The Human League - they Dare'd and won
IN hindsight it seemed like a logical idea... take the landmark record that turned your quirky electro pop act into a world-famous concern and play the whole thing to the fans, live.
It's just a shame it didn't come from the band.
"No, it wasn't our idea," confirms iconic singer Phil Oakey. "It was someone called Jason Day who works at the Virgin EMI catalogue department and who is more devoted to the music of that period than we are.
"It's funny, people in that department care more about music than the rest of the industry. Others get given stuff, whoever the A&R have signed up, and have to work out whether they like it. The catalogue people get stuff that has already been approved by the public because people have been buying it."
And buy Dare they did, in their droves when it appeared in 1981; a genre-defining album driven by the singles Open Your Heart, Love Action and, of course, Don't You Want Me.
Even though it had upped the commercial ingredients that earlier, more experimental records had lacked, Oakey and colleagues didn't anticipate the response.
"It was quite a weird album, and it was weird that people took to it. But they did because it hit the right moment in time and is one that most typified the era.
"I always say about us that we're the same as Abba; Abba were an average oompah band who did some odd stuff that people then bought. Likewise, one day we decided to do something that might be considered conventional and put out singles, that people bought."
It is a typical remark from an amiable singer who single-handedly inspired half curtain haircuts and cross-gender sartorial styling across the country, yet often under-rates the League's achievements.
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The band continues to be a plausible international live draw, being hardly short of the odd hit single. But their December 7 return to Sheffield City Hall sees the current line-up, including Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, abandoning the straight hits routine to major on Dare, although other album highlights Seconds, Hard Times, Sound Of The Crowd and Things That Dreams Are Made Of have long featured in the setlist.
"We've been going so long it's dead easy to slip into the same frame, get the same publicity people, slightly alter the t-shirt and off you go. So we're just doing that album, if we can work out how to do it," says Phil, who reckons fellow '80s icon Gary Numan started the whole album gig thing. Others have adopted the format since, such as British heavy rockers Iron Maiden.
"People forget how very industrial it was," Phil says of the early League. "We were trying to look bleak, because the world seemed very bleak, so we used machines to demonstrate how de-humanised it had become.
"Then a lot of people who like you for being weird and leftfield so they can be among an elite go away when you have pop songs. I used to have these people writing to me, huge dissertations through the post from students on what it all meant. But I let them down."
The band did, of course, please millions as well, although they have had mixed fortunes since. They had more hits, the likes of Nile Rogers and Jim Jam and Terry Lewis assisting their evolution before the trio re-emerged with Octopus in 1995.
The last League album Secrets emerged to mixed reviews, but was a fairly vintage affair blending the classic League sound with some dance aspects Oakey had become exposed to.
“There was a little tiny bit of us being humorous almost going on having a laugh, but the public doesn’t want laughs. Of course, we were serious because an album takes a couple of years out of your life.
“As for now, commerciality has divorced us. I’m thinking of printing on the back of the next album ‘Please tell us who you like’. And when they tell us Hard-Fi or Babyshambles and I’ll say ‘What Pete Doherty is doing is pre-Beatles’. It’s such a large circle that has gone round.”
Oakey confirms they are working on new material with him at the desk.
“I seem to be the producer now and I’m feeling sympathy for all the producers I abused over the years.
“I’ve been killing myself trying to do some new stuff. I’m in every day dragging out the oldest gear, trying to make it work. We are back looking at that stuff, but I cannot tell if I really like it. In the studio we listen to something and if we like it we then struggle to explain why.
“So I’ve been listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Radio-Activity. In those days people had never heard a noise like that.
“Even so, the great glam electro album has yet to be made, halfway between Glitterbeat and Cabaret Voltaire.”
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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