It was released as the third single from the band's fourth album Vienna on 9 January 1981 through Chrysalis Records. “Then, thank God, finally it was our time."Vienna" is a 1980 song by British new wave band Ultravox. “We’d been a bunch of schizophrenic odd-bods and we just weren’t accepted,” he says, now a solo artist. Currie remembers their breakthrough to mainstream success – until their 1988 split - fondly. 40 years on, Steven Wilson has remixed it for a new edition, while Ure has plans to play it live. “At first I was against putting Vienna out as a single, into the meat grinder,” says Currie.
Yet it would be another six months before the group could breathe easy, when Vienna’s title track became a huge hit, helped by a striking Russell Mulcahy promo clip part-filmed in the Austrian capital and starring a variety of decadent Euro-libertines including Great Rock‘N’Roll Swindle director Julian Temple, with a tarantula crawling across his face (in Britain the 45 was held off number one by Joe Dolce’s novelty Shaddap You Face). Sleepwalk reached its zenith of number 29 the same month, leading to the group’s first Top Of The Pops performance. I’ve got a cassette of when we played in Nottingham and someone’s throwing something at Midge, and he was like, It’s a different decade, cut the bloody crap and stop gobbing, spitting and throwing things! We just went bloody mad. We knew some people didn’t like us carrying on without John Foxx, but we were determined to carry on. It was still quite aggressive out there - a leftover from the punk thing. “It was really good being back on the road in Britain,” says Currie, “but it was quite hard work. Three weeks after the album’s release, Ultravox began the first of the year’s two UK tours, hitting Cardiff, Doncaster, Dundee and beyond. Chrysalis didn’t mess about, they would have kicked us off!” They did manage to get us in the top twenty, so we had come into the land of the living, but it was still a bit desperate. “It should have been in autumn, but the label just wanted it out. “It was an odd time for the album to be released,” says Currie. Initial reaction was cautious, with the album entering the charts at 14 on July 19, and anthemic lead single Sleepwalk – with wild solo’ing on the ARP Odyssey from Currie - reaching number 39 the following week. “Cut the bloody crap and stop gobbing and throwing things!” An album of powerful electronic rock with the influences of former Plank clients Kraftwerk and Neu!, and substantial pop flair, the whole was completed by the dramatic, quixotic title track, written in John Henry’s rehearsal space on London’s Caledonian Road. Having road tested material on a US tour in late ’79, the new line-up signed a deal with Chrysalis and decamped to London’s RAK studios in spring 1980 with Conny Plank, later finishing and mixing in the producer’s barn-studio in Cologne.
“There was frustration and it came from all of us,” says Currie. Nobody involved was aiming to miss, it seemed. That was what was needed… I’m very serious about this group.” That’s nothing to be ashamed of, or embarrassed of. “When I joined the band they had no money but I was really just pleased to be in on it,” the telegenic, pencil moustache’d Ure told Paul Morley in September ‘80, adding, “I’ve got a commercial ear. The latter outfit, which also featured sometime Gary Numan collaborator Currie, would, mildly confusingly, run concurrently for a time with Ultravox. Just weeks after his departure, Foxx had been replaced by singer-guitarist Midge Ure, whose resumé included mid-seventies popsters Slik, Glen Matlock’s Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy and Steve Strange’s Visage. Currie, drummer Warren Cann and bassist/ keysman Chris Cross were up for the fight, though.
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