By Dave Hill for MUSICIAN
All Americans have heard of McDonalds. Yes, well so have most of us British. Golden Arch imperialism has bitten deep into the consciousness of even this doggedly insular nation. However, jus as our ghastly current crop of ascendant politicians urge us to cling to illusions of Britannia's former glories, the U.K.'s very own "Home of the Hamburger" tries to convince us that it still belongs at the top of the tree. High on grime and short on custom it may be, but the Wimpy Bar remains. It is in such an establishment that your correspondent encounters Martyn Ware, one third of Heaven 17, a group of people who, ostensibly at least, stand for a healthier kind of new Brit realism than either Margaret Thatcher or our wholesale capitulation to a clown called Ronald.
Appearances, though, can deceive; whichever end you're looking from. Ware, a matter-of-fact- gent with little time for messing about, has rather long, lank hair, wears a promotional T-shirt and a manual workers' donkey jacket of no quality or distinction whatsoever. Several inches of stomach burst from the top of his dog-tooth checkered trousers which, to my mounting astonishment, are actually flared. After all, Heaven 17's professional profile has always been so chic, so sleek, so drenched in razor-creased Euro-sophistication.
Ware responds to the decor by ordering fish and chips and insisting he is not an "interesting" personality. "Why aren't I interviewing you?" he suggests. "You're probably just as interesting as I am. We're just a rarity to be honest about it. Could you pass the salt?"
Well, Heaven 17 are interesting, although their native land&emdash;especially its rock critics&emdash;seems to have decided that Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory are not nearly as interesting as they were. The reviews of the trio's third and latest LP, How Men Are, have been almost uniformly disparaging. "The album has been grossly attacked," says Ware offhandedly; "however, we've done lots of interviews abroad and I've simply concluded that all my worst suspicions about the U.K. rock press have been well-founded. They work on a tiny island and they know they can affect the careers of artists by what they write. It goes to their heads."
The attacks of England's "hacks" and Ware's dismissals of them both carry a degree of justice. The dawning of Heaven 17 in 1981 was greeted with near ecstatic expectations that no one could ever live up to: great, sprawling semiological essays spewed from the over-wrought and under-used minds of our more academic pop thinkers. Launching themselves as an umbrella production operation, the British Electric Foundation, (of which Heaven 17 was but one project), they introduced LinnDrum pop-funk to the top forty and the Sunday Times. "We've always been a studio group," states Ware as he sips his tea. "We've never had a drummer. We're a two-piece synth outfit with a singer if we're anything, and though we did a hundred and thirty dates, we've never really performed live. We used backing tapes the whole time." Ware takes a certain delight at the despairing efforts of their label, Virgin, to get them on the road. "Iknow it's still a prevalent attitude that to capitalize on your initial success in America you've got to slog around the country, but we're not that bothered." Scandal!
"We are not in the time of the 60s rock group anymore," Ware insists. "Things have got to change and they are changing. They've changed despite the protests of the traditionalists."
The problem with the traditionalists? "No problem. If you like that sort of stuff, then great. Its strengths were that it offered greater interpretive possibilities. Its weakness was the inability of people to create anything new out of it. Who wants to listen to ten or fifteen minute guitar solos? Unless it's Jimi Hendrix or someone, it's boring. Frankly tedious. Who needs it?"
The choice of the synth was an act of taking advantage of new possibilities: a practical decision, even more than an artistic one. "We couldn't play the traditional instruments, basically," Ware bluntly explains; "we were more interested in composition and arrangement than in taking ten years learning how to play. The very process of learning can often point you in a particular direction and steer you away from original musical thought. Previous to the flood of low-priced synthesizers, your only two chances of getting into a good group were, one, being a great musician or at least a very competent one; or two, you had to be a damn good singer. Now those two preconditions have been stripped away. Personally I think that's healthy. Synthesizers always sounded good no matter how badly you played them. We just wanted a shortcut."
Heaven 17's urge to emulate certain aspects of soul hark back to their days in the Human League, then a gaggle of neurotic, semi-intellectual synth enthusiasts who, after Marsh and Ware's defection, moved on to devise ironic, Vogue-type video-pop romances. "In the two years previous to the split," Ware notes, "we went through a period where we had a lot of parties. It coalesced in our minds that the sort of music we played at our parties should logically be the sort we were performing as well."
Enter, from Edinburgh, one Bob Last, billed on Penthouse's credits as "Executive Manipulator," and, initially, the founder of radical independent label Fast. In punk's diverse, exciting, immediate aftermath, Fast turned out a string of revolutionary records by such as the Gang Of Four (discordant Marxist funk), the Mekons (discordant Marxist white noise&emdash;oddly brilliant) and the Human League. As well as an ear for non-conformist pop talent, Bob Last also had a desire to meaningfully disrupt and/or ridicule standard corporate packaging practices. Glenn Gregory, whose vocal style resembled the League's Phil Oakey, was recruited to sing, their name was lifted from Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Last tagged along as manager, and the contract with the major, Virgin, gave all concerned the chance to take their ideas overground.
Heaven 17 offered something different on a purely musical level to the rest of England's synth-pop pretenders. Sidestepping the jangling jingles of their peers, they aligned themselves with the burgeoning revival of black Americam music, creating a groove which was genuinely of the dancefloor, but decidedly Anglo-Saxon, overwhelmingly silicon, that came on like a soundtrack for the promised new leisure era&emdash;or at least its more hopeful possibilities. Heaven 17 urged an end to the grisly battles of yore, "We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang," they declared impatiently, revelling in their inspiration and taking agit-pop out of bohemia and into the high street and pop glossies. Heaven 17's apparently contradictory profile matched support for the far Left of the British Labour Party with their own cute entrepreneurial instincts which were both stylistic and real; a kind of credit card leisure socialist manifesto. It seemed so much more than poor old rock 'n' roll, so much more than just music.
"Well, you can scrub all that stuff for a start," deadpans Ware, who now appears to be paying for "all that stuff," whether his group was trying to sell it or not. "It is true that we are not, and never have been, a group in the traditional sense of the word. We are, as originally envisaged, a production company. We want to produce records which are really good. That's all."
The next major B.E.F. venture was a compilation album called Music Of Quality And Distinction: Volume I. A variety of singers were approached to cover songs chosen and arranged by Ware and Craig-Marsh. The Associates' swooping white soulboy Billy MacKenzie delivered distinctive renditions of Bowie's "The Secret Life Of Arabia" and Roy Orbison's "It's Over." Glenn Gregory weighed in with "Wichita Lineman" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day." Gossip columnist Paula Yates fluttered through "These Boots Are Made For Walking." Gary Glitter leapt out of retirement to revamp Presley's "Suspicious Minds." And of course, there was Tina Turner, who set the Temptations' "Ball Of Confusion" ablaze.
"For us," Ware insists, "it wasn't some post-graduate thesis but just a crash course in production. When you've dealt with someone as professional as Tina Turner and a whole bunch of others in a period of three months, you aren't afraid of anyone!"
The Turner connection has since served both parties well. After Ware and Craig-Marsh instigated the liaison, "it was only her persistence that got us back together. She kept ringing up and saying 'Can't you write us some songs,' and we were so busy with Heaven 17. In the end we said, 'Look, we haven't got time to write anything, but we'll do a couple more covers.' We went through various songs. She seemed more interested in rock material. More Rod Stewart than Marvin Gaye if you see what I mean. I remember sitting with her in a hotel room saying, 'Look, there's no point in phoning us unless you want to do a soul number because that's our fascination. We know it's strange because you've already done it all, but it's also the right time commercially."
BRITISH ELECTRO-FUNK
Before they got Fairlit, Heaven 17 were heavy Roland addicts, using a Jupiter 4 and 8, the modular System 100M setup, the MC-4 microComposer and a TB-303 Bass Line synth. Since the advent of the Fairlight MCI, they still use the System 100M and the Jupiter 8, but much of the other gear is lying fallow. There is also a Yamaha Grand Piano in B.E.F.'s studios, as well as a Quantec Room Simulator and AMS digital delay and plate reverb units. Despite their other techno-changes, Heaven 17 is still militantly loyal to their LinnDrum.
A resource for New Wave music and genres it encompasses.
Created: 28/5/96
Modified: 18/11/98
Maintained by: Ashley Fletcher nwc@nerosoft.com