years later, you were the musical director for the 1986 Prince’s Trust Concert, which was about as all-star as Band Aid or Live Aid. It had David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Elton John, George Michael, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Phil Collins, everyone. You were still young, and not long before, you’d been the Slik kid that maybe everybody had written off, or the Ultravox guy that people didn’t think could replace John Foxx. Were you just like, “How did this become my life?”

Yeah, I’ve done that a lot, but they’re all pinch-me moments. You’re standing there surrounded by these luminaries, people that you’ve loved and respected, playing guitar next to Clapton or whoever. They’re pinch-me moments because you’re still the kid from campus lying in the outskirts of Glasgow dreaming of being there, doing this, and being there and doing it is so surreal. It’s bizarre. I always feel like mentally the youngest person in the room, whenever I walk into a room full of that kind of stature of artists. I feel like I don’t quite belong. It’s this thing in the back of my head; maybe it’s a self-deprecating Scottish thing, I don’t know. But yeah, I do feel slightly intimidated by those guys, because they’re just so good at what they do. That would’ve been the case certainly at that [Prince’s Trust Concert], even though they were all really sweet.

Do you still feel that way, though? I could maybe understand how you felt that way at Live Aid or the Band Aid session or at the Prince’s Trust Concert in the ‘80s, because you were still relatively new to the game and coming from that boy-band background. But surely by now when you’re in a room of rock stars, you don’t have impostor syndrome anymore.

I think there’s still an element of it. That’s still there. I still feel like a kid amongst these adults. I know very well that I’m not a kid! But it’s that sense of just feeling mentally younger. I don’t know why.

That’s probably a good mindset, actually. What would you say is the biggest pinch-me moment of your career? You have obviously a long list to choose from.

Oh God, that’s a tricky one. Well, as a spotty youth trying to learn how to play guitar, I was a massive Clapton fan. And when he was out working on one of Sting’s solo albums at a house in Montserrat in the Caribbean… of course, being Clapton and being Sting, Sting wasn’t there. He just left the studio open for a week, booked it for the week and got Clapton in to play whatever he wanted on the album. He did it all in a day and then hung about for the next six days. So, we were just hanging out and we sat together picking up some guitars and playing one-on-one, and he said, “How the hell did you learn to play like that?” And I’m saying, “I’ve learned it from you and Cream! I’m playing your riffs!” That was a massive pinch-me moment. I think another of the biggest ones was when I was on Top of the Pops… it must have been one of the early Ultravox tunes. And Phil Collins was on with “In the Air Tonight” and he came over — and he knew me! He knew my name! I thought, “This is ridiculous. How can he know me? I can’t quite grasp it in my head.”

And a few years later, you and Phil Collins would be the only actual musicians who played on Band Aid’s “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” — it was Phil on the drums and you playing everything else! I’ve talked with you many times about “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” but since the holidays are upon us, I’ll ask this again: Have you come around to that song yet? We’ve had more than one conversation when you’ve said you think that song is just OK, but it’s my favorite Christmas song of all time.

It’s still not a brilliant song, but it’s a good record. I haven’t heard it this year because I’m in Portugal. I’ve heard the Portuguese version a couple of years back — dodgy Portuguese, like a bossa nova version or something — but I don’t hear it over here very often. But that’s when I know it’s Christmas in October, when you’re walking around the supermarket and there it is: the opening clang of doom.

It’s interesting to me with your career that you’ve had, given that you co-wrote, played most of the instruments, and produced “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” that when I ask you what your biggest pinch-me moment is, it’s not that. It’s not even Live Aid. Some artists who participated might say, “My pinch-me moment was when I was onstage at Live Aid,” or “When I was at the Band Aid session,” yet that was not your answer. That shows just how much you’ve accomplished in your career.

It’s also such a personal thing. It’s not always about the biggest thing. Sometimes it’s just the fact that Kate Bush said, “Yes, I’ll do a duet with you.” How cool is that? It’s those little moments that make all the boring elements of touring worth it. That moment you walk onstage and you can see a sea of people singing lyrics that you wrote, singing a song back at you, all of that is just magical. It’s just wonderful.

I feel like you’re still under the radar a little bit. I don’t know if a lot of people, at least in the U.S., are aware of the credits you had on Live Aid/Band Aid, or that you were in all of these other important bands besides just Ultravox. You’re obviously a humble guy, so maybe you prefer it that way. But I think more people should know this about you.

I need a documentary made about me!

Has that been discussed?

It’s been mentioned by a few people, because I think like yourself, a lot of people see these spurious dots that aren’t joined up, or don’t seem to be joined up. They’re joined up in my head, because it’s a linear thing for me. But yeah, there’s a lot of people saying, “You’ve got to tell that story, because it’s so bizarre!” You couldn’t write it as a Hollywood script. It’s crazy.

I mean, hear me out: There needs to be a campaign to get you into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, kind of in the same way Nile Rodgers was inducted, as both a performer and a man behind the scenes throughout many musical eras. How do you feel about that? Or in general, about being sort of undersung — does that ever bother you?

Well, you want people to know what you’ve done. You want people to be able to access what you’ve done. It’s always, always been about the music. And if you let people know and they can find it, it’s a bit like when I did that David Bowie cover, “The Man Who Sold the World.” I did it for a movie back in ‘82 or something like that, and nobody heard it. That movie was dreadful. It was called Party Party. It was like a British version of Porky’s, really bad. The producers decided that they wanted, as a soundtrack, various artists to do cover versions of their favorite songs and they would pay for it, so they did. But then [the Bowie cover] ended up on a video game, a Metal Gear Solid game, because the guy who created Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, is a massive Ultravox fan, a massive Midge fan. He told me he was going to put it into his game, this multimillion-selling game, and I kind of pooh-pooed it. I don’t know anything about it. But now if you look at Spotify, that song has streamed more than anything I’ve ever done in my life, because it hit a different audience. This version, without any context at all, which I did 40-odd years ago, has hit an entirely different gaming audience. It’s crazy.

I’m looking it up on Spotify right now. Your “Ma Who Sold the World” remake has 62 million streams.

Sixty-two million. Yeah, anything else I’ve done is nowhere near that.

Your solo Spotify stats are not too shabby! “If I Was” has 18 million, and “Breathe” has 13 million. And on the subject of syncs or placements, when “Breathe” was in a Swatch commercial in the late ’90s and blew up as a result, that was unusual for the time. Having a song in an ad used to be considered selling out.

It wasn’t “cool,” yeah.

That was maybe the first time I recall a sort of underground song finding a new audience that way, and it being considered a cool thing. How did that come about, during yet another interesting juncture in your career?

“Breathe” had been out for two years before Swatch picked it up, and it died to death. It was the worst-selling record I’d ever had in my entire career. The worst-selling record by far.

And now it’s your third-most-streamed solo song.

Back then I thought, “That’s it. My series of 15 minutes has expired. There’s none left. I’ve used the last one and it’s gone.” I was depressed and thought I’d never make another record and all of that stuff. A fan who bought the record the day it came out, who fell in love with the song in Italy, his job was to place music with adverts. And he took it to Swatch and played it to them personally, and they fell in love with it and asked me, can they use it? I said, “Well, nobody’s ever heard it. It’s never been on the radio. All the radio stations have got it in the library somewhere, but never play it.” I thought someone might get to hear it somewhere. … I saw it as just a different vehicle to try and get the music across to people. That’s it. There was no big deal. There was no, “Oh, here’s a million dollars.” There was none of that at all. … They didn’t alter it. They didn’t change it. They didn’t change the lyrics. They didn’t change nothing, just put it out in this beautifully shot film. … The quality of the advert was really good. It was a really beautifully shot film, about “what can you do in a Swatch moment, a Swatch minute?” It was just a countdown of a clock, and it was all about breathing. It was all about love and respect and communication. It just did exactly what I hoped it might do. It landed on the right ears, but it was a lot more ears than I thought it would ever land on. … With the audience reaction in Italy, where it started, people were phoning up radio stations saying, “What is this? Have you got this song?” [The radio people would say] no, then they’d look in the library and there it was — unplayed, never been touched. It just grew from there and expanded. It was one of the biggest records I’ve ever had, everywhere, except the U.K. … It was another real oddity.

When you look back on your varied career, what do you think the weirdest development, the biggest oddity, was? I still feel like we haven’t covered it all.

I’m not sure. I think my life’s a bit of an open book, to tell you the truth. I’m very honest. I tell everyone everything, the good and the bad. I suppose to sum it all up, even the bad bits were good. I chose to do this when I was 18. I chose to leave regular work and go full-time into a band, not knowing where it was going to take me. And for it to still happen and still excite me and still surprise me is a greater gift than having a No. 1 in America or the platinum and gold discs and all of the back-slapping, all the glittering prizes that come along with it. The big glittering prize is being allowed to carry on doing it.

And this year you carried on with your first solo album in 12 years, Man of Two Worlds. Why was their such a big gap in your discography?

I’m in no hurry. I’m doing an awful lot of live work, and I really enjoy playing live. It’s like you get the ingredients for the cake and you don’t take it out of the oven until it’s ready, or it all falls apart. When the music’s ready, that’s the time to release it. And this time ‘round, because of COVID and lockdown and all that, I ended up with this double-album, which I’m very proud of. The songs say what I need them to say, and the music is ethereal, it’s beautiful, it’s haunting, everything I wanted it to be.

Do you have any other cakes in the oven right now, so to speak?

No, not right now. No. I’ve been doing lots of that other stuff, the live stuff. I’m continuing the U.K. tour next week — they’ve added extra dates, so I’ve come back to do that — then I’m taking the tour into Europe. Then I’ll pop back into the studio and dabble. I’m always writing the things down, but I need to be in the studio to nail them, really.

No U.S. dates on the horizon?

No, I vowed I wouldn’t go [to America] while things were as volatile as they are. I mean, we [Brits] have had our own fair share of morons running the country, and I just didn’t want to be there while that man was still in power. The album says it all: “The Man Who Stole Your Soul.” It’s nothing to do with me, your politics, it’s your country, but everything that America does bounces around the world, like ripples. The ripple effect is huge. As I say, we’ve had our own morons as well, so the ripples are coming in your direction as well. So right now, no plans, but the midterms have given me a lot of hope. It’s fantastic. … A lot of people I’ve spoken to recently are all quite hopeful now that the tide is turning, and hopefully you’ll get someone in there who is capable of being human.

Well, let’s end this interview on a hopeful note then, with me saying I hope to see you on this side of the pond very soon. Maybe when you get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2027..

I’ll wait for the phone call from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and see what they say.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. Midge Ure’s interview can be viewed in full in the video player at the top of this page.