HEAVEN 17
“Everybody goes on about how brilliant Kraftwerk were. Yes, but they were only brilliant because they were rich!”
Although Martyn Ware allows himself a mischievous chuckle, he is trying to make a serious point. “If you’ve got a studio that’s wall-to-wall synths and Bob Moog is custom-building stuff for you… yes, you still need a good idea, but the chances of you turning that idea into a great album have been greatly increased.
“When I was a teenager, living in a two-up-two-down in Sheffield, with an outside toilet, my chances of owning a Moog [the cost of the original Moog Modular system ran into tens of thousands of dollars] were zero. Less than zero. Wasn’t going to happen.
“But companies like Roland and Korg could see where things were headed. By producing synths like the MiniKorg-700 and Roland SH-1000, they gave electronic music to the masses. For the first time, they were available to Average Joes like me. The Korg-700 changed my life!”
As a founder member of the Human League, Ware – along with vocalist, Phil Oakey, and fellow techy, Ian Craig Marsh – played a major role in the history of electronic music in the UK. Their debut single, , was released in June 1978, almost a year before Gary Numan’s ? The band signed to Virgin in 1979, but by the following year, Ware and Craig Marsh had already moved on to Heaven 17, with new vocalist Glenn Gregory.
