*********************************** BLIND YOUTH =========== The early work of The Human League http://blindyouth.co.uk *********************************** This document last updated 1st August 2006. All original text copyright 2000 - 2006 Sean Turner. CONTENTS (1) The Way It Was (biography) (1.1) Dead Daughters (1.2) The Future (1.3) Introducing Philip (1.4) Fast Product (1.5) Interface (1.6) Mysterons (1.7) Least Resistance (1.8) Automatic Stations (1.9) Spirits Wilting (1.10) No Future, They Say (1.11) A Brand New Sound (2) Rock 'N' Roll (discography) (2.1) Being Boiled (2.2) The 'Human League cassette' (2.3) The Dignity Of Labour (2.4) The 'Taverner tape' (2.5) I Don't Depend On You (2.6) Reproduction (2.7) Empire State Human (2.8) Holiday '80 (double) (2.9) Holiday '80 (single) (2.10) Travelogue (2.11) Only After Dark (2.12) In Darkness (bootleg) (2.13) The Future Tapes (unreleased) (2.14) Dance Like A Star (2.15) The Golden Hour Of The Future (2.16) selected UK compilations (2.17) miscellaneous releases (3) Songs They Didn't Know (A to Z of music) (3.1) A (3.2) B (3.3) C (3.4) D (3.5) E - G (3.6) I - K (3.7) L - M (3.8) N - O (3.9) P (3.10) R - S (3.11) T (3.12) V - W (3.13) Y - Z (4) Avoid Those Mistakes (lyrics/dialogue) (4.1.1) Almost Medieval (4.1.2) Circus Of Death (4.1.3) The Path Of Least Resistance (4.1.4) Blind Youth (4.1.5) The Word Before Last (4.1.6) Empire State Human (4.1.7) Morale... (4.1.8) You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (4.1.9) Austerity / Girl One (medley) (4.1.10) Zero As A Limit (4.1.11) Introducing (4.1.12) Flexi Disc (4.2.1) The Black Hit Of Space (4.2.2) Only After Dark (4.2.3) Life Kills (4.2.4) Dreams Of Leaving (4.2.5) Crow And A Baby (4.2.6) The Touchables (4.2.7) Being Boiled (4.2.8) WXJL Tonight (4.2.9) Marianne (4.2.10) Rock 'N' Roll (4.2.11) Night Clubbing (4.2.12) I Don't Depend On You (4.3.1) Blank Clocks (4.3.2) Cairo (4.3.3) Dance Like A Star (4.3.4) The Dignity Of Labour (demo narrative) (4.3.5) Disco Disaster (4.3.6) Dominion advertisement (narrative) (4.3.7) The Future Tapes (introduction) (4.3.8) 'Jason Taverner' dialogue (1), (2) and (3) (4.3.9) Perfect Day (5) original sleeve notes for The Golden Hour Of The Future *********************************** (1) The Way It Was (biography) *********************************** (1.1) Dead Daughters -------------------- The story of England's first true electronic pop group begins in the industrial South Yorkshire city of Sheffield, in the early 1970s. Ian Craig Marsh (born 11th November 1956) joined the local civic youth theatre group, Meatwhistle. Here, he met Mark Civico, with whom he would form a satirical 'theatre-rock' group named Musical Vomit. They took their name from a Melody Maker review of a concert by New York band Suicide, which described them as "musical vomit". They played just two shows together, Ian accompanying Mark's vocals by coaxing noise from his cheap Woolworths guitar, before Ian was expelled from his school halfway through his A-level studies, having been branded 'an undesirable subversive element'. At this point, Ian left Musical Vomit and Meatwhistle in search of work, though Mark kept the band going in various forms, recruiting other Meatwhistle friends such as Paul Bowers, Haydn Bowes-Weston, Adolph 'Adi' Newton, Glenn Gregory and newcomer Martyn Ware. Martyn (born 19th May 1956): "I'd been working as trainee manager at Sheffield and Ecclesall Co-op, when a friend took me down to Meatwhistle. I walked in wearing white flares, white t-shirt, silver platform boots with five inch heels and a diamante cat collar. We're talking heavy Kiss now, that was the image. Gary Glitter, T-Rex." Glenn, who also sang with Ian in another band named Music Of Honour around this time: "I remember it vividly. I knew immediately we'd get along well. I was wearing jeans with 24 inch bottoms and gold baseball shoes." Martyn soon bought his first musical instrument - a Stylophone. Not just any Stylophone, but the deluxe dual-stylus Stylophone. This purchase was a direct result of Martyn trying to play guitar and finding it made his fingers sore; the Stylophone (as used and advertised by David Bowie around the time of Space Oddity) seemed a much more civilised route towards music-making. Before long, he was onstage at the Bath Arts Festival with a new line-up of Musical Vomit, performing numbers such as Denim Mind and Whip King Of Mars to an audience of bemused hippies. Glenn: "We lasted all of two minutes before the hippies started showering us with bottles and cans." Meanwhile, Ian had found work and was able to afford the do-it-yourself synthesizer kit he'd seen in the local library's copy of Practical Electronics magazine. Having bought and constructed the primitive synthesizer, he struggled to get it to work particularly well, though "it made very good motorbike noises". Soon afterwards, he returned to Meatwhistle, taking his synthesizer with him, and was persuaded to play the instrument with the ever-changing line-up of Musical Vomit. Various other bands would emerge from the Meatwhistle group, all with 'colourful' names, such as The Dead Daughters, The Underpants, Dick Velcro & The Space Kidettes, Androids Don't Bleed, Totem Pole, The Hari Willey Krishna Band and Arthur Craven's Tent Band. Each of these bands played together at least once, usually on Sundays in a small room known as Simon Scott's Kit Kat Club. However, Musical Vomit seems to have been the primary musical collective from this scene, as in 1976, they were booked to appear at the famous Reading rock festival. Here they were spotted by future X-Ray Spex leader Poly Styrene, who would later claim Musical Vomit were the very first punk band. Martyn: "Sheffield engendered a certain desperation to get on with something different and creative, 'cause really there wasn't a lot happening. It was a place of great depression at the time, 'cause of all the factory closures. "I was desperate not to replicate my father's life, 'cause he worked in a steel works for fifty years... my father had to retire early through ill health, probably through inhaling metal filings through most of his life, and got a gold watch and no pension.... so I was going, 'This is outrageous, I am never going to be in this position again'. This was my motivation." By 1977, both Ian and Martyn were working as computer operators (for tool manufacturers Spear & Jackson plc and auto parts distributor Lucas Service respectively). Martyn: "I'd just started working in a well-paid job and I've got some spare cash for the first time in my life... what shall I spend it on? The first commercial synthesizers - cheap ones - were just coming onto the market, and so I went and bought one." Martyn's first synthesizer was a Korg 770S, which cost £800 - a lot of money in 1977, but still far less expensive than most other synthesizers. The Korg was quickly put to use when he, Ian, Adi and other Meatwhistle members formed a one-off band to play at a friend's 21st birthday party. Ian: "We played under the name of The Dead Daughters or something. Very strange. There was a guitar, a drummer, my synthesizer and loads of tape loops, all being put through various effects units. We did things like the Doctor Who theme tune and Louie Louie." Adi, Martyn and Ian enjoyed the experience and decided to form a new band together - The Future. (1.2) The Future ---------------- Ian, Martyn and Adi now set about the business of creating pop music using only electronic instruments - a very common practice nowadays, but virtually unheard of in 1977. At that time, only a few artists, such as German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk, were daring to make pop music this way; most purely electronic music was being made by avant-garde artists with little interest in taking the form into the mainstream. Even the artists with pop backgrounds then experimenting with electronic sounds (e.g. David Bowie, Brian Eno, et cetera) tended to either shy away from using synthesizers for pop music or would combine these sounds with traditional rock guitars and percussion. Most of 1977's electronic pop would emerge from the disco scene; for instance, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's ground-breaking classic I Feel Love. Such sounds were a world away from the new wave of punk bands then sweeping Britain, armed with a handful of barely-learned guitar chords and a do-it-yourself attitude born out of exasperation with stagnant rock dinosaurs such as Pink Floyd and Yes. Martyn: "When punk came along, The Sex Pistols played in Sheffield with The Clash, but I didn't go. To be honest, we thought rock was a bit 'old hat'. We had our own thing going in Sheffield and considered ourselves completely separate from London. We were operating at the quirky end of disco, something more futuristic. "But punk was the liberating influence that allowed us to do what we wanted to do." Although they were later keen to distance themselves from Kraftwerk, the group were certainly impressed by their classic track Trans-Europe Express, which Martyn now admits, "transformed my life. I went up to Richard Kirk's house and he was having this big dub-plate party in the back garden on a steamy night in Sheffield in the middle of summer. He put on Trans-Europe Express and I'd never heard anything like it in my life. I was transfixed." Having no formal musical training, the group opted to use affordable and easily-mastered synthesizers rather than guitars. As Martyn commented at the time, the guitar "required you to soak your fingers in alcohol to stop them bleeding. We're not into things like that." Besides, given their interests and location, the group's sound made perfect sense in many ways. Martyn: "I was always into science fiction, and... I think, to a certain extent, in Sheffield, you're surrounded by strange sounds, with the steel works all the time, you know? You're surrounded by music concrete, the drop forges hammering away at night. I mean, literally, it was a natural environment for us - they sounded like very natural sounds... not alien at all. The sound of machinery is what we grew up with." Around this time, The Future teamed up with Cabaret Voltaire, 2.3's drummer Haydn Boyes-Weston and Glenn Gregory to support Mancunian punk band The Drones at Psalter Lane art college. Calling themselves VD K & The Studs, they played mainly cover versions, such as Lou Reed's Vicious and Iggy & The Stooges' Cock In My Pocket, plus a number entitled The Drones Want To Come On Now. Haydn, being a butcher at the time, thoughtfully splattered the audience with pigs ears. The performance was recorded, though it has yet to be released in any form. Martyn: "We were terrible, but The Drones were one of the worst bands we'd ever heard. We knew we had more musical talent than them, and suddenly everything seemed possible." The Future began recording demos in a semi-professional studio in the house of a local recording engineer, as there were no other affordable studios in the area. Martyn and Ian played their synthesizers, while Adi made use of the tape collection he was steadily amassing. Ian: "Adi had been to art school and he introduced me to a lot of modern art stuff - Man Ray, Duchamp, Dada". The group developed a computer system for the production of lyrics - CARLOS (Cyclic And Random Lyric Organisation System). Words and phrases would be fed into the system and assembled at random into sentences by the computer, in the manner of a fruit machine. Similar 'cut-up' experiments had been executed by artists such as Brian Eno and David Bowie (who in turn had been influenced by the experiments of William Burroughs), using words written on small cards, but The Future took it a step further by using the computer to generate lyrics. Although the experiment was short-lived (the group eventually lost faith in the system as it "had a tendency to make things over-staccato"), they did have some success when using CARLOS to write both Blank Clocks and a song about former Stooges guitarist James Williamson. Ian: "The first twelve phrases that came up were quite good." Martyn: "You come up with some amazing lyrics. It's a very interesting process, a very logical extension of mathematics." Adi rented some rooms in a disused factory at 21b Devonshire Lane, where all The Future set up a base for their equipment. Adi: "It became a social focus, a location of many wild parties and a drug experimentation zone." Before long, they had recorded eight compositions and decided to contact the major record companies in London. Keen to make an impression, they sent the companies notification of their forthcoming day trip to London, suggesting that interested parties should make appointments to meet with the group on that day. Many companies were presumably intrigued by the fact that this communication was issued as a computer print-out and arranged meetings with The Future, despite not yet having heard any of their music. However, the group's day in London did not go well; for a start, Adi had compiled a selection of their recordings onto two tracks of a four-track tape reel, and when this tape was played on the record companies' four- track tape machines, they heard not only The Future's demos, but also the music of other artists which Adi had recorded on the remaining two tracks of the tape. This resulted in The Future's music having to compete with the likes of Elvis Presley being simultaneously played backwards. Although this mistake could eventually be rectified in most cases, many of the record company staff suspected the group were simply playing a joke on them, and The Future were physically ejected by security guards from several of the offices they visited. Only Chris Blackwell, head of Island Records, had any encouraging words for the trio; all the other A&R men who would actually listen to the group's music were generally forty- somethings trying to appear 'hip' in the latest punk clothing, with no understanding of what the group were trying to do. Ian: "They all thought we were total crap. All they said was 'Keep in touch, boys'." Adi, wanting to explore acoustic as well as electronic sounds, departed shortly afterwards to form Clock DVA, while Martyn and Ian continued record demos together. Ian: "And then we thought 'No, we really do need a vocalist'"... (1.3) Introducing Philip ------------------------ Ian and Martyn initially considered asking their friend Glenn Gregory to join them as a vocalist, but at that time, Glenn was busy with his own band in London, 57 Men. So instead they invited Martyn's friend Philip Oakey (born 2nd October 1955) to join the group, apparently by leaving a note stuck to his door. Philip was then a hospital porter in a plastic surgery theatre and had never previously considered any form of performance, due to his shy nature. He later admitted that "if it wasn't for Ian and Martyn, I'd still be wheeling bodies around a hospital ward... I was completely without ambition..." Martyn: "I used to go to school with Phil, from the age of 16 probably, and he looked like a pop star." Philip: "I'd been watching with increased admiration as all these things happened to The Future, with them trotting off to London to see record companies, which seemed a fairly insane thing to do. Everybody used to laugh at them except me. "I was very surprised when they asked me because, you know, everyone was trying to be in bands at that stage, and I wasn't." Philip's first meeting with Ian was interesting - the two were introduced to each other in a nightclub, when Ian was wearing women's tights, a 13 amp plug around his neck and a baked bean tin on his head. (Sadly, photographs are not available!) Philip asked him, "What happens if I plug you into the mains? Does your head light up?" Ian was less than amused, but Philip still became part of the group. Ian: "We wondered what role he was going to have because he hadn't got any money to buy a synthesizer or anything. He had a saxophone which he couldn't play." But when Philip came up with lyrics for Being Boiled, his future as lead vocalist was secured. And he certainly looked the part... Philip: "When we started in this pop group business, I thought 'What have all big pop stars got that sets them apart?' And the only thing that I could think of that made them all different was a hairstyle. David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Marc Bolan, The Beatles - they all had odd hairstyles, so I thought I had better find myself one. Then one day, I saw a hair model on a bus, a girl called Penny, and I went over and said 'Where did you get your haircut? I want one of those.' It was as simple as that." Determined to produce pop music in a modern and original way, the group then spent two thousand pounds on new hi-tech gear. Although their financial situation forced them to buy most of it under 'hire-purchase' agreements, they were soon the proud owners of a two-track tape recorder and a 100 System Synthesizer (with sequencer module). Martyn: "We love technology, and we love the idea that things are gonna become more involved with machines in the future. I think rock 'n' roll's had a fair crack of the whip and now it's time for something different." Ian: "It's not as if something new comes along and everything else disappears... you've still got jazz and folk and everything left, even though they're not carrying the forefront anymore." Martyn: "We go out of our way to avoid sounding like Kraftwerk if possible, 'cause I think it's very easy to do, and I think that with the amount of money and equipment Kraftwerk've got, they could do a lot better. You know, to laymen, Kraftwerk are the epitome of electronic music... but in fact, the tunes and structures and noises they make are not particularly complex in any way." Asked years later about the group's original choice of instrumentation, Philip remarked, "We really liked what pop music had turned into with David Bowie - suddenly there were new sounds. I lived my life for Bowie and Roxy Music for four or five years - I don't think I could have got through my adolescence without them, but they were using traditional instruments because that's all there was. We were interested in innovation. Suddenly, there were synthesizers and we were knocked out. Hearing Walter Carlos' soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange totally launched us into it." "It's funny that people call us an Eighties group when in fact we were a Seventies group. Our influences were massively progressive. I loved King Crimson, I loved The Nice. We so liked Genesis. But the band we really cared about was Van der Graaf Generator - that music was so committed." (1.4) Fast Product ------------------ With this new line-up, the group decided to change their name. After briefly considering ABCD, they chose The Human League, taken from a science-fiction board game called Star Force. Martyn: "There were all these scenarios in the back for various wars in the future, and one of these, for a stage 'round about 2180, where there were two main empires - The Pansantient Hegemony and The Human League. The Human League centred around Earth and the scenario was called The Rise Of The Human League. So we stole it." They then spent time writing and recording material for a demo tape in a disused factory on Devonshire Lane in the centre of Sheffield. The demo tape featured Being Boiled, Circus Of Death and Toyota City, all recorded in mono on their new two-track tape recorder and all later commercially released (on the Being Boiled and Only After Dark singles). The group's demos came to the attention of Bob Last through Paul Bowers of Sheffield band 2:3. Bob ran a small independent record label, Fast Product (then home of the influential Gang Of Four and Mekons, as well as 2:3), in Edinburgh, Scotland and was impressed by the tape. He immediately offered them a recording contract. The deal was completed over the telephone, and the group did not actually meet Bob until five months after the group's debut single, Being Boiled, was released by Fast Product. Reproduced below is part of a press release - the group's "world-view" - issued as a computer print-out by Fast Product at the time: "SCENARIO: In the summer of 1977 The Human League was formed due to the members finding no conventional channels for their immense talents. "BACKGROUND: None of The Human League have any orthodox musical training, but prefer to regard compositions as an extension of logic, inspiration and luck. Therefore, unlike conventional musicians, their influences are not so obvious. "CONCLUSION/MANIFESTO: Interested in combining the best of all worlds, The League would like to positively affect the future by close attention to the present, allying technology with humanity and humour. They have been described as 'Later Twentieth Century Boys' and 'Intelligent, Innovatory and Immodest'. The same computer print-out included a brief history of the group, which mentioned The Future and Adi Newton's departure from that project; apparently, he was "deleted due to malfunction". The press release was part of a publicity pack, which also included a cassette of demo recordings, an Electronically Yours sticker and catchphrases such as "beware of sugar-coated bullets"... (1.5) Interface --------------- Between the recording and the release of Being Boiled, the group began to reconsider their stance on live performance. They had previously decided against playing live, primarily because they felt uncomfortable on stage (Philip: "I'm just too embarrassed about dancing. The others describe me looking like a clumsy giraffe if I even make the slightest attempt."), but also because live performance seemed irrelevant to their work. Philip: "Other groups get together with two guitars and a drummer and a singer, and they'll thrash out a song and learn to play it, and then they'll go out and play it live, and then maybe get to make a record of it. The first thing we do when we get anything we like is put it down on a tape, and then see about adding to it, which is a very different set-up." However, frustrated at their lack of progress at the time, the group were eventually persuaded by friends to play live, assisted by backing tapes. Their first show took place at Bar 2 in Sheffield's Psalter Lane art college (above) on June 12th 1978, in front of a bank of deliberately badly-tuned television sets. The event is now marked by a plaque at the venue (see Old Imagery: Miscellaneous on the website). Ian, describing the group's early shows: "The tape recorder would be placed centre stage, where a drummer would be, deliberately, and all the rhythms and bass would be on there. The show started with us deliberately walking on and turning the tape recorder on, and the stuff would start without us playing anything... which was pretty provocative at the time." Philip: "It was just so not like a band 'should' be, and everyone did laugh at us." Martyn: "Oh, they did. We were a joke in Sheffield. We were an affront to their sensibilities. People wanted to hit us and stuff." Ian: "I remember someone actually threw a pint of beer over Martyn and his keyboard, which was a bit shocking 'cause we couldn't afford insurance or anything. So I built a cage to surround the synth to protect it, which all the writers thought was a powerful statement of alienation." Philip: "In fact, it was a beer guard." For many years, stories of the League making their first television appearance around this time have circulated, claiming that the group appeared on the Granada network's What's On TV show to promote Being Boiled. The stories claim that Philip was interviewed wearing a wedding dress and that the network's switchboard was quickly jammed with complaints from viewers, outraged at Philip's attire. However, this myth was recently dispelled by Ian, though he was sorry to do so, admitting it would have been a "nice idea"! (1.6) Mysterons --------------- In the audience at the first show was art student and Ramones devotee Philip Adrian Wright (born 30th June 1956), who lived in the building in which the group rehearsed and worked in an ice cream van around nearby Wakefield. Philip: "We accidentally picked up Adrian" (as he became known) "after about the third show, 'cause we were totally boring on stage. We didn't do anything." Although at the first show, the League were able to use video equipment which an acquaintance had happened to bring along, they were without visual accompaniment at their second and third shows. Adrian: "They said 'We hear you've got this slide collection... we're pretty boring on stage - why don't you come and project your slides behind us and liven us up?'" Adrian agreed to this and was appointed Director Of Visuals in the group, making his debut at a show at Sheffield's The Limit. His slideshows immediately made a huge difference to the group's live appearances. Using up to four screens at a time, Adrian initially mixed up images at random, but later began using them more strategically to complement the songs. His slide collection included hundreds of photographs taken from television, such as Star Trek, Batman, Captain Scarlet and Doctor Who, and it would later expand to include many other images from popular culture, including films and other musicians, such as Gary Glitter, Iggy Pop and the Bay City Rollers. Philip: "As soon as we started doing shows with him, with pictures of people's heads blowing up, or Jesus crying from an early woodcut, the gigs started to go well!" The group's first London show took place at the Music Machine on August 17th 1978, two months after the release of Being Boiled. There they supported The Rezillos, who were managed by Bob Last and whose guitarist, Jo Callis, would join a future incarnation of The Human League in 1981. Concerned by stories of the violent receptions afforded other bands that dared to use instruments other than guitars and drums before a London punk audience, the League originally planned to perform in motorcycle helmets, but decided against this at the last minute. The following month, at a free show at Sheffield's Limit Club, they shared the bill with Graph, featuring Ian Burden, who would also later join the group in late 1980. Also on what was clearly an eclectic bill that night were future stadium rockers Def Leppard...! Martyn: "I remember turning round to Ian and saying, 'This is unbelievable, it's so bad. They've got no f---ing chance of selling anything... ever.' They had just the worst songs imaginable." For this show, the League dressed in white boiler suits emblazoned with the group's initials, HL. Martyn: "I wanted to start the gig off with a lecture and slideshow.... saying 'This is the kind of music we are going to play. Now, we'd like you to move in these certain sections here', you know, with, like, a pointer and everything, before we started playing." The group returned to London in November for a show at The Nashville, which was attended by one of the League's biggest musical heroes, David Bowie, who was greatly impressed. Adrian: "He was very complimentary, and very nice. When he saw our visuals, he said something like, 'Oh bugger, I was going to do something like that on my next tour!'." The group were then asked by Siouxsie & The Banshees to support them on a December tour of Britain, along with new wave band Spizz Oil. The League, although slightly apprehensive, accepted the offer, fearing that the punk element of the Banshees' audience would shower them with spit and beer bottles. Prepared for the worst, they constructed special fibreglass 'riot- shields' to protect themselves on stage, and after the first few shows dropped many of the unpopular instrumental tracks in favour of crowd-pleasing material, such as a cover of Gary Glitter's Rock 'N' Roll. As it happened, the riot-shields proved unnecessary; the tour was a great success for the League and brought them many new admirers from the Banshees' audience. However, many of the League's new fans were to be disappointed by their next Fast Product release, The Dignity Of Labour, which was purely instrumental and not at all in the pop vein their new fans had come to expect. This EP's release was preceded by a short headlining tour in February 1979, supported by Fast Product band The Scars on certain dates. However, their planned concert together with The Transmitters at London's Notre Dame Hall was cancelled just two hours before the show was scheduled to begin, "on moral grounds". The hall's vicar had apparently demanded the show's cancellation, refusing to "allow any of these punk rockers in my hall". Another London appearance was also cancelled two months later; the League were scheduled to support one of their old heroes, Lou Reed, but the former Velvet Underground leader decided shortly before the show that he didn't want a support band after all... (1.7) Least Resistance ---------------------- Following the release of The Dignity Of Labour, the group decided they needed stronger backing than the tiny Fast Product label could offer. So, keeping Bob Last on board as their manager, they decided to put together a new demo tape with which to impress the major record companies. They hit upon the ingenious idea of having a presenter to introduce the tracks on the tape. This was achieved by Philip pretending to be one 'Jason Taverner', and the hilarious results could not fail to make the record companies' A & R personnel to sit up and take note (see Rock 'N' Roll: The 'Taverner tape'). A number of record companies were soon offering The Human League recording contracts, and after much talk of a deal with new Polydor imprint Fiction (who had just signed The Cure), the group chose to sign with Virgin Records, who had had a hand in the release of The Dignity Of Labour and whose publishing arm had recently signed the group. Rather than allow themselves to be lured elsewhere by the promise of large sums of money, they selected this label primarily because Virgin's Simon Draper offered them the level of creative control they desired. Simon: "I was really taken with their version of You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling... they were a very original group. I attempted immediately to sign them and was successful." After the signing, the group embarked on an eventful European tour with one of their heroes, 'godfather of punk' Iggy Pop. Philip: "We went and turned up for a festival in Vienna, I think, or in France, but in one of them, I remember the booklet actually said 'England's leading gay group'. I was a bit worried 'cause I don't think any of us ever were gay... which is a bit unlikely, when you think about it, but it wasn't really a gay thing. It wasn't effeminate - it was somewhere in between. I did have about ten or fifteen years where I didn't wear any men's clothing, but it wasn't really women's clothing either. It was just... somewhere else." Philip also formed a kind of mutual appreciation society with Iggy when he asked the former Stooge if he weight-trained. "He said 'yes', and I said that it showed, because he had a fantastic body, and he said 'you have too'. I was really knocked out by that - Iggy Pop actually said I have a nice body." Ian also caught Iggy's eye. Philip: "Iggy used to go around kissing him all the time and say, 'I am gay, you know'." At Hanover, the League faced a rather hostile anti-English audience, and were doubtless glad of their 'riot shields' as Union Jack flags were burned and various items were thrown at the stage. Philip: "People tore out metalwork from the toilets and threw it at us." Around this time, the group also found themselves being pursued by a groupie, described by Martyn as "like a potato with blonde hair". Martyn: "The second thing she said to us was 'I'm a schizophrenic', and the third was 'Can you put me up for the night?' or something like that. We went to this restaurant and she just sat there, staring, not eating anything. In the end, we let her sleep in the car, just to get rid of her..." Still, the League enjoyed the tour. On their return to England, Martyn declared, "It's great touring there. Pretty magnificent. It never stopped happening - complete excess from beginning to end." (1.8) Automatic Stations ------------------------ Back in Sheffield, the group began recording for their new record label. Curiously, the group's first Virgin release was issued under the pseudonym of The Men. The single, I Don't Depend On You, was recorded to appease those at Virgin who feared that the public would not accept a synthesizer-only group. The track featured a live rhythm section and female backing vocalists, and was decidedly more commercial than the group's previous releases. By now, Martyn and Ian were also contributing lyrics to the songs. Philip: "Martyn Ware is a very good lyricist. Ian wrote the Men lyrics... people would take the lyrics as a block thing, they'd either take it or leave it. However, sometimes I might find that I'd said everything I want to say in the first verse, and ask someone to finish it. It was really, really shared. We wanted to be a cottage industry with a few machines. It was socialist. It was us against the world." The release of the group's ground-breaking debut album, Reproduction, in October 1979 was met with a number of unenthusiastic reviews. Although promoted with the subsequent release of the Empire State Human single, taken from the album, sales of Reproduction were substantially lower than Virgin had anticipated. As a result, Virgin decided to cancel all but two dates of the group's proposed UK tour. At the remaining shows, Adrian's short film Zero As A Limit was shown on a 21' by 14' screen and Teardrop Explodes provided support. Virgin instead arranged for the group to support Talking Heads on their November tour of the UK. However, things changed again soon after Bob Last issued this press release to announce the group's plans for the tour: "The Human League, intrigued to experience their own performance themselves, have designed a remotely controlled touring entertainment. Therefore, 30 Human League minutes will be available on the upcoming Talking Heads tour. The League themselves may well join the audience on some evenings to savour the occasion. The arrangement will allow them on other evenings to continue working on their second album in their Sheffield workshop." Unfortunately, someone somewhere was clearly not amused by this concept of live performance and the League were dismissed from the tour shortly before the first show. The news came in the form of a telex: "Regret must cancel Human League appearance on Talking Heads tour in deference to ticket buyers due to format of League's show." Bob was understandably annoyed: "What right has the agent and promoter to speak for ticket buyers? Why do we have to get up on stage and pose with a guitar?" But despite having invested much time and money in these plans, the group were not too distraught. In fact, they seemed to thrive off such setbacks. Adrian: "Spirits were quite high, because everybody was against us and we were all really tough about it." For the record, the League planned to include the following songs in these shows: King Of Kings, Almost Medieval, Girl One, Circus Of Death, Stylopops, Blind Youth, The Touchables, Being Boiled, Zero As A Limit and Empire State Human. Their next challenge was to persuade Virgin to finance the establishment of their own personal recording studio in Sheffield. Virgin were eventually convinced, realising that it would cost less to set up the group with their own studio than it would to hire other studios for future recordings. The League chose a disused vetinary surgery, close to their old rehearsal room in the centre of Sheffield, and with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks, named the new studio Monumental Pictures... (1.9) Spirits Wilting --------------------- The League spent the early part of 1980 recording their second album and tracks for the Holiday 80 double single, which was released in April that year. The double single failed to trouble the UK Top 75 and Virgin swiftly replaced it with a three track single-disc version, which fared better. The group's electronic sound was now beginning to grow again in popularity, as interest in the burgeoning New Romantic/Futurist scene developed. This movement had grown out of London's glamorous Blitz club, which spawned a number of the characters who would rise to fame in the early part of the new decade, such as Steve Strange of Visage and Boy George of Culture Club. But The League had little time for these so-called Futurists... Martyn: "It's a very old-fashioned view of futurism, which is like people walking about like Michael Rennie out of The Day The Earth Stood Still or something. That's not futurism - that's more nostalgia than anything else." Philip later remarked, "I was doing all these Steve Strange things a long time ago, years ago when David Bowie first came 'round. I remember me and Martyn went to a party dressed up the first time we saw Roxy Music. Everyone thought we were Andy Mackay and Eno. But I've stopped doing all that now. It became a bit common, so I don't do it at all anymore." Adrian: "We're surviving all these different fashions. When the Futurist thing stops, we'll carry on." Still, when the group's second album, Travelogue, was released in May that year, it was more warmly received than Reproduction, reaching Number 16 in the UK charts and eventually spending an impressive 42 weeks in the Top 75. The album was generally brighter in tone than its predecessor, and most agreed that Travelogue demonstrated that the group were finally fulfilling their potential. In support of the album, the group undertook what would be their final UK tour - twelve dates beginning on May 15th at the Mayfair in Newcastle, and ending on May 29th at Wakefield's Unity Hall. On this tour, Adrian directed the slides and lights from the stage, having previously worked off-stage. This was followed by dates in mainland Europe, including an Amsterdam show on June 10th, which was broadcast on Dutch radio. By this time, The Human League were sufficiently prominent to receive a mention in a Top 10 hit by new wave band The Undertones. Their My Perfect Cousin single included these cheeky lines: "His ma's bought him a synthesizer / Got The Human League in to advise her / Now he's making lots of noise / Playing around with the art school boys / Philip's trying to attract his attention / But what a shame - it's in vain - total rejection..." Ian: "We haven't worked that out. We think it's all related to an interview that Martyn and Philip did on the radio, where Philip said something like 'rock and roll is dead, guitars are old-fashioned' - they perhaps took exception to that." Travelogue was followed in June by the re-issue of Empire State Human, the first 15,000 copies of which were accompanied by a free single, Only After Dark. It sold more copies than the original release, though still not enough to crack the UK Top 40. The group were becoming increasingly frustrated. Martyn: "We were on thirty quid a week each. Everybody's going, 'Oh, great albums, mate', you know, 'really influential', and people flying out from all over Europe and Japan and going, you know, 'What is it like, doing the industrial / post-industrial funk?' and all this stuff, and we're going, 'It's fine, but... we're actually skint'..." (1.10) No Future, They Say -------------------------- Ian: "Our intention was to become the first popular synthesizer band that was doing songs with vocals, as opposed to experimental stuff, and we'd been doing a couple of albums and thought that we'd released things that could do that, and nothing ever quite became a hit. "And then, out of nowhere, Gary Numan came along and stole our glory. He used to be a rock act, really, then he seemed to take on our clothing and suddenly became incredibly successful... and we were, I think, quite miffed about that." Martyn: "That was kind of like a cusp for the group, because until that point, it had been a laugh, and art and everything. From that point, that's what really broke the morale, looking back on it now... all right, so we were mentioned as being influential and everything, but in reality, we were poor. We weren't earning any money out of what we were doing. "We must be the only group in the world whose fourth member was a slide projectionist... who then went on to get writing credits! Excuse me? That was the point where I left the group, thank you very much! We were completely 'on a mission'..." The situation was further complicated by the friction between Martyn and Philip (always a problem, but one which had now become unbearable) and with Philip making attempts to kick Martyn out of The Human League, there was no chance of the group continuing in this format. At first, Bob suggested that perhaps the way forward was for the group to split into two new bands, neither of them named The Human League, but both of them releasing material on a new imprint of Virgin which would be called Human League Records, thereby preserving the 'brand name' they had established. Bob: "It felt like a pressure cooker, and I felt the smart thing to do was to pre-empt this, and split into two bands. Martyn was losing interest in this very strict set of rules about absolutely no organic authentic instrumentation, whereas Phil was very keen on sustaining those rules, and that was a kind of battleground." While it was clear that Philip and Adrian no longer wished to work with Martyn, Ian remained keen to continue working with both Martyn and with Philip and Adrian. Martyn was happy with this arrangement, but Philip was apparently concerned that Ian might inadvertently pass on all their best ideas to Martyn, and he tried to persuade Ian to work exclusively with him and Adrian, though without success. In November 1980, Martyn and Ian announced the formation of their British Electric Foundation production company, which would be "a cross between what PiL (Public Image Limited) should have been before they became just another group, and the business suss of Chic." This left Philip and Adrian to deal with the group's forthcoming European tour, which was due to begin about two weeks later. Martyn: "We made our decisions in as civilised a manner as possible, since if me and Ian had gone out as The Human League, the promoters could quite possibly have sued us - rock economics being what they are - because we wouldn't have been the act 'as seen'." Philip, by now warming to the possibility of becoming a star, certainly wasn't about to let go of his chance of fame. "I think they were finding it a bit embarrassing, what we were doing. They thought it was too poppy or something, and they were happy to go and look like backroom boys somewhere else. Whereas, you know, all I ever wanted to do was be Donna Summer." Manager Bob Last's statement to the press gave the impression of an amicable split: "The League didn't split up for the usual corny 'musical and personal differences' reasons. They simply no longer had an adequate working relationship. Neither party was happy and no-one was fulfilled, but this way, both sides will produce far more satisfactory and commercial work." Meanwhile, Philip and Adrian agreed with Martyn and Ian that they would continue to use the Human League name, on the condition that Martyn and Ian would receive 1% of the League's future royalties, though the group's financial debt to Virgin would remain the responsibility of the new League line-up. The two began seeking new members for the impending live shows. Philip famously recruited two teenage girls (Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall) his girlfriend spotted dancing at Sheffield's Crazy Daisy disco. Graph bassist Ian Burden was persuaded to take on keyboard duties (despite the fact that he didn't actually care much for the League's music!). The tour was completed, but was not well-received; with so little time to prepare, the group lacked confidence and the critics were unimpressed. To add insult to injury, the group had to face a number of hostile audiences, particularly in Germany, where the crowds seemed to resent the fact that girls had joined The Human League (!). Even Bob had some concerns about the new format of the group, but staunchly defended Philip's decision in the face of negative reaction from Virgin Records. Bob: "I understood that Phil had very interesting instincts which should be backed, but the fights I had with Virgin! They loved the idea of where Phil wanted to take The Human League, but they were completely baffled by the girls and why they were suddenly presented as a core part of it. "But Phil's instincts were right there. The girls' role was to bring a kind of accessibility to this quite difficult and cold perception people had of the band." The League decided to avoid live shows for a while and began work on new material, with ex-Rezillo Jo Callis joining soon afterwards. Meanwhile, Martyn and Ian's new production company was taking shape, with Ian even handling the company's financial accounts. They signed a production deal with Virgin, under which they would steadily accumulate a roster of 'commercial' acts, one per year, delivering an album by each act every year, along with up to twelve 'arty' albums of their own each year. Initially, they formed a new group (or 'business subsidiary', as they called it) named Heaven 17 after a fictional band from Stanley Kubrick's cinematic adaption of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Their old friend Glenn Gregory from the Meatwhistle days joined them to handle lead vocals and Martyn and Ian began seeking a full band to back Glenn in live performance (they had no plans to be full-time members of Heaven 17 at this point). As Martyn explained, "Heaven 17 is a 100% serious attempt to be incredibly popular, whereas B.E.F. is no less serious but tends to be involved with more experimental projects." By March 1981, the first Heaven 17 single [We Don't Need This] Fascist Groove Thang was in the shops (though not on the radio very often - the BBC banned it for its anti-Reagan lyrics), along with an instrumental B.E.F cassette entitled Music For Stowaways... (1.11) A Brand New Sound ------------------------ The two groups now found themselves in the slightly strange position of having to share the studio they jointly owned, taking turns to use the equipment to record demos for their next albums. During this time, much bitching took place in the music press, mainly from the B.E.F. corner... Martyn: "We've got the talent. They haven't." "It must be revealed that the backing tapes for their last tour were made up by me and Ian. It won't happen again. We got hold of the master tapes and erased them." (Philip and Adrian had in fact already made their own copies of those tapes, as well as recording four new backing tracks for the tour. Philip: "We read in the paper, 'Oh, ha ha, we've taken the tapes off 'em.' And the really sad thing is that we were using them ourselves to record other things over the tracks, because we needed the tape.") Glenn Gregory on Philip: "He likes Ian, loves him like a son, but thinks he's a bit odd. He thinks that Martyn is a self- opinionated twat." Martyn, in response: "I think he's a berk anyway. Yeah, he does like Ian - he thinks he's been led astray by my evil influence." Philip, one year after the split: "When you've devoted two and a half years, and you've got a dream in your head of selling a lot of records, being Number One with the three people you've worked with, it's like a little love affair, and you really believe in it. No matter what you say, no matter that you succeed with something else, you're still a little bit heartbroken that that didn't work out, when you've cared about it for so long. They've moved to London, they don't live in Sheffield anymore. No, they're a lot more interested in going to nightclubs than making records. "I get annoyed at picking up a paper and I read 'haven't The Human League done well when the inventive side have left?', which is an absolute load of rubbish. They are doing a hell of a lot, they've put out three albums and a Hot Gossip album, and singles, and we've done one album. Because we're absolutely determined that everything we do is gonna be a hundred per cent what we want. If we want to do something inventive, we'll do it, we'll take a year over it and it'll be right. But we can do it. "For one album, we said we're gonna do pop singles, we're gonna get popular, we're gonna communicate with a lot of people, make a lot of people think we're really worth listening to, and we're not gonna mess around. We're not gonna release any rubbish whatsoever, nothing with the Human League name on it is going to be duff. And then we read in the paper 'These [Marsh and Ware] are inventive'. Of course they're inventive - if they do a bit of tape for five minutes, they'll put it on a record and it'll be out next week. "But it's all for the better. They are going to be very, very good and we're going to be very, very good. It'd got very stale, everyone was a bit sick of everyone - I've known Martyn for a long time and periodically we do have very big arguments. Twice in the past, I didn't talk to him for a whole year, which is a bit silly. But they're nice lads - Ian still comes in the studio when we're in, and I see Martyn quite a lot. It's better that way." So the bickering eventually subsided and Bob Last continued to manage the new incarnation of The Human League, even though he was now a director and shareholder in the B.E.F. (many people, including the group themselves, suspected him of having engineered the split anyway!). The new-look Human League went on to huge worldwide success with the single Don't You Want Me and the third Human League album, Dare!, which sold five million copies and is hailed by many as one of the definitive pop albums of the 1980s. The group (now essentially just Philip, Susanne and Joanne, plus collaborators) have also scored hits with most subsequent albums and singles, and members have collaborated with the likes of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Giorgio Moroder, The All-Seeing I and even comedian Vic Reeves. Adrian eventually left the League after the making of 1986's Crash album, during which he found that producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had no need for his keyboard contributions, having drafted in session musicians. Adrian returned to film-making and has worked as a director in the fields of both film and music video. Chart success came slightly later for Heaven 17; after disappointing sales of their debut album, Penthouse And Pavement (side two of which Martyn has described as "like a continuation of Travelogue"), they scored three Top 20 singles in 1983 (including the Number Two hit, Temptation) from their best-selling album, The Luxury Gap. The B.E.F. have also had success, both as a recording act (with many famous guest vocalists) and also as producers (after a low-key debut with dance troupe Hot Gossip's Geisha Boys & Temple Girls album, which included new versions of early League songs). Martyn has produced many artists, such as Erasure, Tina Turner, Marc Almond and Terence Trent D'Arby, as well as two singles for his favourite soccer team, Sheffield Wednesday. Ian has also worked on other projects, programming Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy and Scritti Politti's version of The Beatles' She's A Woman. Both The Human League and Heaven 17 continue to record occasionally, and attract large audiences whenever they tour. The League's impact continues to be felt today, with such diverse established artists as Smashing Pumpkins, Ladytron, and Five covering their songs, and a new generation of artists such as Les Rythmes Digitales (mainman Jacques Lu Cont: "They're my all time favourite band") and Ex-Rental (who have covered The Black Hit Of Space and remixed Empire State Human) citing them among their influences. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor once commented on "the excitement of hearing a Human League track, and thinking, 'that's all machines, there's no drummer'. That was my calling." Ultimately, the original Human League line-up achieved their ambition after splitting - mainstream success came when the re-issued Being Boiled single entered the UK Top 10 in 1982... a song both The League and Heaven 17 now play at their live shows. Relations between Philip and Martyn are now relatively cordial, if perhaps a little strained when they meet. Ian: "It's a bit like the envoy of Iraq meeting the President of the United States. It's all very diplomatic and, on the face of it, pleasant, but obviously that whole area hasn't been unwrapped for either of them and it's a pretty sore point, particularly for Martyn, because he basically feels that he was thrown out of his own band. He got Phil in, and then Phil got rid of him." Nevertheless, in the light of recent releases such as The Golden Hour Of The Future and remastered editions of Reproduction and Travelogue, Martyn seems optimistic about the future. "Me and Phil get on fine now. I was thinking about asking him to do some writing together. Seriously. Because I was so impressed with hearing the early albums again, and I just had this idea that we could do what we used to do - me and Ian write some backing tracks and just give it to Phil. I think it would be exciting, wouldn't it?" *********************************** (2) Rock 'N' Roll (discography) *********************************** (2.1) Being Boiled ------------------ June 1978 BEING BOILED b/w Circus Of Death 7" single, Fast Product FAST 4 reissued in August 1980 and January 1982 by EMI This was The Human League's debut single, recorded in mono on a Sony two-track tape recorder. The single was issued under the title Electronically Yours and the original release sold several thousand copies before being deleted. When re-issued in January 1982 after the huge success of Don't You Want Me, the single soared to Number Six in the UK charts, spending nine weeks in the Top 75. Being Boiled was the first song Philip wrote with Ian and Martyn. Ian: "We'd got the instrumental part and [Philip] came along with these lyrics and just started singing them. So we had vocals then. I thought the lyrics were just completely crazy." Philip: "It was... er... I'd got some religions mixed up and I thought that, like, Buddhism was the same as Hinduism, and it was sort of a plea for vegetarianism really, against killing the silkworms to make socks or something. I got really confused about it." Martyn on the b-side, Circus Of Death: "There was this film called Death Circus or something, where you got the clowns going around and a psychopath with an axe... and this is the same thing except the ringmaster is a clown as well, and he distributes this drug - we wrote this in about seven minutes, just reeling off the lines, incidentally - and he distributes this fictitious drug to all his cronies, and basically they go 'round killing people and then take over the world." Ian: "Just a totally ludicrous lyric, but people can interpret it however they want." Despite not selling in vast quantities, the single attracted plenty of attention in the press and certain other musicians were moved to comment on the record. Upon hearing Being Boiled, none other than David Bowie declared it to be the sound of the future of music. He attended the group's show at the Nashville pub in West Kensington, and it was even rumoured that he had expressed an interest in working with the League. On the other hand, Public Image Limited vocalist John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) heard the record whilst reviewing new singles for the New Musical Express and dismissed the group as "trendy hippies"... There were possibly two pressings of the original mono edition, as initial copies seem to have faded yellow newsprint labels, whereas later mono editions have crisp black and white newsprint labels. The run-out grooves on the single are inscribed 'insurgent pop' and 'resistant product'. The single was later reissued by EMI in August 1980, using simulated stereo mixes of the songs, and this was reissued a second time in January 1982. These reissues are easily distinguished from the original 1978 pressing as they have red labels, with a yellow logo and white text, unlike the original. In 1988, Virgin reissued the record in Germany as a 12" single (catalogue number 611908). This release included the 1980 re- recording of Being Boiled as an extra track, and both the Fast Product recordings were presented in simulated stereo. The 12" single's label neglects to credit John Leckie for his co- production on the 1980 re-recording. Both tracks written by Oakey/Ware/Marsh Produced by The Human League Single available on: Reproduction CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.2) The 'Human League cassette' --------------------------------- Summer 1978 THE 'HUMAN LEAGUE CASSETTE' cassette, Fast Product This 'limited edition cassette' was available only via mail order from Fast Product, and could barely be described as an official release - it doesn't even have an official title or tracklisting! The first such cassettes were issued as part of a promotional package, purely for publicity purposes. By early 1979, the cassette had evolved into a semi-official release, available to the general public. To acquire a copy, fans had to reply to a classified advertisement, which declared "Send us a tape and we'll fill it!". The tracklisting varied from cassette to cassette, but generally it seems the tracks would include selections from the following recordings: The Dignity Of Labour (Part One, narrated by Philip) The Dignity Of Labour (Part Two, excerpt) Optimistic Anthem (an early version of Blind Youth) The Year Of The Jet Packs Again The Eye Again (an early version of The Word Before Last) Toyota City You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (recorded for John Peel's show on BBC Radio One)* Some of the cassettes (probably later copies) may also have featured Dance Like A Star, Interface, Dancevision, Disco Disaster and possibly others recorded during this period. Six recordings from the cassette would later appear on the In Darkness bootleg album, along with other tracks from the group's John Peel session. On some (possibly all) of the cassettes, Circus Of Death also appeared, preceded by a short narrated section about solar storms. All tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware, except You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weill), The Dignity Of Labour and Dancevision (Marsh/Ware) and Toyota City (The Human League) Produced by The Human League, except *unspecified BBC engineer Cassette not generally available (2.3) The Dignity Of Labour --------------------------- April 1979 THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR [Parts 1-4] 12" single, Fast Product FAST 10 This EP consisted of four experimental instrumental pieces and gained little radio airplay as a result. It included a free 7" flexidisc single, on which the group and manager Bob Last debated the possible contents of the flexidisc (!). The sleeve featured a photograph of Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin on his way to receive a decoration for becoming the first person to travel in outer space. An extract from The Dignity Of Labour had previously been available in a semi-official form on the mail order-only Human League Cassette. On the extract, Philip provided a commentary, which was not used on the EP. Reviewing the record for Sounds, Chris Westwood declared it 'single of the week', describing it as "a minor masterpiece; moody, evocative, provocative. It fulfils with a (subtle?) vengeance so much of what's been scrawled about the League so far whilst exposing a new facet of both their capabilities and interest." However, the release of the EP did little to capitalise on interest in the group at the time. Philip: "It was a bad mistake doing it at that time, because everyone had decided we were a pop band, and we put that out and it sounded like Amon Duul or something." All tracks written by Marsh/Ware, except flexidisc (credited to Marsh/ Oakey/Ware) Produced by The Human League EP and flexidisc available on: Reproduction CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.4) The 'Taverner tape' ------------------------- Spring 1979 THE 'TAVERNER TAPE' demo cassette 'Jason Taverner' dialogue (1) Blind Youth (first demo version) Interface Again The Eye Again 'Jason Taverner' dialogue (2) Toyota City (alternate edit) The Path Of Least Resistance (vocal demo version) Zero As A Limit (first demo version) 'Jason Taverner' dialogue (3) You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Radio One version)* This cassette compilation is not actually a commercial release - it was used purely as a demo tape, which the League presented to record companies in their search for a label which could offer them the financial support they needed. The Dominion jingle is used extensively throughout the cassette (appearing after every song except You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling), and dialogue is also provided by Philip, who poses as a fictional TV presenter, 'Jason Taverner'. This name was almost certainly borrowed from Philip K Dick's novel, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, which also features a television personality named Jason Taverner. The cassette is not actually titled the 'Taverner tape', but it has become known as this, due to these excerpts of dialogue. (For transcriptions of the dialogue, see the Avoid Those Mistakes section.) Overall, the compilation is a good representation of the group's sound at the time, mixing pop-oriented tracks (Blind Youth, You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling) with instrumentals (Interface, Toyota City) and slightly darker, more leftfield songs (Again The Eye Again, The Path Of Least Resistance, Zero As A Limit). Unsurprisingly, this generated a lot of interest among the record labels in London and the League were quickly signed by Virgin Records. All tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware, except You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weill) and Toyota City (The Human League) Produced by The Human League, except *unspecified BBC engineer Cassette not generally available (2.5) I Don't Depend On You --------------------------- July 1979 I DON'T DEPEND ON YOU b/w Cruel 7"/12" single, Virgin VS 269/VS 269-12 This disco-influenced single was released under the name of The Men and was the result of Virgin pressing the group to record material which used more 'conventional' instruments, rather than just synthesizers. Virgin were afraid that the general public would not accept a synthesizer-only group at that time. Martyn had previously declared that the League would certainly consider recording material using non-electronic instruments, but "not under the name Human League". So, to appease their new label, they recorded I Don't Depend On You, with session musicians providing bass guitar and drums, and Katie Kissoon and Lisa Strike providing backing vocals. The group were obviously convinced that this record would provide them with their first hit single. Philip later revealed how the group had "planned what we were going to do on Top Of The Pops. We had all these actors and actresses hired for the backing group." However, the League were busy recording their debut album at the time of the single's release, and without proper promotion, the single failed to chart. The B-side, Cruel, was a remix of the A-side, from which Philip's vocals were absent. A Canadian release of I Don't Depend On You, credited to "The Human League (A.K.A. The Men)", featured Blind Youth on the b-side instead. Both tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware Produced by Colin Thurston & The Men Single available on: Travelogue CD (Virgin CDV 2160) (2.6) Reproduction ------------------ October 1979 REPRODUCTION LP/cassette, Virgin V2133/TCV 2133 CD released in 1989, Virgin CDV 2133 remastered CD released in 2003, Virgin CDVR2133 Almost Medieval Circus Of Death The Path Of Least Resistance Blind Youth The Word Before Last Empire State Human Morale... You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling Austerity / Girl One [medley] Zero As A Limit additional tracks on CD: Introducing The Dignity Of Labour [Part 1]* The Dignity Of Labour [Part 2]* The Dignity Of Labour [Part 3]* The Dignity Of Labour [Part 4]* Flexi Disc* Being Boiled [Fast Product version]* Circus Of Death [Fast Product version]* The Human League's debut album was recorded at the Workshop studio on Sheffield's Love Street between the 4th and 21st of July 1979, and was mixed and overdubbed at producer Colin Thurston's Red Bus studio in London. The group had mixed feelings about the results. Ian: "Doing it was great. We thought 'Wow, this sounds fantastic, great'. But it was only a few months later when we listened to it on our normal systems that we decided it was lacking in quite a major way in several areas." The album also received lukewarm reviews in many music publications and the sleeve, depicting the trampling of babies (one of them apparently the child of Slade vocalist, Noddy Holder), was deemed distasteful by the public. As a result, the album did not immediately sell as well as the group and Virgin had expected (though it did eventually enter the UK charts on 22nd August 1981, peaking at Number 49 and spending a total of 23 weeks in the Top 75). This initial cool reception was a pity, as the album featured many innovative ideas, and when the melodies were not overpowered by the sometimes harsh percussion and stark electronic sounds, the overall effect was quite stunning. The second track, Circus Of Death, is a re-recorded version of the Being Boiled B-side. You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling is a cover of the song made famous in the 1960s by The Righteous Brothers. Empire State Human was the only single released from the album. The CD re-issues usefully add all the tracks from the first three Human League singles (not including I Don't Depend On You, which was released under the pseudonym of The Men). Note though that some of these tracks are not taken from the original master tapes, but have been transferred from the original records, and surface noise is occasionally audible. Curiously, the CD version included small changes to two of the original album tracks - Almost Medieval and The Path Of Least Resistance. Also, the Fast Product version of Circus Of Death lacks the short sample of dialogue included at the end of the Being Boiled B-side. One other small point - the extra track Being Boiled does not fade out, as on the original single release and the 1988 Greatest Hits compilation, but is presented in its entirety. It's possible that the master tape for this track no longer exists, at least in its original form, as synthesizer overdubs and new vocals were added to the track for one of the group's demo tapes, though hopefully this is not the case. Note: initial copies of the 2003 remastered CD listed Circus Of Death as Circus Of Love (!). This was rectified on later copies. All tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware, except You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil) and The Dignity Of Labour [Parts 1-4] (Marsh/Ware) Produced by The Human League & Colin Thurston, except *The Human League Available on: Reproduction CD (Virgin CDVR 2133) (2.7) Empire State Human ------------------------ October 1979 EMPIRE STATE HUMAN b/w Introducing 7" single, Virgin VS 294 re-issued June 1980 on 7" and 12" as Virgin VS 351 and VS 351-12 This, the only single taken from Reproduction, was issued shortly after the release of the debut album. Like the previous singles, it failed to make the UK Top 75, despite being one of the group's most infectious compositions at the time. However, the single was reissued the following June and this time fared slightly better - the record entered the UK Top 75 on June 21 1980, spending two weeks there and peaking at number 62. This improved performance was probably partly because the reissue included a free single with the first 15,000 copies - Only After Dark. Virgin had originally intended to release Only After Dark as a single with Empire State Human shrink-wrapped as a free disc, but the group objected to this plan and Only After Dark became the free single. The instrumental B-side, Introducing, was based on an earlier demo, Overkill Disaster Crash. Interestingly, Philip briefly sang on that demo, but the vocals were not re-used for Introducing, presumably because they detracted slightly from the music. The 12" edition of the June 1980 reissue featured the same tracks as the 7". Note: the Dutch edition of this single featured a 4'10" edit of You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling on the B-side instead of Introducing. Incidentally, if you've ever wondered about the identity of the strapping chap depicted on the UK sleeve, it's actually Ian Craig Marsh's dad...! Both tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware Produced by The Human League & Colin Thurston Single available on: Reproduction CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.8) Holiday '80 (double) -------------------------- April 1980 MARIANNE b/w Dancevision* BEING BOILED b/w Rock 'N' Roll/Night Clubbing 7" double single, Virgin SV 105 Limited to just 10,000 copies, this EP, subtitled "Holiday '80", included Dancevision, a new version of Being Boiled (which would also appear on the Travelogue album the following month) and a medley of two cover versions - Gary Glitter's 1972 hit single Rock 'N' Roll and Iggy Pop's Night Clubbing, originally co-written and produced by David Bowie for Iggy's 1977 album The Idiot. Two versions of Marianne were completed, but the alternate version (which featured different backing vocals and effects, Philip singing the first verse one octave higher and a new ending) has only appeared in remixed and re-edited form on an Australian release of the Travelogue album. Of this version, Philip said, "We did a nice version of Marianne - much better than the Holiday '80 one. I think it was great - one of the best things we've ever done - but Virgin wouldn't put it out because they didn't like it." The EP didn't sell as well as Virgin had hoped, reaching only Number 80 in the UK charts, so the double pack was quickly replaced by a single record. There were two mispressed versions of the double pack, one of which had the following tracklisting: Being Boiled b/w Marianne, Dancevision (disc one) and Being Boiled b/w Rock 'N' Roll/Night Clubbing (disc two). The labels on the second mispressing listed the correct tracklisting on each record, but actually duplicated the contents of the first disc on the second disc. In early 1982, when EMI reissued the Fast Product debut single in the wake of the success of Don't You Want Me, Virgin quickly re-released Holiday '80, presumably to cash in on the interest in Being Boiled. They even cunningly added the song's title to the sleeve, which had not featured on the original sleeve in 1980. This reissue of the EP entered the UK charts on February 6 1982 and peaked at Number 46 during its five-week chart run. A 12" version (SV 105-12) was also prepared for the UK, but never released, though a 12" edition was released in Japan, with the additional track, Toyota City (long version). A few of the UK copies have appeared over the years and it contains the same tracks as the correctly pressed double pack. The back sleeve of the Japanese 12" featured a small article on the League, which roughly translates as follows (thanks to George Meakin for this): "Developed towards new area with passing time. The most remarkable thing is a group of alternative music that is Genesis P. Orridge, of Throbbing Gristle making Industrial music for concrete people. In England this sort of group came from industrial cities. Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League are typical groups of Sheffield. Both perform without drummers - in particular The Human League perform with synthesisers. It's a very typical modern group creating alternative music. The Human League is alternative with pop music. They create dance music for industrial people - Holiday '80 EP by The Human League is written by Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware. Ian and Martyn play synthesisers and were then joined by Philip Oakey who plays synthesisers too. And finally Philip Adrian Wright joins them - they are contracted to Fast Product, a minor label in Edinburgh. June 1980." Incidentally, the four images on the right-hand side of all Blind Youth pages are taken from this EP's gatefold inner sleeve (they also appeared on the back of the unreleased 12" sleeve). The EP's front cover features a photograph of Coney Island, which was taken by the League from a television screen whilst watching the film On The Town with the colour and contrast controls on their maximum settings. Marianne written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware, Dancevision written by Marsh/Ware, Being Boiled written by Ware/Marsh/Oakey, Rock 'N' Roll written by Glitter/Leander, Night Clubbing written by Osterberg/Bowie Produced by The Human League & John Leckie, except *Ian Marsh & Martyn Ware EP available on: Travelogue CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.9) Holiday '80 (single) -------------------------- April 1980 ROCK 'N' ROLL b/w Being Boiled, Dancevision* 7" single, Virgin SV 105 This single featured an edited version of the medley on the Holiday '80 double single, which faded out before the track segued into Night Clubbing. (This edited version has only been officially released on CD in Australia, on the revised Travelogue album.) Marianne, previously the lead track on the double single, was also missing from this single release. The group had been reluctant to release this single (read their views on cover versions on the Rock 'N' Roll: Only After Dark page), but eventually allowed Virgin to issue it. This single fared better in the UK charts than the double pack, entering the Top 75 on May 3 1980 and reaching Number 56 during its five-week chart run. Unusually, the group were asked to appear on the BBC TV show Top Of The Pops, even though the show traditionally only featured current Top 40 hits at that time. As with the double single, there were pressing problems with this record - some of the pressings contained Being Boiled on the A-side, instead of Rock 'N' Roll (which was listed on the label). Rock 'N' Roll written by Glitter/Leander, Being Boiled written by Ware/ Marsh/Oakey, Dancevision written by Marsh/Ware Produced by The Human League & John Leckie, except *Ian Marsh & Martyn Ware B-sides available on: Travelogue CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.10) Travelogue ---------------- May 1980 TRAVELOGUE LP/cassette, Virgin V2160/TCV 2160 CD released in 1989, Virgin CDV 2160 remastered CD released in 2003, Virgin CDVR2160 The Black Hit Of Space Only After Dark Life Kills Dreams Of Leaving Toyota City Crow And A Baby The Touchables Gordon's Gin Being Boiled* WXJL Tonight additional tracks on CD: Marianne* Dancevision** Rock 'N' Roll / Night Clubbing Tom Baker Boys And Girls I Don't Depend On You*** Cruel*** The second and final album by the early incarnation of The Human League was recorded in their own studio, Monumental Pictures, with Richard Manwaring co-producing all but two of the tracks (Toyota City and the re-recorded version of Being Boiled, which were taken from earlier recording sessions). Released just as the UK's so-called Futurist (or New Romantic) scene was taking off, the album's use of electronic sounds and occasional dance rhythms was more warmly received by the public than Reproduction, and Travelogue reached Number 16 in the UK charts. However, some critics raised an eyebrow at the group's reliance on old songs (Toyota City and Being Boiled were two of their earliest compositions) and cover versions (Mick Ronson's Only After Dark and Jeff Wayne's Gordon's Gin, which themselves were released just weeks after covers of Rock 'N' Roll and Night Clubbing). Critics also voiced concerns over the League's increasing use of traditional rock elements, which came as a disappointment to those who had hoped the group would forge a path towards a new electronic age of pop music, jettisoning tiresome rock clichés. It seems the group members were conscious of this as their later work would mostly shun rock influences in favour of pop and dance, with only the occasional nod towards Glitter beats and chants. As a whole though, Travelogue works well and can be considered a success, still outstripping most of its peers in terms of originality. Curiously, the CD version includes both sides of the first Human League single not to feature Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh - Boys And Girls b/w Tom Baker (which reached Number 48 in the UK charts in early 1981). The Canadian issue of Travelogue was released in a different sleeve, similar to the Holiday '80 front cover, and the tracklisting also differed: The Voice Of Buddha (the re-recorded version of Being Boiled under a different name), The Black Hit Of Space, Only After Dark, Life Kills, Dreams Of Leaving b/w Crow And A Baby, The Touchables, Gordon's Gin, Rock 'N' Roll/Night Clubbing, WXJL Tonight. Similarly, the Australian issue also featured a different tracklisting, though the original sleeve and song titles were retained for this release: Being Boiled, The Black Hit Of Space, Only After Dark, Life Kills, Dreams Of Leaving b/w Crow And A Baby, The Touchables, Rock 'N' Roll, Marianne (alternate version), Gordon's Gin, WXJL Tonight. All tracks written by The Human League, except Only After Dark (M. Ronson/S. Richardson), Gordon's Gin (Jeff Wayne), Being Boiled/I Don't Depend On You/Cruel (Ware/Marsh/Oakey), Marianne (Marsh/Oakey/Ware), Dancevision (Marsh/Ware), Rock 'N' Roll (Glitter/Leander), Night Clubbing (Osterberg/Bowie), Tom Baker (Oakey/Wright) and Boys And Girls (Wright/Oakey) Produced by The Human League & Richard Manwaring, except *The Human League and John Leckie, **Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware, *** Colin Thurston and The Men Available on: Travelogue CD (Virgin CDVR2160) (2.11) Only After Dark ---------------------- June 1980 ONLY AFTER DARK b/w Toyota City [long version] 7" single, Virgin VS 351 This single came free with the first 15,000 7" copies of the June 1980 reissue of the Empire State Human single, which reached Number 62 in the UK charts. It featured the group's version of Mick Ronson's Only After Dark and the full-length 5' 38" version of Toyota City (edited to 3' 15" for inclusion on the Travelogue album). The sleeve of the Travelogue CD lists Toyota City as being 5' 38", but unfortunately the CD contains the same 3' 15" edit used on the original LP and cassette. Commenting on the group's cover versions, Philip remarked, "I think we did them with a certain amount of taste and respect for the original, and we've made efforts not to put them out as singles. The easiest thing in the world to do is to do a way-out wacky cover of a well-known song. If we did The White Cliffs Of Dover with silly clangings in the background, everyone would rush out and buy it, and we'd sell lots of records. "We don't want to do that. In pure financial/career terms, it's cutting your own throat because if you make it on other people's songs, you're not giving people good reason to want to listen to what you do. Which is why we had a very big argument with Virgin Records over Only After Dark, which they pressed without telling us. We never wanted Rock 'N' Roll to come out as a single off the double EP, although we agreed to it. I must admit it was probably that which got us onto Top Of The Pops, but after that, we didn't want to release another cover version for a couple of records. Martyn: "We went into Virgin and they said, 'We're going to release it whether you want us to or not.' They actually said that, unequivocally. We said, 'You can do it completely against our wishes and we'll do everything in our power to get out of our contract.' They'd already shrink-wrapped Only After Dark with Empire State Human without telling us. We knew it was going to be released, so we said, 'We're not against re- releasing Empire State Human, so can't you make that the single to be pushed?' and they gave in to it. We wanted to re-release State Human at some stage. Philip: "There's only one thing Virgin can do without our consent - that's take two singles off each album, and we've had battles with them over every one." Nevertheless, Only After Dark was released as a single in its own right in Germany (Virgin 102 148 - 100), although it had a different b-side to the UK issue - WXJL Tonight from the Travelogue album. Only After Dark written by M. Ronson/S. Richardson, Toyota City written by The Human League Produced by The Human League & Richard Manwaring Only After Dark available on: Travelogue CD (Virgin CDV 2133) (2.12) In Darkness ------------------ late 1981? IN DARKNESS (unofficial 'bootleg' album) LP, RTS003 Blind Youth (demo) Year Of The Jet Packs (demo) Again The Eye Again (demo) Toyota City (demo) Dancevision (demo) No Time (Radio One) You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Radio One) Being Boiled (Radio One) Blind Youth [Progression] (Radio One) This is an illegal release, issued without the consent of The Human League, Virgin Records or the BBC, and was not available in the average high street record shop. However, despite the poor sound quality of the record, it is of some interest to fans, as it features unreleased material from 1979's so-called 'Human League cassette', plus other recordings made at Maida Vale 4 studio on August 8th 1978, broadcast on John Peel's influential late-night show on BBC Radio One on August 16th 1978. Of the demo recordings, two were commercially released, unchanged: Toyota City appeared on the free Only After Dark single, and Dancevision was part of both the Holiday 80 double single and single (later appearing on the Travelogue CD also). Two of the remaining three demos (Blind Youth and Again The Eye Again) were later re-recorded for the Reproduction album (Again The Eye Again would be re-titled The Word Before Last). The mis-labelled Interface is an instrumental which remains officially unreleased on vinyl or CD, though it can be heard in the Futuristic Sounds section of the Blind Youth site. The demos are separated by the Dominion jingle, though this is not listed on the sleeve or label. The Radio One recording, No Time, is another early version of The Word Before Last. This was re-recorded for the Reproduction album, as were Blind Youth and You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (which is rather shorter and slightly faster in this version, and excludes Reproduction's segue with Morale...). It seems the album was released in two different sleeves, one of which is pictured on the Blind Youth site. The other sleeve is said to sport a poor reproduction of a group photograph taken from the New Musical Express in July 1980, which depicts the group standing together in front of a projected slide of a hand (see group pictures in the Old Imagery section of Blind Youth). All tracks by Marsh/Oakey/Ware, except Toyota City (The Human League), Dancevision (Marsh/Ware) and You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil), though the writing credits for Year Of The Jet Packs are unspecified. Demos produced by The Human League, Radio One recordings produced by Bob Sargeant and engineered by Mike Robinson. LP not generally available, though some 'specialist' dealers may have a copy. (2.13) The Future Tapes ----------------------- unreleased THE FUTURE TAPES LP, Virgin OVED 4 spoken introduction Blank Clocks (excerpt) Looking For The Black Haired Girls Almost Medieval Cairo (excerpt) Pulse Lovers (excerpt) Dreams Of Leaving Overkill Disaster Crash (first version) Interface Morale (third instrumental version) Dance Like A Star (instrumental) Treatment The Years Of The Jet Packs Disco Disaster (instrumental) Dance Like A Star (incidental sounds only) [title unknown] [title unknown] C'est Grave Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex The Last Man On Earth (excerpt) Once the second incarnation of The Human League began having major chart success in 1981, Virgin Records were predictably keen to capitalise on interest in the group and eager to make plenty of Human League 'product' available. As luck would have it, Martyn and Ian were interested in releasing a compilation of their work as The Future, prior to Philip joining them to form The Human League. Virgin realised they could easily sell such a compilation to the new legions of Human League fans, simply by mentioning the League's name on the album's sleeve. A compilation was quickly assembled, using extracts and full-length tracks from Martyn and Ian's archives, and a spoken introduction was recorded by their friend Nicholas Dawson, explaining the origin of the material to the listener (see the Avoid Those Mistakes section for a full transcription). However, when the planned release came to Philip's attention, he suspected that Virgin (and perhaps also Martyn and Ian) were simply exploiting the popularity of the new-look League, and recognised that no-one in the League's current line-up would profit from the album, because none of the group appeared on any of the tracks. So Philip intervened and prevented Virgin from issuing the album, even though its forthcoming release had already been announced on the sleeve of Heaven 17's 1981 debut album, Penthouse And Pavement. For twenty years, the majority of the tracks planned for inclusion on this album remained unreleased, but in 2002, Philip gave his consent for the release of the Dance Like A Star EP and The Golden Hour Of The Future, which between them included more than half of these songs in one form or another. The titles of two of the pieces on this album are unknown and they are not thought to have ever surfaced on bootlegs. Regarding the remaining titles listed above - some may not be the titles which would have been used on the released album, as many pieces from this period were known by more than one name. No sleeve artwork is known to be available, so it's possible that, for instance, the curious second version of Dance Like A Star above would have been listed with an alternate title (it does after all sound as though Martyn and Ian were trying to present this as a track in its own right). According to the album's spoken introduction, the tracks are split into thirteen 'bands', the first of which seems to include the first six tracks after the introduction, i.e. those recorded by the Marsh/Ware/ Newton line-up of The Future. Band thirteen appears to include both Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex and the excerpt of The Last Man On Earth, as C'est Grave is described as band twelve. Some of the tracks which had originally been recorded in mono were given a fake 'stereo' treatment, and even the tracks in 'band one', which were recorded in stereo, have been slightly altered in places, with the addition of effects. For reasons best known to Ian and Martyn, Blank Clocks and Looking For The Black Haired Girls are welded together as one track. The early version of Dreams Of Leaving is actually a good deal longer than the one-minute extract issued on The Future's early demo tape, and here lasts three and a half minutes. Also, Treatment would have been listed on the album's sleeve as Depression Is A Fashion, which is how it was re-titled after Martyn added vocals to the track - the album would not have included these vocals. Please note that there are a number of bootleg CDs and cassettes based on that early demo tape, and these are often titled The Future Tapes too. These are completely different to the album described here, and feature rather fewer tracks (usually eight or ten), though they do include full- length versions of tracks presented here as excerpts, plus a few tracks which were not included on the planned album. These bootlegs usually offer some or all of the following tracks: Blank Clocks, Looking For The Black Haired Girls, Almost Medieval, Cairo, Pulse Lovers (sometimes listed as Pulse Colours), Future Religion, Daz, Dancevision, Dreams Of Leaving (excerpt) and Philip's first solo effort, The Circus Of Dr Lao (often listed as Circus Of Dr Boo), which has nothing to do with The Future, other than the fact that Philip borrowed Martyn's synthesizer to create the track! Writing credits for Blank Clocks to Dreams Of Leaving and unknown titles are uncertain, though all other tracks are likely to be Marsh/Ware compositions, except C'est Grave (traditional, arr. Marsh/Ware/Pearce?) Produced by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, except Blank Clocks, Looking For The Black Haired Girls, Almost Medieval, Cairo, Pulse Lovers and Dreams Of Leaving (co-produced with Adi Newton) and C'est Grave (co- produced with Timothy Pearce) Release cancelled (2.14) Dance Like A Star ------------------------ October 2002 DANCE LIKE A STAR 12" EP, Black Melody MEL 3 Dance Like A Star (v.1) C'est Grave Titled U.N Dance Like A Star (v.2) Morale... (instrumental demo, mis-labelled Treatment) Last Man On Earth (excerpt) This limited edition 12" record was released to promote The Golden Hour Of The Future, and like that album, was credited to The Future + The Human League. The EP includes two tracks (Dance Like A Star and Last Man On Earth) from that album, but the remaining four tracks are exclusive to this record. Only 2000 copies of the EP were pressed, many of which were issued to the media and various DJs. The remaining copies could be purchased either directly from the Black Melody label or via specialist music outlets. Note: the two versions of Dance Like A Star are labelled versions 1 and 2, though it's thought that v.1 was actually recorded after v.2. All tracks written by Marsh/Ware, except Dance Like A Star (Oakey/Marsh/ Ware) and C'est Grave (traditional, arr. Pearce/The Human League) All tracks produced by Marsh/Ware, except Dance Like A Star (The Human League) and C'est Grave (Tim Pearce and The Human League) Dance Like A Star and Last Man On Earth available on: The Golden Hour Of The Future CD (Black Melody MEL 4) (2.15) The Golden Hour Of The Future ------------------------------------ November 2002 THE GOLDEN HOUR OF THE FUTURE CD, Black Melody MEL 4 Dance Like A Star (first version) ** Looking For The Black Haired Girls * 4JG ** Blank Clocks * Cairo * Dominion advertisement ** Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex * Daz * Future Religion * Disco Disaster ** Interface ** The Circus Of Dr Lao *** Reach Out [I'll Be There] (instrumental) *** New Pink Floyd ** Once Upon A Time In The West [Funeral March] ** Overkill Disaster Crash (first version) ** The Year Of The Jet Packs ** Pulse Lovers * King Of Kings ** The Last Man On Earth (excerpt) ** * The Future, ** The Human League (many tracks featuring only Martyn and Ian), *** Philip Oakey This album, credited to The Future + The Human League, compiles recordings the two groups made between 1977 and the moment The Human League signed to Virgin Records in 1979. The project began soon after producer and recording artist Richard X contacted this site in early 2001 after noticing it features the sleeve of his first Girls On Top single, Being Scrubbed, which mixes Being Boiled with TLC's No Scrubs. After he expressed an interest in releasing the early works of The Future and The Human League on his Black Melody label, I contacted Martyn and Philip to find out how they felt about the idea, and both seemed interested. Richard and I then began gathering unreleased recordings from our collection of bootlegs, and following my visit to The Human League's Sheffield studio in October 2001, I was kindly given copies of further unreleased material by the League's long-standing engineer, David Beevers, including a copy of The Future Tapes, some of which had never been bootlegged. As the project began to gather momentum, David volunteered to explore the many master tapes stored in the League's studio and found many more unreleased recordings, some of which had probably not been played since the 1970s. While David was busy restoring and cleaning up these tapes, many of which were in bad condition, Richard and I met with Martyn and Ian, who also looked through their collections for other recordings and photographs which could be used for the artwork. After much deliberation, Richard arrived at the tracklisting above, though the album contains some additional snippets of material not listed above or on the sleeve. These are as follows: before Dance Like A Star: a spoken introduction by Philip, taken from the legendary 'Taverner tape' after 4JG: a bizarre recording of a young child, reciting the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep and attempting to pronounce "The Human League" while one of the League members tinkers with a synthesizer in the background after Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex: a spoken introduction by Philip (interrupted by Martyn), taken from the fourth version of Dance Like A Star (see the transcription in 4.3.3 below) after Disco Disaster: the 'Dominion jingle' after King Of Kings: Philip and Ian recording screams, possibly for use on Introducing or Almost Medieval (unconfirmed) after The Last Man On Earth: an excerpt from the introduction of the radio broadcast of the League's Festival Of Fools show in Amsterdam, June 1980 - one of the original line- up's final live shows Unfortunately, the sound quality is uneven throughout the album; this is due to the variable quality of the tapes available. Of the tracks listed on the sleeve, Philip's The Circus Of Dr Lao is probably the most lo-fi, as the only good quality recording of this track which could be located was missing Philip's vocals. The only available vocal version was actually taken from a bootleg cassette, and this appears on the album. Thankfully, the other recordings were taken, if not directly from the original master tapes, then from good quality DAT backups of those masters. While many more unreleased recordings remain in the League's archives, this album does provide the listener with a good overall introduction to both The Future and the League's early recordings which led to their publishing and recording contracts with Virgin companies. Incidentally, if you're wondering why the album has this title, check the introductory narrative for The Future Tapes. Writing credits: * The Future, ** Marsh/Ware, except Dance Like A Star, Dominion advertisement and Disco Disaster (Oakey/Marsh/Ware), Reach Out (B Holland/L Dozier/E Holland), Once Upon A Time In The West (Ennio Morricone) and King Of Kings (Miklos Rozsa), *** Philip Oakey Produced by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, except * The Future, Dance Like A Star, Dominion advertisement and Disco Disaster (The Human League), and *** Philip Oakey Available on CD from Black Melody (2.16) Selected UK compilations ------------------------------- 1980 FAST PRODUCT - THE FIRST YEAR PLAN LP, EMI EMC 3312 THE MEKONS Never Been In A Riot THE MEKONS Heart And Soul THE MEKONS 32 Weeks SCARS Adult/ery SCARS Horror Show THE HUMAN LEAGUE Being Boiled THE HUMAN LEAGUE Circus Of Death 2.3 All Time Low 2.3 Where To Now GANG OF FOUR Love Like Anthrax GANG OF FOUR Armalite Rifle GANG OF FOUR Damaged Goods THE MEKONS I'll Have To Dance Then [On My Own] THE MEKONS Where Were You This album compiled early single releases on the Fast Product label, including both sides of the League's debut single. In the USA, the album was released by JEM the previous year as Mutant Pop 78/79 in a different sleeve (pictured right) and included additional music by Flowers. EMI's Australian release, also in 1979, was titled Fast Product / Various and omitted the final few seconds of the League's Circus Of Death (which also happened when the track was featured on the CD reissue of the Reproduction album). The UK album was reissued on CD by EMI in 1993 under a new title, Rigour, Discipline And Disgust (CDEMC 3654), with seven bonus tracks: THE FIRE ENGINES Discord THE FIRE ENGINES Meat Whiplash THE FIRE ENGINES Candy Skin THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Dignity Of Labour [Part 1] THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Dignity Of Labour [Part 2] THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Dignity Of Labour [Part 3] THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Dignity Of Labour [Part 4] Being Boiled and Circus Of Death written by Ware/Marsh/Oakey, The Dignity Of Labour [Parts 1-4] written by Marsh/Ware All Human League tracks produced by The Human League Deleted ----------- November 1980 MACHINES LP, Virgin V2177 ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK Messages THE SILICON TEENS Memphis Tennessee TUBEWAY ARMY Down In The Park THE HUMAN LEAGUE Being Boiled THOMAS LEER Private Plane DALEK I Dalek I Love You JOHN FOXX Underpass HENRY BADOWSKI Making Love With My Wife PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED Pied Piper FAD GADGET Ricky's Hand KAREL FIALKA The Eyes Have It GARY NUMAN Aircrash Bureau XTC The Somnambulist Virgin released this compilation to promote some of their lesser- known artists by placing them alongside a handful of vaguely similar 'chart acts', such as OMD (represented by their first big UK hit from May 1980) and two tracks licensed from Beggars Banquet which featured Gary Numan. The album was also released in New Zealand with a different tracklisting (the tracks by Thomas Leer, Dalek I and Karel Fialka were replaced by Crash Course In Science's Kitchen Motors and Irmin Scmidt & Bruno Spoerri's Rapido De Noir). Reviewing the album alongside the Cash Cows compilation (see below) for Sounds, Betty Page described the "overwhelmingly rich-textured second version of Being Boiled" as "just as good as the League's original. Technically swisher, it's real cabaret, padded out with synthinastics at every juncture with a rousing ornate climax". The term "synthinastics" is not explained. Being Boiled written by Ware/Marsh/Oakey Being Boiled produced by The Human League and John Leckie Deleted ---------- November 1980 CASH COWS LP, Virgin Milk 1 XTC Respectable Street THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Black Hit Of Space MIKE OLDFIELD Sheba JAPAN Ain't That Peculiar THE RUTS West One [Shine On Me] SKIDS Arena THE PROFESSIONALS Kick Down The Doors THE FLYING LIZARDS Hands 2 Take FINGERPRINTZ Yes Eyes CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND Dirty Blue Gene GILLAN Are You Sure KEVIN COYNE Taking On The World PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED Attack For completists only! Virgin threw together album tracks by such disparate artists as hard-rockin' Gillan, the then-avant-garde Public Image Limited and the suave, sophisicated Japan, and expected people to buy the resulting compilation, simply because it was cheap (a maximum price of £1.15 was stipulated on the sleeve's sticker). Strangely enough, this seemed to work; the album reached Number 49 in the UK charts, faring better than the superior Machines compilation which was released around the same time, priced £3.99. The album features The Black Hit Of Space, though as it is exactly the same version as was used on Travelogue, there is no good reason to seek out this shoddy compilation. As Betty Page remarked in her Sounds review, "it's only Aunty Bransonburgers getting desperate, so save the ackers for a rainy day"... The Black Hit Of Space written by The Human League The Black Hit Of Space produced by The Human League and Richard Manwaring Deleted ---------- 1982 METHODS OF DANCE (Volume 2) LP, Virgin OVED 7 CHINA CRISIS No Ordinary Lover I-LEVEL Give Me (American mix) RIP, RIG & PANIC You're My Kind Of Climate (party mix) DAF Kebab Traume THE MEN I Don't Depend On You SIMPLE MINDS Soundtrack For Every Heaven CULTURE CLUB I'm Afraid Of Me (Disconet remix) B.E.F. The Secret Life Of Arabia (dub mix) Volume 1 of Methods Of Dance (named after the song on Japan's Gentlemen Take Polaroids album) had featured a track by the second League line-up (a dub mix of Do Or Die from the Dare! album), as well as two tracks from Martyn and Ian (B.E.F.'s Groove Thang and Heaven 17's Soul Warfare). The album, which collected dance-oriented material by Virgin artists, was reasonably successful and was followed by this second volume. This time, the label delved back to 1979 for a Human League track - the single they released under the name of The Men, I Don't Depend On You. Note that Martyn and Ian also appear at the end of the album, on a remix of their B.E.F. collaboration with Associates vocalist Billy MacKenzie (a David Bowie cover version, the original mix of which had appeared on the B.E.F. album, Music Of Quality And Distinction). I Don't Depend On You written by Ware/Oakey/Marsh I Don't Depend On You produced by Colin Thurston and The Men Deleted ---------- October 1988 GREATEST HITS LP, Virgin HLTV 1 CD, Virgin CDHL 1 (also issued as a picture disc CD, CDHL 1) Mirror Man [Keep Feeling] Fascination The Sound Of The Crowd The Lebanon Human Together In Electric Dreams Don't You Want Me Being Boiled Love Action [I Believe In Love] Louise Open Your Heart Love Is All That Matters Life On Your Own This was the first compilation of hits by The Human League and as one might expect, the original group line-up is represented by a single track (the Fast Product version of Being Boiled, which was a UK Number Six hit when reissued in January 1982). The rest of the album is dominated by later incarnations of the group, with the exception of Together In Electric Dreams, which is not actually a Human League track, but a single Philip recorded with producer Giorgio Moroder in 1984. The compilation was also released as a video cassette, though as the group never made a promotional video for Being Boiled, Russell Mulcahy's video for the Reproduction version of Being Boiled's original b-side, Circus Of Death, was used instead. The album has also appeared on cassette, digital compact cassette and mini-disc. The LP's gatefold sleeve featured an interesting 'family tree' history of the group, but the quality of the vinyl within is appalling on some copies. Being Boiled written by Ware/Marsh/Oakey Being Boiled produced by The Human League Deleted ---------- November 1995 GREATEST HITS CD, Virgin CDV 2792 cassette, Virgin TCV 2792 Don't You Want Me Love Action [I Believe In Love] Mirror Man Tell Me When Stay With Me Tonight Open Your Heart [Keep Feeling] Fascination The Sound Of The Crowd Being Boiled The Lebanon Love Is All That Matters Louise Life On Your Own Together In Electric Dreams Human Don't You Want Me (Snap 7" remix) Virgin released the group from their recording contract after the disappointing sales of their 1990 Romantic? album and the next Human League album, Octopus, was issued by East West in 1995. Thanks to two Top 20 singles (Tell Me When and One Man In My Heart), the album sold respectably. Virgin were quick to capitalise on the group's renewed popularity and issued a second Greatest Hiits album. The second compilation was essentially the same as the first - even the sleeve's photograph was taken from the same session! However, the inclusion of Tell Me When and a then-unreleased track, Stay With Me Tonight, provided an incentive to prospective buyers, as did the final track, Snap's remix of Don't You Want Me. Arguably. The version of Being Boiled is again the original Fast Product single. A video collection was also issued by Warner Music Vision (licensed from Virgin - catalogue number 0630 12671-3), featuring Russell Mulcahy's videos for Circus Of Death and Empire State Human, which were filmed together in 1979. This collection was also issued as a laserdisc in Japan (catalogue number AMLE-8108). Other compilations have appeared since this one, without the consent (and sometimes without the knowledge!) of the group. These are usually budget-price affairs, containing a few hit singles and a lot of previously-released album tracks and b-sides to fill the gaps in between. Fans are advised to avoid these low-quality releases and stick with the group's 'official' albums... Being Boiled written by Ware/Marsh/Oakey Being Boiled produced by The Human League Currently available on CD ---------- September 2003 THE VERY BEST OF CD, Virgin HLCDX 2 CD 1: Don't You Want Me Love Action [I Believe In Love] Open Your Heart The Sound Of The Crowd Mirror Man [Keep Feeling] Fascination The Lebanon Life On Your Own Together In Electric Dreams Louise Human Heart Like A Wheel Tell Me When One Man In My Heart All I Ever Wanted Being Boiled Empire State Human CD 2: Don't You Want Me (Majik J Original Booty vocal mix) Open Your Heart (Laid remix) The Sound Of The Crowd (Trisco's PopClash mix) Love Action (Brooks Red Line vocal mix) [Keep Feeling] Fascination (Groove Collision TMC mix) Empire State Human (Chamber's Reproduced mix) The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (Jimmy 19 The A509 PWC remix) The Sound Of The Crowd (Freaksblamredo) Open Your Heart (The Strand remix) The Sound Of The Crowd (Riton re-dub) Love Action (Fluke's Dub Action remix) This is the latest 'best of' compilation, though the original League line-up are only represented by the final two tracks on the first CD, and a new remix of Empire State Human on the second CD. There is also a single-disc edition of this compilation, which features only the first CD and none of the remixes on the second CD, all of which were commissioned by Virgin during 2002 and 2003. The CDs were followed on September 29th by a DVD collection, also entitled The Very Best Of (catalogue number 7243 4 90788 9 5). This collects almost all of the League's promo videos to date, including Russell Mulcahy's clips for Circus Of Death and Empire State Human, plus six BBC television appearances by later line-ups of the group, a new interview with Philip, Joanne and Susan by music writer Simon Price and various other extras. The Fast Product version of Being Boiled plays when the DVD menus are viewed. Being Boiled, Empire State Human and Circus Of Death written by Oakey/Marsh/Ware (order of credits varies) Being Boiled produced by The Human League, Empire State Human and Circus Of Death produced by The Human League and Colin Thurston Currently available on CD and DVD (2.17) Miscellaneous releases ----------------------------- March 1981 B.E.F. - MUSIC FOR STOWAWAYS limited edition cassette, Virgin TCV 2888 (re-issued as OVEDC 230) Optimum Chant Uptown Apocalypse Wipe The Board Clean Groove Thang Music To Kill Your Parents By The Old At Rest Rise Of The East Decline Of The West This rare cassette was Martyn and Ian's first B.E.F. release following the split of the original League line-up. It's included here because the second track, Uptown Apocalypse, featured their former partner in the The Future, Adi Newton, on guitar and synthesizer (he also co-wrote the track). An alternate version of this collection was exported on vinyl to territories outside the UK. Entitled Music For Listening To, it featured a different tracklisting (Groove Thang, Optimum Chant, Uptown Apocalypse, B.E.F. Ident b/w A Baby Called Billy, Rise Of The East, Music To Kill Your Parents By) and catalogue number (BEF 1). In 1997, Virgin's US label Caroline Records released a CD edition of Music For Listening To (Carol 1124-2), with three extra tracks (Wipe The Board Clean, The Old At Rest and Decline Of The West) which were previously included only on the Music For Stowaways version of the collection. Uptown Apocalypse written by Marsh/Ware/Newton/Turner Uptown Apocalypse produced by B.E.F. (executive production by Bob Last) Deleted ---------- 1981 ARLENE PHILLIPS' HOT GOSSIP - GEISHA BOYS & TEMPLE GIRLS LP, Dindisc DID 13 Soul Warfare* Houses In Motion** I Don't Depend On You Burn For You*** Geisha Boys And Temple Girls* Morale... The Word Before Last Circus Of Death Hot Gossip were a British dance troupe created by choreographer Arlene Phillips, and they appeared regularly on British DJ Kenny Everett's TV comedy show in the late 1970s. With singer Sarah Brightman guesting on lead vocals, they scored a UK Number Six hit in 1978 with I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper, one of many dubious 'space'-themed records released to cash in on the success of the first Star Wars film. In truth, Hot Gossip contributed little more to the single than a spot of dancing in the video and Sarah Brightman dispensed with their services for her follow-up single, The Adventures Of The Love Crusader (shrewdly credited to Sarah Brightman & the Starship Troopers). But someone somewhere clearly thought there was a market for further Hot Gossip records, despite the fact that the dancers couldn't actually sing particularly well. Work on this album began in 1981, wiith Richard James Burgess (who had already recorded a Hot Gossip single, Criminal World, with his band Landscape) in the producer's chair. The album was to be a collection of cover versions, entitled The Hollywood Jungle, featuring songs by The Psychedelic Furs, The Rolling Stones, Adam & The Ants, The Police and Talking Heads, among others. However, Richard eventually abandoned the project, leaving Geoff Westley to complete production of Houses In Motion. Martyn and Ian were then asked to salvage an album from the inconclusive sessions. They decided to ditch most of the material and took the opportunity to fill 75% of the record with new recordings of their own Human League and Heaven 17 songs, retaining only the Talking Heads and Police numbers (Houses In Motion and Burn For You respectively). The album was finished within just two weeks and renamed after one of the Heaven 17 covers it now included. Soul Warfare (a Heaven 17 song from their debut album, Penthouse & Pavement) was issued as a single (DIN 38 and DIN 38/12) in February 1982, backed by a mercifully instrumental version. This was followed by the release of Hot Gossip's attempt at the single the League had released as The Men, I Don't Depend On You (DIN 39, pictured above, and the extended 12" version, DIN 39/12), which was backed by an alternate version, Depend On Us. Like every other Hot Gossip release since their 1978 hit, all of these records failed to reach the charts. Thorn EMI also released a VHS video edition of the album (catalogue number TVE 90 0532 2), featuring Hot Gossip performing songs from the LP, plus two bonus tracks - a cover of Adam & The Ants' Press Darlings, and Love On The Phone, thought to be a cover of the Fellini Suzanne song, though this is unconfirmed. It's not known whether these bonus tracks were BEF productions. All tracks written by Marsh/Oakey/Ware except *B.E.F./Gregory, **Byrne/ Eno/Talking Heads, ***Sting All tracks produced by The British Electric Foundation except **Geoff Westley Deleted ---------- early 1982 THE HUMAN LEAGUE - BOILING POINT bootleg LP early 1982 THE HUMAN LEAGUE - DRUMSET MYSTERY (LIVE AT THE ROLLING STONE CLUB) bootleg LP These live bootlegs are mentioned here simply because they include the 1981/1982 League line-up performing a few early songs among the Dare tracks, et cetera. Other post-split bootlegs exist - these were just the first to appear on vinyl. The early songs included on these items have brand new arrangements, all of them more pop-oriented than the originals, and around this time, Circus Of Death was being performed as a medley with Scott Joplin's The Entertainer (!). Captured on a hand-held cassette recorder in December 1981 at London's Rainbow venue, Boiling Point apparently features a completely incorrect tracklisting on the sleeve and terrible sound quality and editing throughout. The early tracks included on this album are Circus Of Death, Crow And A Baby and Blind Youth, the latter being the original line-up's demo version (not a live recording by the later line-up). Drumset Mystery, recorded in Milan on March 17th 1982, is said to have better sound quality despite being another audience recording. Early songs on this album are Circus Of Death, Marianne and Empire State Human. Like Boiling Point, this is not an item found in the average music store. ---------- October 1999 HEAVEN 17 - HOW LIVE IS CD, Almafame ALMACD9 Heaven 17 had never played a live concert before 1997, but began to tour occasionally in the late 1990s. This CD documents their 1997 show at Glasgow's SECC, where they were guests of Erasure, and it is included here because the final track is their version of The Human League's Being Boiled. This version is very similar to the League's 1980 recording of the song, as featured on Travelogue - so similar in fact that one has to wonder whether the original backing tapes were used! This show had originally been released exclusively through the official Heaven 17 site in June 1999 as Live At Last (catalogue number H17-1), limited to 1,000 copies and housed in a different sleeve (pictured right). How Live Is was available through regular music outlets and included three bonus CD- ROM video tracks recorded live at London's Sound Republic in March 1999. ---------- January 2003 THE HUMAN LEAGUE - ELECTRONICALLY YOURS... THE HUMAN LEAGUE SAMPLER CD, Caroline 17689 Being Boiled (Fast Product version) Blind Youth Empire State Human The Black Hit Of Space WXJL Tonight Marianne The Sound Of The Crowd Love Action [I Believe In Love] Don't You Want Me (Love & Dancing version) This is a North American promotional-only release, issued by the Caroline label to promote the January 2003 remastered editions of Reproduction, Travelogue and the Dare / Love & Dancing package. As this is not a commercial release, it is only likely to be on sale through outlets who specialise in such items for the collectors' market. However, all of the material is readily available on the three CDs this release was intended to promote, so this is only really of interest to completists. *********************************** (3) Songs They Didn't Know *********************************** This section details all tracks officially released by the original line-up of The Human League, and attempts to catalogue all unreleased material recorded by The Future and The Human League before the group split in 1980. However, it is highly likely that the details of unreleased material are far from complete. If you know of any Future or Human League material which should be listed here (or if you notice any errors!), please email Blind Youth with details - thank you. Tracks are listed alphabetically by title. (3.1) A ------- * Again The Eye Again This is simply the original title of the track which later became The Word Before Last. A demo version of the song was recorded while it still had this title and featured slightly different lyrics. The music itself did not differ greatly from the final version released on the League's debut album. According to the 'Taverner tape', this composition is "a study into the solely subjective existence of time". Obviously. Demo version released on the 'Human League cassette' and In Darkness (unofficially) Also included on the 'Taverner tape' * Almost Medieval This song began life as an instrumental track recorded by The Future. Although the basic synthesizer melody was already evident on this version, the rhythm track was quite rudimentary and there was little more to the arrangement than various strange incidental sounds flying in and out of the mix. When Philip joined Martyn and Ian, lyrics were added and the song was re-recorded as the opening track of the Human League's debut album. This version was driven by a much more powerful rhythm and certain additional melodies had a stronger 'medieval' flavour, in keeping with the song's title, though the lyrics are mostly obscure, with only vague references to stagecoaches and a return to "the age of men" (!). The song would usually begin differently when performed live; the opening keyboard sequence used on the album version would be replaced by a short series of drum beats before the group launched into the first verse. The Future's version unreleased The Human League's version released on Reproduction * Austerity This song was originally an instrumental piece, written and recorded by Ian and Martyn shortly after Adi Newton left The Future. This version was almost issued on Virgin's The Future Tapes before the album's release was cancelled. The track was re-recorded with lyrics for the League's debut album, forming a medley with Girl One. It had previously had three other titles - Treatment, Depression Is A Fashion and The Martyr. Instrumental version released as Treatment on Dance Like A Star * Austerity / Girl One (medley) A medley of two songs, both of which had previously been recorded as separate tracks. The League's medley is something of an epic (at six minutes and 38 seconds, it's one of the League's longest recordings) and the musical tone alternates between the bright, optimistic sounds of Girl One and the less certain moods of Austerity. Both songs reflect upon one of Philip's favourite early lyrical themes - the relationship between a father and a daughter. Released on Reproduction (3.2) B ------- * Being Boiled While the Sex Pistols' early singles had been hugely important in proving to Britain's youth that anyone could express themselves in a rock 'n' roll band, The Human League's debut single, recorded in a disused factory on a domestic tape recorder at a cost of £2.50, demonstrated that anyone could make electronic pop music. Opening with what sounds like the long-overdue release of some incredible pent-up pressure, the track begins its voyage through a series of unearthly effects without ever losing sight of that all-important pop sensibility. The almost incomprehensible lyrics could only add to the sense of this being something new, something original. An outstanding debut, by anyone's standards. The League later added some overdubs to the original track, including a new vocal, and this version was distributed to record companies on a demo cassette compilation. Another demo version was recorded around this time, known as the 'dub mix'. Mainly instrumental, it features possibly the most tedious introduction in recorded history (the same riff repeated for about two minutes!) and minimal vocals (Martyn intones just one line twice, "Listen to the voice of Buddha"). Soon after this, the group recorded the song for John Peel's BBC Radio One show, using a new keyboard arrangement and a similar dance-oriented rhythm. This formed the basis of a third demo version, with similar rhythms but another new keyboard arrangement, which was more forceful but perhaps a little over-ambitious in places. Many of the ideas present in this recording would then serve as a blueprint for the final version recorded in 1980 with producer John Leckie. Although some complained that the 1980 version was too 'glossy', it took the song to a new level. Gone were the lo-fi home-made electronics - this version was perhaps the most sophisticated-sounding track the early League ever recorded. The infectious rhythms, in-your-face hand-claps and Funkadelic-inspired 'synthetic horns' by Martyn and Ian (calling themselves the Boys Of Buddha) combined to create a dynamic dance-pop classic. The recording of the 'horns' was inspired by the experiments of Frank Zappa, who would record instruments at half-speed to create new sounds, and the League recorded the horn parts in this way, partly because they were too intricate to play at full speed, but also to give the sounds more 'attack'. Incidentally, an alternate version has appeared on certain bootleg tapes, which does not have quite so many layers; this version lacks the 'synthetic horns' and certain percussive sounds such as the hand-claps which were overdubbed later. An excerpt from the completed 1980 version was adopted by Radio One DJ Richard Skinner as his signature 'jingle' in the early 1980s. In late 2000, Richard X (as Girls On Top) mixed the music of the original single version with the vocals from TLC's hit single No Scrubs to create the much-sought- after bootleg single, Being Scrubbed (Black Melody MEL 1), which featured a pastiche of the Fast Product sleeve on its front cover - see Old Imagery: Miscellaneous on the Blind Youth site. Richard has since used Being Boiled for another single, this time re- recording the original music with pop group Liberty X singing Chaka Khan's Ain't Nobody over the top, to create the March 2003 Virgin single, Being Nobody. The song has also covered by numerous other artists, including Hybrid Machine's Kraftwerk-style arrangement on their 1994 album Concrete Ground, and Garlands' version, recorded with jangly 'indie' guitars (!) for March Records' disappointing League 'tribute' album Reproductions in 2000. Simple Minds also covered the song on a b-side in 2001, though with limited success. Martyn and Ian nowadays often perform the song live with Heaven 17 and a recording of this is available on their How Live Is album - see Miscellaneous releases (part two). Fast Product version released on single, Reproduction (CD only), Fast Product (The First Year Plan) - see Compilations (part one), German 12" reissue (1988), Greatest Hits (1988 and 1995) and The Very Best Of - see Compilations (part two) first 'demo' version possibly released on some editions of the 'Human League cassette' John Peel session version unofficially released on In Darkness second and third demo versions and 1980 pre-overdubs version unreleased completed 1980 version released on Holiday '80 (double single and single), Travelogue, Cash Cows - see Compilations (part one), and as a bonus track on German 12" reissue of Fast Product single (1988) * Black Hit Of Space, The A tongue-in-cheek piece of sci-fi, telling of an extraterrestial record so terrifyingly bland that it numbs the minds of the entire human race, taking control of the planet Earth. Along the way, there are mentions for fictional hero Buck Rogers and James Burke, who at the time was well-known in Britain as a presenter of primetime science-based TV programmes. Set to a suitably futuristic backing track, this was a great and original way to begin the second album, with highly effective use of abrasive noise (used throughout the album) and no shortage of drama. The track originally had a longer introduction which was edited for the final version - unsurprising, as the deleted section added nothing to the song. Incidentally, this song apparently began life with a completely different title (I Held You Underwater), though it's not known whether the track had lyrics at that stage. The Black Hit Of Space has been covered twice in recent times - first by Ex-Rental (download an MP3 of the demo version exclusively from the Blind Youth site) and also by The Hidden Variable, on March Records' Reproductions compilation. Released on Travelogue and Machines - see Compilations (part one) * Blank Clocks An interesting experiment by The Future. After the spoken introduction, the three take turns to utter phrases composed of two words. The first word each time is one of constantly repeating cycle of four words (your, the, my and blank). This is followed by one of a second constantly repeating cycle, this time comprising seven words (face, clock, mind, heart, thigh, pain and time - though the fifth of these sometimes sounds more like fine). This loop continues until the music ends, by which time all possible combinations of words have been used at least twice. The music itself is a light (some would say insubstantial) mid-tempo arrangement and is again a series of loops, not really going anywhere and very nearly outstaying its welcome... Released on The Golden Hour Of The Future * Blind Youth One of the League's earliest compositions, the original demo was known as Optimistic Anthem - an apt title, given the song's rejection of the nihilistic attitude adopted by many punk bands at that time. The opening line, "'No future', they say" refers to the closing refrain of the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen (Philip once remarked, "I can't believe they're serious"). Although the demo version didn't quite gel, a faster-paced recording (subtitled [Progression]) was later made for John Peel's BBC Radio One show. A similar tempo was also used for the second demo version, which is perhaps the best recording of this song. Although lacking some of the additional synthesizer melodies used on the album version, the second demo featured a driving rhythm track and highly energetic keyboard and vocal performances. However, the group evidently decided that this approach was a little too fast and recorded a slightly slower version for their debut album. Discussing the group's lyrics, Martyn once commented, "I don't think we've ever written a conventional lyric. I think the nearest is Blind Youth, which is saying to the youngsters in the audience, 'don't worry - your time will come'. I don't see any reason to be depressed." Original demo version and John Peel session version released (unofficially) on In Darkness Original demo version also officially released on the 'Human League cassette' and included on the 'Taverner tape' Second demo version unreleased Album version released on Reproduction and Canadian I Don't Depend On You single (3.3) C ------- * Cairo The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, best known for their pioneering use of electronic instruments on the TV series Doctor Who, were an influence on many British electronic artists in the 1970s, and this track suggests that The Future were among those artists. Mainly instrumental, the piece is particularly reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop's incidental music for Doctor Who stories in the early 1970s. The primary motif is a pastiche of ancient Egyptian music and the track concludes with a brief spoken word section taken from J G Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition (chapter four, You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe). Released on The Golden Hour Of The Future * C'est Grave This is a collaboration between The Human League and their tour manager/engineer Timothy Pearce, who provides lead vocals. It is certainly one of the most bizarre tracks associated with the League; musically, it could almost be a blueprint for the New Romantic dancefloor antics of Visage (who this track pre-dates), but Timothy Pearce's demented vocals are a world away from those of Steve Strange! It's virtually impossible to imagine Philip singing this one... Released on Dance Like A Star * Circus Of Death One of the League's earliest and most intriguing recordings, the original version came about when the group first attempted to cover Iggy Pop's Night Clubbing. Martyn: "We had the echo unit doubling the beat and created another beat, and we decided 'this is too good for Night Clubbing - we'll use it for a track of our own'". The lyrics mainly concern a fictional psychopathic clown and his drug-crazed followers, but the song also makes reference to Commissioner Steve McGarrett from the TV series Hawaii Five-O. (Martyn: "We were trying to get Phil to say 'One, two, three, book him, Chin' at the beginning of the song.") The original version ended with a sample from John Carpenter's 1974 sci-fi film, Dark Star, though this only appeared on the Fast Product single (probably removed from later releases because of problems with copyright clearance). The single's sleeve included this note: "Dominion is the name given to the fictitious drug administered by the ringmaster/clown to subjugate those who fall prey to his power." An alternate version of the Fast Product recording