“IT WAS INCREDIBLY GRIM”

FORMED by Human League refugees Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh and fronted by photography student Glenn Gregory (he’d been the original choice for League singer), Heaven 17 was fuelled, says Ware, “by the massive energy generated by the split.” Still smarting 36 years on, he sees it now as “quite an incentive to do something. It was such a shock, I had no idea what was going on,” he recalls of being ousted from the group he helped form. “It was presented as a fait accompli. Their plan was that Ian [Craig Marsh] was going to stay with [Oakey and Wright] but Ian at the last minute decided to come with me. So that blew their plans out the water a little bit.” Ware’s own plan was to craft a kind of electro-Britfunk, a template bolstered by the syncopated basslines of 17-year-old local John Wilson. There was even a presentiment of this scheme in 1979, when the original Human League, operating as The Men, issued the single I Don’t Depend On You, a version of the intelligent pop-soul Heaven 17 would perfect on their debut, Penthouse And Pavement. “We were all heavily influenced by disco but we couldn’t do it under the rules of engagement of The Human League because everything had to be electronic,” says Ware. Like Dare, sessions for Penthouse And Pavement took place in the “incredibly grim” Monumental Studio: “like a squat, but worse.” One group arrived as the other departed. “But we never crossed over,” says Ware. “I think they were too embarrassed.” While the new League reverted to traditional pop-romance tropes, Heaven 17 cleaved to the old League’s spikier agenda. “What excited us was being able to address politics, which we were all very passionate about,” says Ware of tracks such as (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang. “All our parents were trades unionists and worked in the steel industry, so it was part of our everyday life. So was dancing in nightclubs – we managed to bring both together.” Meanwhile, the group’s aesthetic satirised the transactional nature of the artist-audience relationship by presenting themselves as smart-suited go-getters. They were punk rockers in the guise of proto-Yuppies. “We appeared on the surface to be completely corporate,” says Ware of the Penthouse And Pavement cover image of himself, Marsh and Gregory as pony-tailed moguls, “but we were trying to subvert that by burying messages in the songs.” Still, for all the rave reviews, Heaven 17’s debut was outstripped commercially by Dare. “We were disproportionately influential, but it didn’t translate into sales like the League did,” says Ware, still impressed by Oakey’s induction into the band of the Girls. “That was brilliant,” he concedes. “He saw in them the teenage girl nightclub equivalent of the Everywoman. Phil was – and still is – quite out there in his take on things.” Ware had revenge of sorts when Heaven 17’s second album, The Luxury Gap, became one of ’83’s best-sellers. “It was our opportunity to go hell-for-leather to make the ultimate pop album. We knew we’d never get the chance again. We had a blank cheque – we spent three months in the most expensive studio in London, Air. That’s how you end up with songs like Temptation [UK Number 2 in 1983] and Come Live With Me. ” Is he pleased that, just as Dare dominated 1981 and ABC owned 1982 with The Lexicon Of Love, his own bunch of Sheffield pop subversives enjoyed their moment in the sun? “Ha, yeah,” he says, momentarily satisfied before that good old South Yorkshire glass-half-empty spirit surfaces. “I wish it could have lasted a few more years, but hey.”