(ARE YOU EVER COMING): BACK(?)

And I still haven't got around to seeing them, either? Them? Human League. (Or is it The Human League, I never quite grasping? A bit like the decade or so earlier arguments about whether it was The Pink Floyd or The Yes, but I digress.) Because, inevitably, it being the 21st century, no band is ever allowed to die, and are doomed to play on eternally, whether they like it or not, a St Vitus' dance of our days. (Witness this one, fr'instance....) The League, neatly sidestepping the above concern, play on and I still haven't seen them.

There was a time, of course, when I desperately did want to, when Don't You Want Me was top of the charts and Dare (the parent album) in my Christmas stocking. But I was too busy, too serious and too earnest for gigs in those days, newly married and employed at the lowest rung of the hospital ladder, freshly minted out of medical school. Blimey, I barely had time for records, hearing more music on the radio than on my pining-for-me stereo. But the recalcitrant muso in me still usually made time for 40 minutes of a Thursday evening, for Top Of The Pops. (Heart attack in casualty? Just wait till the end of this song......)

As the years passed, slowly life settled down. Live music slowly came back into my life, courtesy the wonderful Birmingham Odeon, a cinema in the central drag of the shopping centre, that, then at least, doubled as a the premier live venus for the city. I saw loads of bands there between 1984 and onward, until, unceremoniously, it reverted to films only. Boo, it leaving the city much of a wasteland for bands to play, it being pubs or Wolverhampton, a situation that remained until the refurbishment of the Town Hall allowed its return for concerts, followed, a year or so later, by the famed Symphony Hall, a truly terrific venue for bigger bands, it taking a certain reputation to fill it. Huge bands had always the godawful National Exhibition centre and, later, the National Indoor Arena, but both were/are soulless indoor caverns with extortionate parking and lacklustre and exorbitant bar concessions. But I still didn't manage the League. Dare was followed by Hysteria and Crash, the standard slowly slipping, despite the huge singles from the Jam-Lewis helmed latter album, to some extent discussed here. However, amongst the other dross was one absolute banger, the subject of this piece. Seeming a deliberate, if belated, part 2 to Don't You Want Me. Clearly the "waitress in a cocktail bar" really didn't want him and, with that slowly sinking in, maybe needing this second song to make sure: Are You Ever Coming Back?

The astute amongst you might be popping up your hands to catch my attention. What about, you say, I'm Coming Back on the album between the two, Hysteria. Arguably, extremely, this could be construed as the link between them? OK, so the lyrics are ambivalent and, if you buy into this derisory line of argument, surely Joanne Catherall would be singing the chorus, or at least part of it, she being the waitress from the song I suggest started it all. But, nonetheless. (I am conveniently going to disregard another and more prevalent theory that the "follow-up" to Don't You Want Me was given by the reconciliation through closure of Louise, on Hysteria. Trust me here.)

What came next? The loss of their record contract with Virgin, for one, after the poor showing of album number four. Their star so now out of the firmament, I have to admit I have never heard 1990's Romantic, but wonder if Rebound, one of the songs, might be the next step on our journey. Shall we see? I mean, she's singing, isn't she?

Sorry, now I'm obsessed and have to follow it through.... A long five years before they manage anything new, now on EastWest records. The oldies circuit had sucked them in, still, to this day, a source of lucre for bands of the 1980s. But Octopus, remarkably, garnished a rekindling of their karma, and, for a while it looked as if their may be (eight) legs in the League after all, even if, officially, there were six, it being just Oakey, Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley as the residual band members. Now I did hear this one, and think I even have a copy on the shelf. Anything here to prop up my hypothesis? Well, astonishingly, first track and lead single, Tell Me When, seems to fit neatest into the never say die spirit of the deserted Oakey figure from Don't You Want Me. 

Exciting this, isn't it, as we race to the finish, with but two further studio releases to come. Secrets, in 2001, saw them slipping back down the rankings, now on smaller label, Papillon. Again, knowingly unheard to my ears, I'm going to have to guess this one, the description of, again, first track and lead single, All I Ever Wanted as showing, as the UK Times newspaper said: "the playful interplay between Phil Oakey's sonorous baritone and Joanne and Susanne's girly voices are present and correct". And I can fully and confidently state that the more upbeat lyric might represent a feasible next chapter.

Well, the ten year gap between Secrets and Credo, the last official release in 2011, might confirm a dimming of the spotlight, at least commercially, in the world of new releases and chart acclaim. It seems the band had appreciated this, relying more on their continued pull as a live act, by now bouncing between the remember the 80's bandwagon and just being a quirky good time live act with enough cache to appeal to audiences growing up with them and the younger generation inspired by them. I'm not sure I can find the fitting song to bookend the flow of possible consecutiveness I have dreamt up here, but it must be there, I'm sure, having convinced myself of it. So let's just go with this, plcked at random. (And yes, it's true, nearly the only one with a decent available video. Or with a video at all.) If I squint hard enough, it falls and fits within the let me go/have me back nonsense I have tried to convince you of. Never Give Me Up is its name.

So, have I convinced you of this hitherto unexplored continuum across and between the releases of this band, as we witness together the turning of raffish young blade, Phil Oakey, to the somewhat desperate gent of today, his teenage accomplices themselves now somewhat matronly, as befitting their years. Worry not if it has just reminded you of the songs, as they're mostly good. Would I still go see them after this exercise? Well, never say never, but it may be I will just go see this lot again.....

Well, are you?

ELECTRICITY: TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS/PHILLIP OAKEY & GIORGIO MORODER

Let's not forget the full glory of the title, not least as it is the how and why they happened to be together that underlines this piece. Hearing a snatch on the radio, I rather guess most civilians assume this to be the Human League, so similar it is to the template already riding high the charts. Indeed, wise to that, the record company contrived to include the song on 1988's Greatest Hits collection of that band. But it wasn't, it arising purely from the serendipity of movie producer Steve Barron rejecting Giorgio Moroder's original choice of singer for a tune he had been hired to write.

Electric Dreams was a film made by Barron, earlier better known as the director of innumerable music videos, such as Take On Me/Aha and Money For Nothing/Dire Straits. In truth, that is as much as you need to know about the film, it being somewhat lightweight tosh, with a soundtrack album, Electric Dreams, featuring many of the great and the good of the day. As I look back at this, Jeff Lynne jostling with Culture Club, plus a couple of Moroder instrumentals, it is remarkable how little else has stuck. It is, really, only the Oakey/Moroder collaboration I can recall. Or anyone else recalls. Room for confusion arises in that the duo produced an album called Electric Dreams. The song and several more they cooked hastily together. Again, only the title track has had any real posterity.

Be My Lover Now/Oakey & Moroder

Moroder seems an interesting guy, and certainly lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Whilst his website might describe him as the founder of disco, a claim he seems on shaky ground with, it correctly asserts he was a trailblazer of electronic music, seeing the more popular opportunities in synthesisers , still then more the domain of serious prog-rockers. I had not before appreciated that the song, Son of My Father, taken to the UK chart by band Chicory Tip, was one of his writes. Pretty slim fare, it's true, but it was certainly the first synthesiser led track I can recall on Top of the Pops. As a producer and studio mogul, Moroder pumped out a slew of singles, embracing the twin idioms of disco and electronica. If by attrition alone, some of these had to be hits, with Donna Summer's I Feel Love being his biggest and best known breakthrough. If many of his themes and backing tracks sounded the same, that seemed no bad thing, and he took the launch into film scores. Here, Midnight Express was clearly his high water mark, but the list of his other involvements is immense, from work with David Bowie and Blondie. And Electric Dreams, of course.

The Chase (Midnight Express)/Giorgio Moroder 

A couple of decades silence and he was again suddenly the rage, taken up by Daft Punk and celebrated once more, delighting in being able to remind the world of his modest contributions to music.....

Giorgio by Moroder/Daft Punk

Phil, or Phillip, as he now prefers, Oakey, has also made the most of his opportunities. As lead singer for Sheffield electronic noise terrorists, The Human League, beleaguered and embattled by lack of success, he was left high and dry when the musicians in that band left for Heaven 17,  alone, with only the name of the band. By some enormous quirk of fate he hired a couple more players, added in two schoolgirls he had seen dancing at a club and they were huge. And rightly so. Dare, courtesy some fabulous songs, strident yet simple synth melodies, Oakey's shaky stentorian voice and the glorious naffness of the girls, leapt into the charts as an album, the singles vying with each other to get higher and higher than the one before. Culminating, inevitably, with the joy of Don't You Want Me, number one forever over the Christmas and New Year of 1981 into 82, buoyed by a never more memorable video. If their pinnacle, it certainly wasn't all they had, that line up managing a decent follow-up ahead of creeping personal differences. Another rebirth, as Jam and Lewis picked up the band and gave them a shake, and provided much of the material, with Human shaking the rafters worldwide. Since then they plod on, Oakey, the girls and whomsoever, surviving on the oldies market and the flurries of hope that each new release provides. I think I would certainly still cross the street to see them live.

Never Let Me Go/The Human League

So, the actual song? Well, as described, Barron suggested Oakey and, seemingly, ten minutes in the studio and it was the first take that was used, achieving a 1984 number 3 hit in the UK, but only featuring in the Billboard Dance Chart, if still a not unhealthy 20. In their (electric) dreams, not.

Together?

ALONE: I SLEEP ALONE/RICHARD HAWLEY

Richard Hawley has a dark golden voice, built for solitude, a deep beacon of emotions dug deep from experience. A voice not always made for the cutting edge of modernity, his flair for melody, and for holding the tune perfectly around that melody, harking back to simpler times, at times more reminiscent of the early 1960's, behind the wave of rock'n'roll and ahead of beatlemania. A time where the Bobby's Darin and Vee could hold sway, songs of lovelorn romantics and bashful innocents filling the radio waves.

I Sleep Alone/Cole's Corner (2005)

Sheffield is a city that has always held a rich musical heritage hitting well above it's weight: Joe Cocker, the Human League and Pulp all come/came from there, Hawley one of the group of musicians linked with the latter band, at one time a tour member on guitar, at the behest of old friend Jarvis Cocker. But he had been beavering away long before then, as a member of onetime tipped for the top britpoppers, Longpigs. Combining a career as a band member with his solo work, he had already put out a couple of individual records before Longpigs broke up, each well received if breaking few waves. As the son of local legend, Dave Hawley, huge on the local pub circuit, he looked destined, like his dad, to be only world famous in Sheffield.

Lonely Night/Late Night Final (2001)

But it was when he moved to Mute records that things started to take off. Cole's Corner, issued in 2005, began a momentum, reaching the album chart top 40, hitting a chord with many critics. I Sleep Alone, the featured track for this pice, comes from this recording and is typical thereof. I remember being initially a little wrong-stepped by it, so redolent was it of that era so usually reviled for being of little value. Indeed, it took me back to revisiting some of the songs of the early 60s, the time my parents first invested in a record player, and the pile of singles that came with it and that I still have. But any lingering doubts were totally dispelled by the next one, Lady's Bridge, which took the template to another level, going gold in the process. Together with another "alone" track.

Lady Solitude/Lady's Bridge (2007)

This could have become both cloying and cliche were it all he had to offer. Truelove's Gutter risked that, albeit with a degree of archness to the arrangements, offering some sourness to the earlier sweet. And then, with Standing at the Sky's Edge, a complete volte face, embracing the full force of squalling guitars, a heavy psychedelia. The critics largely went with him for this journey, but naysayers, however complimentary, wondered quite why. (Struggling to find an "alone" track to demonstrate, I am having to invoke the old why did the skeleton go to the party alone story........)

Leave Your Body Behind/Standing at the Sky's Edge (2012)

Perhaps a little cornered as to know quite now how to proceed, his next album Hollow Meadows was a bit of a stop gap, Hawley hindered by health issues, and was little more than ungarnished demos. Thankfully, his latest, last years Further, was both a return to form and to consistency. The vocals were again the rich warming broth, the backing now evoking, slightly, a hint of the Wall of Sound production values of Phil Spector. And of course there is an "alone" track.

Alone/Further (2019)

Are you ever really alone with a Richard Hawley record?

ON/OFF : Electricity

Jings, me too, this is a real toughie, scouring the interweb for songs relating "on" with "off". My initial idea had been to find equal and opposite songs. Like You Can Keep Your Hat Off as a riposte to  Tom Jones, Eat Stuff on the Sidewalk as a riposte to the Cramps, but no such luck. It's enough to make me go off on one, a peculiarly english phrase that would make a wonderful song title, meaning to lose my rag or blow my fuse. Which, like a lightbulb in my head, gave me the answer. OK, abetted by the illustration to the side of this column. A switch. The ultimate off/on being of electricity. (Let's ignore water as that would "faucet", boom boom!!)

So then, Electricity, the initial single from UK synthpop pioneers, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, back in 1979. Inspired by Kraftwerk's earlier Radioactivity, this song is a paean to the wastage of the earth's resources, truly ironic in a band who relied so totally thereupon. (OMITD unplugged would just be singing!) Over this side of the pond it seriously seemed, for a while, as if guitars may have had their day, such was the plethora of electronic keyboard bands bursting forth, from the Human League through Depeche Mode, Tubeway Army through Soft Cell. OMITD did have a bass guitar to complement the drum machines and synthesisers, but I was never sure whether this was for real, or a prop for the vocalist to fill his hands with. Suspicious at first, it wasn't long before I was converted. It was touch and go whether I preferred this band or the Human League, they were certainly the two leaders in my pack. I don't know how well, if at all, this style translated stateside, or even if any impact was felt at all. My usual sources, thanks, Wiki, suggest little.

Riding the crest of their wave, OMITD followed this single, and the album it led, with the even better Enola Gay, about the plane that dropped the initial H bombs, perhaps the ultimate on/off, before a brace of songs about Joan of Arc (both, confusingly, of the same name), no moon in june dilettantes these. Frustratingly, I think it was this arguably cod-intellectualism that pissed me eventually off, along with the expansion to include more traditional instrumentation, guitars, real drums, brass. The band split, Paul Humphreys, synths and straight hair, leaving Andy McCluskey, bass and curly hair, to lead whatever session men were about him. Even that imploded, before a chance request to do some gigs brought the original duo together and back to life in the mid noughties, a decade or so ago. How do they sound? Not a clue. I haven't had the heart since about '83. But what a heart it was then. And we are supposed to be conserving power, aren't we. Or most of us.....

Start here!