(This article originally ran on Yahoo Music for Live Aid’s 30th anniversary, and has been updated.)

They were the world. They were the rock ‘n’ roll children. Hard as it may be to believe, it was 40 long years ago, on July 13, 1985, that more than 75 artists, 190,000 concertgoers, and a whopping 1.9 billion television viewers across 150 nations gathered for Sir Bob Geldof’s massive Live Aid “superconcerts” — held jointly at London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Stadium, and inspired by the all-star charity singles “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World,” to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief.

Four decades later, where those funds went, exactly, is still a hot topic of debate. However, every ‘80s child remembers tuning in to MTV, and every artist that graced those two revolving stages agrees that music history was made that day. Prince Charles and Princess Diana rubbed epauletted shoulders with David Bowie; Sean Penn (aka Mr. Madonna Ciccone at the time) hung out in a trailer with Simple Minds; Mick Jagger de-skirted Tina Turner on live television; the original “Fab Five” Duran Duran lineup played its last show for the next 18 years; Phil Collins hopped on the Concorde in order to appear at both concerts; Queen and U2 played gigs of a lifetime; and everyone from elder statesmen Page & Plant, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young to new wave newbies Thomas Dolby and Howard Jones joined forces for a singalong heard ’round the world.

Below, a dozen or so Live Aid alumni from both sides of the pond reflect on that momentous day: the surreal star sightings, the nerves, the backstage shenanigans, the onstage mishaps, the misplaced money, and more.

MARTHA QUINN, MTV VJ (Philadelphia): My contention is Live Aid 1985 was probably the pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll.

JOHN TAYLOR, DURAN DURAN/POWER STATION (Philadelphia): When I think back on Live Aid, I am almost overwhelmed by the glory of it all. Pop culture would never be the same again.

STEVE NORMAN, SPANDAU BALLET (London): It was an incredible atmosphere in Wembley Stadium. It was a very sunny day. Our singer had a full-length leather coat on! Even though it was a beautiful, sunny July day.

ADAM ANT (London): I did “Viva La Rock,” because I thought it was in the spirit of the day. But in retrospect, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience for me — because people would come up to me endlessly for years saying, “Why didn’t you do ‘Stand and Deliver’?” Initially, I was asked to do four songs, and then I think what happened is big bands started to show interest — Queen, Bowie — and late in the day through Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter, I was told, “You’re off the show, you’re not doing it.” Fortunately, I was managed by Miles Copeland, who managed Sting, who said, “If you don’t put Adam on, you’re not having Sting.” So I got one song.

STEVE NORMAN: There was a kind of tension that day, because we only had an allotted time, and if you went one minute over, they pulled the plug on you. It was that simple. So I think everyone had their eye on the clock.

ADAM ANT: The main reason a lot of people got cut is when Bono jumped off the stage… We were all told by Bob Geldof, “No one goes over; if you don’t stop, we’re literally gonna press a button and the stage will spin around.” And Bono jumped off the stage and played forever, so a lot of bands didn’t get to play [their full sets]…. Everybody stuck to their time except Bono! [Editor’s note: Due to Bono’s unplanned stage-jumping, U2 actually cut the final song from their set, “Pride,” in order to stay on schedule.]

MICHAEL DES BARRES, THE POWER STATION (Philadelphia): Bill Graham was the master of the ceremonies, the P.T. Barnum of the situation. It was a circular stage, so you had a band or artist playing and when they finished their three obligatory songs, the thing would turn and then there would be another band set up, ready to go.

JIM KERR, SIMPLE MINDS (Philadelphia): I think we had 13 minutes or something. Thirteen unlucky minutes? But I remember this quite clearly: The legendary promoter Bill Graham came over and leaned in and made it abundantly clear as to what would happen if we played just a minute over. I will just say that he was very frank. But we thought, “This is cool! This is Bill Graham!” Because he was such a legend on his own. You have to remember, we were just some guys from Glasgow.

REV RUN: It was too big for me to understand — how I go from playing a probably all-urban/African-American place, probably the night before, and then having to get up at 7 and fly to Philly, and then see a sea of all different races. I had never seen that many people in my life. It felt uncontrollable to me — like, “How am I going to control this? What is this? What is happening? Why am I here?” We didn’t have “Walk This Way” out yet.

RICK SPRINGFIELD: It was a pretty surreal day. Everyone was thinking the world would change because of the incredible degree of commitment from so many for one cause. It didn’t change anything. Music only reflects social change; it doesn’t cause it. The problems in Africa have only multiplied a thousandfold. But it was a brave and noble try.

ADAM ANT: Politics aside, the actual day itself was wonderful and it was a wonderful gesture; I think it became a promotional thing and just a bit of a mess, but I think at that time it was something that was really from the right place. Everybody did it from the heart.

ROGER DALTREY: You know, how do you refuse? I mean, Bob Geldof is quite a slick talker: “If you get together, you will really help us get other people on board by the Who being there. Will you do this?” You can’t say no to those things. That famine in Ethiopia, it was enormous. There was enormous suffering going on. Now, whether we solved any problems with it, I don’t know. Africa seems to always have problems, doesn’t it? But we did our best. The music business came together for that event in a remarkable way.

MICHAEL DES BARRES: This Irish punk, Bobby Geldof, created this because he saw a documentary that infuriated him, and it began the idea that rock ‘n’ roll stars could do something, that they could actually mean something. There was power there, and I think that that was probably the most important part of that event — because God knows what happened to the money. It was a more innocent time. And a more stoned time.

JOHN OATES: It definitely was a more innocent time. The ’80s were an era of what seemed to be endless possibility. It was like, the go-go ’80s, you know? And it filtered down through all aspects of society. Like Wall Street, people were making scads of money. Excess was everywhere. It seemed like the horizon was limitless. It just had that feeling to it. It was in between wars. It really had this euphoric kind of feeling. I think everyone’s heart and intention was in the right the place with “We Are the World” and things like Live Aid. It was a nice attempt for the entertainment world and musicians in general to try to do something on a greater scale. There’s nothing you can criticize about that. I would agree now, when you see the fact that Africa and so many places in the world are still in the state that they’re in, it really was only a Band-Aid on a wound that is very hard to heal. I think people are more realistic now. People have more ability to access information. In those days, you just didn’t know; you felt if you raised some money and you could do something good, then good things would happen. It wasn’t that good things didn’t happen, it just that it wasn’t enough.

ADAM ANT: I would have suggested that the U.N. take the money in. I think a lot of the food got to the borders and got taken by the army. And the actual government itself in the problem areas said it did cause a lot of trouble, because a lot of people moved to centers to try and get to the food, and it wasn’t there; it had been stolen by the army. It’s been quite sad, very sad. But I think on the day itself, the energy was there.

MIDGE URE: I can tell you off the top of my head that between Band Aid and Live Aid, I think it generated somewhere in the region of $190 million. So it generated a substantial amount of money; I think the record initially raised something like 7 million pounds.

JOHN OATES: To me, you can’t worry about how much money was raised. What’s [the] more important question is, “How much money actually got to where it was needed to go?” That’s the real question. That’s the question everyone should ask any time they get involved with a charity or a benefit type of event. How much of the funds are being siphoned off on the bureaucratic side of the organization or the event? How much filters out to where it’s supposed to go?

MARTHA QUINN: Where the money is going — that is a totally valid question. I support that question. But does that mean we shouldn’t try? I love that our gut reaction to suffering is to help. The vibe at Live Aid was so positive. Everyone donated their time and paid their own expenses. Philadelphia gave JFK Stadium for free! It was not only a dizzying array of talent, but everything good about humanity.

GLENN TIPTON, JUDAS PRIEST (Philadelphia): To be amongst so many respected and talented artists who were all fighting the same cause was an incredible feeling and one that will live with me for the rest of my life. When everyone joined together onstage and sang “We Are the World,” it was one of the most emotional moments I can recall. And knowing that music, even heavy metal, played its part was a wonderful feeling.

MIDGE URE: Here we are nearly [40] years later, and [“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”] is still played on the radio; the song royalties go directly to the Band Aid trust and go directly to Africa.

HOWARD JONES (London): Live Aid was the highlight event of the ’80s. It brought together music artists and a global audience, for a great cause. It was proof that one person’s outrage could be transformed into something that brought the world together and could save thousands of people’s lives. It was a privilege to be part of it. I hope that with this anniversary, it is remembered as a benchmark for global activism and compassion.

STEVE NORMAN: It seems so weird it was that [40] years ago. Good grief.

Watch Michael Des Barres speak with Lyndsanity about his Live Aid experience:

There are many, many ways that pop-culture fans have discovered shapeshifting rocker/actor Michael Des Barres over the decades. Some may know him from his big-screen debut at age 17 in the 1967 Sidney Poitier film To Sir, With Love; or as the frontman of the Deep Purple- and Led Zeppelin-associated bands Silverhead and Detective; or as the co-writer of Animotion’s 1983 hit “Obsession”; or as the longtime host of the Little Steven’s Underground Garage morning show on SiriusXM; or as iconic MacGyver villain Murdoc; or for his many other television appearances on shows like Roseanne, Seinfeld, Melrose Place, Northern Exposure, Frasier, and Nip/Tuck.

But if you’re one of the Gen X kids among the estimated 1.9 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world population at the time) who watched the global Live Aid concert broadcast 40 years ago, on July 13, 1985, then you might best know Des Barres as the lead singer of the Power Station.

Live Aid was, incredibly, only Des Barres’s second public appearance with the Duran Duran-spinoff supergroup — as an extremely last-minute replacement, after original frontman Robert Palmer unceremoniously bowed out. And the Power Station were part of an absolutely stacked Philadelphia bill that included everyone from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and the surviving Zeppelin members; to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; to Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood; to comeback queen Tina Turner and rising pop princess Madonna.

And yet, it seems Des Barres was the only performer at JFK Stadium who wasn’t nervous that day.

“I’d been in many, many movies. I’d done 120 hours of television by that time. So, getting nervous is not something I do,” chuckles Des Barres, who was a decade older than the Power Station’s John and Andy Taylor, and (definitely unlike John and Andy) had already been clean and sober for four years when Live Aid took place. Des Barres’s young bandmates, however, were “very nervous and very frightened about what could happen,” he recalls.

The surprise success of the Power Station’s self-titled debut album (a success so surprising, in fact, that Palmer, whose only U.S. performance with the group was on Saturday Night Live, quickly decided that it was more of a commitment than he’d bargained for) had impressed all the rockist snobs who’d once wrongly dismissed the Taylors’ main band, Duran Duran, as mere pretty-boy teen-pop. And so, Live Aid, which was set to be followed by an international Power Station tour, was a massive opportunity. “They had prayed for something like this — and now it’s happening, but Palmer has split. It was not cool, really, to do that to them,” says Des Barres. “I mean, God bless him, but a week away from a six-month tour — and he quits? That’s kind of heavy.”

So, how exactly did Des Barres end up at Live Aid, playing right after Neil Young, in front of a live Philly audience of 100,000 people and a TV audience about 20,000 times that size?

“I was with Don Johnson — in Miami, of course — and we were just gallivanting around. We were doing a record together, me and him,” recalls Des Barres, who was longtime pals with the Miami Vice star and later used that connection to land the Power Station a cameo on an October 1985 episode on the slick NBC cop drama. “And I get a call: ‘Come to New York!’”

At first, the talent agent on the other end of the line, Wayne Forte, would only tell Des Barres that he represented a mystery band in desperate need of a new lead singer. But eventually Forte revealed that the meeting in New York City would be with John and Andy Taylor, who’d been impressed by Des Barres’s stage presence when another supergroup that Des Barres had fronted — Chequered Past, featuring the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and several members of Blondie — had opened for Duran Duran the year before. “It was like saying Rudolf Nureyev wanted to dance with me,” Des Barres laughingly says of the out-of-the-blue offer.

Des Barres took a whirlwind flight to meet with John and the Power Station’s drummer, Tony Thompson of Chic, in New York, where they were “looking very nervous, because this was millions of dollars at stake.” He recalls that John was actually holding a list of other possible replacement frontmen. “I look down and I read all these names… I won’t tell you who!” he chuckles, although it’s known that before Robert Palmer originally signed on, other singers that were considered included Mick Jagger, Billy Idol, and the Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler. But regardless, after the New York meeting, Des Barres moved to the top of John’s list, and he was then flown to London that same night, to meet with Andy.

“I hadn’t slept for 24 hours,” Des Barres recalls. “There was a limo waiting for me at Heathrow Airport. I went to the studio. Five hours, I waited, exhausted. And Andy shows up with two bodyguards, big guys, and he says, ‘Go in and sing something.’” Des Barres, who’d been part of Britain’s early-‘70s glam scene, got in the studio booth and banged out the first verse and chorus of T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” (the Power Station’s cover, released as “Get It On,” had just cracked the top 10 in America). Andy’s reaction was to just say, “Let’s go shopping,” and the two took off to Vivienne Westwood’s store for the rest of the afternoon. Des Barres got the job.

Michael Des Barres looks out into the crowd during the Power Station’s opening Live Aid number. (photo: YouTube)

For a moment, though, it seemed like Des Barres’s Power Station stint was going to be the shortest listing on his illustrious résumé, when, after returning to the U.S. via the Concorde, he got a call from his manager, informing him that Palmer had decided to do Live Aid after all. But the very next day, Palmer changed his mind again, this time for good, because “young girls were not his audience. It’s as simple as that. He did not want to play to young, teenage [Duran Duran fans],” shrugs Des Barres. “Meanwhile, me? I’m in a bikini and eyeliner.” Des Barres was officially back in the band.

And so, after just three days of rehearsals and one warm-up gig at New York City’s 1,500-capacity Ritz club, the Des Barres-fronted Power Station, introduced by Don Johnson, played Live Aid, performing without a net and literally without any teleprompters. Not everything went smoothly. Andy’s amplifier blew up right before their set, and notorious concert promoter Bill Graham was being “an asshole up there … shouting at us all. I was laughing my ass off, thinking, ‘Can it get any weirder?’” Des Barres also recalls being the target of “a lot of anger from young men” in the JFK Stadium crowd, who were apparently upset that Palmer was a no-show. “One guy, I’m out onstage and this bucket of water is literally like in slow motion, coming towards me. I was going to be splashed in front of 2 billion people. I dodged it, and it went all over John Taylor,” he laughs.

It was also a risk that of the only two songs the Power Station played at Live Aid, they opened with a deep cut of sorts, the non-single “Murderess.” Des Barres says that decision was made to showcase Andy’s little-known and under-appreciated guitar chops. “It’s an Andy song. I thought it was a great song. He was so talented, but he was a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player, and I think that’s why he left [Duran Duran],” Des Barres explains. “He wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll, and they’re not a rock ‘n’ roll band. … Andy wanted to be Eric Clapton, essentially, a bluesy rock ‘n’ roll guitar player. That’s why he left.”

Duran Duran also played JFK Stadium that day, and notably, this turned out to be the last time that Duran’s original “Fab Five” — guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, and singer Simon Le Bon — would perform together until 2003. Le Bon, Rhodes, and Roger were already fracturing off with their own very different side-project, Arcadia, and when Le Bon hit that infamous, unfortunate “bum note heard around the world” during Duran Duran’s Live Aid performance of their James Bond theme “A View to a Kill,” the annoyed, exasperated look on Andy’s face made it obvious that tensions were running high within Duran’s ranks.

Des Barres didn’t witness much acrimony between the Duran members that day, as he was too busy enjoying the rest of the show from the stage wings (his favorite Philly Live Aid performers were Neil Young, Patti LaBelle, Tom Petty, and Mick Jagger with Tina Turner). But once he went out on the road with the Power Station, he “could see it splitting apart. [John and Andy] weren’t even talking to each other much, and I was there, singing away. And that was that. … I would arrive, I would sing, I would leave. Then they could do their coke.” (Incidentally, Des Barres later helped both Taylors get sober. “So, I brought more than music to that experience,” he says proudly.)

As for the other snafus that took place at JFK Stadium that day, Des Barres may have kept his cool despite the daunting circumstances that led him to Live Aid, but he says, “Everybody [else] was in a different state of mind than I’ve ever seen from any artist, ever. It was fascinating. … It was very hard for a lot of people to come on and do 20 minutes, and Bill Graham is screaming because the snare drum isn’t there for someone. It got them on their feet, really. … They were all scared shitless, every one of them.”

Des Barres recalls that “Madonna was a wreck; she was shaking,” and that “Bob Dylan, Ronnie Wood, and Keith Richards were all playing in a different key; that was a trainwreck, but it was a fabulous trainwreck, I suppose.” His old Swan Song Records cronies Led Zeppelin, with Phil Collins on drums, were “not cohesive and didn’t have that brotherly Zeppelin vibe. It was almost like a rehearsal or something. And then it probably was a rehearsal! It wasn’t as powerful as I think people expected. … And nobody spoke about it [afterwards]. That’s the only way to deal with shit like that.

“The most interesting person there was Joan [Baez], because she hated it and was riffing on how everybody was awful and that only her songs really meant something to the audience. It was the weirdest thing. There was that kind of irrational behavior,” Des Barres continues. “But I think that was her way of being scared.”

After Live Aid, the Power Station recorded one song with the unflappable Des Barres — “We Fight for Love,” which Des Barres wrote, for the Commando soundtrack — and it was all over by 1986, with John returning to Duran Duran and Andy going solo. But Des Barres will always consider his brief time with the band “a major chapter in my life,” and he will always be thankful for the opportunity to play for “the biggest audience ever,” which boosted his career in ways he could have never imagined.

“I love them to this day,” he says. “I was very grateful to them for getting me on that stage.”

This interview originally ran on Gold Derby.

Midge Ure today (photo: Nathan Roach)

Midge Ure is currently on his self-contained, two-man Band in a Box tour of America, playing selections from his vast catalog using various loops, samples, and programmed drums. One song that the Ultravox/Visage legend probably won’t be playing is Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” which he co-wrote in 1984 with Bob Geldof and for which he played almost all the instruments (listen to his original one-man demo at the very bottom of this article). But fans will soon get to hear a Trevor Horn-produced mashup of all four versions of that perennial holiday charity single, Ure exclusively tells Lyndsanity.

“In the process now. They’ve been delving around trying to find footage. We didn’t have the luxury of having a film crew… so we’ve desperately been trying to find all the footage from Band Aid, Band Aid 20, Band Aid 30,” says Ure when asked if a documentary, similar to Netflix’s Greatest Night in Pop doc about USA for Africa and the making of “We Are the World,” is in the works for Band Aid’s upcoming 40th anniversary.

“There’s a big megamix about to come out, done by Trevor Horn [whose Sarm West Studios was the location for the 1984 all-star recording session], utilizing all of the different mixes and a bunch of new stuff, so you can have various vocalists. It’s technology. You can have various vocalists together,” Ure reveals. “He’s done his magic. He’s created kind of this slightly symphonic, mega-extra-long thing, which was just wonderful. It’s great. It’s a great way of celebrating the 40 years, really. That’s all happening this year. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

So, will even Dizzy Rascal’s rap interlude from the 2004 version make it into the new Trevor Horn mix? “There’s a bit of that in there as well, yeah,” Ure chucklingly confirms .

Ure appreciates the historic significance “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” — “There’s something about that ominous beginning that makes the hair on your arms stand up every time you hear the multi-track vocals,” he muses — but he has stated in at least one of our previous interviews that he doesn’t think “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is a great song. And even now he shrugs, “It’s OK. It’s a song with no chorus.” He certainly doesn’t think it’s the best song he’s ever written… and a strong case for that, actually, is his Band in a Box setlist, which is packed with synthpop classics like Visage’s “Fade to Grey” and Ultravox’s “Vienna,” “Reap the Wild Wind,” and “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes.”

At age 70, Ure is currently simultaneously working on three albums, with no signs of slowing down, but he’s also happy to revisit his past, both onstage and in interviews. For casual music fans aren’t fully aware of this self-described “invisible man of rock’s” many artistic achievements, the fascinating video interview above and Q&A below serves as a crash course in all things Ure — covering his stint in the Rich Kids and how the advent of synthesizers split that band in half; why he turned down an offer to join the Sex Pistols; how he managed to be in Ultravox, Visage, and Thin Lizzy (yes, that Thin Lizzy) at the same time; how Phil Lynott became a one-man unofficial publicist for Ultravox at a crucial point in that band’s career; recording with Sir George Martin; memories of Live Aid and being the musical director for the Prince’s Trust concerts; and other “pinch-me moments” from his brilliant career.

LYNDSANITY: We’ve discusses “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” but there’s a lot of other stuff to cover, because your Band in a Box tour is an overview of your entire career and catalog. What’s the concept for this semi-self-contained show?

MIDGE URE: It was born out of necessity, really. My old friend Howard Jones came to me a couple of years ago and wanted to do a tour that was kind of electronic-heavy, and he wanted me to go out there with a full-blown band. I had to explain to him the fiscal problems of doing something like that; Howard was commercially successful in America, much more so than I was or Ultravox was. So, we came up with this hybrid where I would use his keyboard player as the main keyboard player and I would program some drums and synthesized bass and play keys and guitar. I was reticent about doing it because it felt a bit, I don’t know, is it karaoke or is it live? I’m not sure. It’s not something that sat well with me — until we did it. The response from the audience was spectacular. They got to hear something that was as close as they were ever going to hear to what Ultravox would’ve sounded like, or Visage might’ve sounded like had we performed live. So, the response was great, and it waylaid any fears that I had of doing it.

Does it feel full-circle to do this? You were one of the early adopters of synthesizers. I imagine around the time you started doing electronic music, there were people who said, “What’s this flash in the pan?” or “That’s not real music.” You were at the forefront of being able to do it DIY-style, and this is sort of a return to that.

It is kind of gone ‘round, yeah, full-circle. That’s the way life tends to be, isn’t it? I bought a synthesizer in 1978 and introduced it to the Rich Kids with a view to utilizing this new instrument that was only as limited as your imagination… and it immediately broke the band in half! Half the band liked it. So, the drummer, Rusty Egan, and myself took the synthesizer and created Visage. We put together a studio concept of working with our favorite musicians, one of whom happened to be the keyboard player in Ultravox [Billy Currie]. And during the Visage recordings in the dying throes of the Rich Kids, we saw Ultravox come to America, do a tour and come back half a band — the singer [John Foxx] left, the guitarist left, they’d been dropped by the record label. And I jumped at the chance of joining.

Obviously real synthheads know about the John Foxx era of Ultravox, but when you joined Ultravox, just as MTV was about to happen here in America, my impression is that’s what catapulted the band. I know you say they weren’t that big here, but growing up with MTV and KROQ in L.A., Ultravox were a big band to me. And it was your era of Ultravox.

Yeah, the coasts were great for us. The big bit in the middle wasn’t so welcoming! You’ve got to imagine, you’ve got to remember, 1979 or 1980 was the first time I came to America with Ultravox, and you still had stations that played “Stairway to Heaven” 24/7 and Styx and Boston and American corporate poodle rock stuff. Nothing wrong with it, absolutely fine. But for us to expect that kind of audience to adapt and listen to what we were doing, it must’ve been like we had just arrived from Mars. It was so alien.

That’s what made it exciting to me!

It made it exciting for me as well. … It was an exciting period not just musically, but technologically as well. You had these instruments that could do just about anything. They were just difficult to tour with! It was a bit of a nightmare. Our soundchecks used to take five hours.

Those old synthesizers were really heavy.

And we adapted everything we had to make them do what we needed to do, which meant we had to carry two of everything, in case one broke. You couldn’t just rent one, because it was altered. So, it was a technological nightmare. But the noise we made, the sound we made, was fantastic.

You were saying your adaptation of the synthesizer fragmented the Rich Kids. When you decided to explore this new technology, what made you want to do that? It was a risk, but you must have had some vision that it was the future.

You have to remember that when the saxophone came out at first, the people in orchestras and big bands thought it was a joke. They thought it wasn’t a real brass instrument. So, yes, they synthesizer did divide people. It was seen as a novelty instrument. It was a funny noise you put on your record. But because of the clubs that we were associated with in London… Rusty Egan ran a little club called Billy’s, which was the forerunner to the Blitz Club, so he was responsible for a lot of the music coming out of Europe getting played in those little clubs. He would play early Ultravox, early Gary Numan, early Depeche Mode or Heaven 17 or Human League or whatever, amongst Kraftwerk and Neu! and Can and Roxy Music and David Bowie. It was a “Bowie Night,” as they called it, but it had all this electronic stuff. … The sonic element of it coming out those sound systems was immense. It was amazing. So, we were very influenced by that and wanted to generate music to play in clubs. That was it. Not to make music that was going to be revolutionary or groundbreaking. We wanted to make music that we could play in Billy’s and eventually the Blitz, and that was it. Then of course, the fashions became high-street fashions, and then everyone dropped the guitars and bought synthesizers. It was a revolution with technology and fashion and music, all at the same time, kind of a little social explosion.

So, did [Rich Kids bassist and original Sex Pistols member] Glen Matlock ever later tell you anything like, “Hey, you were onto something there. You knew what you were doing”?

He did. It’s just understandable. It was such a divisional thing if you weren’t interested in it. Glen’s very much a plug-in-and-rock-and-roll guy, plug in and just hammer it out. The Rich Kids were a great band, and it was great fun playing with them, but it seemed, again, for him, quite an alien thing. And Steve [New], the guitar player, didn’t like the idea of it at all. But no one’s got foresight. We did what we felt was interesting at the time, not expecting it to tilt the world on its axis.

Didn’t you have an opportunity to join the Sex Pistols at one point?

Yeah, back in 1976, I think it was. I was stopped in the streets of Glasgow, my hometown, by Bernie Rhodes, who went on to manage the Clash. I didn’t know who he was. He was English, and he was stopping me in the streets, and I thought it was something to do with borrowing equipment. … Anyway, he took me around the corner to meet his friend, Malcolm McClaren, and [McClaren] proceeded to tell me about his association with the New York Dolls, Vivienne Westwood, his fashion, the clothes, the design. … Then he said he was putting this band together, and would I join the band? But he hadn’t asked if I was a musician! I have no idea whether he wanted me to be the singer or the drummer or the guitarist or whatever. So, I just said, “No, I’ve got my own band. Thanks very much.” It just seemed he was looking for something to probably help sell Vivienne’s clothes. So, I declined it, but then later on realized it was the Sex Pistols he was putting together.

Did you ever have a chance to ask Malcolm about this? You must have crossed paths with Malcolm again over the years.

Oh, no, I didn’t! But I did “Jonesy’s Jukebox,” [Sex Pistols guitarist] Steve Jones’s [radio show] a few years ago, and that was hysterical. I told him his stories about it. I told him that I turned down the Pistols. He said why [McClaren] was there in Glasgow was that he had slightly hot equipment that he was selling from the trunk of his car, and I turned down the Pistols, but I bought an amplifier. And Jonesy was so incensed: He said, “I stole that amplifier, and he sold it and kept the money!” [laughs]

Oh my God, that’s an amazing story. Well, I’ve got to ask, since [Rhodes] stopped you on the street not even knowing if you played anything, and you seemed like a good posterboy for the Vivienne Westwood look, what were you wearing that day? What was it about you that made him go, “That looks like a rock star?”

I had a kind of James Dean quiff and was wearing ‘50s clothes, at a time when everyone else was wearing flared trousers. I think they just liked the look rather than any technical ability. I think maybe they thought that would come later.

I mean, it obviously did! So, you mentioned the Blitz Club. I have often said if I could ever time-travel, in a time machine, to anywhere, I would go to the Blitz Club. It just seems so exciting, and I don’t think [Visage singer and Blitz Club promoter] Steve Strange] gets enough credit here for what he inspired. What was that era like? Take me back to the Blitz Club. Put me in the time machine.

All right. Well, you had to be in the know to be allowed in. Steve had a very strong door policy that if you didn’t look the part, you weren’t coming in. So, kids with absolutely nothing… they had no money, nothing. It was a very dismal time in U.K. social history, a three-day working week. It was very tough. But these kids would go and raid their grandmother’s wardrobes and put on a ball gown or a dress and just push the boundaries, and go down to this club and dance to that type of music, the electronics and stuff. They were the kids who had started the whole punk scene, and because their younger siblings were getting into the new wave/punk thing, they didn’t want to be associated with what their younger brother or sister wanted. So, they reverted back to the first love, which would’ve been T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music.

So they went to these clubs, dolled up, looking fabulous. All the guys all looked great with slicked-back hair. Everyone was there posing, voguing before voguing became a thing, I suppose. And it was a tiny little club, a wine bar in Covent Garden in London, but it was a themed 1940s. … If you think of the Blitz as like the original Blade Runner, was it in the past or was it in the future? Because there was a foot in both camps. People looked like they were dressed in 1940s and 1950s clothes, but they were listening to music that was coming from the future and dancing to it. It was this weird hybrid, and I think maybe that’s what made it kind of unique.

These people were just so incredibly cool listening to this fabulous music dancing and just having a great time, with the minimal amount of spend that you could have. You’d buy a little can of beer and you’d hold it all night and make it last the evening. It was incredibly basic, but those environments are inviting to a certain type of person. Saint Martin’s School of Art kids, the graphic designers, the fashion designers would all be there. You could look around the room and you’d see a future film director, or someone who’s going to design hats, or someone who does brilliant graphics. It was just this little boiling pot of creativity. And it was all very cool until the night that David Bowie walked in and these kids just turned into headless chickens! They were all running around because the master had turned up, and it was just glorious. The whole thing was great. It was a fantastic little period in time, but only lasted a couple of years.

Is that how some of the Blitz Kids ended up in David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” video? Was he talent-scouting to cast that?

I think so. Bowie’s ear to the ground was amazing. He knew about what was going on and he wanted to check it out for himself. And that evening, Steve and a couple of others were dragged off to Beachy Head somewhere down near Brighton to shoot the video dressed as they were in the club that night, these weird Greek priests outfits or whatever. It got completely OTT. But yes, Bowie saw something happening there and wanted to be a magpie and just take some of that for himself, which is brilliant. That’s the way it should be.

What was the process in which Steve Strange became the face and voice of Visage?

Rusty just said, “Steve’s my flatmate. I’m sure he’d love to do it.” At this point, Steve and Rusty were running the Blitz, so they were the face of that. Steve had already become the kind of the figurehead of this little movement that was happening, and because we were all in different bands, all still touring at the time, someone had to be the face, the nucleus, the middle person, the middleman. And Steve was more than happy to do that. We used to send Steve off with the dancers, two backing vocalists, and they’d go and do the television shows and whatever, and I would do all the work in the studio producing the music.

But it took a long time to put it together because of trying to get three different bands, still active bands in the country together at the same time. To grab a couple of hours or a couple of days to go and write and record for the Visage album took over a year. It was a year before the first Visage album was complete, begging and borrowing and stealing studio time to do this. And it was over that year of putting the Visage thing together that I went on tour with Thin Lizzy. I had just joined Ultravox. Billy, the keyboard player, went on tour with Gary Numan. And that gave us the wherewithal to come back and put the money into Ultravox, to buy the equipment we needed for this to happen. But by that point, “Fade to Grey” was in its infancy. Billy came back from the Gary Numan tour with this piece of music that he’d been jamming at soundcheck, and he’d recorded it with one of Gary’s keyboard players. I had pointed out that we were short of a track on the first Visage album, and if he gave me that piece of music, I’d alter it and write a melody and some lyrics for it. And when we recorded that tune, we knew that something magical had happened. We had just created something that was kind of seismic. And it still stands the test of time, which is quite incredible.

You mentioned Thin Lizzy. There are probably a lot of people that don’t know you were ever in that band, or wouldn’t associate you with a classic rock band like that. But obviously it worked very well and you had a collaborative relationship with Phil Lynott — you did the Top of the Pops theme song with him too. How did that come about? Because if I’m understanding the timeline, at one point you were in Visage, Ultravox, and Thin Lizzy at the same time.

Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s a bizarre one. I mean, music people evolve. I bought the synthesizer in ‘79 in the Rich Kids, and that grew into Visage. And out of Visage, over that year period, I ended up joining Ultravox, which I was desperate to do. I mean, Ultravox had just been dropped by the record label. John [Foxx] wasn’t there. The guitarist wasn’t there. It looked as though it was finished, wiped out, never going to happen. And I leapt at the chance of joining the band. In fact, it was Rusty Egan who suggested to Billy that I was the guy that they needed. So, I had just joined Ultravox and was really enthusiastic about it, and all of a sudden, the shackles were off. I wasn’t thinking of writing three-minute pop songs. I was creating music that had no limits at all. Then I got the phone call from Phil Lynott when I was in the studio putting the finishing touches to “Fade to Grey” for Visage. I was part of Ultravox, and he phoned up and said, “We’re on tour with special guests. Gary Moore has left the band. Can you fly over tomorrow and do the tour?” And I’d never been to America, so I thought, “This is a great, wonderful thing to do.” I tied up my loose ends amd I went off to America. I learned the [Thin Lizzy] set on the plane and in the hotel room the night before doing the first show, and then played to 30,000 people.

But the wonderful thing was that Philip was a friend. When he would go and do interviews, he’d take me with him and he’d sit and talk about his new album and about Thin Lizzy, and he’d talk about the tour, but then he’d say, “You should speak to Midge about Ultravox!” Which was quite lovely, beautiful thing to do. So, you’d have me talking about Ultravox, explaining that they weren’t finished and I had joined the band. So, it worked on many, many different levels, but [the Lizzy tour] was only a three-week thing. I had no intention of ever staying within Lizzy. My heart was with Ultravox. Even though Visage were high on the agenda when it came to popularity and Ultravox were deemed finished, Ultravox was an exciting thing to be part of.

What made you so excited to join Ultravox at that time? Most people thought they were has-beens, as you say, but obviously you viewed this as the opportunity of a lifetime.

They had been using technology that I couldn’t attain, couldn’t afford. Ultravox had been using drum machines and synthesizers since I think Brian Eno introduced a synthesizer to them on the first album in mid-’70s. They had knowledge that I wasn’t accessing. So, to be in with those guys who are so creative, at a time when I was like a sponge, I was soaking up all of their influences. And as I said, the shackles were off, the doors had been thrown open, and there was a world there where I thought, “I don’t have to sit down and try and write commercial singles.” That was my attitude at the time. This world enabled me to go in and expand. I mean, “Vienna” was never a radio record. It was never meant to be a radio record.

And then it was.

And it changed everything. But to me, it was like, “Wow, I can experiment here. I’m not held by any constraints.” As a musician, I’d found my home.

It’s very interesting in that you were excited about not being commercial and not writing singles, and the Ultravox had a No. 2 single in the U.K. with “Vienna” — after you joined.

It’s a mixture, isn’t it? You change the ingredients of one ingredient in a recipe in a meal, and it tastes different. And for some reason, the three of them and me coming in as the new boy, there were pop sensibilities, but there were also experimental sensibilities that just gelled. All of a sudden, it all kind of made sense, way before there was any commercial success. “Vienna” was the third track from the album or something. The album had done what it was going to do, and it was quite successful at that level. And then, by some quirk of fate, “Vienna” started getting played on the radio and it changed everything. All of a sudden, instead of selling 30,000 albums in total, we were selling 30,000 albums a day. It was unheard-of. And we hadn’t backtracked. We hadn’t changed anything. It’s weird that in hindsight, you can look back and go, “Obviously ‘Vienna’ was going to be a successful record.” But if that person who played it the first time on the radio had chosen not to play it, it would never have been heard.

If only that DJ hadn’t played Joe Dolce’s “Shaddap You Face” too!

If only the great British record-buying public hadn’t bought it! [laughs]

It’s one of those weird trivia factoid that Joe Dolce’s novelty song “Shaddap You Face” made “Vienna” stall at No. 2 instead of going to No. 1. What a strange time, that those songs would occupy the two top chart spots.

It reflected the U.K. charts at the time. There was space for everything, and everything got out there. It was a very mixed-up time!

Were you like, “What the hell? Why is this novelty song at No. 1 while we’re at No. 2”?

No, no. You’ve got to think that we put out this four-minute, long, slow, electronic ballad that speeds up in the middle, with a viola solo. What was the chance of getting that to No. 2? And maybe because of the ridiculous scenario with us being kept off the No. 1 spot, people felt it in their hearts. They still talk about it today, that it was some weird anomaly that happened, the timeline continuum that this thing happened. So, they kind of feel sorry for us. For us, we were ecstatic. It elevated Ultravox way beyond the club band that we were at the time, and it changed everything and enabled us to do the follow-up album [Rage in Eden] the way we wanted to do it. We had three weeks to record and mix [Vienna], whereas the follow-up album, we spent three months creating at the studio — very experimental, a very difficult and interesting record to make. So, we have to thank Joe Dolce for keeping us at No. 2.

I did want to ask about the album after that, Quartet, because you worked with George Martin on that. I’ve interviewed George’s son Giles, and he told me he was in the studio with Ultravox at the time when he started being his “father’s ears,” because George’s hearing was failing. What are your memories of recording Quartet with George?

It was amazing. Ultravox weren’t the easiest band in the world to get along with, us as musicians. We stuck with what we thought was interesting, what we wanted to do. So, when we decided we wanted to work with a producer, it had to be someone that commanded huge respect. And George was that. When George would say, “OK, guys, I think you’ve said what you need to say here. You’re just doing these escalating chord changes and making it a six-minute song instead of a four minute song. Maybe you should rethink that” — well, we would take that. There were not many people we’d respect and admire enough to take that. But when George suggested something, you said, “Yes sir and thank you.” It was an amazing experience working with him and his engineer, Geoff Emrick, who was the guy who did Sgt. Pepper with him. That’s the dream team. Why would you even question what these guys are telling you.

George’s hearing was going and he wasn’t going to make an album — he wasn’t going to [produce] another record. He initially turned Ultravox down. It was Giles and his sister Lucy — Lucy happened to be a big Ultravox fan and talked George into doing it. So, we owe a huge debt and gratitude. Although his hearing was going, he had people around him who he trusted — Geoff and Giles. And although Giles was young, he was obviously very musical; the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. So, it was a fantastic period and a wonderful man to even be associated with. There are what I call “pinch-me moments” in your life, in your career, and they don’t necessarily have to be the big bits that people see on television or whatever. They tend to happen behind-the-scenes: doing a duet with Kate Bush, sitting in a studio with Mick Karn, having George Martin knowing your name. Those are magnificent moments.

I do remember Giles telling me a story about how someone said to George, “How’s it going in there? How’s the recording going?” and he answered, “Two hard-boiled eggs,” or something like that. Because he couldn’t hear well.

That was me. Yes, it was in Montserrat. The mixing facility in Montserrat and Air Studios was manual. It was pre-computerized and whatever, and you had to move all the fades with you your fingers. Five of us at the desk, 10 faders, each having to remember to pan and do the EQs and pull the faders up and down at the right time. Old-school mixing. And when you would do that, it would usually be the end of the evening, and you would leave the mix set up. You wouldn’t dismantle it — you’d leave it set up and listen to it again the next morning, before you stripped it all down to start doing the next mix, so that if the vocals weren’t loud enough or there was a mistake or something, you could redo it first thing in the morning. And I was in the swimming pool just outside the studio door, and George said, “I’m just going to check the mix.” And as he walked out [later] with his tray, I shouted, “How’s it sound, George?” And he said, “Ah, two boiled eggs.” It was his breakfast tray.  And I thought, “OK…”

Oh my God, it’s so crazy that I brought that up. Were you aware of George’s hearing loss at the time?

We were aware of it, but we weren’t worried about it because it’s not just about the hearing things. His musical abilities were a major thing. His knowledge of not just musical structure, but technology as well… my big worry was, “What if he’s not kept up with modern tech stuff and drum machines?” But he knew exactly what he was doing. He’d tested it all out, he’d checked it all. He was working out how to make it sound more human, what kind of delay you’d have to put on the snare to make it sound like a drummer. He was way ahead of the curve.

You mentioned “pinch-me moments.” You must have a very long list of such moments, with everything you’ve done in your career. What are some other ones?

Well, as a kid growing up trying to be a guitar player, the idea of sitting playing guitar with Eric Clapton, one-on-one in Montserrat, would’ve been completely off the radar. That was one. Working with Kate. Being onstage with David Bowie at one of the Prince’s Trust concerts. Bowie and Jagger had just put out a version of “Dancing in the Street” and all the money was going to go to the African fund [for Live Aid], and they decided to turn up at the last minute at the Prince’s Trust concert to do “Dancing in the Street” live. And of course, none of us knew it, so we had to go and learn it in the dressing room very quickly. To be onstage with him was just wonderful. People forget that artists are fans. We all get into this industry because we’re fans of someone else. And if that fandom ever wanes, it’s time to hang up your guitar. You should be standing in the same room as someone else that you admire and be a gibbering wreck! You can talk to them, but in the back of your mind, you’re thinking, “I’m not worthy. This is just incredible.” It’s all those little moments that happen when you think, “Yeah, this is great. I never ever saw this coming.”

And what about Live Aid? I mean, talk about a pinch-me moment, in terms of being around so many your heroes.

It was too large to contemplate. Even though I’d been in all the meetings and all this stuff, three months of buildup to doing Live Aid as a Band Aid trustee, overseeing the whole thing, it still didn’t feel as though it was going to be real. The only way you could get to Wembley Stadium at that point on the day was by helicopter from Battersea Heliport. So, you’re flying in over an empty Wembley Stadium with thousands and thousands of people standing outside just completely encompassing this thing, waiting to go in. And at that moment, it felt like, “Oh, this is really going to happen,” because in the back of your mind, it’s too big. You think, “How are we going to pull this off?” And then you get there, and everybody you’ve ever seen or heard in your life is all there.

It was crazy, irrespective of what genre of music you thought you belonged to. Because there is a divide, a self-inflicted divide. You’d look around the kind of holding area, the green room, and you’d have the rock guys over there, Paul Weller over there, your New Romantic synth guys in the corner. But the moment the thing kicked off with Status Quo doing “Rockin’ All Over the World,” you look around and everybody’s got an inane grin and the heads are all bopping. You think, “OK, the library tag has gone. We’re just a bunch of musicians. Status Quo are playing this rock ‘n’ roll three-chord song. Here we go. Yes, this is real. This is fabulous.”

One of the outstanding moments for me was stupid. I was talking to Harvey Goldsmith, who was the guy who put it together with the Band Aid trustees. He’s still a Band Aid trustee. He was in a real tizzy, and he was on the phone, and I said, “What’s the problem, Harvey?” He said, “I’ve lost the shuttle.” I thought he meant the shuttle that took you back and forth between the stadium and the dressing room areas. And he pointed up and said, “No, the Space Shuttle!” One of the astronauts flying overhead was going to announce one of the bands [but the signal had been lost]. And I thought, “It just doesn’t get bigger than that, does it?” Crazy.

Do you know who the shuttle was supposed to introduce?

No, but it didn’t matter. The fact that they were going to link up to Shuttle that was flying around the Earth to do this, it was just ludicrous.

We’ve been talking about all of your achievements. I feel like you’ve flown under the radar a bit. Lots of people know about Ultravox, everybody of course knows “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” but a lot of people probably don’t know about the rest of your CV and discography. You’re sort of a Zelig of pop. How do you feel about your legacy?

You know what? Legacy-wise, the only thing you can hope that happens once you’re gone is that your family, my four daughters, can listen to what I’ve done and think, “He did the best he could at that moment in time.” I’ve never done anything 50 percent. I go at things and I do them to standard that I’m happy with. That’s it. And it might not be everyone else’s standard, but it’s my standard, and I’m content with that. The Zelig part, yes, it has bonuses. You can be “the invisible man of rock,” which is perfectly OK with me. I got a life in music, a career. I’ve gotten what I wished for. I go back home when I’m in Glasgow, and if I’m back there and have a few hours, I go back to the streets that I used to walk around as a kid, wishing for what I eventually got. And that keeps my feet on the ground. I get to do what I love. So, when people say to me, “Are thinking of retiring?” I say, “Retiring from what?” You retire from something you don’t like doing, to do something you do like. And I can’t find anything better than what I’ve got.