Tag: Heaven 17 (Page 13 of 14)

MARTYN WARE: The BEF Interview

20 May 2011 / electricityclub

Photo by Mike Prior

This Autumn sees the reissue of BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION’s ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Volumes 1 & 2’.

Ambitiously conceived as a high-tech covers project with HEAVEN 17’s Martyn Ware as musical director and in a production partnership with bandmate Ian Craig Marsh, ‘Volume 1′ featured guest vocalists such as the late Billy MacKenzie from ASSOCIATES, MANFRED MANN’s Paul Jones, HEAVEN 17’s Glenn Gregory, Bernie Nolan, Sandie Shaw and Paula Yates. There were also cameo appearances from Midge Ure and Bob Geldof under the pseudonym of THE NANCY BOYS.

There was an impressive supporting cast of musicians who included THE SHADOWS’ Hank Marvin, MAGAZINE’s John McGeoch, I LEVEL’s Jo Dworniak, Nick Plytas and John Foxx. However most notably, ‘Volume 1′ saw the recorded return of Tina Turner on a blistering reworking of THE TEMPTATIONS’ ‘Ball Of Confusion’.

Although impressively co-ordinated, Volume 1 did not sell in huge numbers but the working relationship with Tina Turner gelled which led to Martyn Ware producing her comeback single, a magnificently moody version of Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’. Becoming a massive worldwide hit, it effectively revived her career.

For 1991’s ‘Volume 2’, she reciprocated by singing the Sam Cooke classic ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ while this collection also saw the return of Billy MacKenzie on Denise Williams’ ‘Free’. The album featured a greater emphasis on Ware’s love of soul which was highlighted by guest vocalists such as Green Gartside, Chaka Khan, Terence Trent D’Arby, Lalah Hathaway and Billy Preston.

Now, a ‘Volume 3’ entitled ‘Dark’ is being completed while the work of BEF is to be celebrated in a live extravaganza at London’s Roundhouse this October that will feature the live premiere of HEAVEN 17’s ‘The Luxury Gap’ in 3-D sound on Friday 14th and a BEF concert on Saturday 15th with guest vocalists Andy Bell, Midge Ure, Boy George, Kim Wilde and Sandie Shaw already confirmed.

Following his interview last year, Martyn Ware was kind enough speak about the whole BEF production concept, ‘The Luxury Gap’ and the forthcoming live weekender.

It’s amazing to think now that back in 1981, Virgin Records were prepared to finance such an ambitious project by a then comparatively unknown musician / producer…

There were visionary people, it’s only in the fullness of time that you realise how visionary. I have to give Virgin a lot of respect because initially when I left THE HUMAN LEAGUE, I signed to them as BEF, not HEAVEN 17. They were really bought into the idea, big style. I said if I was really going to make it real as opposed to some fancy marketing fluff, I wanted to really organise it as a proper production company and make it work by bringing forward lots of different projects. And the manifesto for that was the ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction’ album, it was like a calling card really for our production style. I was ridiculously gung ho I think… I’d just ring people up, they didn’t know who the hell I was!

How did the idea first come about?

I really wanted to get up to speed in terms of putting myself and Ian Marsh up on the map as a production team that people would be interested in. I couldn’t think of a better way of doing it than appealing to people’s artistic nature.

Was the seed of this in THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s live act when you used to do covers?

Yeah, there’s always been the element of the curator in me I suppose, wanting to reinterpret things and try to change people’s perceptions through the medium of reinterpretation… and that’s a very pretentious way of saying “doing cover versions”! The point is, applying the skills and palette of sounds that we’d used with THE HUMAN LEAGUE, adding some real instruments in there and seeing what would come out. And it turned out to be the palette of sounds that we used for ‘Penthouse and Pavement’.

At the time, many were expecting the songs to be arranged in the style of HEAVEN 17 but with other vocalists. But the arrangements were quite varied from glam rock to big ballads plus a variety of conventional instrumentation. How did decide how the recordings would actually sound?

It started out with the idea that it was going to be electronic really, and then it quickly became apparent that it was just restricting ourselves too much. It turned into something that in the same way I wanted to put ourselves on the map in terms of vocalists, I also wanted to do it in terms of musicians as well. Hence getting people like John McGeoch who I had massive respect for, Neville ‘Breeze’ McKreith and David ‘Baps’ Baptiste from BEGGAR & CO and other musicians from the funkier end of the spectrum.

These weren’t old session players we were using, these were young guys with an average age of 22. We had older musicians too like Paul Jones from MANFRED MANN playing harmonica on ‘Ball Of Confusion’ just generally mixing and matching and mashing styles up. It all seems straightforward now because that sort of thing has been done so much in the last few years but at the time it was pretty cutting edge. It was like being a demented puppet master, but a friendly Northern version.

The one that stands out for me is Bowie’s ‘The Secret Life Of Arabia’. Not only was Billy MacKenzie amazing but so were the funk musicians juxtaposing with your Linn Drum programming and Roland Vocoder choral pads…

I love that! What an incredible talent, I loved what he did and how he appeared right from the second I heard ASSOCIATES’ ‘Party Fears Two’ on some late evening music show. He just looked like a Hollywood star. I am not gay but if I was… I thought he was utterly beautiful and stellar! *laughs*

What was he like to work with?

We got on really well, he was the first on the list of people that I rang up. Everybody knows he was bonkers and had a particular take on things but musically, we fitted together very well. He lacked a little in terms of understanding the production process and how sound fitted together but what he lacked in that respect, he made up for in his arrangement ideas.

I was, if you like, kind of filling in the missing parts for him. But he turned round to me after we’d done a couple of tracks on the ‘Perhaps’ album and he said “Martyn, you’ve got a pop heart” which I though was the nicest compliment anyone’s ever paid me.

There was a group called THE HEREAFTER credited with backing vocals on Volume 1. Was that you and Glenn Gregory?

Yeah! I just love the name… HEAVEN 17 and THE HEREAFTER… c’mon! I might revive that for the live show *laughs*

What inspired the Volume 1 album artwork?

We always liked the whole notion of packaging for different types of goods. So Ian Marsh had a shirt box which said “shirts of quality & distinction”. It was literally a box in black and white of people getting out of an E-Type Jag in front a big posh hotel. So I thought “we’re going to recreate that photo and call the album Music Of Quality & Distinction”!

You used the Synclavier 2 quite a bit on the album but when HEAVEN 17 eventually acquired a computer musical instrument, you settled on a Fairlight. What were your operational reasons for this?

The operational reasons for moving to the Fairlight were that Ian had bought one without asking anyone and with his own money… £40,000! I was going “Are you sure about this Ian?”, it seemed a little extreme but he was keen so… those days have gone! But I was very keen on the Synclavier from the point of view in that the purity of the sounds was so amazing. There was also another machine, I can’t remember what it was called now but it had a green computer screen built-in. It was like an early graphic visual representation programmer.

We also used a PC called an Osborne which we used for programming sequence parts just before we got into Macs and everything. We just hired stuff in and tried different things, it was being in a giant toy store. The LinnDrum was just brilliant, we wanted everything to be as good that was at rhythm. We thought that merging it with the human aspects of live players was pretty unique at the time.

Photo by Gered Mankowitz

Did you use the Synclavier on ‘The Luxury Gap’?

No, we’d moved on by then to programming using the Roland MC4 Microcomposer, so there was a lot of numeric programming on that album. That drove my System 100 and Ian’s System 100M. The original demos are really just the programmed parts which then got layered over with real instruments. The programmed parts, as you’d expect, combined with the LinnDrum sounded extremely robotic and not necessarily in a good way, it sounded too ‘white bread’ for me.

By that time, I’d moved into a different headspace. It was the idea of programmed parts inspiring musicians who weren’t used to listening to programmed material to syncopate off them and that was interesting. On ‘The Luxury Gap’, Simon Phillips came in and played on ‘Lady Ice And Mr Hex’. He played the most amazing syncopated, polyrhythmic thing on a giant drum kit with three bass drums and twenty toms… that was all inspired by the nuts nature of the original LinnDrum programme.

Volume 2 finally appeared in 1991 and had much more of a soulful live feel didn’t it?

It was more aiming for the mainstream market , it wasn’t really meant for the cognoscenti. It was almost Trans-Atlantic rather than European, it’s got quite an American feel but not in a detrimental way. I saw Green Gartside from SCRITTI POLITTI the other day who did ‘I Don’t Know Why I Love You’ which I really like, I still play it.

He said he really likes it now but he wasn’t so sure at the time. I had to push him hard to do that track because he doesn’t really see himself as a soul singer. And I think he’s got an incredibly soulful voice, although it’s not necessarily in the purist genre based sense of soul. I always think that about Kate Bush as well. Essentially, some people have got soulful voices whether they choose to sing what we regard to be soul music or not. Peter Gabriel fits into that bag as well.

What are your favourites from the first two volumes?

‘Secret Life Of Arabia’ was very successful as far as I was concerned. I really like ‘Wichita Lineman’, that’s an interesting version of that song and Glenn sings it really well. I also really like ‘It’s Over’ with Billy MacKenzie, it’s so completely over the top and kind of operatic. Of course ‘Ball Of Confusion’, it was very successful and led to me working with Tina Turner.

On the second album, I like the Green track. I personally, although I’ve never heard anyone else say it, really like ‘Someday We’ll All Be Free’ sung by Chaka Khan and I’m very fond of ‘Family Affair’. Lalah Hathaway’s got a great voice, I don’t know what really happened to her. I also loved Mavis Staples doing ‘A Song For You’.

When we last spoke, you revealed that you’d just finished the backing track to DELFONICS’ ‘Didn’t I Blow Your Mind?’ for ‘Dark’. Are you able to reveal any more of the other tracks that will be on the finished album and any of the vocalists?

Andy Bell’s going to do ‘Breathing’ by Kate Bush; Kim Wilde is going do a minimalist System 100 only arrangement which I’ve done with Brian Duffy of MODIFIED TOY ORCHESTRA of a song called ‘Everytime I See You I Go Wild’ by JJ Barnes, it’s a classic Northern Soul tune co-written by Stevie Wonder.

Billie Godfrey who sings with HEAVEN 17 has done a version of the BRONSKI BEAT song ‘Smalltown Boy’ which is really interesting, it’s like an epic eight minute version and quite cinematic. Polly Scattergood who’s on Mute has done a version of Dusty Springfield’s ‘The Look Of Love’. With Glenn, I’m going to be working on ‘It Was A Very Good Year’ by Frank Sinatra, an electronic soundscape version of it. If you think about the original fantastic orchestral arrangement, it’s like a series of little episodes of a short story and I want to do the same but using electronics instead. I think it will work really well.

So is ‘Dark’ much more of an electronic album than any previously in the BEF covers series?

Yes, the basic premise is dark, minimalist electronic versions of previously normal songs. It’s expanded a bit since that original theory because I realise now is that what I really want to do is either minimalist or soundtrack-ish type things but none of it is going to be normal, just pure electronic.

You’re going to celebrate the legacy of BEF with a two day live event featuring HEAVEN 17’s ‘The Luxury Gap’ on day one and BEF on day two. How are the arrangements coming along?

It’s a massive amount of work, it all seems very simple when you’re talking about it in a meeting. Just contacting people and getting them to respond to emails, these generally aren’t people you can just ring up out of the blue however much you get on with them, they’re just not available a lot of the time.

It slows the whole process down. I’m doing this and the BEF album with no finance or record company support. You’re asking for people’s faith and for them to approach it as a good idea from an artistic point of view, and therefore trying to leverage my reputation over thirty years amongst people who know.

It’s tricky but it’ll all come out in the wash. I’m sure that it’s going to be an extraordinary night. I’m very happy that people have agreed to do it so far in advance. There’s already been three months of hard work from all concerned to try and get this together. I’m lucky to be getting these people for one night. It’s genuinely not going to happen anywhere else, it is a one-off!

What are your sound challenges for these two shows at The Roundhouse?

The challenge for the HEAVEN 17 Luxury Gap performance is to create a show that’s never been created before which is equipping the entire auditorium in 3-Dimensional sound. I do with my other hat on with Illustrious so I’m not freaking out as it’s what we do for a living. But I don’t think people are going to be quite ready for it, they’re going to be gobsmacked. No rock band has ever done this before and that includes PINK FLOYD… they’ve done quadraphonic but this is the next level up. So that in itself plus programming in an entire album. And we’ll be doing songs that aren’t on ‘The Luxury Gap’, like with the ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ show.

And then the challenges for the BEF night are just the logistics, programming it all, getting everybody in and there at the right time, and the rehearsals… can you imagine that? *laughs*

Are the HEAVEN 17 regulars like Billie Godfrey, Asa Bennett and Joel Farland going to be the house band for the BEF show?

Yes, and we’re getting a great looking girl keyboard player Berenice Scott, because there are a lot more parts on ‘The Luxury Gap’ and the BEF albums than on ‘Penthouse and Pavement’.

That’s an impressive line-up of guest vocalists you’ve gathered so far. Can you say who will be doing what song?

Andy Bell’s going to do ‘Secret Life Of Arabia’, I can’t think of a better person to take it on. Sandie Shaw will do ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ and Glenn will do ‘Wichita Lineman’. For the live show, the idea is that each of the artists on ‘Dark’ will do one of the tracks of their choice from Volumes 1 and 2, and then the new track that they’re doing.

Any chance you could get Phil Oakey to do ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ for old times sake?

I’m working on it, that’s all I can say!

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Martyn Ware

Special thanks also to Peter Noble at Noble PR

BEF ‘Music Of Quality & Distinction Volumes 1 & 2’ are due for release as a remastered boxed set by EMI in Autumn 2011

HEAVEN 17 perform ‘The Luxury Gap’ on Friday 14th October 14th 2011, followed by BEF ‘Music of Quality & Distinction Live ‘on Saturday 15th October 2011 – the event takes place at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London. Day tickets cost £23.50 while weekend tickets are £42.50 subject to booking fee.

http://martynwareblog.blogspot.com/

https://www.heaven17.com/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
20th May 2011

WE HOPE YOU ENJOY OUR NEW DIRECTION

18 April 2011 / electricityclub

Some Not So Great Albums By Some Great Acts

While opinion is totally subjective and in the mind of the beholder, in the same way that a footballer can occasionally fluff a shot, then a musician can also score their equivalent of an own goal. The less than impressive albums on this list have generally been derided by both fans and critics. In most cases, these recordings were made by established acts with sure-fire reputations at the height of their career; or they were part of a much vaunted comeback.

But as can be expected with the highs and lows of the music industry, a number were produced during difficult periods in an artist’s creative dynamic following personnel changes or record company pressures. So in hindsight, poor results were often predictable and inevitable. However, based on the standards of their strongest work, most of the talents mentioned here should have known better.

But even in the face of informed criticism, some musicians can be terribly stubborn and unrepentant. Reacting to negativity surrounding his infamous ‘Metal Machine Music’ double album of feedback and electronic screeching, Lou Reed famously snorted: “if they don’t like it, they can go eat rat sh*t”! Oh well, would you like fries with your rat sh*t?

Inspired by the Q Magazine article ‘Can I Have My Money Back?’ from 1996, here are 20 of the better known creative blips, in alphabetical order. It should be noted that ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK actually bought all but 5 of these albums, so make of that what you will!

KARL BARTOS Electric Music (1998)

Proof that pioneering geniuses lose their way once in a while. Following his ‘Esperanto’ album in 1993 with Lothar Manteuffel of RHEINGOLD under the moniker ELEKTRIC MUSIC which many accepted as a KRAFTWERK record in all but name, Karl Bartos went to work with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on ELECTRONIC’s ‘Raise The Pressure’. He found the experience liberating and on his return, adopted the guitar for his next ‘Electric Music’ album.

Speaking in 2005, he said that when he started playing music as a teenager, it was in his bedroom with his guitar pretending to be Chuck Berry and this album was him getting back to all that. ‘Young Urban Professional’ was actually a song originally written for KRAFTWERK, but is turned into THE SMITHS’ ‘Hand In Glove’ with vocoder! ‘Sunshine’ is typical of the clumpy rock that marred NEW ORDER’s 2001 comeback ‘Get Ready’ while the rest of the album is pretty much the same. Only ‘Call On Me’ possesses any kind of spark as a song. Bartos himself described ‘Electric Music’ as an “exploration of the sound of the sixties – guitar pop out of the computer” and thanks Johnny Marr in the credits! Luckily, Bartos returned to synths and was back on form with 2003’s ‘Communication’, delivering a collection that showed his former cycling partners over at Kling Klang a thing or two.

Best track: ‘Call On Me’

‘Electric Music’ was originally released by SPV Records

http://www.karlbartos.com/

DEPECHE MODE Sounds Of The Universe (2009)

Following a return to form with ‘Playing The Angel’, much was expected of ‘Sounds Of The Universe’ when the band’s biggest world tour to date was announced in 2008. Unfortunately, the lacklustre ‘Exciter’ from 2000 appeared to be the musical template and the tracks that leaked were not particularly promising. The resultant album lacked spark, dynamics and creative tension. It was dreary mid-paced electro blues that dominated on this turkey.

The outstanding track from the sessions ‘Oh Well’ was a spicy uptempo Moroder-esque collaboration between Martin Gore and Dave Gahan but only appeared in the 4CD deluxe box set while the fact that the two best tracks on the main feature were a ballad voiced by Gore and a short instrumental said it all! But this became rather trivial when Gahan was diagnosed with a life threatening illness while on out on the road in Athens!

Best tracks: ‘Jezebel’, ‘Spacewalker’, ‘Oh Well’ (deluxe box set only)

‘Sounds Of The Universe’ was originally released by Mute Records

http://www.depechemode.com

DURAN DURAN Thank You (1995)

This covers album was recorded at the behest of EMI Records who were strangely impressed by DURAN DURAN’s rather strained cover of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND’s ‘Femme Fatale’ from ‘Wedding Album’ and eager for a quick cash-in on their 1993 renaissance. Among the songs attempted were ironic takes on ‘White Lies (Don’t Do It)’ and another drug dependency tale ‘Perfect Day’, as well as songs by Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Sly Stone!

The covers of Iggy Pop’s ‘Success’ and THE DOORS’ ‘Crystal Ship’ were actually quite enjoyable but among all the ham reinterpretations of established standards, the band actually covered themselves in a new version of ‘The Chauffeur’ entitled ‘Drive By’! Often regarded as one of the worst albums ever recorded, this disaster was dubbed “No Thank You” by many fans! Worse was to come for DURAN DURAN though as John Taylor left the band and EMI UK then refused to release their 1997 album ‘Medazzaland’. It would take a reunion of the classic line-up in 2004 to get them back on track and it wasn’t until 2011’s ‘All You Need Is Now’ album that they fully recaptured their former artistic glories.

Best tracks: ‘Success’, ‘Crystal Ship’

‘Thank You’ was originally released by EMI Records

http://www.duranduran.com

ERASURE Loveboat (2000)

In a poor period for Andy and Vince, this was a close run thing with their covers album ‘Other People’s Songs’ but at least with the latter, there were quality songs on show even if some of the versions left a lot to be desired. The problem wasn’t just the emphasis on guitar driven dynamics, it was also severely lacking in the usual ERASURE charm. Andy Bell admitted how shocked he was when he heard how “weird and indie” Rob Kirwan’s final mix sounded.

Despite production by Flood, it was all very muddy. And even the album’s one potentially great song ‘Moon & The Sky’ was missing an uplifting chorus which was only later added to the Heaven Scent Radio Re-Work version that was released as a single. The redeeming consequence though was that despite these tough times creatively, ERASURE took to soft synths and made one of their best albums in 2005 with ‘Nightbird’.

Best tracks: ‘Freedom’, ‘Moon & The Sky’

‘Loveboat’ was originally released by Mute Records

http://www.erasureinfo.com

HEAVEN 17 Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho (1988)

‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ were the affectionate nicknames given by Terence Trent D’Arby respectively to HEAVEN 17’s Martyn Ware, Glenn Gregory and Ian Craig Marsh. The conventional sounding ‘Pleasure One’ released in 1986 had been given a lukewarm reception, while Martyn Ware’s success as a producer for artists such as Tina Turner and Mr D’Arby himself may have started to spread his creative energies just a little too thinly.

Whatever, when ‘The Ballad Of Go Go Brown’ was released as lead single and Glenn Gregory appeared on the album cover wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots, the writing was on the wall. A lot of the album features the blue eyed soul of the times but with younger acts like WET WET WET, AZTEC CAMERA, HUE & CRY and even PERFECT DAY (featuring a certain Mark Jones of Wall Of Sound fame!) gaining the public’s attention, HEAVEN 17 then went on hiatus for the next nine years before returning with the electronically driven triumph ‘Bigger Than America’.

Best tracks: ‘Big Square People’, ‘Train Of Love In Motion’

‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://www.heaven17.com

THE HUMAN LEAGUE Crash (1986)

Work had started on ‘Crash’ in 1985 with producer Colin Thurston but the results were not deemed suitable for release by Virgin Records. To overcome the creative block, THE HUMAN LEAGUE were despatched to Minneapolis to record with top producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Here, they became part of the manufactured R’n’B conveyor belt that had already seen success for Janet Jackson and Alexander O’Neal.

Ian Burden in particular was considered surplus to requirements by the producers. Disconcertingly, the album’s two strongest numbers ‘Human’ and ‘Love Is All That Matters’ had no songwriting input from any of THE HUMAN LEAGUE themselves… but then, they weren’t involved in the album’s two stinkers either! The David Eiland composed ‘Swang’ was horrible while ‘I Need Your Loving’ surely had to have been a Janet Jackson reject? Eventually, Oakey and co went home leaving Jam and Lewis to finish ‘Crash’. ‘Human’ was an American No1 and helped keep THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s profile up Stateside while the album’s end results sounded nothing like them with Phil Oakey’s voice left exposed as it was not really suited to the dynamics of soul. It would take almost ten years for them to regain momentum with 1995’s ‘Octopus’.

Best tracks: ‘Human’, ‘Love Is All That Matters’, ‘Money’

‘Crash’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://www.thehumanleague.co.uk

JAPAN Rain Tree Crow (1991)

This was the much heralded reunion of David Sylvian, Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri aka JAPAN, a band who many considered had broken up before their time following the highly acclaimed ‘Tin Drum’ album in 1981. However, the split was due to personal rather than artistic differences when Karn’s girlfriend Yuka Fujii left him for Sylvian. Time eventually healed wounds and the quartet gathered together in France.

Under the Sylvian inspired Native American moniker RAIN TREE CROW, the idea had been to compose and record as a group through improvisation as opposed Sylvian being sole songwriter and studio dictator which had previously been the case during the JAPAN days. However, Sylvian’s stubborn imposing character led to a return to old ways. Supported by a huge budget from Virgin Records, unbelievably it was exceeded. So Virgin gave them an ultimatum where no more money would be forthcoming unless the project was presented under the name of JAPAN. The others agreed but Sylvian refused. Walking off with the tapes to mix the album under his own finance and supervision, he refused to let any of his bandmates in on the sessions! The result was an unfocussed set consisting of progressive avant jazz and self-indulgent ethnic instrumental pieces tha sounded unfinsihed. Only the magnificent single ‘Blackwater’ bore any kind of relation to JAPAN’s brilliant legacy. The quartet never worked together again and with Mick Karn’s sad passing, never will.

Best track: ‘Blackwater’

‘Rain Tree Crow’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://www.nightporter.co.uk

JEAN MICHEL JARRE Sessions 2000 (2002)

It is always going to end in tears when an artist embarks on a jazz odyssey! And so it was when Jean-Michel Jarre came up with what appeared to be an attempt to break his then recording contract with Sony Music. ‘Sessions 2000’ contained six tracks named presumably after the days they were composed. Recorded by Jarre with collaborator Francis Rimbert, all had deliberate chill-out lounge jazz undertones and unfortunately, a distinct lack of melody.

‘June 21’ just plods along aimlessly for over six minutes while ‘September 14’ aims at the atmosphere of ‘Twin Peaks’ but does nothing in its excruciating nine! Haunting piano and detuned tones colour the Ryuichi Sakamoto influenced ‘May 1’ but any potential is unrealised. Only ‘March 23’ has any kind of musical shape with a distinct rhythmic pulse textured with synthetic brass and slide guitar samples but is far too long. Jarre eventually got back up to speed with the improved but still laid back ‘Geometry of Love’ and the dance driven ‘Teo & Tea’.

Best track: ‘March 23’

‘Sessions 2000’ was originally released by Sony Music

http://www.jeanmicheljarre.com

KRAFTWERK Tour De France Soundtracks (2004)

The first new material from KRAFTWERK since the disappointing ‘Expo 2000’, this was Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider’s opportunity to reconsolidate their position as electronic godfathers. However, it was also 14 years since the departures of percussionists Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos, and it showed. One of the weakest links in ‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ was the rhythm programming which lacked punch and neither encouraged excitement or dancing.

Ironically, for an album about cycling, ‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ was strangely pedestrian. Everything was tightly sequenced and structured but noticeably absent was the humanity and humour which were two of KRAFTWERK’s strongest suits, even on tracks like ‘Sex Object’ and ‘Boing Boom Tschak’ from 1986’s lacklustre predecessor ‘Electric Cafe’. The reworkings of the original 1983 ‘Tour De France’ track are the best things on here while Karl Bartos’ ‘Communication’ album, which happened to be released a few weeks later, was infinitely superior.

Best track: ‘Tour De France’, ‘Tour De France Etape 1’

‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ was originally released by EMI Records

http://www.kraftwerk.com

NEW ORDER Waiting For The Sirens’ Call (2004)

NEW ORDER’s musical strength was fusing the spirit of punk into electronics and dance. However, with keyboardist Gillian Gilbert leaving the band on their recorded return, Messrs Sumner, Hooky and Morris filled the void with a bunch of stodgy rock numbers on 2001’s ‘Get Ready’. For the next album, the trend towards rock continued although there were marginally more synths this time although the array of producers involved confused matters.

As possibly the worst song NEW ORDER have ever recorded, ‘Who’s Joe?’ had none of the spirit of their best guitar numbers. Even the lead single ‘Krafty’ was uninspiring NEW ORDER by numbers while its follow-up ‘Jetstream’ featuring SCISSOR SISTERS’ Ana Matronic was terribly lame despite being produced by Stuart Price. Only the title track and ‘Dracula’s Castle’ have any flashes of their classic brilliance. Legend has it that when Peter Saville was commissioned to design the sleeve, he was so unimpressed by the quality of the album that he decided to send an ironic message to warn any potential punters!

Best tracks: ‘Waiting For The Sirens’ Call’, ‘Dracula’s Castle’

‘Waiting For The Sirens’ Call’ was originally released by London Records

http://www.neworder.com

GARY NUMAN Warriors (1983)

Things had looked promising with Gary Numan returning to the live stage after retiring in 1981. Bill Nelson was slotted in to produce ‘Warriors’, but the pair fell out very early on in the sessions. Nelson then had his more trebly cutting mixes wiped by Numan so asked for his name to be taken off the credits! With the alien embracement of jazz and funk influences, ‘Warriors’ ended up a well played if confused, characterless body of work.

The use of some top flight session musicians was a major part of this mess. Dick Morrissey played saxophone solos whether they really ought to have been there or not, while Joe Hubbard’s slap bass was at times self-indulgent and wholly incongruous with the Numan sound. Although there were a couple of good tracks like the dreamy ‘The Iceman Comes’ and the synthetic THIN LIZZY of ‘My Centurion’, this was the start of a creative dip that Gary Numan wouldn’t truly recover from until 1994. In between, he appeared far more interested in flying than his music career.

Best tracks: ‘The Iceman Comes’, ‘My Centurion’

‘Warriors’ was originally released by Beggars Banquet Records

http://www.numan.co.uk

OMD Liberator (1993)

Following the success of ‘Sugar Tax’ in 1991, remaining sole OMD founder Andy McCluskey was on a commercial roll and decided to continue this well trodden poptastic path. As a result, ‘Liberator’ featured lots of busy modern dance effects. “It was an album for kids” lamented McCluskey later to Jens Lindell on Swedish radio in 1996. But by the time of its release in 1993, Da Kidz were worshipping acts such as TAKE THAT and EAST17 who were closer in age to the intended demographic.

An album of C-sides, ‘Stand Above Me’, ‘Everyday’, ‘Love And Hate You’ were all painfully poppy and not exactly the strongest songs in the OMD canon. Meanwhile, opinions are still divided about the synth MOR tune ‘Dream Of Me’, based on LOVE UNLIMITED ORCHESTRA’s ‘Love’s Theme’. The confused schizophrenic nature of the album’s concept was compounded by the pure genius of darker, more traditional OMD numbers like ‘King Of Stone’ and ‘Christine’. The muted reception to ‘Liberator’ led to the brave but conventional and ultimately doomed ‘Universal’ in 1996, before McCluskey retired the OMD brand. Bruised, he then set his sights on launching ATOMIC KITTEN! And that is a story in itself!

Best tracks: ‘King Of Stone’, ‘Christine’, ‘Best Years Of Our Lives’

‘Liberator’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://www.omd.uk.com

PET SHOP BOYS Release (2002)

With pun totally intended, ‘Release’ was marred by the input of THE SMITHS’ famed guitarist Johnny Marr who had already used his influence to fill the last ELECTRONIC album ‘Twisted Tenderness’ with harmonica, getting Bernard Sumner rock out again in the process and even inspiring Karl Bartos to use guitar on every track of his ‘Electric Music’ album… note the irony with both band monikers!

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe meanwhile attempted a collection of understated songs which were not only free of club derived beats but also of hooks and melodies! ‘Release’ certainly had none of the quality of their other understated album ‘Behaviour’. ‘I Get Along’ comes over like a camp version of Oasis while the worthiness of ‘Here’ wasn’t revealed until PET SHOP BOYS’ own dance remix for ‘Disco Vol3’. ‘The Night I Fell In Love’ is a lyrically amusing narrative about Eminem having a gay fling with a fan, but apart from the uptempo ‘The Samurai In Autumn’, this album is mostly plodding six-string led numbers devoid of any of the mastery that made them great. They were wearing someone else’s clothes and they didn’t fit. Ironically, ‘Release’really was PET SHOP BOYS ‘Being Boring’! And did you know that Johnny Marr in French (J’en Ai Marre) means “I am fed up”?

Best track: ‘The Samurai In Autumn’

‘Release’ was originally released by EMI Records

http://www.petshopboys.co.uk

SIMPLE MINDS Street Fighting Years (1989)

Lambasted for embracing stadium rock, one thing though about 1986’s ‘Once Upon A Time’ was that it was an enjoyable uptempo synthetic rock record that successfully exploited its commercial possibilities with its sharp radio friendly outlook. However, when they took the album out on the road, Jim Kerr and co persisted with overlong, pompous arrangements and hectored the audience with tiresome repeated shouts of “show me your hands” and “higher”!

For the ‘Street Fighting Years’ album, the band retreated to the tranquillity of rural Scotland to inspire a more earnest, political direction… unfortunately, the overlong, pompous arrangements remained! Instrumentally, the bombast and synths were replaced by brushes, rootsy bottleneck guitar and Hammond organ flourishes that were ubiquitous of the period. But the songs meandered along formlessly at over six minutes at a time. Their only UK No1 single ‘Belfast Child’ outstayed its welcome by at least four and a half minutes! Even the production skills of Trevor Horn and Stephen J Lipson, who were recruited because Jim Kerr was a fan of PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’, couldn’t save this one!

Best track: ‘Wall Of Love’

‘Street Fighting Years’ was originally released by Virgin Records

https://www.simpleminds.com/

SPARKS Terminal Jive (1980)

Following the success of the singles ‘The No1 Song In Heaven’, ‘Beat The Clock’ and ‘Tryouts For The Human Race’ from the Giorgio Moroder steered album ‘No1 In Heaven’, SPARKS were despatched by Virgin Records to record a swift follow-up. Although Moroder was still nominally at the helm, ‘Terminal Jive’ was more ‘Hot Stuff’ than ‘I Feel Love’. Harold Faltermeyer of ‘Axel F’ fame took up a large part of the production duties as Moroder started to lose interest.

The songs were mostly lethargic synth assisted FM rock numbers. ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll People In A Disco World’ seemed to reflect the confused direction both lyrically and musically. Ironically, despite featuring more guitars and therefore a more American friendly sound, ‘Terminal Jive’ was the only SPARKS album that wasn’t issued in the US on its original release. The highlights were ‘When I’m With You’ which was a massive hit single in France and the satirically pervy ‘Young Girls’. However, the lack of quality material, as summed up by the inclusion of the instrumental version of ‘When I’m With You’, was the real problem. Disillusioned, SPARKS left Europe and returned to the States where they attained some varied domestic success having been previously ignored by their compatriots. They wouldn’t be seen much in Europe again until 1994 when the brilliant ‘When Do I Get To Sing My Way’ became as smash and gave them an unexpected career renaissance.

Best tracks: ‘When I’m With You’, ‘Young Girls’, ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’

‘Terminal Jive’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://allsparks.com

TANGERINE DREAM Cyclone (1978)

So this was a great idea, a TANGERINE DREAM album with vocals and flute! Featuring Steve Jolliffe on those said two colours, the first 13 minute track ‘Bent Cold Sidewalk’ came over like GENESIS and JETHRO TULL with its mystical lyrics and Hobbit vocal delivery. The uptempo ‘Rising Runner Missed By Endless Sender’ actually sounded like ULTRAVOX, but unfortunately in their Foxx-less and Ure-less ‘Ingenuity’ guise fronted by the best forgotten Sam Blue!

The progressive rock overtones took a breather on the more traditionally cosmic instrumental ‘Madrigal Meridian’ which saved the show, but most TD fans had probably headed down to the second hand stores by the end of side one. Although not well received, such was Messrs Froese and Franke standing at the time, ‘Cyclone’ was TANGERINE DREAM’s sixth best-selling album in the UK.

Best Track: ‘Madrigal Meridian’

‘Cyclone’ was originally released by Virgin Records

http://www.tangerinedream.org

TEARS FOR FEARS Everybody Loves A Happy Ending (2004)

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‘Everybody Loves A Happy Ending’ saw TEARS FOR FEARS’ original nucleus of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith reunited for the first time since the tedious ‘The Seeds Of Love’ album from 1989. Friends since childhood, Orzabal’s domination of those sessions proved too much for Smith and it would be many years before they would even speak again. However, the reunion was already in trouble when Arista Records, who had signed the duo, pulled the comeback album.

But it was easy to see why… the album consisted of dull derivative compositions with little flair. The title track was another attempt at THE BEATLES pastiches from the last time Orzabal and Smith recorded together. Americana was one of the main templates with ‘Call Me Mellow’ basically a retread of THE LAs’ similarly influenced ‘There She Goes’. Eventually released on Gut Records after a year’s delay, only the original closing track ‘Last Days On Earth’ had any redeeming features but even that sounded like The Isley Brothers. As further a sign of their lack of creative juice, the duo even took to using Gary Jules’ arrangement of ‘Mad World’ from the ‘Donnie Darko’ soundtrack when performing the song live! Anyone who expected the sixth form synth angst of ‘The Hurting’ or even the MTV friendly rock of ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ was going to be disappointed.

Best track: ‘Last Days On Earth’

‘Everybody Loves A Happy Ending’ was originally released by Gut Records

http://www.tearsforfears.net

ULTRAVOX U-Vox (1986)

Also known by fans as “The Dreaded Pink Thing”, the signs had not been good when drummer Warren Cann was booted out of the band for preferring to use computer generated percussion while in the wake of his successful solo career, Midge Ure was dictating a more back-to-basics approach. Paradoxically though, soulful backing vocalists, funk bass, orchestras, brass sections and sax solos all entered into the equation, resulting in a totally unfocused sound.

‘Sweet Surrender’ was frankly a bit of a mess while ‘Moon Madness’ didn’t know whether it should have been rock or jazz. Backed by The Chieftains and featuring no synthesizers at all, ‘All Fall Down’ polarised listeners with its Celtic folk roots and anti-war message. But the poor title ‘U-Vox’ summed it all up… a band with something missing! However, ‘The Prize’ was as good as anything TEARS FOR FEARS or SIMPLE MINDS did in their stadium phase, ‘Time To Kill’ retained some European cool despite the acoustic guitars and the epic ‘All In One Day’ was the best thing Scott Walker never recorded.

Best tracks: ‘The Prize’, ‘Time To Kill’, ‘All In One Day’

‘U-Vox’ was originally released by Chrysalis Records

http://www.ultravox.org.uk

VISAGE Beat Boy (1984)

Midge Ure and Billy Currie had both left VISAGE in 1982, leaving Steve Strange and Rusty Egan with the VISAGE name and ownership of a very expensive Synclavier computer synthesizer. Despite the promising edgy electro-disco of interim single ‘Pleasure Boys’, the direction chosen for ‘Beat Boy’ was an ill-advised sojourn into rock with a group of session musicians filling in slots vacated by the former members of ULTRAVOX and MAGAZINE.

Without Ure’s production guidance, Steve Strange’s singing was all over the place. Neither ‘Only The Good Die Young’ nor the dreadful title track knew when to finish, while ‘Can You Hear Me?’ didn’t know when to actually start. And the backing vocals by guitarist Andy Barnett on the gross heavy metal of ‘Casualty’ were truly appalling! The eight tracks that made up ‘Beat Boy’ were all far too long although ‘Questions’ possessed a funky energy while ‘Love Glove’ could have easily come off ‘The Anvil’. However, this poor album led to the end of VISAGE. Rusty Egan went to work for U2 while Strange formed the unsuccessful STRANGE CRUISE and sadly later experienced some well documented personal difficulties.

Best tracks: ‘Love Glove’, ‘Questions’

‘Beat Boy’ was originally released by Polydor Records

http://therealvisage.com/

NEIL YOUNG Trans (1982)

Many of the albums mentioned have had the disaster of synth based acts adopting more conventional colours. This was one which where it happened the other way round. ‘Trans’ was Neil Young’s 1982 excursion into synthesizers, Linn Drum computers and vocoders. Despite the noble gesture of wishing to artistically express the difficulties of communicating with his son Ben who had cerebral palsy, ‘Trans’ didn’t work.

‘We R In Control’ and ‘Computer Cowboy’ both sounded like Metal Mickey fronting THE EAGLES while ‘Sample And Hold’ was an excessively long robotic march. However, there was an almost ethereal ‘Neon Lights’-like beauty in ‘Transformer Man’. Although there were still enough essential elements for ‘Trans’ to be nothing but a Neil Young album, it baffled his fans and was lambasted by the real music brigade. “I could never get anybody to believe that the f***ing idea was any good” said Young looking back, perhaps because it wasn’t in Young’s instinctive musical DNA to effectively use electronics. Indeed, he was later sued by his label Geffen Records for producing “deliberately uncommercial and unrepresentative work”!

Best Track: ‘Transformer Man’

‘Trans’ was originally released by Geffen Records

http://www.neilyoung.com

Text by Chi Ming Lai
18th April 2011

The Amazing Adventures Of MR NORMALL

1 April 2011 / electricityclub

Those who have attended the recent concerts of ULTRAVOX, JOHN FOXX, HEAVEN 17 and Thomas Dolby may have noticed a striking satorially astute personality in the audience with the make-up and piercing eyes.

Looking like he’s just failed an audition to join SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK for dressing too smartly, that new kind of man is Tapio Normall, concert goer extroadinaire from Finland.

His trips seeing many of the artists from the classic synth and new wave era have been documented on his website The Amazing Adventures Of Mr Normall. His charming photographs with acts as KRAFTWERK, SPARKS, JAPAN, ULTRAVOX, GARY NUMAN, MARC ALMOND, THE HUMAN LEAGUE and VISAGE have become tales of electronic music folklore.

Just prior to visiting London again to see GARY NUMAN, JOHN FOXX, MOTOR and MIRRORS at Back To The Phuture, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK caught up with Mr Normall to reminisce about his travels and meetings with various lumanaries key to the rise of electronic pop music in Europe.

How did you come discover the joys of electronic and new wave music?

I remember that moment very well: I was 15 years old, it was summer and I was sitting in my parents’ car. The radio played ‘Computer World’ and few other tracks by KRAFTWERK. I knew right then that this is my kind of music. I had already tried punk and even a bit of rockabilly, but they weren’t my thing. The first vinyl album I ever bought was ‘Die Mensch Maschine’ by KRAFTWERK.

Who are your favourite acts?

JOHN FOXX, ULTRAVOX, VISAGE, KRAFTWERK, JAPAN, THOMAS DOLBY, HEAVEN 17, DURAN DURAN, SOFT CELL / MARC ALMOND, ASSOCIATES / BILLY McKENZIE, ADAM ANT, SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK, DEAD OR ALIVE and many others.

What was your first concert?

A Finnish band called RATSIA. They started as a punk band but then moved towards new wave. When I saw RATSIA, they already had synth on stage and the guy who played it looked like a ‘rock’ version on Nick Rhodes.

The first non-Finnish band I saw live was CLASSIX NOUVEAUX. This was November 1982.

What inspired you to first journey abroad to see your favourite bands? It is because Finland is often missed out on touring schedules?

There were MARC ALMOND, SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK and DURAN DURAN gigs in London only a few days apart in December 2000. All my big favourites and no chance to see them in Finland. I’m glad that I went to see them because it was the only time I saw the Martin Degville, Tony James and Neal X version of SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK.

There just aren’t many gigs in Finland that I would like to attend. It takes me only few hours more to travel to London than to Helsinki, and you can always find fairly inexpensive hotel in London. There’s no such thing as inexpensive hotel in Helsinki.

When did it occur to you that your travels were now becoming more than a habit?

I think that started summer 2006 when I went to London to see THOMAS DOLBY live at the Scala. The last few years have been like the second (or third or fourth) coming for many of my favourite artists/bands. This time has also been a sort of ‘second coming’ for Mr Normall. My passion for these things was almost lost during ’90s but it all started to come back after 2000 and it’s getting better and better. 2010 was great: THOMAS DOLBY, ULTRAVOX, JOHN FOXX, HEAVEN 17, MARC ALMOND.

You meet a lot of the people from the bands themselves and the ‘handshake’ photo with them has been a regular endearing feature of The Adventures Of Mr Normall. How do most of them react to meeting you, especially with your striking persona?

Heh heh… I believe all of them has seen more peculiar things than me! Actually everyone has been quite nice. Some artists have recognized me, which to me is a funny thing to notice. The internet makes things possible.

Often, you manage to get an invite to the aftershow party. How easy or difficult have you found to arrange this?

I have learnt one thing: it goes easy or it doesn’t go at all. Some aftershow passes I have asked, some have been offered to me and I’m very grateful for that.

Who have been your favourites stars to meet and why?

This question may lead to “Oscar speech syndrome” (just made that up) and I don’t know when to finish. I just leave it to that *laughs*

Tell me a funny story about one of your many meetings…

I don’t know if is this funny but I tell it anyway. 15 years ago – March 1996 – Italian songstress Alice had gig in Turku (Finland) and ex-JAPAN members Mick Karn and Steve Jansen were in her band. My sister Tuula lived in Turku then, so Marjaana and I drove there to visit Tuula and to see Mick Karn and Steve Jansen live.

My idea was to go to the gig venue in the afternoon just in case we could see Karn and Jansen there. We went inside the venue, walked around and found Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Robby Aceto in a small room and they obviously were just killing time waiting for the gig in the evening. They were apparently delighted that they got company and they were so very friendly. Mick Karn asked to show him from a map where we had come and he was astonished at how far north we had drove to Turku.

Before we left the venue – to return there later in the evening – they asked us tips what to do and where to go in Turku. We told them the best known sights there; Turku Castle and few others. It occurred to us later that maybe they actually wanted to go to the Turku city with us (I told them earlier I was there by car). They would have had both a local guide and ride back to venue with us, but we just weren’t able to read between lines. So we left Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Robby Aceto where we found them and went to the city without them. If I had asked, maybe I would have had half of JAPAN on the backseat of my car.

We met Karn and Jansen again in the evening. There is a picture of Tuula, Steve Jansen, Marjaana, Mick Karn and I on my website. The picture is taken by Alice. She was actually the star of the evening but we forgot to take any pictures with her. I didn’t meet Mick Karn again after this.

At The Blitz Club Reunion, I approached someone who I thought was Mark Shaw from THEN JERICO and it turned out it wasn’t? Have you ever had this embarrassment on your adventures?

Yes, but other way around. I’ve been mistaken for Billy Idol, Neal X – those were long time ago – and more recently for JohnFoxx. The latter was last summer on the day of John Foxx’s Roundhouse gig.

I was staying in Camden and at one point during the afternoon I left my hotel to go to a shop. I was wearing black ‘Glimmer – Best of John Foxx’ T-shirt, black trousers and virtually no make-up. Walking down the pavement I heard “Hey John!” but I didn’t realize it was meant for me.

Then a couple of blokes politely stopped me and asked if I could “sign these”. They had several John Foxx 12″ vinyls with them. As far as I can remember I said “yes I can but I think it’s better if JOHN FOXX does it, not me”. That was a good start for the John Foxx themed evening.

Was there anyone you met who perhaps wasn’t as friendly as you’d hoped?

No, not really. Ralf Hutter didn’t allow to have photos taken but he signed me several KRAFTWERK CD covers and chatted a bit. He is a gentleman.

So what do you think of the proverb that you should ‘never meet your heroes’? Can it ever go too far?

I suppose it depends what are your expectations and what you want. I haven’t had big disappointments but instead, the uplifting feeling after meeting an artist I have listened on the records and seen on the music videos since my teen years. That’s the story so far.

You have a friendly, engaging personality but do you ever worry you may be considered by some to be a stalker?

I hope not. To be honest, I don’t have enough interest in anyone particular for that. However, when I travel from Finland to London specially to see live an artist I haven’t met before, it’s not a big sacrifice to wait an hour outside the gig venue to possibly get a few photos taken for my website.

What are the options? Go back to the hotel, shopping, sight seeing, pub… actually a pub doesn’t sound too bad *laughs*

Is there anyone you would still like to meet and be photographed with?

Several people: Adam Ant, David Sylvian, DURAN DURAN, Siouxsie, Pete Burns and – dare I say it – David Bowie. Those names came first to my mind but there’s several others as well.

Is there anyone from history or who is no longer with us who you would have like to have met and why?

Billy MacKenzie – in my book he was the best singer ever. Also meeting Andy Warhol would have been a big thing for me.

Favourite live concert of all time?

It’s too difficult to decide which one is my favourite concert ever. However, if I can expand this to a whole day including pre and after parties and the live concert, then I have the answer: it’s ULTRAVOX at Hammersmith Apollo in April 11th 2010. That was a great day.

Yes, I was there too, what a great gig! So who would you say is your favourite band of all time?

JAPAN.

Your favourite album?

‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ by JAPAN. It is perfect.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Tapio Normall

http://www.mrnormall.net/

https://twitter.com/MrNormall

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
2nd April 2011

IS THAT THE TWELVE INCH MIX?

8 January 2011 / electricityclub

‘Is That The Twelve Inch Mix?’ is a new book about the history of remix culture by author Rob Grillo whose previous publications have included the best seller ‘Anoraknophobia’.

Featuring a foreword by Martyn Ware, Rob affectionately traces the development of record collecting and describes it as “A light-hearted look at the 1980s, the rise and rise of the remix and the twelve inch single… and The Human League”.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK is pleased to be able to publish three extracts from this excellent book…

From the past until completion…

Of course, the record that is synonymous with the twelve inch single is ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order. Initially released only in twelve inch format in 1983, there was no regular seven inch pressing available to the public.

This was nothing new: twelve months earlier Motown’s Gary Byrd & The GB Experience had hit the top ten in the UK with ‘The Crown’, in twelve inch and cassingle only. And ABBA, of all acts, achieved a similar feat in 1981 with ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’: that didn’t even have a cassingle to help it reach number seven.

However, ‘Blue Monday’ captured the record buying public’s imagination, and it became the biggest selling twelve inch single ever, eventually selling over a million copies in the UK alone. The single initially reached number twelve, before climbing again to number nine later in the year.

The first pressings, in a floppy disc sleeve designed by Peter Saville, proved far more expensive to manufacture than at first envisaged, although claims that each copy sold lost the record company money are a little wide of the mark. Later pressings did see a slightly simpler sleeve used, but one which still did not display too obviously either the title of the song or the name of the band.

Unless you also owned a copy of the band’s subsequent album ‘Power Corruption and Lies’, the coloured blocks on the ‘Blue Monday’ sleeve meant nothing: as only the album sleeve contained the key to deciphering this series of blocks, you were none the wiser. Many people who bought the album were still none the wiser. This hardly affected sales, though: most record buyers knew exactly what they were looking for when they went into their local store to purchase the single, and most record store assistants would have known exactly what do should they have been met with any enquiries.

To confuse matters, some pressings of the single came with the centre labels placed on the wrong sides, thus confusing some purchasers about which track was ‘Blue Monday’ and which was the B-side, a dub version of the track called ‘The Beach’. The song itself is rumoured to have been recorded initially to test out some new technology (a drum machine in layman’s terms), but also to satisfy audiences who criticised the band for not performing encores at their concerts. New Order could perform an extra part of their set with minimal effort – walk on stage, press a button, and, hey presto, ‘Blue Monday’!

Of the tracks that are reputed to have influenced the track itself, Sylvester’s disco classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ is probably the best known. Ironically, as Factory Records were not members of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) – in other words they were an indie label – ‘Blue Monday’ never attained its initial gold status (awarded for 400,000 units for singles in the UK).

The track eventually appeared as a regular seven inch single in 1988, when it was reissued in a remixed format. There was a further UK reissue, featuring various new mixes, in 1995, and the track has been sampled and covered by a number of acts in recent years.

More notoriously, and mentioned elsewhere, Bobby Orlando and Divine ripped off the track for their HI-NRG monster ‘Love Reaction’. New Order didn’t bother taking legal action – the success of’ ‘Love Reaction’ no doubt contributed to further sales for ‘Blue Monday’ itself.

In more recent times a mash up with Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ has been given official licence as ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. The Factory story, and the almost anarchic way in which business was done, has been told many times, but at least New Order themselves were able to make a little money from the new twelve inch format. This was not always the case. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were originally handed a golden spoon by Mark Dean’s CBS subsidiary Innervision in 1981. Their hastily signed deal allowed them little in the way of proceeds from regular single and album sales, and even less from twelve inch sales – where they earned not a penny from each copy sold to the public.

It took a while for recording deals to recognise and catch up with the phenomenon. As the late ’80s brought important changes to the release of singles in general – the twelve inch single at the forefront of these – it was inevitable that in order to keep pace, the way in which singles charts were compiled would also have to change. The twelve inch single was of course not the only format alongside the traditional seven inch vinyl pressing. As mentioned previously, record companies dabbled with different variations of the cassette single – or cassingle as it was often known. There were early trends towards releasing a ‘cassingle’ with two tracks, basically the A- and B-sides, an identical alternative to the seven inch.

Later a cassette of twelve inch tracks was preferred, selling for roughly the same price as twelve inch vinyl. There were coloured vinyl twelve inch discs and picture disc twelve inch singles too. Neither of these was an original idea, having been around for over a decade in their seven inch guises. There was also the occasional far more obscure ten inch record. OMD with ‘Souvenir’ and the Pet Shop Boys with ‘West End Girls’ offered mixes on their ten inch pressings that were at the time unavailable elsewhere, but generally the ten inch was a rare commodity, and certainly a pain in the arse to play if your old-style turntable had automatic settings for seven or twelve inch vinyl only!

For those with an eye to detail we salute you…

Take 12ZTAS1 for example. Or rather, one of the most controversial yet brilliant singles of the ’80s – Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’.

Now many readers will own, or will have owned in the past, a twelve inch copy of this track – the Sex Mix is indicated on the sleeve and label. Except that the chances are this was not actually the Sex mix at all. It was most probably the US mix. Unless you’re a real collector or a huge fan of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, you’ll never have known the difference. Ignore the label: it probably isn’t the Sex mix. Well, this is the story.

Producer Trevor Horn recorded several variations of this track (including an unreleased Warp mix, which was a seven inch white vinyl promo-only release). When it was initially released we were given the seven inch mix (actually the Move or Suck It mix) and a sixteen minute Sex mix on twelve inch, with initial pressings at 33rpm and later ones at 45rpm – all with the catalogue number 12ZTAS1. This Sex mix actually contained none of the song itself, but was a rather peculiar track that featured Holly Johnson rambling on to himself together with several rather odd noises created in the studio by Trevor Horn, all overlaid by a tribal beat and culminating in what was supposed to be a fulfilling climax (in the literal sense!). It didn’t go down too well in the clubs.

One of the criticisms was that it was far too long and never actually managed to get out of second gear, so it was difficult to dance to. An alternative mix was produced, therefore – an eight-minute edit of the Sex mix called the New York mix. It had the same catalogue number, and the only way you can tell the difference between this and the 45rpm Sex mix is by looking at the matrix number etched onto the inner vinyl (12ISZTAS1 to be precise). There was no indication anywhere that this wasn’t the Sex mix.

Unfortunately this new mix did little to stem criticism of the track. Horn got it right third time around, though, when he recreated the popular seven inch version, added a long instrumental build-up and created the US mix which we all know so well. Nobody thought that the original sleeve or label should be changed, however, so all the US mixes were pressed as the Sex mix. It then got that bit more muddled when new commercial pressings of the Sex mix were labelled as the Original mix.

Confused? Well, in recent years things have got that little bit more complicated. At least one Frankie Goes To Hollywood CD release refers to the US mix as the New York mix – further confusing themselves as well as a whole host of Frankie Goes To Hollywood fans worldwide. There is also a separate disco mix that until recently had only ever been released in Greece!

When the brilliant and long-awaited follow-up to ‘Relax’ was issued, the band and Trevor Horn didn’t disappoint . . . or confuse themselves/us/everybody else. In truly creative style they merely put out a number of different twelve inch versions of the new song, ‘Two Tribes’, luckily with different catalogue numbers and contrasting picture sleeves, so kick-starting the trend for multiple twelve inch issues in order to further record sales.

First up was the Annihilation mix, a nine minute epic that featured the voices of Patrick Allen and Ronald Reagan (actually Reagan was voiced by Chris Barry, who was behind the same character on ITV’s Spitting Image). Next up was the Carnage mix, which featured the unforgettable and rather disturbing line, “mine is the last voice you will ever hear”. These chilling messages were recorded by Allen for the British government as part of their ‘Protect and Survive’ programme of the late ’70s and early ’80s, which aimed to give the general population information on what to do should nuclear war ever break out.

Trevor Horn then decided to remix the B-side, ‘War’ (a cover of Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit), so a third twelve inch pressing contained ‘War’ (Hidden Mix) backed with ‘Two Tribes’ (Carnage mix). ‘War’ was re-categorised as the AA-side rather than the B-side. Finally a limited supposedly DJ-only Hibakusha Mix was pressed, this being the same version used on the extended video soundtrack which received many airings on national TV. There was a shorter video that featured the seven inch version, and there were alternative videos for ‘Relax’ too – all this well before any of the tracks were later remixed and re-released for later generations. Lost yet? I won’t bother explaining how some of the seven inch versions of Frankie Goes To Hollywood singles differed slightly.

Re-make/Re-model…

The record companies soon cottoned onto the fact that remixes could even be recycled. ‘Why not put them on an album?’ they said. The Human League and Soft Cell were leaders in this field.

Flush with the immense worldwide success of their third album, ‘Dare’, the former put out ‘Love and Dancing’ in 1982 under the pseudonym League Unlimited Orchestra. This was a mini-album containing dub versions from ‘Dare’ (as well as ‘Hard Times’, the flip side to the single ‘Love Action’), all loving recreated by producer Martin Rushent.

The public went for it, the album reached number three in the UK album chart and went platinum. Earlier the same year Soft Cell followed up their debut album ‘Non Stop Erotic Cabaret’ with the remix album ‘Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing’. This is considered to be the first ever remix album.

Other artists followed suit, with variable degrees of success. The Pet Shop Boys took the idea even further, and have continued to release a series of remix albums – their ‘Disco’ series and Introspective adorning the shelves of hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe. And then came the idea of a compilation album that contained only twelve inch mixes (for example, Now Dance being one of the ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ series). There may have only been three or four mixes each side, but labels such as Morgan Khan’s Streetsounds created a niche market for themselves. With the advent of the CD this has proved much easier to exploit, as there aren’t the running time and sound limitations that vinyl had.

So the best remix of all time? Well, that’s an entirely subjective question. I will, however, touch on two tracks that I regard as prime examples of (a) how bloody great it can feel to get your hands on a really great twelve inch single, and (b) how, occasionally, a remix can breathe new life into an already great tune and send it into dance-floor hyperspace. The first isn’t a remix at all: it’s a full length mix. In their early years New Order didn’t bother to put their singles on albums; they were released separately – but when they finally started doing so one of their finest moments was edited right down for the release of their third album, 1985’s ‘Low-Life’.

There was no commercially released seven inch format for ‘The Perfect Kiss’, but in its twelve inch glory it was unsurpassed by anything else that was released that year. In just short of nine minutes the listener journeys through Bernard Sumner’s insistent lyrics before there’s a beautifully crafted four and a half minute instrumental outro that takes the listener higher and higher and yet higher, before climaxing in a dramatically disorganised crescendo. Sheer beauty. The full length mix has never appeared on CD: the closest you’ll get is the mix on their unmissable compilation ‘Substance’, which is some eighteen seconds short of the original. Eighteen seconds! That’s nothing, I hear you exclaim. It is if you’re a music geek.

TALK TALK It's My Life US Mix The second example brought new life to a track that even in its regular seven inch format remains one of the most endearing tunes from the ’80s. And yet it took three official releases before Talk Talk’s ‘It’s My Life’ hit the higher reaches of the singles chart in the UK. The fact that the extended version issued on twelve inch in the UK was pretty limp and lifeless didn’t help the song’s cause. Things were very different in the States, however. The now legendary DJ Steve Thompson was commissioned to create a mix that was more appropriate for an American audience, and what he came up with proved to be undoubtedly his finest moment in a large repertoire of remixes.

Rebuilding the track with a much more upfront beat, and yet never straying far from the original, he created another tune that simply builds and builds before another long outro that takes the dancer – or listener – to heaven and back. It’s sheer brilliance. But remember, it’s the US remix. Don’t be tempted to go for the extended version that appears on far too many compilations; you won’t go places listening to that.

And finally . . . Heaven 17. Messrs Marsh, Ware and Gregory had already had a worldwide smash in ’83 with their first top ten UK hit, ‘Temptation’, on which Carol Kenyon added a fantastic female accompaniment to Glenn Gregory’s vocal. There was no need for their label, Virgin Records, to commission a remix, as the original was so strong that no new mix could ever do it justice. That is, until remixers Steve Anderson and Dave Seaman, better known collectively as Brothers in Rhythm, came along and blew everyone away with their new seven minute reworking, which first surfaced in Ibiza clubland. The band themselves initially knew nothing about the new mix, but they and their record company had no hesitation in having the single reissued in its new form.

The result? Nine years after the original, ‘Temptation’ smashed its way back into the UK top five singles and was again a worldwide smash, the new mix teasing the listener – and the dancer – for a full three minutes with its infectious beats until the track cascades into life with Gregory’s famous vocal opening. It’s a perfect example of a radical reworking that manages to stay true to the original. Simply bliss. And make sure you purchase tickets for Heaven 17’s next gig: a highlight of this fantastic experience will be their rendition of ‘Temptation’ that takes in the best of both versions, accompanied by a phenomenal vocal performance from current guest vocalist Billie Godfrey.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Rob Grillo

‘Is That The Twelve Inch Mix?’ by Rob Grillo is published by Bank House Books

http://www.robgrillo.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/robgrillo

Text by Rob Grillo
8th January 2011, updated 26th July 2013

MARTYN WARE: The HEAVEN 17 Interview

23 October 2010 / electricityclub

Photo by Tracey Welch

History Will Repeat Itself and the HEAVEN 17 renaissance continues…

Following a well received collaboration with LA ROUX for BBC 6Music and not one, but two TV specials featuring the triumphant concert at Sheffield Magna and ‘The Story Of Penthouse’ and Pavement, Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware are about to embark on a full UK tour celebrating their landmark debut album after a successful European excursion earlier this year.

Martyn Ware of course was a founder member of THE HUMAN LEAGUE before leaving with Ian Craig Marsh to form the production company BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION (BEF). With its pop subsidiary HEAVEN 17 featuring Glenn Gregory, the success of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ and ‘The Luxury Gap’ with its international hits ‘Temptation’ and ‘Come Live With Me’ led to it becoming the priority project over at BEF Head Office.

Simultaneously though, Ware was able to maintain a successful production career which over the years has taken in artists such as Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby and Marc Almond as well as ASSOCIATES and ERASURE. He later founded Illustrious with Vince Clarke to exploit the creative and commercial possibilities of 3D sound technology.

Through Illustrious, he also conceived Future Of Sound, a not-for-profit organisation to provide a forum for the discussion of new and convergent art forms. Among those involved are HEAVEN 17’s guitarist/programmer Asa Bennett and artist Malcolm Garrett, best known for his album artwork for DURAN DURAN and SIMPLE MINDS.

As part of the 30th Anniversary celebrations, the homecoming show at the Magna featuring the ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ album and the extended cut of ‘The Story Of Penthouse and Pavement’ are released as a double DVD package.

Featuring additional BEF cover gems ‘Perfect Day’ and ‘Wichita Lineman’ alongside ‘Ball of Confusion’ sang by Billie Godfrey and ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking’ featuring PROPAGANDA’s Claudia Brücken, Strong Films have successfully captured the evening’s vibrant performance including the futuristic LED screen projections where a variety of visual artists were given free reign to interpret HEAVEN 17 and BEF’s music of distinct quality. These digital videos have been included as bonuses along with rehearsal footage to give a unique multimedia insight into this special live presentation.

Also being released is a deluxe 3 disc collector’s edition of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ featuring a CD demos from 1980 with versions of songs from the ‘Pavement’ side predating the Linn Drum Computer. These showcase a unique hybrid funk driven by crashing early HUMAN LEAGUE style rhythm sounds. In addition, there are alternate mixes of ‘Music To Kill Your Parents By’, ‘Uptown Apocalypse’ and ‘A Baby Called Billy’ from the BEF ‘Music For Stowaways’ sessions.

In the midst of a busy promotional schedule for the ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ tour and its related artefacts, Martyn Ware took time out to talk about his career and the resurgent interest in HEAVEN 17.

How was it playing Back To The Phuture night at Bestival in September? I understand you played ‘And That’s No Lie’?

It was an amazing event actually. We did an hour with Elly from LA ROUX on Radio Bestival or whatever, so that was before we even went on stage, that was quite fun. It was in a big top, we headlined that night. It’s kind of a warm-up because the main days are Friday, Saturday and Sunday but there was like 8500 people there. The big top was completely full but more to the point, it was about 90% people under 30 and they all got it. It was not a shock as such but very heartening to see that people were digging it and presumably, most of them weren’t familiar with a lot of the songs!

Elly from LA ROUX joined you on stage for ‘Sign Your Name’. Are there any plans to work together in the studio?

We’re constantly talking about doing stuff. It’s not so much us. Elly, she’s writing a new album and I think she’s trying not to be too distracted. But we are intent on working together. Obviously at some point, we’ve still got an intention of possibly re-releasing ‘Temptation’ with her singing the lead part.

I spoke to your backing singer Billie Godfrey earlier this year and she suggested that ‘Are You Ready?’ from ‘Before After’ might be good as a LA SEVENTEEN collaboration?

She would do cos she co-wrote it! We love Billie. *laughs*

I do like that song; we’ve only performed it live once I think at The Scala in 2005, so we may revisit that. We’ve got seven albums worth of stuff to pick from so you can’t fit everything in, it’s impossible!

You have a UK tour this November playing the whole of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’. Have you arranged anything different for the forthcoming shows?

Me and Glenn were discussing the tracklisting for the new tour and he put a provisional one together. I looked at it and it was two hours long! Even hardened HEAVEN 17 fans would find it a bit wearing! We do have a lot of stuff and we will do a couple of interesting new things on the tour.

Anything you can give away?

Not yet, we haven’t really narrowed it down but we are planning to do at least one track HEAVEN 17 track that we’ve not done before and then another BEF track.

How did you find touring Europe in your own right earlier in the year?

Tremendous, it was a lot of fun. It was great touring on a sleeper bus, everyone loved it. Not particularly comfortable, but Glenn liked it because he could hold court and it was like being in his own pub travelling around! Of course, I’ve given up drinking now which is not a good thing when you’re touring.

It’s good fun for us, not a chore and I’m sure we’d think differently if it was like 50 odd dates. A short tour, we look forward to very much. Also, the people we work with are all so professional, a lot of them work with other bands and say they enjoy working with us a lot. It’s a nice vibe. It’s driven by a love of music and everybody gets on. Isn’t that the ideal kind of job to have?

I was at the Cologne show and it was a mad evening that went on for ages due to a few technical hiccups but you really rose to the occasion with Glenn doing a few acoustic renditions. What are your personal memories of that night?

Is that the one where the drum kit fell apart?

Yes, and someone threw some underwear at you!

Oh, I loved that! The underwear was great! The one I particularly remember was Hamburg at Fabric. It was astonishing, just doing loads of encores until we ran out. The reception that we received generally in Germany was just outstanding, we weren’t really expecting it. We thought we’d be well received but as a curious pleasure rather than in some cases, ecstatic! So if we get that kind of response on the British shows, we’ll be very happy.

Photo by Tracey Welch

Which song did you find the most challenging to recreate for the live environment?

‘I’m Your Money’, it’s difficult because it’s such a particular sounding record that. We weren’t writing songs with the anticipation of playing them live so ‘I’m Your Money’ is very… say for instance we waved a magic wand and it was exactly the backing track that we did… we can’t do because we don’t have the original tapes.

But if it was exactly the same backing track as we did in the 1981, I think it would really jar on the ear! It’s incredibly repetitive and monotonous but on record, it sounds great. So you kind of have to back off on the frequencies that really hurt and really make it work in a different way. What’s made it work for us is the brilliance of Julian Crampton on the synth bass; he’s given it all sorts of funky inflections. It’s leaning toward that FUNKADELIC thing which is great. It wasn’t difficult in terms of programming; it was more in terms of vibe.

I’ve noticed Glenn has a habit of missing his cues live. What’s the thing you always hope you don’t do during a gig?

Losing my voice towards the end is a big issue because I do a lot of singing, probably more than people realise. The focus is on Glenn obviously and Billie but when are only touring with one girl, which is what we’re doing with the ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ line-up, what we normally use the second girl for plus all the unison and harmonies stuff with Glenn is me and it’s tough on the voice. What’s particularly tough is the whole monitoring set-up is for Glenn which is fine for him because he’s got in-ear monitoring and he’s the lead singer so he can have what he wants basically… I normally have to put up with what’s left! *laughs*

So you can easily strain your voice if you’re not careful. It doesn’t matter on one-off gigs particularly but on a tour you’ve really got to be careful.

Have you had any voice training or anything?

No, but I know how to breathe and how to achieve what I want economically and when to do chest and when to do falsetto, what my break point is; and I’ve learnt through just literally being streetwise about it, what works and what doesn’t. Like Glenn, my voice has got more powerful over the years… if we were to sing acappella, I’d out-sing Glenn in terms of volume! Also, I’ve got a tendency in winter to get chest infections if I’m not careful so it’s always an issue for me… it’s happened on two tours so far and it’s a horrible thing when you have to sing through that! *laughs*

HEAVEN 17’s profile had been enhanced by the LA ROUX collaboration and the two ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ programmes on the BBC including the documentary…

That was amazing! It’s an endorsement of the idea that you should just do stuff rather than think about it too much because a good friend of ours, Joe Strong of Strong Films had wanted to do proper HEAVEN 17 documentary about that period of our development for a while. He’d heard all the stories when we were out getting p*ssed and thought it would make a good story. So we did it for our own reasons and we were just going to release it on DVD. It was just one of those fortunate coincidences. Joe has a lot of contacts in the BBC and at the time, he mentioned to somebody that he just finished editing and this person said “that’s good because we’re just doing an 80s season on BBC2, would you like to launch it?”.

Originally, the idea was to have two solid hours of HEAVEN 17 on BBC and we were going “this is insane!”, you couldn’t buy that kind of exposure! The only other band that’s got that kind of exposure this year as a legacy act is THE ROLLING STONES! Of course, it cost quite a lot of money to push it though and get it all edited and we’re still trying to make the money back but the point is, if you show faith in quality material and it’s shot well and the story’s interesting, it creates a virtuous circle of people having confidence that you’re doing things for the right reason. That means a lot in the BBC in particular because they’re not so commercially driven, they just want good quality stuff.

And it’s led to all sorts for us. It’s led to a massively increased amount of live work because we’ve just signed to William Morris Agency who are huge. And at the very outset from when we signed to them, we said “there’s no point in getting signed to a bigger agency if we’re going to get lost in their vast slate of artists but we want establish ourselves as credible artists from that period and we want top perform as credible artists, not just some trixy 80’s pop band! That’s where we want to go, can you help us?” And they said “That’s fine, then if you do it properly, we can get you into all sorts of festivals”.

We’ve hardly scraped the surface in terms of festivals across the world, we’ve done a couple in Europe but the rest have been in the UK. We’ve never yet played properly live in America which is amazing frankly seeing as we had a No1 record in the Billboard Dance Charts in the 80s with ‘Let Me Go’.

So we have a vision for the future for the first time in a long, long time. We have a structured plan and we got David Stanbury who’s our new manager… we’re really putting some effort and money into it. For the first six months of this year, we were running at a loss. But now it’s paying back. It’s a big thing to do when you don’t have the support of a record company, much harder.

There’s lots of things you can do that don’t require big time logistic support like ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK and lots of other blogs around the world. We’ve put a lot of effort into it, we believe in what we’re doing and we believed what we were doing in the past was really good and we believe that we’re good at performing it. So do fortunately, the audience.

How did you convince Phil Oakey to discuss the break-up of the original HUMAN LEAGUE on the documentary?

What it was, we were going up to Sheffield to perform at a charity gig for a friend of ours Dave Kilner from Radio Hallam who unfortunately died. We’d done some filming when Glenn and James said “can’t you just ring up Phil?” cos we’re mates now. But he’s notoriously difficult to contact, let alone get him to approve anything!

So they kept bugging me and bugging me. I said I’d give Phil a call and see what happens! I said “we’re in Sheffield City Hall… it will take about quarter of an hour, would you come down?”. And he said yes! I couldn’t believe it! So I took my little flip HD camera, set it up on my home tripod… it came out looking like CCTV footage in an interrogation room which I quite like because we didn’t have any proper lighting or anything! But we didn’t have anything planned. He didn’t say “don’t ask me about this”, I just asked him as a mate what he thought and he was very candid.

You’re working a lot with Mark Jones and his Back To the Phuture brand. Of course, his Wall Of Sound label have signed THE HUMAN LEAGUE… you know what I’m going to ask? Any chance of you and Phil Oakey writing or recording together again?

I don’t know, I personally would love to do it. I don’t have any issues left. Some of the best creative work I’ve ever been involved with was writing with Phil, he’s a brilliant lyric and leadline writer. What can I say? The first two HUMAN LEAGUE albums ‘Reproduction’ and ‘Travelogue’ have some genuinely fantastic moments on them. Still ’til this day, I think things like ‘The Black Hit Of Space’ and ‘Marianne’ are unsurpassable in that genre to be honest. I’d love to work with Phil, it might be a bit strange after all these years but I personally would love it.

I understand Phil might be doing a solo album in parallel with THE HUMAN LEAGUE so I don’t know if…

… there’s an opportunity possibly! Yeah, he seems a lot more open to collaboration now. He’s always done a bit before, he did ‘Together In Electric Dreams’ and that stuff with ALL SEEING EYE at one point but it’s good for him to spread his wings a bit because he’s got an iconic voice and songwriting style. It’s not for me to say but there is a possibility he could work in different environments other than THE HUMAN LEAGUE. Sometimes it’s just good to free yourself to do something with no expectations.

So have you got anything going on outside of HEAVEN 17 at the moment?

I’m doing the new BEF album ‘Dark’. I’m a bit nervous about saying which tracks I’m doing in case anyone nicks the idea but I suppose I could tell you one of them… last week I just finished ‘Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time’ by THE DELFONICS. It sounds amazing even though I say so myself, I’m so pleased with it. It’s done in a kind of darker fashion.

Are you able to say who’s singing it?

I don’t know, I haven’t got any singers yet, I’ve just done the backing tracks. I’m still open to suggestions if you’ve got any ideas! But it has to be either established artists or contemporary artists who are quite high profile, that’s the only thing! I’ve got plenty of people suggesting complete unknowns to me and I just haven’t got room for that because I’ve got to sell some albums. Talent we’re not short of but I need to get some famous people on board.

The concept works and I’m really pleased with it. Glenn’s obviously going to do it and Martin Fry from ABC’s agreed to do one. I’ve not asked Elly from LA ROUX but I’d be surprised if she said no… and so on and so forth. There are various people, contemporary singers that I like. I really like the singer from EVERYTHING EVERYTHING, I like his voice a lot. I think he might be suitable for something quite dark. I’m thinking about getting some actors in as well. I quite like the Rod McKuen kind of direction or William Shatner, depending on how you look at it *laughs*

‘Penthouse & Pavement’ is being reissued in a 3 disc package with a CD of demos. How different do these sound compared with the recorded versions? As different as the two versions of ‘Temptation’?

Some of them are… some of them are very similar and we just polished them up. But the biggest revelations are the demos that we found that were lost for 30 years literally of ‘Play To Win’, ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ and ‘Soul Warfare’ which are awe inspiringly different and funky. They sound like rare groove versions of HEAVEN 17. Both myself and Glenn had completely forgotten they existed. Just for those three tracks alone, I was so vibing on that… I think that’s worth the purchase price alone. But there’s a whole bunch of half baked/half finished experiments, there’s about half an hours worth of different experimental tracks that never turned into anything which we found as well which was really exciting. That CD is pretty damn good actually, I must say! And it was all made ’round about this time thirty years ago.

With those three ‘Pavement’ demos you just mentioned, can I just ask what you were using rhythmically on those because I’m assuming you didn’t have the Linn Drum Computer at that point?

No, it was just immediately prior to us getting the Linn Drum so those original demos we’d have been using the Roland System 100.

If the whole album had sounded like the ‘Penthouse’ side, then it would have been based on these demos if you know what I mean.

But the guitar and bass playing, this was when we first met John Wilson and there was no pressure on him, he was pouring out… very relaxed playing and super funky! He was a very young guy bear in mind, so we go into a professional studio… he still great on the album but now you can hear the difference. He was very relaxed in Sheffield, kind of loose in that great way but down in Townhouse when we recorded him, he was more pin sharp but not quite as loose.

Can I ask whatever happened to John Wilson?

Yes, you can. He recorded with us for three albums and then he just kind of disappeared. He worked with various people as a session player for a while but he was always incredibly shy, he wasn’t made for the rough ‘n’ tumble of the music business. And I think what happened if I remember rightly is somebody didn’t pay him for a bunch of sessions he did. These are the sort of things you have to roll with the punches or else you’ll never have a music career, disappointment happens on a weekly basis! But he just couldn’t handle it, he was very religious and I think he just thought “I don’t want any of this” and went back to his bedroom… I think! For all I know, he might be out there playing, we’d love to contact him and offer him some work.

Photo by Gered Mankowitz

You were harnessing a lot of new digital technology like the Linn Drum Computer at the time which was one of the distinguishing features of HEAVEN 17 at the time. How did that open up your horizons as to what you could achieve musically for the album?

The Linn Drum became within a day, the new direction… that and discovering John Wilson were the two things that defined ‘Penthouse & Pavement’.

I just got on well with programming it. It appealed to my mentality because you had to approach it from breaking the song down into bars and then at the end of a section you fill, it appealed to the logical part of my brain very much. It got to the point where I could programme really complex stuff in an hour for a 4-5 minute song. That would be the definitive thing, it’s not like “it kind of sounds alright, what shall we do?” because the sounds were very solid and good. They responded to an experienced engineer or producer toughening them up or compressing them.

It was our idea of heaven after subjecting ourselves to desistitudes of live players. Suddenly, we controlled something that sounded kind of real so it was the ideal bridge for us from the purely electronic world to the apparently real world. But it was rhythmic surrealism because there was loads of stuff I could do with the Linn Drum that was physically impossible for a drummer… and that I got criticised by various drummers saying “you couldn’t even play that!” But well, that’s good because then we’re doing something no-one else has ever done before!

So how does Joel McFarland, your live drummer find doing all this stuff?

He regards it as an amazing challenge. He’s got a first class degree in percussion from The Royal Academy of Music, he’s one of these dudes who could do the Evelyn Glennie thing with multiple mallets and stuff. He can play Stockhausen, all that sh*t!

His favourite thing is Linn Drum programming so we’ve got the actual original sounds and we just put them into his Yamaha brain, the central processing unit for his drum kit and we just wind him up and let him go!

What did you use for percussion on the more electronic ‘Penthouse’ side, was it an analogue drum machine?

I think it was all System 100 although we did have a Roland TR606 but the sounds were so terrible! And the only other drum machine we had was a Doctor Rhythm.

The subject matter in ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ is still relevant in the current climate. Musical trends are cyclical but so it seems are politics and economics. What are your thoughts on that?

Incredibly sad! But I’ve got a funny story for you… somebody on Facebook today said “Can’t believe it! Miners are celebrating, Liverpudlians are celebrating! Is Margaret Thatcher dead?” It just made me laugh, it’s very good isn’t it?

I think what is doubly ironic is one of the lines on the first song of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ is “History will repeat itself”… and it has! And oh my god, we’ve got some suffering to come! I mean morally and conceptually, I fear for the working classes in Britain. I think there will be civil insurrection. And I’ve lost count of the number of people who say we should reissue ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’!

Are there any plans to take ‘The Luxury Gap’ out live in the future?

Yes! Glenn in his traditional role as sceptic is um-ing and ah-ing while in my traditional role as ‘bull in a china shop’ is going “of course we’re going to do it”! So it’s somewhere between the two. It’s looking quite likely that we’ll be doing another European series of dates in late Autumn next year. And we almost certainly will do ‘The Luxury Gap’ there as a trial before we bring it over to Britain.

It’s a different kind of album to do live because I think it’s going to require an extra keyboard player because of all the brass and the strings. We don’t really like putting too much on the backing track, you can end up sounding a bit karaoke if you’re not careful. But then it’s a cost issue, it’s all difficult.

For instance, the European tour we did… even though it did very well at the box office, it just about broke even because of the production we were carting around with us. It’s a bit more economical in Britain because we’ll be selling more tickets anyway. It’s fine here but in Europe, you have to show faith and spend a bit of money to break the market.

‘The Luxury Gap’ sold a lot more than ‘Penthouse & Pavement’, it was more directed at the general public rather than the cognoscenti. That’s the definition of popular music, if you can do it intelligently then you’ve got the best of both worlds. I’m very proud of ‘The Luxury Gap’, it a very good album. Musically it’s very intelligent, there are certain elements that are superlative frankly like having THE PHENIX HORNS ESQUIRE, ‘Temptation’ etc. Some of the lesser known tracks work really well, you’ve got Simon Phillips on drums…

… ‘Lady Ice And Mr Hex’ is one of my favourites

Yeah, I mean it’s a brilliant piece, certain elements of it are serendipitously brilliant but then I’m a big fan of ‘How Men Are’ looking back on it. I think it’s an under rated album and that was when we were probably in our most daring and creative phase. I regard ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ is the most groundbreaking of the albums, but that’s primarily because of what was going on around it at the time.

Looking back on the ‘Pleasure One’ and ‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ period after that, what do you think now?

I think after ‘How Men Are’, several things happened. There was an overall moving away from daring music that was going on in the British music scene towards a more structured marketed thing. We weren’t new anymore so the only path we had to go down was carrying on writing good pop songs.

And during ‘How Men Are’ when we were trying to get on Top Of The Pops to do ‘Sunset Now’, Glenn exploded his cartilage in his knee on the day we were meant to film that and he had to go to hospital. And nobody but nobody f***ed off the BBC in those days! If you ever f***ed up their schedules, you never got on Top Of The Pops again and that’s exactly what happened! Which is really wrong but that’s just the way it was! That kind of killed the promotional activity on that album which is a real pity… not abroad but just in Britain.

So consequently when it came to making ‘Pleasure One’, we’d lost our confidence a bit because it felt like we were slipping. So we started employing more session players and moving towards a more traditional rock sound. And that wasn’t a deliberate decision. We lost confidence not in our songwriting but in the sound that we had, so it like really lost a bit of identity…

… yes, it happened to THE HUMAN LEAGUE, OMD, ULTRAVOX; it happened to the whole lot of you!

We wanted to move on but there wasn’t anywhere to move on to from a sound point of view. We couldn’t go back to being all electronic, it seemed like we had to keep trying new stuff but in the end, it sounded a bit more old fashioned. Having said that, I think ‘Contenders’ is one of my favourite tracks we ever did, I really like that. But generally, the album wasn’t fantastic I have to say!

And ‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ was the nail in the coffin; we’d completely lost our way by then as far as I was concerned! We were retreading some ideas and some of the things we were doing were not working. I think we all knew it had run its course at that point. But ironically, it wasn’t that we’d run out of musical ideas, it was just that vehicle because at that time, I was doing Terence Trent D’Arby’s album which showed myself, Glenn and Ian that we’d still got creative ideas but we’d lost focus on what HEAVEN 17 should be at that point.

The break did you good as you came back with ‘Bigger Than America’ in 1996.

I really like that album, it was our attempt to get back to the electronic sound. I said we’ve only got one chance to do this retro thing and show people because everyone was in the middle of that dance thing at that time. We thought we’d show them what these original sounds are like in a song context and things like ‘Dive’, ‘Bigger Than America’ and ‘We Blame Love’, they’re really good.

But you had a setback almost straight away. Any thoughts about how that album disappeared off the radar?

It was bad timing, we signed to an imprint that was owned by the guys who did SNAP! They then basically lost interest in their label about a month after our record came out and it reverted back to Warners in Britain who’d got no interest whatsoever in the album so they just killed it!, They were just terrible, they’d got no idea and didn’t particularly like it. It was just marking time really. Which was a pity because there was some good things on that album, it could have been more successful. I think we might re-release it on our website.

You’ve re-released your last album ‘Before After’ through the website as a limited edition of 100, each in unique artwork. How did this idea come about ?

What happened was we originally couldn’t find anybody to put it out so we pressed some up ourselves to sell it and then it got picked up by another label. But we’d forgotten there were 100 that we’d pressed up that were just sitting around in a box. So these albums are still in the wrapper, we might as well sell these. And then we came up with the idea from seeing an exhibition of an artist who had done 50 different covers for a 12 inch single. And I thought wouldn’t it be great to do 100 different album covers and do it as an art piece, signed with a letter of authenticity.

It’ll help pay for the next album that we make or whatever. And so we did it and it came out really well. They’re all excellent, the great thing is people have started going when they get their copy “oh, I’ve got Number 43 and this is what it looks like… “ and because they’re all completely different, they post them up on line. It’s really nice. We’ll sell them at the gigs as well and it’ll sell out once we start touring.

What’s next for yourself? Will you do another ambient project with Vince Clarke?

We’re not going to do anymore new stuff on Mute but there is ten years of Illustrious output which I’ve never released. So I might do a big boxed set in some interesting format which I’ve yet to determine.

I love ‘Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle’…

… it’s good isn’t it? We’ve got seven or eight hours of this stuff, some of it’s really good. I’m sitting on it really because I know somebody will want to buy it eventually.

‘Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle’ is not facile stuff, some thought went into it and it’s beautiful… it’s not whale song or terrible spa music! And that album was rendered in binaural so it does mess with your head when you listen to it on headphones.

Anything else?

I’m just negotiating doing a Future Of Sound event in Sydney Opera House next June which is going to be called Future Of The Centres. I’m probably going to compose a new piece for that together with various other artists. I’ve been talking to The British Film Institute about doing a soundtrack to a quite important Russian science fiction film from the 1920s which I can’t reveal what it is. That would almost certainly be on at the BFI in the middle of next year. I’m looking at various other compositional stuff with the BFI where they’re re-examining what was new over the years. I’m hoping to be the music curator for that. There’s quite a lot of stuff coming up.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Martyn Ware

Additional thanks go to Peter Noble at Noble PR and Kayleigh Watson at Name PR

The deluxe 3 disc collector’s edition of ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ is released by Virgin Records on 22nd November 2010

The ‘Penthouse and Pavement Live in Concert’ with ‘The Story Of Penthouse And Pavement’ double DVD is released by Blink TV on 15th November 2010 and will be available at the merchandise stand during the tour.

HEAVEN 17’s 30th Anniversary Penthouse and Pavement Tour

Dates include: Edinburgh HMV Picture House (22nd November), Glasgow O2 ABC (23rd November), Manchester Ritz (25th November), Birmingham HMV Institute (26th November), London HMV Forum (28th November), Oxford O2 Academy (29th November), Brighton Corn Exchange (30th November), Bristol O2 Academy (1st December)

https://www.heaven17.com/

https://www.facebook.com/heaven17official

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
Photos by Tracey Welch and Virginia Turbett
23rd October 2010

Tag: Heaven 17 (Page 13 of 14)

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