Stefano Lazzarini from RomaMost probably my favourite song. Heard it for the first time in a dark Dorset night and I was suddenly caught in the crepuscule of Vienna of the emperors and their ephemeral glory, masterfully depicted in an aura of haunting melancholy: in a word, decadence. Years gone by, but that feeling is still there everytime I listen to it. It was voted Britain's favourite single ever to peak at No. 2 on the charts in a 2012 poll by BBC Radio 2 and the Official Charts Company (OCC). It was also awarded an honorary No. 1 by the OCC. [14] We’d been listening to music by this old German composer called Max Reger. He’d tried too hard to be successful and deliberately overdid it. That was why I did a violin solo that was overly vibrato and romantic. Midge felt a little uncomfortable, because he’d only just joined and thought we were being arty-farty. “This means nothing to me,” he said. And Conny Plank, our producer, replied: “Well, sing that then.”

You seem to be dismissing the connection based on the movies plot rather than the atmosphere the movie provides. This weakens your argument.

The Austro-Hungarian empire was, as empires go, comparatively short-lived. It began in 1867 with the Ausgleich – the "Compromise" – that saw the old Austrian and Hapsburg empire transmogrified into a new Austria-Hungary, a strange hybrid empire with a dual monarchy whose imperial life ended in 1918 with defeat in the first world war. In fact, Austria-Hungary contained many other countries and ethnic groups and 11 recognised languages. This curious amalgam of peoples included Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Romanians and Italians. For the duration of its existence its emperor was Franz Joseph I. He reigned for nearly 68 years, dying in 1916 at the age of 86. The multi-generational length of his reign gave an illusion of permanence, of timeless durability, but as the old man grew ever more aged, so too the prospect of his death generated a collective sense of impending disaster. This growing fearfulness resonates in the literature of the period but there was a general feeling throughout the empire that everything would change once the old gentleman passed away. His son and heir, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide at Mayerling in 1889. Franz Joseph's nephew, Franz Ferdinand, became archduke and the heir presumptive to the empire. There was at least the notion that the dynasty would continue until – in June 1914 – Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, made a state visit to Sarajevo.

Missing lyrics by Ultravox?

We took an early morning flight to Vienna, ran round like loonies in and out of taxis as we filmed, and soon discovered that, due to it being the winter off-season, many of the splendid places we’d been counting upon filming were either shut for redecorating or covered with webs of scaffolding. A conclusion could easily be drawn between the atmosphere of the song and the atmosphere of the movie. However, I believe this connection to be simple co-incidence, a connection that appears to exist yet is in fact something unrelated. (I think the connection between the 'Wizard of Oz' with the sound off and the Pink Floyd Album 'Dark Side of the Moon' is an excellent example of this sort of co-incidence. The emotions on the album match that on the screen, but was not deliberate).

Vienna famously never made it beyond No.2 on the singles charts; Shaddap You Face beat it to top spot. History has possibly judged Joe Dolce’s novelty record differently to Ultravox’s iconic efforts, though. From its time as the capital of an imperial superpower, through war, dissolution, dictatorship to democracy Vienna has reinvented itself and its relevance to the rest of the world. I can see where people can get an impression that the movie influenced the song. After all, the movie is not horrific as you claim it is (the idea behind it is though). It is actually quiet atmospheric, with it's unusual score, strange camera angles and lighting that is very mood invoking (whether the bright lights in the sewer scenes or the dark streets with lights shimmering on the roads etc). The movie does have an ebb and flow of sights and sounds.

Hopefully you will all read the book by Angus Robertson…this is a really serious book about Vienna'However, it had to make do with peaking at number two for several weeks, famously being kept off the top spot by novelty song 'Shaddap You Face' by Joe Dolce. So long that we all got impatient with waiting and dipped into the many cases of wine we’d laid on for refreshment after the shoot. By the time the crew was ready to film, we were all well partying for real. In 2017, Ure was offered the chance to meet Dolce, but Ure declined, saying: "I've had 40 years of people talking about Joe 'Bloody' Dolce and I don't want to spend what I've got left talking about when I met him." [15] Music video [ edit ] The grave of Carl Schweighofer in 2009