When Midge Ure returns to Australia this October, it will be more than just another tour. For the Scottish music icon, the long-awaited run of dates represents unfinished business, a chance to reconnect with Australian audiences after the last visit in 2020 was abruptly derailed as the world shut down around him.
Speaking with Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips, Midge Ure vividly recalled the surreal experience of touring Australia as COVID restrictions rapidly escalated. Travelling westward across the country, he watched audience capacities shrink day by day before the tour finally came to a halt in Perth. “We got to Perth, but no one else did,” he laughs. “We had to go back with this unfinished tour. It was very odd.”
This time around, Ure is determined to make up for lost time. Having also postponed his planned 2025 Australian dates due to a health issue that required urgent treatment and recovery, he says he is especially eager to return. “I think I let a lot of people down last year, and I want to make reparations for that,” he says. “I want to be there and do it well. Australia has always been great for me.”
MORE ABOUT THE INTERVIEW, AUSTRALIAN TOUR AND NEW ALBUM
The October 2026 tour is built around Ure’s acclaimed Catalogue concept, a celebration of a career that stretches across more than five decades and encompasses an extraordinary body of work. Audiences can expect a setlist drawing from his solo career, Ultravox, Visage, Thin Lizzy and The Rich Kids, featuring the songs that have defined his musical journey.
While the show is still centred on the hits and fan favourites, Ure admits he likes to keep things fresh.
“The Catalogue tour does exactly what it says on the tin,” he explains. “It’s the hits, the favourites, the key album tracks from Ultravox, Visage and the solo records. But I’ll shuffle things around a little because it keeps us on our toes.”
Behind the scenes, however, mounting such a show is far more sophisticated than audiences might imagine. Ure’s current live production relies on what he describes as a “silent stage”, with no traditional amplifiers and much of the band’s sound driven through modern digital technology. It’s a far cry from the mid-1980s Ultravox tours where up to 26 synthesizers were required on stage to recreate the band’s arrangements.
“Modern technology has allowed us to reduce all of that to three keyboards,” he says. “We can split sounds across the keyboard, use software instruments and make everything much more efficient while still maintaining the quality.”
The touring band itself is compact but highly versatile. Long-time drummer Russell Field is joined by multi-instrumentalists Joseph O’Keefe and Cole Stacey, musicians Ure discovered performing as a contemporary folk duo before recruiting them into his electronic world.
“They came as a band in their own right,” he says. “I’ve completely ruined them by putting them behind synthesizers and they love it.”
The Australian tour arrives as Ure continues to promote his ambitious new release, A Man Of Two Worlds, a project unlike anything else in his extensive catalogue. The double album combines a collection of vocal songs with an entirely separate instrumental album, reflecting two distinct sides of his creative personality.
The project’s origins can be traced directly back to the lockdown period following that interrupted Australian tour. Suddenly facing an empty diary for the first time in his professional life, Ure found himself with both time and creative freedom.
During lockdown he hosted a late-night programme for a UK classical radio station, immersing himself in instrumental music and the work of contemporary composers such as Max Richter and the Icelandic artists like Sigur Ros whose cinematic soundscapes had long fascinated him.
“I started thinking I’d make an album that wasn’t aimed at any commercial market,” he says. “Just something I wanted to get out of my system.”
At the same time, he continued writing songs. The process evolved naturally, moving between vocal tracks and instrumentals, allowing him to return to each project with fresh ears. Eventually, he realised he had effectively created two separate albums.
It was only later that someone suggested they belonged together. “That’s when the title A Man Of Two Worlds made sense,” he says. “It reflected the two sides of what I do.”
For Ure, writing instrumental music requires an entirely different mindset from writing songs.
“A song has lyrics to tell the story,” he explains. “An instrumental has to stand on its own. Every listener brings their own interpretation to it. That’s what makes it fascinating.”
Lyrically, the vocal half of the album is shaped by contemporary events and Ure’s observations of an increasingly turbulent world. Themes of political dysfunction, social division and uncertainty run throughout the record, continuing a long tradition of socially conscious songwriting.
“Had I made this record in the 1960s, people would probably have called it an album of protest songs,” he says.
Musically, the album also allowed him to revisit his love of synthesizers. While Ure was once surrounded by vast collections of analogue gear, he now relies largely on modern software instruments.
“The soft synths are fantastic,” he says. “They give you this enormous palette of sounds. The challenge is not getting lost in it all. If you spend all your time reading manuals, you’ll never actually make any music.”
Despite embracing modern technology, Ure remains committed to the album format itself. The sequencing of A Man Of Two Worlds was carefully considered, particularly with vinyl listeners in mind.
“I still believe in the journey of an album,” he says. “People used to buy a record because of one song and then discover their favourite track was something completely different after living with it for a week. That experience has largely disappeared in the streaming age.”
The overwhelmingly positive response to the album has been particularly gratifying for an artist who says he created it entirely on his own terms.
“I made this record for me,” he says. “I’m 72 years old. I’ve earned my stripes. I wasn’t trying to compete with anybody. I just wanted to make something I found interesting.”
It’s an attitude that has defined much of Ure’s remarkable career. From fronting Ultravox and Visage, to co-writing and producing Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, directing major international benefit concerts and helping drive the historic Live 8 event, his influence on modern popular music is difficult to overstate.
Now, Australian audiences will once again have the opportunity to experience that legacy live. Expect the classics, some deep cuts, stories from an extraordinary career and perhaps a glimpse into the two worlds that continue to inspire one of Britain’s most enduring musical innovators.
For fans who missed him in 2020 or those disappointed by last year’s postponement, October’s return promises to be worth the wait.
MIDGE URE AUSTRALIAN ‘CATALOGUE- THE HITS’ 2026 AUSTRALIAN TOUR
THURSDAY 8 OCTOBER 2026 – ASTOR THEATRE – PERTH BUY NOW
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