Midge Ure

One of the key members of the new wave band Ultravox, guitarist/vocalist Midge Ure began his professional music career with Salvation, a Glasgow-based group that became the bubblegum band Slik in 1974. Upset in the change of direction, Ure left the band to join the Rich Kids, a punk-pop group led by former Sex Pistol bassist Glen Matlock. The Rich Kids only released one album, 1978s Ghosts of Princes in Towers, before breaking up later that year. Ure spent a brief time with the Misfits (not the American band) before forming Visage with drummer Rusty Egan and vocalist Steve Strange; he left the group to replace Gary Moore in Thin Lizzy, who had left in the middle of an American tour. After the tour was finished, Ure fulfilled an agreement to join Ultravox as the replacement for John Foxx.Once he joined the band in 1980, Ure helped make Ultravox a mainstream success; during this time he also worked as a producer, making records with Steve Harley and Modern Man. In 1982, Ure released a solo single, a cover of the Walker Brothers hit No Regrets; it climbed into the U.K. Top Ten. Ure and Bob Geldof formed Band Aid, a special project to aid famine relief efforts in Ethiopia, in 1984. The two wrote the song Do They Know Its Christmas? and assembled an all-star band of British musicians to record the single; it sold millions of copies over the 1984 holiday season and prompted Geldof to organize the benefit concert Live Aid in 1985.