Adele, Dad Drama: Singer's Estranged Father Pleas for a Reconciliation

Peter Wafzig, Redferns

Midge Ure, the singer and guitarist for the synthpop group Ultravox, had a very eventful 2012 -- a year marked by the British quartet's first new album in 25 years -- featuring Ure, Chris Cross, Billy Currie and Warren Cann -- and a European tour. Yet Ure isn't exactly taking a break after completing those Ultravox concerts. This month, he's in the midst of a solo tour of the States, where he hadn't performed for more than 10 years. But that's a relatively short hiatus given that Ultravox hadn't played together in America for over two decades.

"It was always a bit of a bone of contention with Ultravox," Ure tells Spinner, "that we used to tour quite regularly in America. And because of technical limitations, we used to have to do five-hour sound checks because the equipment at the time was incredibly basic -- basic synthesizers, basic electronics. So we could never open up for another band, we could never do a package tour with other artists, which would have been the natural next step for Ultravox. We got a bit frustrated that we never really kind of pursued the American market the way we would like to have."