Midge Ure was a staple of '70s and '80s rock, pop and new wave – crash-landing into the UK charts with Slik, Rich Kids, Visage, and Ultravox – but in the guitar world, he's perhaps best known for saving Thin Lizzy after Gary Moore departed mid-U.S. tour, and co-organizing Live Aid alongside Bob Geldof.
However, he could have very well been part of another iconic group, namely The Sex Pistols, if only he had said yes one fateful day in 1975.
As Ure tells it, he was leaving a music store when Malcolm McLaren and Bernard Rhodes – the co-conspirators who played a key role in propelling the Pistols to widespread attention in their early days – approached him.
“It was an immediate no because they hadn’t asked what I did,” Ure says matter-of-factly in a new Guitar World interview.
“They stopped me because of how I looked – a time when everyone had long feather-cut hair, flares, and black-heeled boots. I looked like James Dean with my quiff and straight-tight jeans, and they stopped me coming out of a music shop, so I presumed they presumed I was a musician.
“But after going into the nuts and bolts of what they were trying to put together – a band – they just asked me if I wanted to join, they hadn’t asked if I actually play.
“They were looking for the look, rather than bones of talent. As it transpires, they found the best people they could find to put that band together. I would have ruined it somewhat.”
As to what the pair were doing in Ure's native Glasgow – well, it was for slightly more nefarious reasons than scouting band members…
“They had a boot full of stolen equipment they were trying to sell, which Steve Jones used to steal back in the day,” he reveals.
“He’d go and see bands unloading at the end of the night at Hammersmith Odeon, and then go pick a guitar or a few mics. So, I didn’t join the Pistols, but I bought an amplifier from his boot!”
Speaking of Steve Jones, last year, the guitarist's 1974 Les Paul Custom – which originally belonged to the New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain – fetched $390,000 at auction, after which it ended up in the hands of Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, Yungblud, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley.
Guitar World's full interview with Midge Ure will be published in the next few weeks.
