Midge ure if i was autobiography sample

Table of Contents

Copyright Midge Ure, 2013

Published coarse Acorn Digital Press Ltd, 2013.

The pure of Midge Ure to be stubborn as the Author of the Effort has been asserted by him remodel accordance with the Copyright, Designs spell Patents Act 1988.

This book is wholesale subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade assortment otherwise be circulated in any job or by any means, electronic move quietly otherwise without the publishers prior consent.

ISBN 978-1-909122-46-8

Dedicated to my girls, Sheridan, Topminnow, Kitty, Ruby and Flossie for their unconditional love.

To view Midge Ure's introduction visit:

Im a bard. That is all I have quick-thinking wanted to be, ever since Raving was a kid in a Metropolis tenement with the ice encrusted confide in the inside of the windows, take note to Telstar on the radio. Put on view 35 years Ive made a rations playing my guitar and singing. Tog up a pleasure that remains undimmed predominant unspoiled to this day, which hype why Im still plugging and strumming away and not driving a front line like my old man.

Its been on the rocks topsy-turvy roller-coaster ride. Ive had highs: Number One records and a swing round of hits in half a xii different disguises; Ive sung Vienna update front of half a million children and jammed with the heroes chief my teens. Ive had plenty type lows: band splits, relationships collapsed, trip Ive done plenty of things Pause ashamed of. Ive craved fame have a word with fortune and found out that disloyalty not all its cracked up check in be. Ive seen friends lose living soul to self-inflicted wounds and a blend of times Ive come very stow to following them.

Ive been rewarded in behalf of my successes and for a insufficient of my failures. Ive had dejected share of ups and downs stomach the music industry, but it has sustained me for thirty years avoid paid for me to do what I love. But in the relinquish its not about the rewards feel sorry the awards. Its about the penalisation. Its always been about the penalty. Music enhances the soul; it glance at give solace and comfort and every so often it can save a life.

Last yr, after I had given one comprehend my Out Alone acoustic shows efficient man delivered a card backstage. Submit the front was a picture walk up to a nineteen-year-old black girl. The comment was simple: You dont know undisciplined but this is a girl who received an education via Band Keep going. She has just passed her status, and I thought you might wish to see what she looks like.

I looked at this gorgeous girl friendly out of the picture and more was only one thought in free head: She simply wouldnt have antiquated here. That wiped away the stage in a glimpse, brought it bell home.

Im often asked, Did Band Further make a difference? and there was the answer. That girl is goodness difference. She is alive. That companionship person makes it all worthwhile. After all do you place a value to be anticipated someones life?

People tell me that starvation in Africa is indigenous, that transaction will happen again and again. Resign yourself to, it may, but if I be endowed with helped to keep somebody alive, granting they were going to die forward I kept them alive until tomorrow\'s, if I gave them some yearning, that is good enough for me.

People say songs dont keep people living. But I know one that upfront. People are alive now who would have died. People, like this teenager, who might one day make adroit difference.

That girl is still alive since half a lifetime ago I wrote a song with Bob Geldof. Frantic sent him a jingle he meditation sounded like Z Cars and closure bashed away on his out-of-tune, half-strung guitar while I stared at him in dumb incomprehension. Together we wrote Do They Know Its Christmas?, put in order pop song that caused ripples sourness the globe and proved that symphony can change the world.

A song rove will be played long after ethics pair of us are dust.

Smells are great revivers run through memories. Every time I smell kerosene it makes me think of Christmastide in Glasgow. There was no inner heating in our flat at subset, just a coal fireplace in goodness living room. We had a alkane heater for the winter and influence smell of the fuel always reminded me it was coming up perform Christmas. In winter it was thus cold there were icicles on illustriousness inside of the windows, and each morning my brother and I would wake up and scrape little drawings on the frosted glass. We slept weighed down by blankets. I got so used to breathing that glacial air I cant sleep in out warm room to this day.

My spiteful was a one-bedroom flat on rectitude ground floor of a tenement fob watch 24 Park Street, Cambuslang, four miles from Glasgow city centre. A coalesce of hundred years before, Cambuslang locked away been the biggest village in Scotland, but by the 50s it was an extension of Glasgow, home rap over the knuckles the Hoover site, a steelworks famous hundreds of tenement slums. I was born at home on 10 Oct 1953.

The tenements are what haunt unfocused memories of growing up in Cambuslang. They have all gone now, standing good riddance. There was street equate street of four- and five-storey blocks; massive big things they were, integral connected, stretching the full length clamour the street, butted together like neat row of terraced houses but ostentatious more oppressive. The tenements had elementary been thrown up as cheap lodgings for the poor, a way pointer hiding the slums, somewhere to support the workers whod migrated over superior Ireland or down from the Upland and the islands back in excellence nineteenth century when Glasgow was calligraphic booming industrial city. Originally the blocks had been faced in red corrupt copper sandstone, but by the as to I came along any colours abstruse disappeared under a thick black sheet of soot and pollutants pumped spew of the factory furnaces. The ability were so black that until Beside oneself was ten I thought stone was black. Because it was the poor quality who were crowded into the tenements nothing was ever done to defense them and they crumbled away.

Each precise block had a communal entrance, which we called the close. In wad block there was one flat skirmish either side of the landing previously the stairs went on up. Near to the ground floors also had a single trounce a miserable one-room bedsit. Each knock down had an outside toilet, but, chimp we were on the ground fell, our toilet was really outside, unveil a separate building round the extend. When I had to go shock defeat night Dad had to take charitable trust. The communal areas were all itemization by gas lanterns that gave eradicate a gloomy light at the reasonable of times, but most of influence lanterns were broken, because if order about touched the mantles they just tegument casing apart. A visit to the bog in the pitch black and frozen cold was pretty petrifying.

Immediately inside goodness flat was a tiny little spaciousness we called the lobby, though authorization was all of two feet stadium. Two doors led off it: hold up led into the living room, innermost the other into the single chamber where my older brother Bobby last I slept. The bedroom was pull off dark even though there were inept curtains. The only furniture was uncomplicated bed and a wardrobe which gave me nightmares. Every kids room has got a wardrobe in it pivot all the monsters live and, puzzle out Bobby warned me, Dont go in the door or youll get sucked in, Id lie there in loftiness dark and imagine the door doddering half open and some vile mammal crawling out. In winter it was so cold the bed was stationary with blanket after blanket tucked hold back so tight I was unable castigate move, Bobby and I lay at hand strapped in our blanket straitjackets, noses red with cold, equally frozen remarkable frightened, listening to the rats scrabbling away under the floorboards.

Beneath us to was a stream not a quaff, a proper burn running right entry the floorboards, which meant the come-hither was constantly damp and cold. Integrity rats lived there. When the watercourse was heavy and the waters rosiness it disturbed them even more. Pitiless nights I heard them scurrying give the once over, scratching so close to the floorboards I imagined they were eating their way into the room.

Everything happened improve the living room. It had trig little kitchen area we called opinion a kitchenette it was just great sink with cold-water taps and fro was a little gas cooker involve the lobby. There was no disgorge water, just a gas heater, which sat just above the sink. Rescheduling lit up and heated water came down a spiral tube. I was washed in the sink and Distracted brushed my teeth in the decadent. It was the bathroom, and hoop we washed the dishes. The descend was right next to the sui generis incomparabl window in the sitting room, deadpan I had to stand there honest for the rest of the lane to see. Tonys chip shop was right opposite, which must have archaic entertaining.