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I was sent to London to interview Ultravox in the summer of 1980, just before they got big.

Here’s an outtake from my memoir:

I was in Midge Ure’s flat in Chiswick nosing through his record collection, and I saw that it was full of Beatles LPs. Midge seemed a bit embarrassed when I mentioned it and said that he’d got them free from the record company.

I’d been sent down to London to interview Ultravox, who’d just released their first album with Midge as singer. I’d reviewed, and liked, their new LP Vienna so they were pleased to see me. We had a good chat about synthesiser bands and they almost convinced me they weren’t one.

Ultravox had always been popular in Liverpool, the same way that Roxy Music and our home-grown artschool band Deaf School were in the 70s: a reaction against reality and an escape into glamour. I had started to notice a new group of fans around town, who liked to dress up, dress their hair and do robotic dancing to the kind of music they thought was arty. I gave them the generic name ‘hairdressers’, although they were just as likely to be on the dole.

I hadn’t yet heard of New Romantics, but I noted in my interview that Ultravox were regulars at Blitz, which I’d seen described on the TV as the club ‘where the trendiest young people in town go’.

Six months later, the Vienna title track was a huge hit for the band. It was kept off the number one spot by John Lennon.

Penny Kiley uncovers a smile on the face of the robots, and discovers that synthesizers are just rock’n’roll hardware.

Melody Maker, August 2, 1980

A picture of a group: a TV screen, on it men wearing high-buttoned black shirts and serious expressions. The music: slow drumbeats, a sparse backing, solemnity. A close-up of a face on the screen, intoning, deadpan.

There was a song on the first Ultravox album called "My Sex". This sounds rather like it but the words are wrong. You realise where a certain pop star got his ideas from. The voice continues, cold, relentless. The mouth twitches a little but reaches the end of the song impassive. There are cackles of laughter in the background. The face looks toward the camera, reproachful. "This is Art," says the robot. This is Ultravox.

Ultravox went to Germany to make an album. Conny Plank's famous studio is a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Ultravox got bored. The result is a collection of videos, which include a lot of studio fooling, proof that Ultravox have a sense of humour.

Other interesting and surprising facts about the band:

Ultravox are one Scotsman (Midge Ure: vocals, guitars, and synthesizers); one Canadian (Warren Cann: drums, electronic percussion, and vocals); one Yorkshireman (Billy Currie: synthesizers, piano, violin, and viola); and one Londoner (Chris Cross: bass, synthesizers, and vocals). Ultravox are not John Foxx.

Ultravox frequent Blitz, where the trendiest young people in town go, as the "Twentieth Century Box" TV programme (theme tune by John Foxx) repeatedly insisted. Midge Ure is the trendiest.

Ultravox get upset when critics accuse them of being passionless.

Ultravox are not a synthesizer band.

There are some days (many of late) when you turn on the radio and every record sounds like Hawkwind. And there are some days when you turn on the radio and every record begins with a bleep or a bubble. Not just the plastic Top 30, three minutes at a time and expensive matching video, but groups which want us to take them seriously, groups it is necessary to admire in order to stay up to date. It all seems very shallow but yet I feel I'm drowning. Is it a conspiracy or is it just me? Some days I'm allergic to synthesizers.

And then along come poor, unfashionable Ultravox, always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and make an album which doesn't disagree with me at all. The reason is simple, they claim with disarming logic. They are not a synthesizer band.

But what of my nightmare vision of a world taken over by musicians in bleak industrial suits and robot haircuts, and punters with dyed red hair and baggy trousers? Are Ultravox denying responsibility? They are.

I went to meet Ultravox hoping for a beginner's guide to electronic rock and ten reasons why I shouldn't feel hostile to it. This is what I got:

Me: "Why do I hate synthesizers and not hate Ultravox?"

Billy: "Because we're a rock band. We use the technology but we don't let it push us around."

On the plethora of modern electronic pop bands:

Billy: "People buy synthesizers for instant effects." (Chris sneers: "Noises and bleeps.")

Midge: "Bands like that are basically cashing in."

On the hip electronic garage bands:

Warren: "The press were initially very put off by the serious young man arty type of thing, but they seem to be coming to terms with it now because the bands themselves have decided to offset that a bit, introducing things like comic strip humour and quirkiness. It gives them reference points; they don't feel like they're left out in the cold, they're invited in to have a little laugh. That, I think, is a bit of a copout."

On Gary Numan: "He's got to watch what he's doing now."

On John Foxx: "Most of the stuff Foxx does is totally passionless."

On ... Are synthesizers the future of rock 'n' roll?

Midge: "I think synthesizers are a strong part of it, just the way that guitar effects are and PAs are. It's developed, synthesizers are here to stay, but guitars will always be there, drums will always be there, pianos will always be there."

Though the last point is reassuring, none of this is doing much to remove my suspicions. Perhaps I should have interviewed the Human League instead. Because Ultravox, it is fast becoming clear, don't belong in this area. They are, pure and simple, a rock band who happen to use synthesizers — not a synthesizer band.

Their past year of obscurity, since parting with erstwhile record company and erstwhile vocalist, has allowed a few misconceptions to grow up. One of the most pervasive is that of a masterplan on the part of John Foxx to convert Ultravox into a synthesizer band.

Billy makes the point that it was he who bought the band's first synthesizer, back in 1977, when they were far from fashionable.

"I was the prat that was playing it, I was the prat they were gobbing over, I was the prat who learnt it. I really feel bad about that."

But although the initial move was a conscious step on Billy's part, the synthesizers were never seen as more than an interesting addition to the sound.

"The difference is," says Billy, "that we keep the human thing as well, it's like 50/50."

Midge emphasises: "There's a lot more raunchy rock guitar on 'Vienna' than on any of the other albums. We use whichever instrument we think is necessary to get the effect and sound that we want, whether it's a guitar, bagpipes or whatever, it doesn't matter as long as we get the desired effect."

Warren adds: "That's one reason we released 'Sleepwalk' as a single, as a breath of fresh air, to show you can bang your head against the wall with a synthesizer as much as you can with a guitar, just to show it's not all bleak. The housewife audience will hear it and tap their feet, and the fact that it's all synthesizers won't bother them."

One reason why Ultravox are different. Chris explains: "There's reference points all the time in our music that anyone who's into any type of music can relate to. It sounds conventional in a lot of ways but because we're using synthesizers to make the noise it doesn't sound exactly conventional."

THE album cover, though easily misconstrued as the expected robot cliches, is intended to convey a romantic image, associated with black and white stills photography of "an era when style was at its peak", as Midge says. The past, whether Twenties, Thirties or Forties, is important both musically and in terms of atmosphere, as shown particularly in the song which gives the album its name.

Midge: "It was obvious that 'Vienna' was such a strong track, it epitomises the feel of the album."

Billy admits: "It's a definite piece of music from that particular period, 1930s European music."

Warren adds: "At the end of that section our tongues are very firmly in our cheeks."

Midge: "Some of the lyrics are very tongue in cheek. 'Passing Strangers': 'Dance in the dark/Sing in the rain'. 'Singing in the rain', for God's sake!"

Warren: "It's fun with lyrics like that, because after a point you start picking lyrics that are almost banal, and if you use the right ones something clicks and it works."

Romance is often banal after all, and a cliché can be a kind of emotional shorthand, usefully evocative, and that's how these songs work.

The approach to songwriting has changed since the departure of Foxx, a dominant lyricist. Lyrics and music are more integrated now, resulting in songs that are documentary rather than narrative, the mood set through fragments, evocative rather than explicit — and sometimes too enigmatic.

"New Europeans" should not have amused me as it did.

Warren: "We knew we were setting ourselves up for a slagging with that title — 'Sorry Ultravox, that was last year's thing' — and we did try a few alternatives but we couldn't find one that fitted. The song isn't about glorifying a movement, 'Hey hey we're the Monkees'."

Chris: "It's our feeling about Europe in the last 20 years."

Even after a potted history of post-war Europe from Warren, it's not entirely clear. Still, it does bring us to the question of Ultravox as a European band, something they can't deny.

Warren: "When we started we never looked toward America, the whole thing didn't interest us at all. All right, I'm from that side of the world but I left because I wanted to get away from it." Ultravox's importance is not just historical, they are not just "an influence". "Vienna" is probably the strongest Ultravox album yet, exuding authority and self-confidence. Free of Foxx's dominance, they're able to continue their development as a unit.

Midge: " 'Vienna' is exactly like what the next album from 'Systems Of Romance' should have sounded like. It's a natural progression for Ultravox and John Foxx has gone off at a tangent."

Billy: "He's doing what he wanted Ultravox to do, which isn't what we wanted to do, which is why we split up."

So, Midge is happy with his new band, the rest of Ultravox are happy with their new singer, and everyone is happy with their new album. John Foxx is (presumably) happy. Ultravox fans should be happy, because they've got a new album to listen to, and a tour on the way. I'm happy because I've forgotten to worry about whether I should like synthesizers.

Thank you for reading Penny Kiley's music writing. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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