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Ultravox instruments from Live Aid up for auction

PA Media Auctioneer Luke Hobbs from Gardiner Houlgate stands facing the camera holding a black bass guitar which was played by Chris Cross at Live Aid. Mr Hobbs has a beard and is wearing a white T-shirt with "Feed the World" in black letters on itPA Media
The guitar played by Chris Cross at Live Aid is expected to fetch in excess of £4,000

Items from Ultravox's Live Aid performance nearly 40 years ago are to be sold at auction.

The bass guitar played by Chris Cross at the 1985 Wembley concert, held to raise money for famine relief in Africa, is expected to fetch in excess of £4,000.

The memorabilia is being sold on 3 December, in Corsham in Wiltshire, following the death of Cross, 71, in March.

Auctioneer Luke Hobbs, from Gardiner Houlgate, said: "We're expecting interest from around the world. For musicians, Chris's collection of around 400 items is a real treasure trove."

In addition to more than 30 guitars and a range of synthesizers, the Chris Cross collection includes Ultravox gold discs from around the world.

An old photograph from the 1980s of the band on a stage with smoke machines creating coloured smoke
Ultravox regularly appeared on the BBC's Top of the Pops in the 1980s.

Chris Cross, whose real name was Chris Allen, was a member of Ultravox from the band's formation in the mid-1970s until its split in 1987.

He co-wrote the new wave band's best known 1981 hit, Vienna, and retired from the music industry to become a psychotherapist.

Speaking from his home in Portugal, former Ultravox singer and co-organiser of Live Aid, Midge Ure, said: "Chris was the glue that held Ultravox together.

"There was a reason why he counselled troubled kids after we split. Ultravox was a great training ground for a career in therapy."

PA Media Thousands of people are seen in a picture taken from the stage at Live Aid in 1985, held at Wembley StadiumPA Media
Music fans packed into Wembley for the Live Aid concert in 1985

A Yamaha SG2000 electric guitar used by Ure is also being auctioned as is Cross's platinum disc for the Band Aid single, Do They Know It's Christmas?

Other collectors' items include the 1980s Oxford synthesizer used on the 1984 single Love's Great Adventure and an EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer used for bass parts on Ultravox's ground-breaking first album, Ultravox!.

Mr Hobbs said: "Chris's collection connects to some of the most iconic moments of the 1980s.

"Not just Band Aid and Live Aid, but also key points in Ultravox's career as they transitioned from synth pioneers to pop stardom.

"Many people who grew up in the 1980s are collecting this kind of memorabilia."

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