Carla Jenkins

OF ALL the exciting things that must be going on in Midge Ure’s life, he is particularly excited at the crowd-gathering prowess of one young girl. “Have you seen the clip of Greta [Thunberg] in Congress yet? It’s fantastic. I loved it.

“She’s saying, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to my words – listen to the science. Jesus Christ – we need more of her” says Midge.

I shouldn’t be surprised at his enthusiasm for Greta’s work: Midge is not known only for being a living legend of the music scene, but for doing incredibly charitable things with the scope of his influence.

I am talking about Band Aid here, of course, one of the most famous one-off groups in musical history which, as Midge himself said, “would shift the world on its axis a little bit and change the world’s opinion on what charity is”.

Now Midge is back, touring Ultravox’s Vienna around Europe for the first time in 40 years.

It is a homecoming in many senses. Not only will the eponymous European album return to its European stages, so too will Midge return to his hometown for a set in the Barrowlands on October 13.

But this is no longer the Europe – or the UK – where albums like Vienna sprung. At the end of the 1970s, momentous change was afoot across the world, and politics, fashion and music were about to change forever. It is the same now.

Will it be strange to sing an album about Europe amidst Britain's Brexit crisis?

“If it does go ahead at the end of October, or whenever it is meant to go ahead, if we do decide because we have a cut in our finger, we’re going to chop our arm off, it makes things incredibly difficult to go into Europe.

“There is a form of madness that seems to have taken over politics now, not just here but in America as well. I think it has stemmed from people being unhappy and unheard, and I absolutely appreciate that. But you don’t kill something just because nobody is hearing your voice. You fix it – you try to fix it from the inside.”

And is that what The 1980s tour intends to do – attempt to fix things from the inside?

“Music is a fantastic healing motion. It’s a vehicle for telling people things, for voicing your opinion, galvanising people – that is what we all need to be concentrating on right now. Not this madness.

“Whatever happens we need to heal the rift that’s gone right across the whole of the UK. Just the same way when the referendum was happening in Scotland, the rift between the ‘leave’ and the ‘stays’ had to be healed and looked at, and the problems that instigated that rift in the first place. And that’s what we should be thinking of right now.

“Get this thing finished one way or the other, get it out the way, and concentrate on people who are using foodbanks, paying nurses, making sure the NHS is good.”

Amidst all this healing, I want to know what Midge will fill his moments of peacetime with whilst back in Glasgow.

“I’ll have a wee wander about the guitar shops, go for a Crolla’s ice cream like when I was a wee boy. And I’ll have to break my diet and have a Lorne sausage and fried egg roll.”

Returning to the 1980s in more ways than one, I joke with Midge – will his flying visit merely be a tour of Scotland’s culinary delicacies?

“Every time I’m back, I go to Cambuslang where I used to sing in the scout hall when I was eight years old. It reminds me of why I wished for it, and that I got that wish.

“Sometimes it’s so easy to take all this stuff for granted, and I do not want to do that. Walking about the streets reminds me of being a spotty youth, playing whatever guitar I could get my hands on, and wishing I could make a living out of what I dreamed doing. And I got it.

“You start off at the thin end of a wedge, and the wedge opens up and weird and wonderful things happen. It’s just that mine has been very extraordinary, and very lucky. It’s been a lovely wedge.”

The Midge Ure Vienna & Visage 1980 Tour kicks off in October and comes to the Barrowlands, Glasgow, on October 13