HEAVEN 17
LIVING THE HIGH LIFE
IN THIS 2018 INTERVIEW, MARTYN WARE LEADS US INTO TEMPTATION AS HE TELLS THE STORY OF THE LUXURY GAP
JONATHAN WRIGHT
“THERE IS NO CIRCUMSTANCE UNDER WHICH TEMPTATION ISN’T SUCCESSFUL... I HONESTLY BELIEVE WE COULD PROBABLY PLAY IT IN AN OLD PEOPLE’S HOME AND THEY’D ALL GET OUT OF THEIR WHEELCHAIRS, OR IN A NURSERY AND ALL THE KIDS WOULD START DANCING”
MARTYN WARE
© Chris Youd
There are songs that somehow get away from their creators, connecting with audiences so fully that they take on lives of their own. By his own estimation, Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware has been involved in writing one such song in his life, a floor-filler that will get any audience gathered anywhere in the world moving.
“There is no circumstance under which Temptation isn’t successful,” says Ware. “To be honest, it’s a mystery to me. I’m really proud of it, it’s a great song and everything, but there’s just something about that track that transcends normal appreciation. I honestly believe we could probably play it in an old people’s home and they’d all get out of their wheelchairs, or in a nursery and all the kids would start dancing. I don’t know what it is, it’s a good song, but there are lots of good songs. If I could distil the essence of Temptation, I’d be a much richer man than I am today.”
It’s a song that Ware, along with singer Glenn Gregory, spent chunks of autumn 2018 performing when Heaven 17 went on tour to mark 35 years since the release of second album The Luxury Gap, playing the record, including Temptation, in its entirety. As all students of early 80s music know, this was the platinum-selling album that made Heaven 17, for a while at least, proper pop stars, something Ware both courted and welcomed. “I’m really frightened the word ‘pop’ has such a loaded nature now, a negative implication, when back in the day, it wasn’t… to be popular was what everybody sought,” he says.
Martyn Ware, Glenn Gregory and
Ian Craig Marsh
© Virginia Turbett/Redferns
“There were fantastic pop acts, like Michael Jackson, that were credible as well. That was what we were seeking to be, both credible and kind of timeless as well. We knew we were probably never going to get another chance like this. This was our time. If we didn’t do it now, then we probably never would, so we just decided to chuck the kitchen sink at it.”
STARTING OVER ANEW
More on the kitchen sink recording methodology later, but to understand why Heaven 17’s label, Virgin, was so happy to underwrite the album, it’s necessary to go back a little further, to late 1980 and the break-up of the first line-up of The Human League, a band co-founded by Ware, fellow keyboard player Ian Craig Marsh and Philip Oakey.
According to Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, this was a split engineered by Bob Last, manager, maverick and the founder of Fast Product, the indie label that released the League’s first single, Being Boiled. Version one of the League were stuck, deadlocked, after two moderately successful albums, Reproduction (1979) and Travelogue (1980). It was an insight that paved the way for the Dare-era League and the British Electric Foundation (BEF), based around Ware and Marsh.