Electric friends are back on stage

A former member of the Human League and Heaven 17, Martyn Ware is one of the founders of BEF. Duncan Seaman spoke to him.
Martyn WareMartyn Ware
Martyn Ware

THE British Electric Foundation have never operated by any rulebook. Albums have only appeared sporadically over the past three decades, song choices have been eclectic, and their only fixed member is Martyn Ware, once of Sheffield synth-pop pioneers the Human League and later Heaven 17.

Finally, after a 22-year silence, BEF are back with the third instalment of their Music of Quality and Distinction albums and two rare concerts – one in Yorkshire, one in London – featuring an array of guests including 60s chart-topper Sandie Shaw, Andy Bell of Erasure, Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17 and 80s star Kim Wilde. The album this time has a theme – ‘dark’ electronic cover versions of pop songs such as God Only Knows, The Look of Love, Smalltown Boy and Picture This.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It’s quite an amazing thing,” says Ware. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to do Volume 3 – it was 20 years after the last one. One day I had a light bulb moment. I was listening to a song called The Night by Frankie Valli and Four Seasons, it’s a Northern Soul classic. I thought of doing a cover version of this, stripping away the jolliness of the backing track and doing something more menacing. It gave me an idea for an album of previously happy pop songs.”

Riffling through his “huge library of music”, Ware alighted on between 20 and 30 songs that “when you looked at the lyrics and put them in a different context” they would sound quite different.

That became the basis for Dark. Despite having “no financial support from any record company”, he managed to recruit a string of guests to sing on it. “People like Kim Wilde I’ve toured with,” he says. “Green Gartside [of Scritti Politti] was on Volume 2, Sarah Jane Morris [formerly of the Communards] I’ve done an album with before, Kate Jackson [once of the Long Blondes] did guest appearances for Heaven 17, Boy George was an old friend from Virgin Records, I knew Andy Bell from producing Erasure and Sandie Shaw was on the first BEF album 31 years ago.” There’s new talent too including Polly Scattergood, Sheffield singer-songwriter David J Roch and Max Pokrowsky, a Russian pop star whose album Ware has just produced.

“I had to attract people by making it appeal to their better nature,” Ware says.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

BEF pioneered the deconstructed pop group, later favoured by the likes of Gorillaz and Electronic. Ware says the idea was inspired by P-funk veteran George Clinton. “To be honest when we started the Human League and BEF and Heaven 17 we were influenced by Parliament-Funkadelic, which was a floating collective of musicians. We liked the idea of having a collaborative attitude to making music with people doing it for the love of music.”

For years Ware resisted the idea of playing live. Despite their considerable success in the 1980s, with hits such as Temptation and Come Live With Me, Heaven 17 never toured. It was not until the mid-90s, when Ware produced the album I Say I Say I Say for Erasure that Vince Clarke managed to persuade him on stage.

“Vince one day said to me, ‘If I said to you, you could support us on a big arena tour, would you consider playing live?’ I said, ‘Go on, why not?’ Our first show was to 15,000 people at Birmingham NEC. That was the first proper gig since 1979 with the Human League.”

Since then Ware has got a taste for concerts – Heaven 17 have toured all over the world for shows marking the 30th anniversary of classic synth-pop albums Penthouse and Pavement and The Luxury Gap. “We love it,” he says. “It’s not a given. If we had been playing live since 1978 we would probably be bored of it, but we are not.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The BEF show at the O2 Academy Sheffield will be “a rolling revue with a house band and special guests and certain surprises”, though he’s reluctant to reveal more.

Aside from pop music, much of Ware’s focus these days is directed towards his 3D sound business. A decade ago he set up a company called Illustrious. “I formed it with Vince Clarke but he now lives in America and so it’s mainly me and my colleagues in Britain,” he explains. “We create three-dimensional sound installations in environments all over the world, mainly outdoors and in public spaces. Last year we did one on the Millennium Bridge over the Thames during the Olympics and another at Wembley Stadium.

“We’re talking to many property developers and people like the Olympic Park and Wembley about creating new experiences in the public realm. It’s a mixture of public art and ambience.”

A limited edition signed CD box set of his Illustrious experiments with Vince Clarke is now available from the website www.clarkewareboxset.com

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ware also remains open to another collaboration with Philip Oakey, with whom he and Ian Craig Marsh formed the Human League in Sheffield in 1977. “Phil has said to me he’s interested but he lives in Sheffield and I live in London and we’re all busy,” he says. “But if we were both hanging out and had a half-baked idea it’s more likely to happen.”

Ware is keen to stage the first two Human League albums, Travelogue and Reproduction, but admits “there’s some resistance at their end” to the idea, possibly because only Oakey from the current Human League line-up featured on them. “I like the idea,” he says. “The first two albums I’m very proud of, they’re great pieces of work. They deserve revisiting for a new generation.”

May 18, O2 Academy Sheffield, 7pm, £17.50. 0844 477 2000, www.ticketweb.co.uk

British Electric Foundation

British Electric Foundation (BEF) were formed by Sheffield musicians Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh in 1980. They were previously members of the Human League, with Philip Oakey.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Their first release in 1980, Music For Stowaways, was released on cassette.

The same year the pair founded Heaven 17, but released another BEF album, Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One, in 1982 featuring guest vocalists such as Tina Turner, Paula Yates and Billy McKenzie of The Associates.

A second volume in 1991 included contributions from Green Gartside of Scritti Politti and Chaka Khan.

Related topics: