In 1979, David Bowie attended a gig at the Nashville Rooms in London. The next day, he told the NME that he had ‘seen the future of pop music’. The band he had seen was a group of scrappy young Sheffield lads with synthesisers – they called themselves The Human League.
Four decades later, The Human League are synonymous with synthpop music, widely remembered and loved both as part of Sheffield’s experimental electronic post-punk scene, through to their reinvention as global pop stars.
Following the League’s hometown return to Sheffield for Tramlines last weekend, we wanted to take a look back at how a group of young Sheffielders changed pop music forever.
Origins – Ware & Marsh, The Future, and ‘Being Boiled’
When he received his first paycheque from his job as a computer operator, Martyn Ware had a choice – he could use that money for driving lessons, or he could sink it into a Korg 700S synthesiser. To this day, Ware claims he still cannot drive.
Ware had no musical background or training. He chose the Korg, a monophonic machine, for its experimental nature – ‘we were suddenly capable of producing sounds that no other human being had ever considered possible, let alone heard’, he explains in his autobiography.
Ware and his associate Ian Craig Marsh had been part of experimental ‘mess-about’ groups in Sheffield, with names such as ‘Meatwhistle’ and ‘Musical Vomit’, and had associated with post-punk icons Cabaret Voltaire – usually to raid house parties of booze together, of course. Their ambition was growing with their access to the exciting new availability of synths, and, inspired by glam-rock synth maestro Brian Eno, they decided to put a start a band. They called themselves The Future, and were based in a studio on Devonshire Lane (just off West Street).
The original frontman was Adi Newton, an avant-garde existentialist who would go on to cult success as frontman of industrial group Clock DVA. Their initial demos were met with curiosity and confusion from record labels – though they could get some otherworldly sounds out of their equipment, they could barely piece together anything with structure or melody. Newton was dismissed after they failed to get any label backing, leaving Ware and Marsh to find a new frontman.
Ware’s first choice was his friend Glenn Gregory, who had just moved to London to sing for a band called 57 Men (later to become new wave stars Wang Chung). On a whim, he decided to ask his best friend from school – a socially-awkward but good-looking oddball named Philip Oakey, known around Sheffield for his bizarre hairstyle (long on one half, cut short on the other) and eccentric dress sense. Oakey had never sang before, but Ware and Marsh gave him a week to write some lyrics to an experimental tune they had concocted. Two days later, he returned, and sang to them in a low monotone:
Listen to the voice of Buddha… Saying, ‘stop your sericulture’…
He got the job. This song would become ‘Being Boiled’ – the first single from their new group, The Human League.
Reproduction and Travelogue
Their name was taken from a science fiction strategy board game named StarForce: Alpha Centauri, and was intended to bring a more emotionally engaging and ‘human’ element to electronic music, which in the 1970s was still stereotyped as cold and robotic. The Human League’s sound was birthed out of glam rock and post-punk, but took hints from diverse influences, including the disco and funk of Parliament-Fundakelic, and the Krautrock of Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk, melding them as an entrancing avant-garde pop fusion.
‘Being Boiled’ was released on Fast Records in 1978, and while not a chart hit, it gathered attention from the music press, and subsequently, major labels.
Suddenly, this trio of Sheffield experimentalists were signed with Virgin Records for a multi-album deal – albeit for half the wages Ware and Marsh had been earning as computer operators. Their first gig was at the Psalter Lane Art College in Sheffield, with their synths on old Formica tables and junk TVs displaying only static behind them. At a subsequent gig at Sheffield’s Limit Club, they played on the same bill as a debuting rock group – you may have heard of them – Def Leppard. Their first national tour was as a support act for Siouxsie and the Banshees, where they experienced the rough-and-tumble world of the emerging punk scene, and would subsequently go on to support Iggy Pop on a European tour.
In 1979, they released The Dignity of Labour, a haunting darkwave EP inspired by Yuri Gagarin’s return from space, which included a unique flexi-disc – a miniature record on flimsy plastic film, on which the band recorded a discussion of the benefits of including a flexi-disc, among other meta and artsy conversation. Their first full-length album, Reproduction, was recorded at Virgin’s Townhouse studio in Shepherd’s Bush, London, and featured striking artwork of naked babies underneath a glass dancefloor. Ware maintains his disappointment in the album failing to capture their harsh, electro-punk sound that made them such a notorious live act, and claims it came out too clean and overproduced. However, in hindsight, the record remains a gem of early synthpop; it is quite unlike anything else from that period, with the eerie ‘Circus of Death’ delivering a strong sense of dread and darkness, and the punchy earworm ‘Empire State Human’ bringing some energy into the mix.
For the next album, The Human League relocated back to Sheffield, to Monumental Studios, a new creative lounge built in a rundown ex-veterinary surgery on West Bar. Travelogue would be released in May 1980, and featured a heavier, more raw and industrial sound, closer to their live act, with synths on full blast and pumping maximum distortion. The cover art, hued in a warm deep orange, was taken from National Geographic, featuring a sled trainer and dogs on a frozen lake in Canada – embodying mystery and isolation. The band were being noticed by now – the album entered the chart at number 16 – but they were still missing the level of success that Virgin were expecting.
Viewed as too niche for pop-crossover success, The Human League’s last-ditch attempt at pop stardom was the Holiday ’80 EP, hastily released a month before the album. It featured ‘Marianne’, probably the greatest song the original line-up had made, encapsulating their dark-yet-danceable edge. Virgin even managed to negotiate an appearance on Top of the Pops for the band – much to the delight of Ware’s elderly parents. However, without the backing of major radio shows, the record was consigned to middling success. With Virgin beginning to feel the pinch, and with other synthpop acts like Gary Numan rolling over them with massive success, a shake-up was needed.
The Split, The Girls, and Dare
On the eve of a European tour, The Human League were torn in half. Accounts differ on the specifics, but Ware maintains he was kicked out of his own band by Oakey and the studio after months of creative clashes and frustration.
Marsh took Ware’s side and left alongside him, relinquishing the Human League name and leaving to found their own separate group. They would be joined by their original choice of frontman, fellow Sheffielder Glenn Gregory, to form Heaven 17, and go on to their own great success. Ware also eventually became a renowned music producer, helping to ignite the spectacular solo career of one Tina Turner.
The Human League was left with Oakey and Adrian Wright, who had previously organised slide shows to back the stage performances. The studio drafted in songwriters and synth players Jo Callis and Ian Burden to help back things up musically… but of course, the most famous addition to the group came in the form of two young ladies.
Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall were only 17 and 18-year-old schoolgirls when Oakey recruited them, spotting them on the dancefloor of the Crazy Daisy Nightclub on Sheffield’s high street and – without preamble – invited them on the tour as backup singers and dancers, according to an oft-repeated anecdote. The girls had to receive permission from their parents and their school to come along, audaciously convincing their teachers of the educational benefits of tour travel.
The band had previously experimented with this format in 1979, when they released a disco-influenced single, ‘I Don’t Depend on You’, under the pseudonym The Men and featuring two women on backing vocals: Lisa Strike and Katie Kissoon. This single had failed to chart, but showed promise. Essentially, The League were a shell – they were days away from a tour, with mountains of debt and responsibilities weighing down on Oakey. Ware and Marsh were gone, leaving Oakey with two teenagers with no musical background, and a hastily-assembled team of studio musicians, along with the slide operator who had talked his way into playing synths. What could this seemingly disastrous line-up achieve?
They – somehow – made one of the greatest, most important pop albums of all time.
The influence of Dare is felt to this day. It defined the synthpop genre for a generation, and put Sheffield on the map around the world, kick-starting a Second British Invasion of the American pop charts. In the UK, it hit number one, and was certified triple platinum. The singles were an even greater success, with ‘Don’t You Want Me’ going to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, including as the coveted UK Christmas Number One, and with 1.5 million copies sold, was the top selling single of 1981.
The production of this album was tumultuous, not least because they were still sharing Monumental Studios with Ware and Marsh, who were working nights recording Heaven 17’s debut Penthouse and Pavement while The League recorded Dare on the day shift. With feelings still raw from the split, a rivalry formed, with Heaven 17 unintentionally badmouthing the new group in NME as ‘dodgy boilers’ – though by way of apology, Marsh and Gregory reportedly invited the girls out for a meal, which they graciously accepted. Ware recounts being in the studio and finding a demo tape of what would become ‘The Sound of the Crowd’, describing it as ‘hopelessly funny, and with the girls childishly and consistently out of tune… My God, there were even some muffled comments on the tape between takes with Phil encouraging them to try harder’.
But perhaps that was what cemented the appeal of the new Human League to the public. These were normal girls, who liked to dress up and party, elevated into the glitz and glamour of the new world of electronic pop. They didn’t need privileged backgrounds or unnatural talent or even any real training – they just had fun with it, and that fun was infectious – particularly as the group took advantage of the new medium of music videos, becoming some of the first British stars of MTV.
Dare just got everything right. The cover was a gatefold inspired by Vogue magazine, in dazzling white and close-up frames of the members’ faces in heavy makeup. The songs, while simple, employed endlessly catchy and memorable synth hooks, with lyrics that were easy to sing along to (there’s a reason that ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is so widely remembered after more than four decades). The band was compared to the emerging New Romantic movement, though the League’s style actually preceded that particular chic – they considered themselves part of the Sheffield scene through-and-through.
Mainstream Success in the 1980s
With the unexpected and insurmountable success of Dare, the pressure was on to follow it up. As a stopgap, producer Martin Rushent released one of the first ever remix albums, inspired by the electro-funk mixing of Grandmaster Flash. 1982’s Love and Dancing, credited to ‘The League Unlimited Orchestra’, featured dub-style instrumental versions of songs from Dare, created by cutting up and manually gluing the album tapes. With the notion of ‘remixing’ a fresh novelty at the time, the record became another huge hit, and was an incredibly influential landmark for dance music.
The Motown-inspired ‘Mirror Man’ and the electropop track ‘(Keep Feeling) Fascination’ were released as follow-up singles, and both hit number two in the UK charts in 1982. However, the band reportedly agonised to make a follow-up album, with Martin Rushent leaving the project partway through.
Hysteria finally saw daylight in 1984, and while still a success, it became evident that Dare had been a flash-in-the-pan success almost impossible to recreate. The leading single, ‘The Lebanon’, is quite a sombre pop track about the then-ongoing Lebanese Civil War, and – in a shocking first for The League – was guitar-driven, featuring a riff not unlike something by U2 or REM. By the mid-‘80s, the novelty and excitement of synthesisers was beginning to wear off. The League had to catch up, or be left in the dust.
The band did receive a boost, however, when Oakey was invited to make a collaborative album with one of his icons, synth pioneer and ‘Godfather of Disco’ Giorgio Moroder. This partnership spawned the hit single and unforgettable ‘80s anthem, ‘Together in Electric Dreams’, written for the film Electric Dreams (1984). While it technically wasn’t a Human League song, it entered their repertoire for obvious reasons – it is simply a perfect pop song, bought to life by beautiful synths, Oakey’s soulful lyrics, and an electrifying guitar solo.
With things stagnating in the studio for the League, collaboration was seen as the way to go. This led to a pretty radical partnership for the next record, as Virgin decided to fly the band to Minneapolis to pair them with R&B production and songwriting duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis were the biggest producers in the world, fresh off the back of making huge hit records for Janet Jackson and Alexander O’Neal, so Virgin were eager to put them to work on reinvigorating their most profitable act. What could possibly go wrong?
Crash, the aptly-named 1986 album, is a real mess. On one hand, it gave The League one of their best tracks ever: ‘Human’, which was a US number one and a beautiful, meticulously-produced staple of pop-R&B fusion. On the other, it gave us… The rest of the album.
The clashes between The League and their newly appointed producers were reportedly brutal, ending in Wright leaving the band and Oakey pulling out of recording and returning to Sheffield. Jam and Lewis are speculated to have seen the album as an opportunity to crossover into mainstream pop, and were given creative control and some songwriting duties, allowing them to side-line the League’s material in favour of their own Yamaha DX7-led digital sound. The result? Tracks like ‘Swang’, which sound painfully un-Human League – no self-respecting Yorkshireman should be caught singing about ‘swanging’. Tensions came to a head when Jam and Lewis appointed their own female backing singer in place of the League girls. At the time, Oakey was in a relationship with Catherall; as such, this was unforgiveable.
Even the album artwork is out-of-focus, slapped on at the last minute after a planned Vogue-style photoshoot reportedly ended in disaster, with allegations of overt sexualisation of Sulley and Catherall resulting into an angry clash with the photographer.
Crash was a moderate commercial success, but the band struggled to recover from the frustrating creative process. They toured extensively at this time, but did not record new material for another four years.
The 1990s to Present – From Obscurity to Reappraisal
By the end of the 1980s, synthpop was a dying beast. Previously successful acts like Eurythmics and Duran Duran had been assimilated into mainstream rock and pop, and groups like New Order and Depeche Mode were absorbed into the growing alternative rock scene. With Madchester and Grunge beginning to dominate the charts in the early ‘90s, things looked bleak for The Human League, who had just re-established themselves in a new Sheffield studio in collaboration with the local council.
Romantic? was the band’s sixth album, and signalled dwindling success – the song ‘The Stars are Going Out’ even lament’s the band’s loss of fame and subsequent depression. League fans were glad to see them back with creative control, but Virgin were less than impressed with the band’s commercial prospects, and in 1992, they were unceremoniously dropped from the label after fourteen years.
Their first post-Virgin material was another collaboration, this time with fellow synth pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, who had spearheaded electronic pop in Japan while the League were doing the same in the UK. YMO Versus The Human League was released in Asia in 1993, and features fantastic re-workings of classic YMO tracks with vocals by Oakey, including a great house-influenced version of ‘Behind the Mask’. It was an obscure release, but showed that the band were still full of promise.
In 1995, they signed with the EastWest label and joined up with producer Ian Stanley (Tears for Fears) for a new album, Octopus. Now presenting as a trio – just Oakey, Sulley and Catherall – this record took them back to their roots of analogue synthesisers, and was a surprising success, giving them their first top-ten hit in nearly a decade, ‘Tell Me When’.
After being out of the limelight for so long, the band saw something of a reappraisal and re-evaluation by critics across the late ‘90s and beyond. Electronic pop would once again become cool in the 2000s, and The League had a solid legacy as pioneers, with heavy influence across the entire pop spectrum. The landscape had changed so much over the years that repeating the success of Dare was a simple impossibility, but they were simply never going to let themselves fade away.
Secrets (2001) was well-received by critics, and Credo (2011) was an indie hit, featuring production by fellow Sheffield act I Monster. This later material leant more towards the dance scene, crafted more so for nightclubs than radio stations. To this day, they still have The Human League Studio in central Sheffield.
However, since the 1990s, the area in which The Human League have truly excelled is in their stage shows. They have toured extensively, headlining festivals the world over to great success, largely due to the trio’s incredible stage presence, and their refusal to use playback – every single Human League show is rehearsed and played live, with a guarantee that no two performances are the same. For a legacy electronic act, this is impressive, and shows the band still maintain their pride.
The Human League were one of the biggest highlights of Tramlines this year. Their long career has had its ups and downs, but there is no denying that they are simply some of the most iconic offspring of the Steel City. If you missed them at the festival, they will also be headlining arenas in UK later this year on their Generations 2024 tour, supported by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and T’Pau, with tickets available here.
Sources:
‘Electronically Yours: Vol 1’, autobiography by Martyn Ware, 2022.
‘Philip Oakey – The Human League Interview’ by Nigel Humberstone, Sound on Sound, April 1995.
‘Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have become Synonymous with Recording Excellence’ by Chris Williams, Wax Poetics, February 2015.
TV Interview: Eamonn Holmes with Sulley, Catherall & Oakey for GMTV. Originally broadcast 5 November 2002.
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