Ultravox
| Ultravox | |
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Ultravox in 2012, playing a date from their "Brill!ant" tour at the Hammersmith Apollo in London
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| Background information | |
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| Origin | London, England |
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| Labels | |
| Associated acts | Visage |
| Website | www |
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Ultravox (formerly known as Ultravox!) are a British new wave band, formed in London in 1974 as Tiger Lily. Between 1980–86, they scored seven Top Ten albums and seventeen Top 40 singles in the UK, the most successful of which was their 1981 hit "Vienna".
The band has been led by two different frontmen who never played together in the band at the same time. From 1974 until 1979, singer John Foxx was frontman and the main driving force behind Ultravox. Foxx left the band to embark on a solo career and, following his departure, Midge Ure took over as lead singer, guitarist and frontman in 1980 after he and keyboardist Billy Currie worked in the studio project Visage. Ure revitalised the band and steered it to commercial chart success lasting until 1987. Ure left the band in 1987 after establishing his own solo career and the group disbanded for a while.
A new line-up, led by Currie, was formed in 1992, but achieved limited success, with two albums failing to chart and one solitary single reaching 90 in the UK Singles Chart.
The band's best-known line-up of Currie, Ure, bassist Chris Cross and drummer Warren Cann reformed in 2008 and performed a series of reunion shows in 2009 and 2010 before releasing a new studio album, Brill!ant, in May 2012 which reached 21 in the British Album Charts. In November 2013, Ultravox performed as special guests on a four date UK arena tour with Simple Minds.
The band was formed in 1974 on the initiative of vocalist and songwriter Dennis Leigh, a then Royal College of Art student, and was originally known as Tiger Lily. An initial but incomplete line-up comprised Leigh plus Chris Allen (bass guitar) and Stevie Shears (guitar), with Warren Cann (drums) and Billy Currie (violin) joining in May and October 1974 respectively. The group released one single in 1975, "Ain't Misbehavin'", a cover of the Fats Waller song which featured in a soft porn film. Later, the band went through a series of name changes including The Zips, Fire of London, London Soundtrack, and The Damned, using this last name for a few weeks before discovering that another band had already taken it.
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