Richard Evans on Ultravox: ‘They were too rock for electronic purists, too electronic for rock audiences’

For more than four decades, Ultravox have occupied a rather unusual position in British music history. They were pioneers of electronic music, yet never quite belonged to the electronic camp. They emerged from the post-punk scene, embraced technology early, and later became one of the most successful British bands of the early 1980s. Yet their reputation has often been reduced to a handful of familiar titles, most notably “Vienna” and “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”.

Richard Evans believes the band deserves a good deal more recognition.

Following his 2022 book “Listening To The Music The Machines Make – Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983”, Evans has turned his attention to Ultravox with “Looking Backwards Towards the Future: The Story of Ultravox”, an authorised biography published by Omnibus Press on October 8, 2026. The 400-page hardback carries a foreword by Moby; North American, Australian and New Zealand editions follow on February 9, 2027. Evans has two book events confirmed so far: the Mowlem Theatre in Swanage on October 29, 2026, and Sound Affects in Brighton on November 4, 2026, both a talk, Q&A and signing.

For Evans, Ultravox was a natural subject because their story crosses several musical worlds at once. They were already active when his previous book began, and were still active when it ended. More importantly, they repeatedly moved ahead of musical fashion rather than following it.

We spoke to Richard about the origins of the book, John Foxx, the transformation brought by Midge Ure, the Blitz and New Romantic scene, the band’s unexpected connection with early Depeche Mode, the reunion years, and why he believes Ultravox are still waiting for the recognition they deserve.

‘All of a sudden I was writing a book about Ultravox’

Side-Line: Your previous book covered a whole musical movement. What made you decide that Ultravox should be your next subject?

Richard Evans: The exact moment was in a pub in London in 2024. I had gone into town to meet Omnibus Press, who had published my previous book, because they had got in touch to ask if I was interested in writing another one for them. “Listening To The Music The Machines Make” had sold well and they wanted to hear if I had any ideas for something else.

I had a small number of ideas, maybe four in total, which I told them about over a beer. They said they liked the sound of the Ultravox one the most and that was basically it. All of a sudden I was writing a book about Ultravox.

What interested me about the band was that they were one of only a small number of artists who were already active in 1978, at the start of “Listening To The Music The Machines Make”, who were still active in 1983, at the end of that book.

Also, I didn’t actually know that much about them. I had a few of their singles but I didn’t know much about the band beyond that. However, I had listened to a lot of their music while I was writing “Listening To The Music The Machines Make” and I really liked it, and the idea of finding out more about them was interesting.

Plus, of course, there wasn’t already a book about them. I don’t know why that was the case but it felt like a perfect opportunity.

A band that never quite fitted anywhere

Side-Line: Was there a particular question about Ultravox’s history that you wanted to answer?

Richard Evans: There wasn’t a particular question about Ultravox’s history that I wanted to answer. It was all of their history that caught my eye: the fact that they were a rare band who were so often ahead of musical fashions, who were true pioneers, but who were almost too far ahead of those curves to receive the credit for what they achieved.

They also interested me because they never made anything easy for themselves. They were always pushing themselves to explore new areas, often at the expense of easy commercial success, and I admired them for that.

Side-Line: That idea of Ultravox being difficult to categorise seems to run through their entire career.

Richard Evans: Ultravox are a funny band in that they never quite fitted anywhere. They were too rock for electronic purists, too electronic for rock audiences, too arty, too single-minded… all qualities that make them such an interesting band.

That is one of the things that became clearer to me while writing the book.

John Foxx: the beginning of everything

Side-Line: Your story goes all the way back to the origins of the band and John Foxx. How important was Foxx’s original vision?

Richard Evans: Incredibly important. Fundamental actually.

John Foxx actually conceived the idea of creating a band in response to a lecture he attended at art school, and in fact the formation of the band was a college project of sorts. That’s where the story starts, and none of the rest could have happened without that initial impetus.

Side-Line: Foxx is fascinating because his influence extends far beyond the years he spent as Ultravox’s frontman.

Richard Evans: John Foxx is a fascinating character, he deserves a biography dedicated to just him in fact.

He is incredibly articulate and innately curious and his career, which covers music, art, design, academia and more, is very interesting. He feels like a true maverick and a genuine innovator, but Ultravox! was the starting point for that.

If that hadn’t happened then he might have gone in an entirely different direction. An artist or an illustrator perhaps, or a writer or a teacher.

Ultravox! set him on a path to everything he has achieved and explored. It took a while for the world to catch up but I do think that his influence is now being realised and recognised.

‘Systems Of Romance’ and the DNA of electronic music

Side-Line: The first three albums occupy a fascinating place in electronic and post-punk history, with “Systems Of Romance” in particular becoming a reference point for later generations. Did researching them change the way you heard those records?

Richard Evans: They are indeed, and you’re right about “Systems Of Romance” in particular. That album represented a very special moment where creativity and technology were being explored in a new way and Ultravox were among the very first to start exploring that.

My research led me to listen to those records in a different way and they contain lots of idiosyncrasies and pieces of formative DNA which pointed to everything that came next, not just for the band, but for music in general.

That’s quite an achievement, isn’t it?

Side-Line: Did you deliberately avoid turning John Foxx’s later solo career into part of the Ultravox narrative?

Richard Evans: I don’t delve into John Foxx’s work after Ultravox in the book but I agree that “Metamatic” was a very important record.

Throughout “Looking Backwards Towards the Future” I tried to give equal weight to all the members of the various line-ups as best I could. They pretty much all had other projects going on outside Ultravox and if I explored one then I would have to explore them all, which would have taken focus away from the core Ultravox story and would have made the book much too big and unwieldy.

For what it’s worth though, I view “Metamatic” and John Foxx’s subsequent projects as being distinct from Ultravox rather than being extensions of it.

‘Vienna’, Blitz and the New Romantic moment

Side-Line: Ultravox’s relationship with the emerging Blitz and New Romantic scene is particularly interesting. How important was that environment to the band’s success?

Richard Evans: For the individual band members I don’t think it was particularly important, but for the success of “Vienna” it was crucial.

That period in time, those new electronic sounds, were incredibly new and startling, but it took Blitz and the New Romantics – none of Ultravox liked that name, although at the time they said they were more comfortable with being called Futurists – to create a world around that music by adding the dance-floor, the fashions and a compelling post-punk aesthetic to hang everything on to create a scene.

That scene in turn allowed all sorts of very diverse artists, Ultravox amongst them, to smuggle themselves into the mainstream under the cover of New Romanticism.

Side-Line: Depeche Mode were also part of that wider environment, although they quickly tried to distance themselves from the New Romantic label.

Richard Evans: It was a very fertile period and lots of bands who previously wouldn’t have been grouped together suddenly found themselves part of a movement, but the smarter artists already knew that fashions fade fast.

Having used the scene as the first steps on their career ladders, they were quick to try to distance themselves from it. Even at the time very few bands identified as New Romantics even though they were thrown together under that banner.

Depeche Mode could see that, I think, and didn’t want to be held back by it.

I think Ultravox were the same, but perhaps they played the game a little better!

When Ultravox and Depeche Mode almost crossed paths

Side-Line: There is also the story of Depeche Mode being offered an opportunity to support Ultravox around the period of the “Some Bizzare Album” and Stevo’s scene. What did you learn about that episode?

Richard Evans: It is something I touch on in the book.

You will be unsurprised to know that I was able to talk to Vince Clarke about Ultravox for “Looking Backwards Towards the Future” and we talked about exactly that.

It’s absolutely true, but although Stevo offered Depeche Mode a support slot with Ultravox as an incentive to sign with him, I don’t think that he was in a position to actually make that happen.

I think Depeche made the right decision!

Midge Ure and the creative chemistry of equality

Side-Line: When Midge Ure joined, Ultravox didn’t simply become a more commercially successful version of the same band. The entire musical and visual identity evolved. What made that line-up work so well?

Richard Evans: I think it was equality.

The previous incarnation of Ultravox was John Foxx’s project and he drove it, but with this new line-up everyone was equal and that led to a real creative connection.

Talking to the band about those sessions I get the impression they were having fun both creatively and personally, and they were very driven at that stage in their career, which was also an important factor.

Side-Line: They also resisted the obvious commercial option. After the enormous success of “Vienna”, they followed it with something as strange and eccentric as “Rage In Eden”.

Richard Evans: Initially I think they had fun with success.

It’s interesting – and very typical of the band – that following the massive success of “Vienna” they made an album as strange and as eccentric as “Rage In Eden” when the safe option would have been to simply capitalise on their success and do more of the same.

But I also think that as they moved forward, and as their success allowed them to explore other areas, internal dynamics did start to change and they got caught in a cycle of recording, releasing and touring album after album, which ultimately became unfulfilling and creatively challenging for them.

Beyond ‘Vienna’

Side-Line: Did researching “Vienna” itself reveal anything that changed the familiar story?

Richard Evans: The band have been asked about “Vienna” so many times over the years that I think everything that could be said about it has already been said.

That said, I did talk to the television promotions person from Ultravox’s label at that time, Chrysalis, and his memories of the band doing “Top Of The Pops” for the first time were interesting and new to me at least, so maybe I have added a little to the story of that song after all!

Side-Line: How much space did you give to the tensions behind the success?

Richard Evans: I think the public face of any band is never quite aligned with what is going on behind the scenes, but yes, those tensions are part of the story and so they have been included.

I was guided by the band members themselves as to how much they wanted to put in the public domain, but they were all very honest, I think.

Sometimes too honest, and sometimes that honesty made it into the book, and sometimes it didn’t…

Where does the classic Ultravox story end?

Side-Line: The “U-Vox” period is often regarded as the end of the classic Ultravox story. Do you agree?

Richard Evans: Warren Cann was already out of the band by the time “U-Vox” was released, so I would say that the end of the classic Ultravox story actually comes at the end of the “Lament” album project.

“U-Vox” was a tricky moment in the band’s career though.

That said, I always liked the album artwork!

Side-Line: And what about the Tony Fenelle and Sam Blue line-ups?

Richard Evans: I write about both of those line-ups but for me, and for a lot of other fans of the band, they aren’t true Ultravox albums.

They are interesting Billy Currie projects and there’s some good music to be found from both, but attaching the name Ultravox to them just doesn’t sit right for me looking at them in retrospect.

Sorry Billy…

Side-Line: So was the end of the band ultimately a creative, personal or musical problem?

Richard Evans: Definitely a combination of all three!

An influence still waiting for recognition

Side-Line: Ultravox’s reputation continued to grow through compilations and retrospectives. When did they become a genuine historical influence on new generations?

Richard Evans: That’s a really interesting question.

I talk to a couple of artists who claim Ultravox as a major influence on their own careers: Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, who is a huge fan of the earlier incarnation of the band, and Moby, who is more of a fan of the later records.

But despite their respective flag-waving for the band, I don’t think that Ultravox have really ever been given the respect they deserve.

Hopefully the book will help remind people of what they achieved as another stepping stone towards that kind of recognition.

The reunion: serendipity rather than nostalgia

Side-Line: The reunion in 2008 seemed almost improbable. What brought the four classic members back together?

Richard Evans: It was such an unlikely thing to happen, which is typically Ultravox in itself and I suspect that was part of the appeal for them.

It was basically a case of good timing.

One of Ultravox’s former managers, Chris O’Donnell, sent each of them an email wondering if they might consider doing some shows, and on that particular day, and in those particular moments, all four of them thought that there might be something in the idea.

The stars just happened to align.

Serendipity.

Side-Line: And then came “Brilliant”.

Richard Evans: The band have mixed feelings about that title, but it’s a decent album in my opinion.

I think that by the end of the making of it a lot of the old tensions were back in the band, which took a lot of the joy out of the project…

Writing an authorised biography without losing independence

Side-Line: You had access to the surviving members, as well as former collaborators, archive material and people from the band’s wider circle. How did you build the research?

Richard Evans: I was lucky on the research because I had already gathered a lot of it for “Listening To The Music The Machines Make”, so that turned out to be unexpectedly valuable.

Once Omnibus Press agreed to the idea of an Ultravox book I approached the surviving band members to see if they would be comfortable with me writing about them, and also to sound them out on whether they might want to become involved.

I had interviewed John Foxx, Billy Currie and Midge Ure previously for other things, so I started with them and they all confirmed they were happy for me to write the book, and also that they would make themselves available to answer questions.

Billy connected me to Warren, who also agreed to be on board, and John Foxx’s manager introduced me to Robin Simon, who also said yes.

Nobody was still in touch with Steve Shears though, and tracking him down took some time, and when I did he decided that he didn’t want to be directly involved.

I told the band that I would only ask them about things that they hadn’t previously talked about, rather than making them go over the same things they have been asked a hundred times over the years. I think that helped my case.

I’ve worked in the music industry for long enough that I knew people who had worked with the band, or who could easily connect me with people who worked with the band.

And other people I talked to I just approached out of the blue, like Steve Lillywhite and Moby, or I already knew, like Vince Clarke and Nick Rhodes.

Conflicting memories and uncomfortable truths

Side-Line: Was there any archive material that proved particularly revealing?

Richard Evans: I think the most interesting archive materials were the interviews the band did for the Ultravox fanzine “Extreme Voice”, which eventually became their official fan newsletter.

Those interviews were not only very relaxed conversations with the band, but they also delved deeply into unexpected corners in the way that only true fans could have done.

If I had to choose one then it would be the very honest interview that Warren Cann gave to the “In The City” fanzine after being sacked from the band, which wasn’t published at the time but later appeared in “Extreme Voice”.

Aside from that, John Foxx hasn’t really talked about a lot of things I asked him about. In fact, he told me he dislikes talking about this part of his history, so there are some very interesting contributions from him and it seems I was lucky to get them.

Side-Line: How do you balance honesty with fairness when different members remember the same events very differently?

Richard Evans: Sometimes it was tricky.

As I got to know the various band members a little over the course of the project I got to like them all, and as a result I very much wanted to represent each of them equally.

Sometimes their individual recollections didn’t quite match, or were dramatically different, and in those situations I tried to present all views side by side.

Did I leave some things out?

Yes I did, but only if I felt that they were unfair, overly personal or unsubstantiated.

Side-Line: And did the fact that this is an authorised biography ever compromise your independence?

Richard Evans: Not really.

None of the band members asked to see any of the book while I was writing it, and at this exact moment in time they still haven’t. As soon as printed copies are available I will send a copy to each of them and I very much hope they approve of it.

Ultimately it’s my book rather than theirs, but the band were kind enough to trust me to tell their stories, so I did feel a responsibility to represent each of them properly and respectfully.

I don’t recall not asking a question I wanted the answer to in any of my conversations with them though.

Why Moby?

Side-Line: Your previous book had a foreword by Vince Clarke. This time it is Moby. How did that happen?

Richard Evans: I didn’t know Moby, although our paths had briefly crossed in the early 90s, but I did know someone who could introduce me to his manager, which is what happened.

I knew Moby was a huge fan of Ultravox and when I explained what I was writing he agreed to talk to me.

We scheduled a Zoom and we got along really well.

His enthusiasm for Ultravox was so infectious and so heartfelt that he seemed to be the perfect person to provide the foreword.

He’s another really interesting character with interesting things to say.

Looking backwards, towards the future

Side-Line: You are planning book events around the publication. What would you like these events to become?

Richard Evans: When “Listening To The Music The Machines Make” came out I did an event for Sound Affects in Brighton. It was my first ever time doing a book event and although it went well I knew in retrospect that I didn’t do as good a job on it as I should have done, so I asked them if I could come back and do another one for this book, and they very kindly agreed.

Swanage is the closest town to where I live and I did an event at the same venue for “Listening To The Music The Machines Make”, which went well, so they asked if I might like to do another one.

Beyond those two I’m also having conversations with a few other people about doing talks and events at the moment. Potentially some of them will be me talking about the book, some will be conversations with other people. It’s all being worked out at the moment.

Side-Line: Finally, after spending so long looking backwards towards the future of Ultravox, where do you think the band belongs today?

Richard Evans: I think Ultravox are long overdue some proper respect for their achievements, and for always achieving those achievements on their own terms.

If the book can help amplify that for the band then I would be very happy, and if reading it makes people discover aspects of Ultravox they weren’t previously aware of then that would be amazing.

If nothing else, reminding people of the breadth and quality of their catalogue and reintroducing them to those songs feels like a successful outcome.

About Ultravox

Ultravox formed in London in April 1974 around singer Dennis Leigh, who took the name John Foxx, together with Chris Allen on bass, Stevie Shears on guitar, Billy Currie on violin and keyboards and Warren Cann on drums. The group worked as Tiger Lily before adopting the name Ultravox! in October 1976 and signing to Island Records. Allen had by then become Chris Cross. Steve Lillywhite and Brian Eno co-produced the debut album “Ultravox!”, released in February 1977; “Ha! Ha! Ha!” followed later the same year. Robin Simon replaced Shears on guitar for “Systems of Romance” in 1978, recorded in Germany with Conny Plank and built on synthesizers, treated guitar and drum machine. Foxx left in March 1979 after a final American date and went on to release “Metamatic” in 1980.

Midge Ure, previously of Slik, The Rich Kids and Thin Lizzy, joined as singer and guitarist on November 1, 1979, having worked with Currie in Visage earlier that year. The Ure line-up signed to Chrysalis and released “Vienna” in July 1980; its title track reached number two in the UK in early 1981. “Rage in Eden” followed in 1981, “Quartet” in 1982 with George Martin producing, and “Lament” in 1984, which carried “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”. Cann was dismissed in 1986, before the recording of “U-Vox”, released that October. Currie continued the name with two further albums fronted by other singers, “Revelation” in 1993 with Tony Fenelle and “Ingenuity” in 1994 with Sam Blue.

Ure, Currie, Cann and Cross reunited in November 2008, played their first show together in more than two decades at the Edinburgh Playhouse in April 2009 and released “Brill!ant” on May 28, 2012. Chris Cross died on March 25, 2024 at the age of 71. Chrysalis issued “The Collection (Deluxe Edition)” in December 2025. “Looking Backwards Towards the Future: The Story of Ultravox” is the first full-length book on the band.

Interview by János Janurik.