Midge Ure on the Meaning Behind the Ultravox and Chieftains’ Celtic Collaboration, “All Fall Down”

By the time Ultravox released their eighth album U-Vox in 1986, founding member, drummer, and programmer Warren Cann parted ways with the band and their sound shifted ever-so-slightly from new wave synth, penetrating something more traditional and folk, with the release of “All Fall Down.”

‘We’ll All Fall Down’

Written by vocalist Midge Ure, keyboardist Billy Currie, and late bassist Chris Cross, the second single from U-Vox, “All Fall Down” delivered an anti-war protest, a cross-examination of the powers that be.

Within the lyrics, “All Fall Down” questions “what our chosen leaders do on our behalf, or supposedly on our behalf,” says Ure, who asked the Chieftains to play with the band on the song, to help capture the Celtic tone of the song.

When I was a boy there’s a dream that I had
That a war if it’s fought was for good against bad
And I woke up to find that the world had gone mad
And we’d all fall down

And I feel like a child again sitting observing
You’re toying with power, your fingers are burning
You’re pushing so hard that the worms won’t be turning
We’ll all fall down

While you try to pretend you’re a god upon high
With your party ideals and your squeaky clean lies
When it comes to the crunch you’re not smarter than I
And we’ll all fall down

“It’s just incredibly simplistic,” Ure tells American Songwriter about the song. “It’s a questioning thing. I think about my daughters, and what I can teach them. And the only thing I can teach my daughters is right from wrong, good from bad. That’s it. Then the rest of it’s up to them.”

Ure adds, “You can pay for education, and you can put them through university and all of that stuff, but the reality is what it all boils down to is that’s all we need to have, the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.”

[RELATED: Midge Ure on Keeping the Spirit of Ultravox Alive on the ‘Band in a Box’ Tour]

Going Celtic”

When he was younger, Ure remembers being taught traditional Scottish music, and “very Celtic” melodies, which he never imagined seeping into an Ultravox track.

“Of course, as a kid, you’re not interested in it,” says Ure. “You want to be playing in a band. You want to listen to Cream or Led Zeppelin or whatever you’re not interested in. So when I wrote ‘All Fall Down,’ it was so ridiculously Celtic—so ridiculously Scottish—and all of that stuff I thought it was ignoring was there, hence getting the Chieftains to play on it.”

“It’s the “simplicity” of the lyrics that make the song so powerful, says Ure, before reciting the closing verses: No sun for a world that once stood so tall / No wind’s going to blow and no rain’s going to fall / No flowers for graves, in fact, no graves at all / When we all fall down.

If it’s color or creed or your old-time religion
Well fighting for that shows a pure lack of vision
The fight that we strive is the fight to survive
And we’ll all fall down

Well look in the mirror and what do you see
An American, Russian, a soldier, or me
When you’ve all pressed the buttons just where will you be
When we all fall down

It gets harder to see just what future’s in store for us
Hard to see through all the wool you pull over us
Words that you give are just words to console us
We’ll all fall down

“It’s the simplicity of someone capable of pressing a button, and we are on the precipice right now,” says Ure. “We seem to be on the precipice a lot, so it’s the simplicity of that, just saying it. Sometimes the very simple words really hit home, because that’s all it is—’No graves at all,’—and that’s what will be left.”

Ure laughs, “Yeah, I’m miserable. What can I tell you.”

Photo: Ultravox (l to r) Billy Currie, Midge Ure, Warren Cann, and Chris Cross, Montreux, Switzerland, 1984 by Andre Csillag/Shutterstock