What a difference a day makes.

It was one of those scenes so loved by middle-aged film directors who make movies about The Music Biz. Grubby metropolitan exterior concealing tastefully lit recording studio - comfortably modern decor with comfortably modern people preparing for the arduous task, of being creative.

Ultravox are putting the finishing touches to their new album. Midge Ure (cute, moustachioed brunet) sits by a window ignoring everything with true style. Billy Currie walks through the room in which I sit. "Are you doing an interview in here?" he enquires. I nod. "No you're not. " He smiles and walks out again.

Enter Chris Cross - coffee in hand. He smiles pleasantly. He has a pony tail... it's very nice; the sort you want to pull - playfully, of course.
Such yearnings are resisted, for Ultravox have a new single 'One Small Day' - and this is the man to talk about it; no point in alienating the poor thing.

The recent review of 'One Small Day' by Morrissey in RECORD MIRROR commented: "This may not be the worst record in the universe but it's certainly in the running." I wonder what sort of reaction such opinions may have sparked off in the man before me.

"I didn't read it, " he answers amiably: "People ring me up and say, 'Have you read so and so?' and I say 'No'. Or they ask 'How can you say that you don't mind bad press? I was really annoyed; so I rang them up or sent them a letter to complain." "It's funny because the function of a review for us is purely that when people see it they know we've got a record out. To us it doesn't matter what they write. In fact we seem to get the same review for every single - they just stick different title in".

Could this not be, I venture guardedly and with little conviction, that all the singles are the same? "No", says Chris, laughing confidently. "Just the reviews.

'One Small Day' though, as classily contagious as all Ultravox tunes, does have that 'Now where have I heard that before?' sound. A sort of mixture of bits of Big Country and bits of Crass.

"The whole thing sounds like Big Country to me", admits Chris. "It's weird because it happens without you knowing it. Some reviews say it sounds like U2, and someone told Midge that it was like Thin Lizzy. We had that happen to us over the last single. A lot of people told us that Icicle Works' single was a rip-off of us. I can't hear it at all - and I'm sure if you said it to them they wouldn't be able to either."

A new Ultravox album is scheduled for a March / April release - playfully entitled 'Lament' at the moment - to be followed, as these things usually are, by The Tour. The fast time the band went out on the road they gave as a magnificent set of stark looming structures thrusting their way up from Mother Earth with the power of Achilles and enough symbolism to have Mr Freud chortling into his Bovril for weeks. The music was OK, too. Can they possibly improve on that?

"The new show will be terribly different from the 'Quartet' one, Chris explains. "More versatile for a start... we had problems with the last one - it just wouldn't fit in some places.
"We haven't worked an image out yet in any detail, but there'll be a lot of black... and a lot of netting ... and that's about it at the moment!"

The 'Quartet' extravaganza was captured for posterity and the bands 'Monument' video - released before Christmas. For a collection of primarily five footage it proved surprisingly rivetting viewing - helped by the not inconsiderable fact that Ultravox, are at their best live AND that they used great dollops of those perfectly pretentious promotional videos from their singles to pad it out.

"We didn't want to put out a 'Greatest Hits' video," Chris explains. "Well, we haven't really got enough material! You need a good hour to do that. We do use parts of the singles videos because, basically, live footage of bands - oven as - is just really boring. So when me and Midge wore putting it together we just used favourite bits from them to give it more interest."

Ultravox don't make profound music, they're not hip and trendy and they're not trying to change the world. What they do is make clean and classy music with humour and style. What more could you possibly ask for?


Eleanor Levy
February 18,1984