There has been a series on TV recently called "Smash!". It is basically a half hour programme about well known pop bands. On Sunday 11th August 2002, the episode was all about The Human League. Not only was Numan mentioned in the show, but there was also a clip shown from 1979 when Tubeway Army performed their number one hit "Are 'Friends' Electric?". Here is the transcript of what was said...
Original members of The Human League, Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware were talking together while Phil Oakey was interviewed separately. Along with the narrator of the programme, they talked about the early days of the band. They had signed to Virgin Records (Oh Blimey! You can't say virgin on the Internet, can you?) in 1979, were disliked by the punks and were not able to get a hit.
|
Narrator |
"By 1980 The Human League had survived the attentions of the gobbing punks, but they still couldn't break the Top 40, even with their version of Gary Glitter's "Rock 'n' Roll". |
|
Ian Craig Marsh |
"We thought we were the first British electronic pop outfit, that's what we were kind of like aiming for. There was no one particularly out there - there were a few other acts doing - but we thought we were the ones that definitely had all the right things in place, then suddenly out of nowhere it was the Gary Numan effect." |
|
Phil Oakey |
"I thought of him as an upstart. He came along a couple of years after us. Everyone had been talking about us and David Bowie had been turning up at the shows and saying we were the future of music, and we were strutting around and everything and Gary came along and had a number one hit with "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and I just thought "...we've missed the boat...". |
|
Narrator |
"The pasty faced Numanoid had stolen The Human League's thunder..." |
The programme then went on to describe how the band came to split up with Marsh and Ware going on to form Heaven 17 and Oakey recruiting two young girls to dance and do backing vocals on their next album. Both bands would eventually have big hit singles but the League would be the more dominant and longer lasting.
It was nice
to see Numan acknowledged, even if it was in a way that made it seem as if
he had just stolen their ideas. The sad thing is that those of us who were
around at the time will realise that, whether by bad research on the part
of the programme makers, or simply not wanting to portray Numan in a more
positive way, some of the information is quite misleading.
For a start, The Human League did not get signed by Virgin Records (Oh crikey,
I've said it again!) until 1979 and the programme said that their first single,
"Being Boiled", was released in 1980 and reached number 56 in the
UK charts. By this time Numan had had two Number One singles, two Number One
albums and done a world tour on the back of his success! His first single,
although admittedly not electronic based music, was released in early 1978
and his first album was released in September 1978 by which time he had started
to include synthesizers in his music quite heavily. The "Replicas"
album that held the forthcoming hit was released early in 1979 and Gary was
already preparing the almost totally electronic "The Pleasure Principle"
which was released in September 1979.
Fair enough, the programme was about The Human League and not about Gary Numan,
but it would be nice if they hadn't made it seem like he simply stole their
ideas and beat them to the charts at their own game.
I have always enjoyed the music of The Human League and have seen them in concert at Manchester Apollo in the mid '90s when they had a sort of mini revival. They were very entertaining, which is more than I can honestly say about Numan concerts of the same period. Their last album "Secrets" has some very good songs but was mediocre in other parts. If you like electronic based music I'd say it is well worth a listen.