WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN………
I travelled home from work on dark and damp evening in February 2010 feeling as miserable as the weather, until I changed and put on the TV.
It was a Sunday evening and I switched on BBC1, to be greeted by Aled Jones presenting Songs of Praise, I didn’t want to watch that, but I needed to be on that station and press the red button to find out the football results…..
…. before I got the chance to see the football results, there was a message offering the chance to see Heaven 17 and La Roux’s session recorded for BBC Radio 6 presented by Steve Lamacq.
It turned out to be at the time, the BBC’s most successful ‘red button’ choice with 1.2million hits in a week (at least three times by me!!)
Now I’ve been a fan of Heaven 17 since first hearing ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ back in 1981.
The single was the NME’s single of the week when released, but was banned by the BBC Radio 1, as it was believed to be libellous towards President Ronald Reagan.
Despite the ban the single reached No 45 in the charts.
“Groove Thang” is a mixture of electronic funk with a socialist/Marxist message played with a very fast tempo and with a wonderful bass solo in the middle.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
So that Sunday evening I sat and watched the Radio 6 session.
I was aware of La Roux, as I’d bought their single ‘Bulletproof’, I liked the electronic 80’s feel and sound.
mp3 : La Roux - Bulletproof
During the session they played Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’ and ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ and La Roux’s ‘In For The Kill’ and ‘Bulletproof’.
They also did a version of Terrence Trent Derby’s ‘Sign Your Name’ that was originally produced by Martyn Ware.
Later last year, the BBC devoted a couple of nights to Heaven 17, to celebrate 30 years of the band, showing a documentary on the making of their first album ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ and the following evening they showed a concert where they played the whole album.
The documentary saw Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory going back to their home city, Sheffield and revisiting their family homes and also their fathers’ places of work. Ware grew up in a council flat, while Gregory’s home was considered a lot posher by Ware, although it was also a council house.
As well as being a great piece on the origins of the band, it also captured the lost industry of Sheffield.
It was explained, how both were expected to follow in their father’s footsteps into the foundries and finishing shops of the steel industry, Martyn Ware described that prospect as hellish.
Gregory told, how his father was a shop steward in the steel industry and he waged war against Margaret Thatcher...and still does!!!
Both saw music as a way of avoiding the steel works.
They both grew up with the constant noise of the foundries that came with 24-hour production, which they felt featured mesmerically in their music.
Ware explained how Heaven 17 were formed.
He had formed The Human League with Ian Craig Marsh and their first choice as singer, Glenn Gregory was unavailable, so Martyn asked old school friend Philip Oakey.
They signed to Bob Last’s Edinburgh based independent record label Fast Products who released their first single Being Boiled.
They played regularly over the next two years including support roles to The Rezillos and The Undertones.
They then signed to Virgin Records with Bob Last taking on the role of band manager.
At this point, Bob Last took advantage of tensions in the group and engineered a split, calling Martyn to a meeting.
Phil Oakey said, “Martyn, we’re throwing you out of the band” and Ware replied, “I don’t think so, it’s my band!”
The feeling was that Ian Craig Marsh would stay in The Human League but he chose to leave with Ware.
Part of Last’s master plan was to get Ware to form a production company and that is when B.E.F (British Electronic Foundation) was formed.
Ware explained, that he was whisked away to Edinburgh, by Last, straight after the split, to stay away from Oakey, he said he was heartbroken as Phil had been his oldest and closest friend, but Last, insisted he was the talented one and he could work with other singers and that he’d negotiate a deal with Virgin Records.
The deal was to produce up to six albums a year (Which Ware felt was utterly ridiculous) Virgin would finance all the recordings and provide them with a certain amount of an advance on each album.
The first project was Heaven 17 and ‘Penthouse and Pavement ’.
They took their name from an imaginary band in Anthony Burgess book ‘A Clockwork Orange’, called The Heaven Seventeen.
Glenn Gregory explained how he was brought into Heaven 17, “I went back to Sheffield to take pictures of Joe Jackson for Sounds or NME and met Martyn who told me The League had split. He asked, did I fancy forming another band and two days later I was back living in Sheffield.
Ten days later we had recorded ‘Fascist Groove Thang’. There was that much fucking energy and enthusiasm and wanting to do it…for Martyn.
It was originally called ‘Brothers and Sisters How Much Longer Must We Tolerate This Fascist Groove Thing’ ”.
Glenn Gregory tells how they found their bass player who provided the scintillating bass on the album, “When we’d recorded ‘Groove Thang’s’ backing track, there was a gap in the middle and Martyn said ‘Why don’t we do have a disco bass solo?’ but all the bass players we knew were rubbish and could only play one note bass lines.
At the time, I had taken a part time job at the Crucible Theatre to get some money, as a stagehand. I asked in the green room if anyone who played bass and a nice quiet 17year old black guy called John Wilson said he played a bit.
At lunchtime, we caught a bus to his house where he picked up his bass, went to the studio and recorded it in one take.
He explained that as he was left handed and had never had his bass restrung, so he played it upside down! We were blown away!
He said, ‘Is that OK? Because, I’m better on the rhythm guitar’. We said can you go home and get you’re your guitar”.
Martyn Ware agrees, it was so amazing and so fast, 152bpm. Incredible.
The recording of the album was done under strange circumstances; they were sharing the studio with The Human League.
Glenn Gregory recalled, “It was like a race to us. We were in the same recording space that they were using to write and record ‘Dare’. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to work at the same time, so we decided to do shifts. We did two weeks shifts, one band on days, one on nights and at the end of the fortnight we’d swap over.
We would go in and find tapes that they’d been working on. We’d find bits of ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ on a tape, so we’d listen to it. I’m sure they found parts of ‘Groove Thang’ and thought, ‘What the fuck is this!!!!’
It was a race”.
The album had two distinctive sides; the ‘Penthouse’ side was a hybrid of electronic, funk and dance. The influence of Martyn’s musical likes of American funk with groups like Parliament and Funkadelic from his nightclubbing in Sheffield are evident.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement
It was a like a snapshot of the Britain that time. ‘Penthouse and Pavement’, ‘Soul Warfare’ and ‘Play to Win’ told of the rise of the “yuppie” with their focus on money, cocaine, Thatcherism and the beginning of the privatization of the country’s industries, something their fathers stood firmly against.
The ‘Pavement’ side was purely electronic. It dealt with issues that were important to the band like the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with ‘Lets All Make A Bomb’.
Martin Ware explained, that they knew they were from the pavement but they wanted to head to the penthouse, it was a way of showing we could do well for ourselves.
There also was huge amount of ironic humour in the image of the album.
The iconic album cover by Ray Smith depicted the band members in corporate poses wearing pin stripe suits. His painting looked like a parody of a company’s annual report complete with its own slogan,
“That’s opening doors all over the World”
It also had the B.E.F logo and place names:
Sheffield-Edinburgh-London
When released it was well received although some critics could not see the humour in the artwork, instead they questioned the imagery compared to where the band came from and their background.
Its highest chart place in the UK charts was 14 and it was awarded album of the year for 1981 by the Melody Maker.
As for the race to see who would have the first release ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ came out a month before The Human League’s ‘Dare’.
It was always Heaven 17 intention never to play live and they never did for many years, as they claimed that the technology was such that they could never reproduce their recorded sound. Not playing live was part of their mission statement.
They did make the occasional appearance at nightclubs with Glenn Gregory singing to a backing track.
One such appearance was at the famous Studio 54 nightclub in New York after ‘Let Me Go’ went to No.1 in the US dance chart.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Let Me Go
In 1997, during the Flux music festival that ran alongside the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Heaven 17 were booked to play The Jaffa Cake Club. In the local papers it was proclaimed that they would be playing LIVE. No backing tracks.
The gig was a gathering of 40-somethings to see a band that had never played live in Scotland before.
The line-up included Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory, a drummer, a bass player and two backing singers. The set lasted one hour and twenty minutes and left the audience wanting more.
Ware and Gregory have recorded 3 more albums and now play regularly live.
In 2008, I travelled to Sheffield, it seemed appropriate to see them there, on the Steel City Tour with ABC and The Human League.
Recently in an interview Martyn Ware explained he is still angry that ‘Groove Thang’ was stopped from being a bigger hit by the BBC ban, “I still fucking hate Mike Read. He symbolizes everything that was wrong with Radio 1 in the 1980s, and is probably still wrong with it now. Creepy old out and proud Conservatives with Cliff Richard haircuts hanging round with teenage girls. It's just not right. It wasn't enough that he ruined the Icicle Works'entire career by saying that he had sex to 'Love Is A Wonderful Colour’”.
Mike Read also asked to be Ware’s friend on Facebook.
He declined.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement (demo version)
Mr John Greer, Friday 14 October 2011
(Sorry folks, all mp3s removed as a result of dmca notice - JC)
It was a Sunday evening and I switched on BBC1, to be greeted by Aled Jones presenting Songs of Praise, I didn’t want to watch that, but I needed to be on that station and press the red button to find out the football results…..
…. before I got the chance to see the football results, there was a message offering the chance to see Heaven 17 and La Roux’s session recorded for BBC Radio 6 presented by Steve Lamacq.
It turned out to be at the time, the BBC’s most successful ‘red button’ choice with 1.2million hits in a week (at least three times by me!!)
Now I’ve been a fan of Heaven 17 since first hearing ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ back in 1981.
The single was the NME’s single of the week when released, but was banned by the BBC Radio 1, as it was believed to be libellous towards President Ronald Reagan.
Despite the ban the single reached No 45 in the charts.
“Groove Thang” is a mixture of electronic funk with a socialist/Marxist message played with a very fast tempo and with a wonderful bass solo in the middle.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
So that Sunday evening I sat and watched the Radio 6 session.
I was aware of La Roux, as I’d bought their single ‘Bulletproof’, I liked the electronic 80’s feel and sound.
mp3 : La Roux - Bulletproof
During the session they played Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’ and ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’ and La Roux’s ‘In For The Kill’ and ‘Bulletproof’.
They also did a version of Terrence Trent Derby’s ‘Sign Your Name’ that was originally produced by Martyn Ware.
Later last year, the BBC devoted a couple of nights to Heaven 17, to celebrate 30 years of the band, showing a documentary on the making of their first album ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ and the following evening they showed a concert where they played the whole album.
The documentary saw Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory going back to their home city, Sheffield and revisiting their family homes and also their fathers’ places of work. Ware grew up in a council flat, while Gregory’s home was considered a lot posher by Ware, although it was also a council house.
As well as being a great piece on the origins of the band, it also captured the lost industry of Sheffield.
It was explained, how both were expected to follow in their father’s footsteps into the foundries and finishing shops of the steel industry, Martyn Ware described that prospect as hellish.
Gregory told, how his father was a shop steward in the steel industry and he waged war against Margaret Thatcher...and still does!!!
Both saw music as a way of avoiding the steel works.
They both grew up with the constant noise of the foundries that came with 24-hour production, which they felt featured mesmerically in their music.
Ware explained how Heaven 17 were formed.
He had formed The Human League with Ian Craig Marsh and their first choice as singer, Glenn Gregory was unavailable, so Martyn asked old school friend Philip Oakey.
They signed to Bob Last’s Edinburgh based independent record label Fast Products who released their first single Being Boiled.
They played regularly over the next two years including support roles to The Rezillos and The Undertones.
They then signed to Virgin Records with Bob Last taking on the role of band manager.
At this point, Bob Last took advantage of tensions in the group and engineered a split, calling Martyn to a meeting.
Phil Oakey said, “Martyn, we’re throwing you out of the band” and Ware replied, “I don’t think so, it’s my band!”
The feeling was that Ian Craig Marsh would stay in The Human League but he chose to leave with Ware.
Part of Last’s master plan was to get Ware to form a production company and that is when B.E.F (British Electronic Foundation) was formed.
Ware explained, that he was whisked away to Edinburgh, by Last, straight after the split, to stay away from Oakey, he said he was heartbroken as Phil had been his oldest and closest friend, but Last, insisted he was the talented one and he could work with other singers and that he’d negotiate a deal with Virgin Records.
The deal was to produce up to six albums a year (Which Ware felt was utterly ridiculous) Virgin would finance all the recordings and provide them with a certain amount of an advance on each album.
The first project was Heaven 17 and ‘Penthouse and Pavement ’.
They took their name from an imaginary band in Anthony Burgess book ‘A Clockwork Orange’, called The Heaven Seventeen.
Glenn Gregory explained how he was brought into Heaven 17, “I went back to Sheffield to take pictures of Joe Jackson for Sounds or NME and met Martyn who told me The League had split. He asked, did I fancy forming another band and two days later I was back living in Sheffield.
Ten days later we had recorded ‘Fascist Groove Thang’. There was that much fucking energy and enthusiasm and wanting to do it…for Martyn.
It was originally called ‘Brothers and Sisters How Much Longer Must We Tolerate This Fascist Groove Thing’ ”.
Glenn Gregory tells how they found their bass player who provided the scintillating bass on the album, “When we’d recorded ‘Groove Thang’s’ backing track, there was a gap in the middle and Martyn said ‘Why don’t we do have a disco bass solo?’ but all the bass players we knew were rubbish and could only play one note bass lines.
At the time, I had taken a part time job at the Crucible Theatre to get some money, as a stagehand. I asked in the green room if anyone who played bass and a nice quiet 17year old black guy called John Wilson said he played a bit.
At lunchtime, we caught a bus to his house where he picked up his bass, went to the studio and recorded it in one take.
He explained that as he was left handed and had never had his bass restrung, so he played it upside down! We were blown away!
He said, ‘Is that OK? Because, I’m better on the rhythm guitar’. We said can you go home and get you’re your guitar”.
Martyn Ware agrees, it was so amazing and so fast, 152bpm. Incredible.
The recording of the album was done under strange circumstances; they were sharing the studio with The Human League.
Glenn Gregory recalled, “It was like a race to us. We were in the same recording space that they were using to write and record ‘Dare’. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to work at the same time, so we decided to do shifts. We did two weeks shifts, one band on days, one on nights and at the end of the fortnight we’d swap over.
We would go in and find tapes that they’d been working on. We’d find bits of ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ on a tape, so we’d listen to it. I’m sure they found parts of ‘Groove Thang’ and thought, ‘What the fuck is this!!!!’
It was a race”.
The album had two distinctive sides; the ‘Penthouse’ side was a hybrid of electronic, funk and dance. The influence of Martyn’s musical likes of American funk with groups like Parliament and Funkadelic from his nightclubbing in Sheffield are evident.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement
It was a like a snapshot of the Britain that time. ‘Penthouse and Pavement’, ‘Soul Warfare’ and ‘Play to Win’ told of the rise of the “yuppie” with their focus on money, cocaine, Thatcherism and the beginning of the privatization of the country’s industries, something their fathers stood firmly against.
The ‘Pavement’ side was purely electronic. It dealt with issues that were important to the band like the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with ‘Lets All Make A Bomb’.
Martin Ware explained, that they knew they were from the pavement but they wanted to head to the penthouse, it was a way of showing we could do well for ourselves.
There also was huge amount of ironic humour in the image of the album.
The iconic album cover by Ray Smith depicted the band members in corporate poses wearing pin stripe suits. His painting looked like a parody of a company’s annual report complete with its own slogan,
“That’s opening doors all over the World”
It also had the B.E.F logo and place names:
Sheffield-Edinburgh-London
When released it was well received although some critics could not see the humour in the artwork, instead they questioned the imagery compared to where the band came from and their background.
Its highest chart place in the UK charts was 14 and it was awarded album of the year for 1981 by the Melody Maker.
As for the race to see who would have the first release ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ came out a month before The Human League’s ‘Dare’.
It was always Heaven 17 intention never to play live and they never did for many years, as they claimed that the technology was such that they could never reproduce their recorded sound. Not playing live was part of their mission statement.
They did make the occasional appearance at nightclubs with Glenn Gregory singing to a backing track.
One such appearance was at the famous Studio 54 nightclub in New York after ‘Let Me Go’ went to No.1 in the US dance chart.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Let Me Go
In 1997, during the Flux music festival that ran alongside the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Heaven 17 were booked to play The Jaffa Cake Club. In the local papers it was proclaimed that they would be playing LIVE. No backing tracks.
The gig was a gathering of 40-somethings to see a band that had never played live in Scotland before.
The line-up included Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory, a drummer, a bass player and two backing singers. The set lasted one hour and twenty minutes and left the audience wanting more.
Ware and Gregory have recorded 3 more albums and now play regularly live.
In 2008, I travelled to Sheffield, it seemed appropriate to see them there, on the Steel City Tour with ABC and The Human League.
Recently in an interview Martyn Ware explained he is still angry that ‘Groove Thang’ was stopped from being a bigger hit by the BBC ban, “I still fucking hate Mike Read. He symbolizes everything that was wrong with Radio 1 in the 1980s, and is probably still wrong with it now. Creepy old out and proud Conservatives with Cliff Richard haircuts hanging round with teenage girls. It's just not right. It wasn't enough that he ruined the Icicle Works'entire career by saying that he had sex to 'Love Is A Wonderful Colour’”.
Mike Read also asked to be Ware’s friend on Facebook.
He declined.
mp3 : Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement (demo version)
Mr John Greer, Friday 14 October 2011
(Sorry folks, all mp3s removed as a result of dmca notice - JC)
11 comments:
Topical post for me as I'm off to see the pair play "The Luxury Gap" tonight at the Roundhouse, with the British Electronic Foundation set tomorrow too (the one I'm really looking forward too!)
I doubt they'll be inviting Gary to the do mind you!
what a great post - 2nd on the bounce! i loved the bbc doc - especially the bit where Gn Gregory says to Phil Oakey "so phil who was better me or you?"
I saw them play P and P live recently and what struck me was how good GG's voice still is
Another great piece John.
SC
.. This blog continues to decline..
Only joking!
X
Well dickvandyke there's two more days of the decline to come on Monday And Tuesday.
Thanks Mr SC.... looking forward to cheer on the Bucs next weekend !!!!
John Greer
Fantastic writing John. Reminds me that there is so much to learn about music every day. I haven't thought about Heaven 17 in a long time. Really fun to hear all of these songs again.
Great stuff. Truly fantastic.
I've always been a huge fan of everything Craig-Marsh/Ware did starting with the (original) Human League and followed them closely with H17 and BEF ventures.
Fascist Groove Thing still stands up after all these years. Timeless.
I was at the first Heaven 17 gig ever at the Inns of Court in 1998 - tremendous
As I'm writing this in Tampa, Florida, I am, in spirit, front and center in the Roundhouse and Glenn is onstage singing Wichita Lineman!
Great post!
dmca notice on 'Let Me Go' so it is no longer available..
I think your emotions in your blog are completely honest to you and your friends/readers.
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