Heaven 17 with Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware (right) (Photo by Chris Youd)
In the early days of pop electronic music, Martyn Ware was full of big ideas in Sheffield, England. He teamed up with vocalist Phil Oakey to establish the original incarnation of The Human League. The band revamped after two studio albums, and Martyn and collaborator Ian Craig Marsh moved on to form Heaven 17 with singer Glenn Gregory.
Full of sophistication and soul, Heaven 17 (named for a fictitious band referenced in A Clockwork Orange) became UK chart fixtures from 1981-1986, releasing acclaimed albums such as debut Penthouse and Pavement, UK platinum record The Luxury Gap, and more. Their songs “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” “The Height of the Fighting (He-La-Hu),” “Let Me Go,” and “Temptation,” among others, remain in heavy rotation on satellite radio and the internet.
Heaven 17 never toured until 1997, and the band never mounted a full USA tour. That is about to change as Martyn and Glenn lead a Heaven 17 Tour starting tonight, Sept. 16, in New York. The tour hits the DC metro area at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Sunday, Sept. 25.
Parklife DC’s Mickey McCarter chatted with synthesist Martyn Ware about this long-awaited US tour, his autobiography and podcast, and what’s next for Heaven 17. He was, as you would expect, warm, witty, and welcoming.
Mickey McCarter: How do you feel touring the United States for your first USA tour?
Martyn Ware: Well, we’ve always been open to doing it, but we never toured until the late ’90s anyway anywhere. So it’s taken us 20-odd years to build up the audience worldwide, and the demand really. We’ve been slated to do US tours perhaps twice before. Those plans didn’t happen. We had some experiences, which weren’t very good.
We did a show at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan and one at a big festival in California pre-pandemic. There were some people around then who were going, “Hold on a second.” The Highline Ballroom sold out and then they’d be looking at this going, “Is there enough demand?” — for us as headliner. A lot of people from our area have toured around the UK — Howard Jones, ABC, OMD, Nik Kershaw, and they’ve done multiple artists’ bills. They’ve all said to us that they’ve made no money out of it because of the costs involved. Sometimes, they can make a little bit of money if they keep their costs really low. I’m thinking, “Don’t really want to do that.” So, we had to wait until the economic conditions were right, and we found a promoter who believed in us. That’s why we’re coming over now. We should have been touring in America a long time ago because a lot of what we do is American market-friendly.
MM: You mentioned that you didn’t really start touring until 20-odd years ago. But in that time in England, you’ve been a bit of a touring machine, haven’t you?
MW: Yeah, we’ve been doing an average of 50 gigs a year. We perform for a lot of specialist festivals, but also we do our own headline tour every year. Every other year, we tour Germany and then there are various other one-off gigs around Europe. We’ve been working, working, working, building it up. Of course, COVID put a spike in the wheel for everyone. This USA tour was meant to happen before COVID. I don’t know if it’s a silver lining, but that’s two more years to sell tickets. I think we’re going to have good audiences everywhere. If we don’t, it’s not for the want in trying.
Watch Heaven 17 perform “Temptation” live for the Rewind Festival on YouTube:
MM: A silver lining for us is that you did not have a DC area show on your initial agenda before COVID. And I’m going to be there to see your show, which I’m excited about because you’re a top bucket list band for me.
MW: Yeah, we didn’t select where we’re going to play. This was all down to the promoters in whichever cities they thought would work. It’s a pity because we’d love to play everywhere that wanted us. We were open to everything, but I’m happy that they’ve shown faith in us and in the dates that we’re doing. We were popular often in the Billboard dance charts on the coasts, really, a little bit in Chicago and Toronto, but we never really sold in the middle of the country at all. Or not as much. With the fullness of time, people have learned to appreciate us.
MM: Well, speaking of the dance charts, I want to ask you a little bit about the Heaven 17 sound. There’s an appetite for not only that great dance music but also the original Human League sound, the Futurist sound. I often think of you as having invented that sound as a synthesizer player.
MW: Well, in the UK, I think it’s pretty close to true. Yeah. We will play some early Human League on the American shows. And if there’s enough demand, we might play more than a couple. We’re very proud of those first two albums. Recently, in fact, we did the first two albums complete in concert. We played just two gigs, one in London, one in Sheffield. But Phil [Oakey] wouldn’t sing with us. Glenn took Phil’s role, and we did it with full projections. It was really cool. That was a year ago. We recreated those tracks from scratch to play for those shows, and we re-fallen in love with those songs. That’s part of our repertoire now. There’s the possibility we could do some of those songs.
MM: I have to say, as a boy, like many Americans, I first heard the name of The Human League when Dare was released. But then I promptly found the early stuff where you and Ian Craig Marsh and Phil Oakey were the band. For a while, it was this secret amazing thing that we should have known more about in the United States.
MW: Thank you.
Stream “Empire State Human” by Heaven 17, originally recorded by The Human League, on YouTube:
MM: I absolutely love those albums, and I would really vote to hear them if you’ve got a few of those songs.
MW: Well, we’d be all over it if there are any promoters out there who want to pay for us to do those first two albums.
MM: Getting back to the evolution of the Heaven 17 sound. I’m sure some of it was just switching over to working with Glenn Gregory. But you became way more dance-oriented, New Romantic, sophisti-pop.
MW: Yeah, we were never New Romantics, but the big difference was we started using real instruments. Myself and Glenn and Ian were always big fans of Black American imported music, dance music and soul music. And so we weren’t really allowed to do that in the first two Human League albums. We had a template of what we were aiming for, which is very science fiction and futuristic, which was good. But it was like suddenly all the shackles were off as soon as we started with Heaven 17.
We found an amazing bass player, John Wilson, who was only 17 at the time, believe it or not. He was a Black bass player. And he was also a rhythm guitarist. And together with the LinnDrum programming, which I was responsible for, gave us a much funky rhythm section at the start. John combined that with the kind of syncopated electronic sequences that we were doing and then Glenn’s baritone voice on top. We were incorporating things like brass. All of a sudden, it blossomed into a different kind of world.
I was very happy with the way the original Human League sounded, but this was a different challenge entirely and it related to my intention to go on to become a producer for other people as well. Certainly, the BEF, first Music of Quality & Distinction album, was the template for it, and how we were introduced to Tina Turner. And then we went on to “Let’s Stay Together.”
Watch Tina Turner perform “Let’s Stay Together” with Heaven 17 on YouTube:
MM: I wanted to ask about Tina Turner. Every once in a while, I see those publicity photos of you and Glenn and Tina in circulation. And what an amazing opportunity. I had planned to ask you a little bit about how that came about.
MW: Ask me. Yeah.
MM: How did that come about?
MW: Okay, it’s a good story. I’ve got an autobiography which explains all this by the way. It is coming out in the US in November so you can read all of the details then. But fundamentally, I did this album called Music of Quality & Distinction. And the idea was to do electronic-stroke-soul versions, organic human versions of electronic music, and backing tracks, but with unexpected lead singers doing cover versions. So we’d done loads to them. We’d finished the album more or less and we had one track left, which was “Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations, done electronically, and it sounded awesome. We were really happy with it, and we were due to fly out to record the lead on it with James Brown. And his lawyers rang up 24 hours beforehand and said, “Mr. Brown wants all the artist points on the album, not just his, on his track pro rata.”
We said, “We can’t do that. It’s just not going to work. It’s ridiculous. We can’t do it. We’d go bankrupt.” So that fell through. We thought, “Oh my God, we’re so close to finishing this album. Who can we do?” And I was moaning to someone in the Virgin Records office and one of the Virgin directors who I’d never met, passed through and said over the conversation, “I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’m just going out to Los Angeles, and my wife is friends with Tina Turner. What do you think about Tina Turner?” I think, “Tina Turner!” And I had just seen her two weeks beforehand in London doing the Proud Mary show, and I loved her.
“River Deep Mountain High” is one of my favorite all-time singles. I said yes, and next thing we know we’re on a flight to … We’re in Tina Turner’s front room in Hollywood, saying, “Can’t believe this is happening.” And she was gracious and beautiful and talented. She loved the idea, she came to London, she recorded it. When she asked where the band was, we pointed to the Fairlight. And so we released that as a single, and it didn’t gain the Top 40. So, we couldn’t get on Top of the Pops, which is the big thing.
But when Roger Davies put together Private Dancer, he remembered us and said, “Would you write some songs for Tina?” Of course, we were very flattered. But after a few days, we said, “We can’t write for Tina.” We’d never written for anybody else, and we didn’t know where to start really for a legend like that. So we said, We also were in the middle of writing The Luxury Gap at that time. So we said, “We could do a couple of cover versions for the album.” I drew a short list up, went to see her in London when she was over here. And at the top of my list was “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green. And she loved the idea, and she immediately went for it.
I also said to her, “I know you’re a big Bowie fan.” I love, and I think it’s really underappreciated, the song “1984.” And also I knew her album was going to come out in 1984, so I thought it’d be a great hook. And she loved it. In fact, it enabled the rest of the album to be created in a brilliant but contemporary rock style. We gave it more of a future-facing kind of thing.
MM: That’s totally brilliant. I wanted to ask you more about the autobiography, which you’ve called “Electronically Yours: Vol. 1: My Autobiography.” I haven’t read it yet but 100 percent intend to. Have you been pleased with it, and did you always want to write it?
MW: I’d be thinking for years and then COVID came along, and I thought, “If I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it?” I was bored. I’m a fidget. I have to be doing stuff all the time. So I thought, “If I’m going to be pinned down, I’m going to use this time for something creative.” So that’s what I did, and it took me 18 months on and off. I wrote every word. There’s no ghostwriting. I was only contracted to do 90,000 words and I did 130,000, thinking that the editors would say, “Well, we don’t need this bit. Let’s tidy up here.” But they said they loved it and kept it all.
That’s the way it turned out, and I’m very proud of it. I’ve been doing promo over here, and it’s all going very well at the moment and can’t wait for it to come out in America in November.
Watch the official music video for “Penthouse and Pavement” by Heaven 17 on YouTube:
MM: I look forward to reading it myself. Congratulations on the podcast as well — Electronically Yours with Martyn Ware. It’s ingenious. You are wonderful in it. The range of guests is impressive. How did that get off the ground and how do you feel it’s going?
MW: My attitude toward my career has always been: When you’re faced with adversity, try and make a benefit out of the adversity. So I thought, “What can I possibly do that I’ve not been able to do because I’ve been so busy?” And one of the things I thought of was I could reconnect with people, the many people I’ve met throughout my production career and playing live. And I started making a list of people that I knew that might agree to do it. It was like 30 people. And I thought, “Well, that’s enough to do a podcast.” And I’ve fallen in love with audiobooks and podcasts during that period. I used to do a lot of walking during the lockdown. And I thought, “Yeah, let’s have a go at it. What have we got to lose?”
And at very least, it acts to raise my profile to sell the autobiography. And that’s really the thing that triggered it. And now it’s all grown up and left home and got its own life. I’m getting amazing guests. Today, I hosted the former leader of the Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn. And the next week, I’ve got Paul Oakenfold coming up. I talk to world-famous DJs and comedians. Steve Coogan was on it. So was Tony Visconti and just about every electronic music act that you’ve ever heard of. I’ve got The Avalanches coming up. I’ve got Unkle — James Lavelle is going to do it soon. There can’t be many podcasts that have as wide a range of guests of all types.
To be honest, I was inspired by several podcasts, but Marc Maron’s podcast is one that I go back to. I was just awestruck by the fact that he’s done 1,200 episodes. He did two a week for 12 years. I’m going, “What the fuck is that all about?” How can you commit? That’s your entire life. I’ve got a slightly different thing going on now. Well, he’s doing very well. Good luck to him.
I never want to have adverts on my podcast. I’m completely independent. I can say what I want, I can swear as much as I want. I can tell people, “It can be as free as you want.” And I think that attracts people to the podcast — not just listeners but guests. Nowadays, they have a lot of people that control the spin and how they’re perceived. If you give people a friendly safe space to express themselves, then you get interesting stuff out of them.
MM: I was so pleased that you cited Marc Maron. His stuff is so brilliant. So I definitely see a kinship there.
MW: I really like it. I also like Adam Buxton’s podcast. I don’t know if you know that one. He’s a British comedian. He’s really good. I’m a big fan of comedy generally anyway. Comedy with depth.
Watch the official music video for “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17 on YouTube:
MM: What’s next? You’ve been doing all this stuff. As far as new projects go, will there be new music in the near future?
MW: It’s difficult because Glenn has a full schedule. It’s been like my mates Devo. Gerald Casale’s a friend of mine. He’s always bellyaching to me, “Oh, Mark’s always busy doing films and cartoons.” And he’s got a full-scale life that’s separate. too. And Glenn really has got that. He’s not quite in the Mark Mothersbaugh category of success, but he’s doing really well.
I’m not a big fan of remote working with people. It can work, but I just find it a bit bland. I like getting into the guts of it when you’re together in a studio — getting him together when being in the studio. And we both get asked this question all the time, but it’s Glenn that’s stopping it from happening. We’ve got two-thirds of an album written already. It’s been there for five, six years.
So there’s that. I’ve got a three-dimensional surround sound company that does installations around the world, have done it for 20 years with Vince Clarke from Erasure. I’m currently working with one of the world’s leading immersive theater companies to create alternate sonic realities in three-dimensional sound. Heaven 17 is touring Germany next year. We are hopefully touring. We’ve got a big tour coming up in the UK next year. Hopefully, we’ll do some more stuff in the US. So we’ve got a lot of live work. And to be brutally honest, that’s where the money’s earned now. That’s where the money is.
We could release a CD. CD. God, that sounds so old-fashioned. We could publish an album, and we earn nothing from it. How are we meant to do that? Heaven 17 albums are detailed, beautiful constructions. We try to do that, and we try to keep the quality up. We can’t afford to spend three months unpaid. It’s not the way the world works anymore. Nobody’s paying us to make these albums. There’s not a single record company that’s offered to finance us recording an album in the last 20 years. Everything we’ve done has been paid for by us.
MM: Understood.
MW: That shows you the problems with the music industry. But we would be all over it if there are any American record labels out there who want to finance us making a brand new Heaven 17 album.
MM: As an aside, I wanted to mention that I did see Glenn on the Holy Holy Tour where he performed the David Bowie material with Tony Visconti and Woody Woodmansey. They played at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, where Heaven 17 also will play. He was fantastic.
MW: He’s incredible. His confidence now is off the charts. He’s turned into a rock god. That’s it. It’s all he’s ever wanted to be really. And it’s really had a positive impact on our Heaven 17 performances because his stagecraft is second to none. He knows how to work an audience. We have great banter on stage with the audience. We know how to engage an audience emotionally. So it’s not just, we turn up, play our songs, go away. We are in full contact with the audience.
MM: When you visit the States, will it just be you and Glenn, or are you bringing a band? What does that look like?
MW: Oh no, it’s a band. It’s me, Glenn, our two backing singers, Kelly Barnes and Rachel Mosleh, who are so excited, I have to tell you, and our keyboard player, Flo Sabeva. So it’s five of us plus our tour manager. That’s it.
MM: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask about he synthesizers on the show. What will you bring? Is it different than what you would normally play?
MW: For logistic reasons, we can’t bring our normal rig from the UK. It’s just not going to work, economically and logistically. Fortunately, we’ve been sponsored by Roland, who sponsor some of my equipment over here as well. I’ve always played Roland anyway. They’re loaning us a whole bunch of stuff for the American tour. It’s a system with a lot of the plug-out synths and some phantom stuff. Flo plays three different Roland synths as well.
MM: I love that stuff. So anything you can tell us about is appreciated.
MW: We’re very grateful to Roland for doing that.
MM: We look forward to seeing you at The Birchmere on September 25.
MW: See you there!
***
Heaven 17 perform at The Birchmere on Sunday, Sept. 25.
Heaven 17
The Birchmere
Sunday, Sept. 25
Show @ 7:30pm
$45
All ages