Heaven 17

Heaven 17 are an English synth-pop band formed in Sheffield in 1980. The band were originally a trio of vocalist Glenn Gregory and Human League co-founders Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, both on synthesizers.

The band achieved their biggest critical and commercial successes with their first three albums, Penthouse and Pavement (1981), The Luxury Gap (1983), and How Men Are (1984). Originally a studio-only group, they did not play their first live concerts until 1997. Marsh left the band in 2006, since which time Gregory and Ware have continued as a duo.

History

1980s

Origin and formation

Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware were the founding members of pioneering Sheffield synthpop group the Human League; Glenn Gregory (who had previously been in a punk band called Musical Vomit with Marsh) had been their original choice when seeking a lead singer for the band but as he had moved to London to work as a photographer at the time, they chose Ware's school friend Philip Oakey instead. When personal and creative tensions within the group reached a breaking point in late 1980, Marsh and Ware left the band, ceding the Human League name to Oakey. They formed the production company British Electric Foundation (B.E.F.).

1981: B.E.F. and Penthouse and Pavement

B.E.F.'s first recordings were a cassette-only album called Music for Stowaways and an LP called Music for Listening To, which was re-released on CD in 1997 with two extra tracks. Shortly after, they completed their line-up when they recruited their friend, photographer Glenn Gregory, as vocalist. Taking their new name from a fictional pop band mentioned in Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (where The Heaven Seventeen are at number 4 in the charts with "Inside"), Heaven 17 was intended to be just one of the musical projects for British Electric Foundation.

Like the Human League, Heaven 17 used synthesisers and drum machines heavily (the Linn LM-1 programmed by Ware). Session musicians were used for bass guitar and guitar (John Wilson) and grand piano (Nick Plytas). Whereas the band's former colleagues the Human League had gone on to major chart success in 1981, Heaven 17 struggled to make an impact. Their debut single "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" attracted some attention and was banned by the BBC due to concerns by Radio 1's legal department that it libelled Ronald Reagan, who had recently been elected President of the United States. Neither "Fascist Groove Thang" nor any of the three other singles taken from the band's debut album Penthouse and Pavement reached the UK Top 40. The album itself proved to be a success, however, peaking at Number 14 on the UK Albums Chart, and was later certified gold by the BPI in 1982.

Around this time, Ware and Marsh produced two further albums as B.E.F., the first being Music of Quality & Distinction Volume One featuring Glenn Gregory, Tina Turner, Paula Yates, Billy Mackenzie, Hank Marvin, Paul Jones, Bernie Nolan, and Gary Glitter. The tracks were cover versions of songs that Ware, Marsh and Gregory had grown up listening to. The album peaked at number 25. The second album was Geisha Boys and Temple Girls for the dance troupe Hot Gossip, which used songs formerly recorded by the Human League and Heaven 17, and a track each from Sting and Talking Heads. B.E.F. took over production duties when Richard James Burgess of the band Landscape was unable to complete the album.

1982–1983: The Luxury Gap and commercial success

In October 1982, Heaven 17 released their new single "Let Me Go", which charted just outside the UK Top 40 (but reached the Irish Top 30). However, in 1983 the band's fortunes changed. Their next single, "Temptation" (on which they were augmented by vocalist Carol Kenyon and a studio orchestra), reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart in spring 1983 and became their biggest hit. The song was taken from their second album, The Luxury Gap, which featured further chart hits "Come Live with Me" (UK #5) and "Crushed by the Wheels of Industry" (UK #17). The album itself charted at number 4 on the UK Albums Chart, their highest ever position, and was certified platinum by the BPI in 1984.

In the United States, their self-titled Heaven 17 album was a re-working of Penthouse and Pavement with three songs deleted and replaced by "Let Me Go", "Who'll Stop the Rain", and "I'm Your Money" (along with a different mix of "The Height of the Fighting"). American and Canadian new wave audiences were most familiar with "Let Me Go", which received high rotation airplay on alternative rock and new wave format radio stations such as Los Angeles, California's KROQ-FM, and Long Island, New York's WLIR, an CKOI-FM (Montreal), a regular Top Ten station, and additionally, frequent MTV exposure.