A man walks up to you and your friend in a nightclub and says, “I like your dancing. Do you want to come on tour with my band?” Do you assume he’s being saucy because he’s been on the rock’n’roll mouthwash and tell him to sling his hook? Or, do you go home, get your mum’s permission, then make the 5th best selling single of the entire decade?
Introduction
In the peculiar way that life occasionally imitates art, so Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall chose the second option in their very own Choose Your Own Adventure book. 40 years, 20 million records, 5 UK top ten albums, 15 UK top twenty singles and the 23rd most successful single in UK chart history later and while I haven’t actually asked them I’m going to assume that they don’t regret joining The Human League rather than going to work in Gregg’s at the bottom of Fargate instead.
I was so very close to choosing “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17. If you’re a scholar on the beginnings of electronic music or simply a fan of members of Sheffield bands falling out with each other then you’ll know that the two out of Heaven 17 that aren’t the singer were previously the two out of The Human League that aren’t the singer. Seeking someone to be the one out of The Human League that isn’t either of the ones out of Human League that aren’t the singer, ie, a singer, they chose Phil Oakey who also wasn’t a singer but who, in the words of no less an authority on the origins of electronic music than The Galway Advertiser, “looked like a pop star”.
Which begs the question. What does a pop star look like?
We don’t have any pictures to prove it because Instagram wasn’t invented until 2010, but in my mind Phil Oakey was an amalgam of the first three and that’s how I choose to picture him. Actually, Glasgow newspaper The Herald has a 1978 picture of The Human League while the two soon to be the two out of Heaven 17 were still the two out of The Human League, and Phil Oakey looks more like Nicholas Cage would look if he played 1978 Phil Oakey in a biopic that got panned on Rotten Tomatoes rather than, you know, the actual Phil Oakey out of The Human League: see for yourself. Mad innit?
Citing “musical differences” (i.e. they could play an instrument) the two soon to be the two out of Heaven 17 made like my trousers in Mr Clay’s woodwork class one day in 1984 and split forever. They hired the singer (Glenn Gregory) that they originally wanted in the first place and ceded the name “The Human League” to Phil Oakey in return for Phil Oakey taking on The Human League’s accumulated debts plus 1% of the royalties from the next Human League album. It kind of all worked out in the end. Heaven 17 gave us stonkers like “Penthouse and Pavement”, “Fascist Groove Thing”, “Come Live With Me” and another of those songs that everyone is born knowing the words to, one which will forever be associated with Mark Renton falling in love:
And don’t tell me you’ve never chanted “TEMP-TAY-SHUN” in a mock baritone voice before because I was watching through your kitchen window when you did it. While they were chucking that lot at us, The Human League (not to be confused with The Humane League, who made very little impression on the charts in the 1980s) gave us #bangerz like “Love Action”, “Fascination”, “Mirror Man” and the song sandwiched between “Two Tribes” and “Last Christmas/Everything She Wants” in the list of the best selling UK singles of the 1980s, “Don’t You Want Me”.
Throw in tracks like “Being Boiled”, “The Lebanon” and “Life On Your Own” and I bet you’re now thinking something along the lines of, “Jiggins! I’d quite forgotten how many corking ‘tunes’ The Human League had put out!” Amirite?
Preamble
Let’s return to “Don’t You Want Me”, the last single taken from the album “Dare!” and a song that Phil Oakey hated so much he made it the last track on side 2 of the album. The now-famous video follows the break-up of a movie actress and a film director.
“Louise” was cited to be the follow-up single and first track taken from the next album, “Hysteria”. The lyrics are about the same couple from “Don’t You Want Me”. The film director sees the actress and because his initial anger at the break-up has subsided, he still thinks he can win her win her back; according to Phil Oakey, “It’s about men thinking they can manipulate women when they can’t, even conning themselves that they have when they haven’t.”
Yvie Oddly enough, “Hysteria” was also the name of an album by another band from Sheffield, hoary old denim pop-metallers Def Leppard. “Hysteria” also happened to be the name of the fourth album by both bands. Both bands were formed in 1977, and Def Leppard’s third gig was as support for… The Human League. Not only that but the video for Louise was directed by Steve Barron, who would, predictably, later go on to work with Def Leppard too.
As it happens Virgin decreed that “The Lebanon” was to be the first single from “Hysteria”. That was followed in the summer of 1984 with “Life On Your Own”, presumably because of its jaunty calypso vibes and summery “winter is approaching / there’s snow upon the ground” lyrics. “Louise” was finally released in October 1984 and reached a merely respectable number 13 on the poptastic hit parade. It’s fair to say that Virgin, who were the ones who pushed for “Don’t You Want Me” to be released at all, made a cock-up as large as the blinder that they’d played on the previous album.
Here’s the deal. I play the video and I write down what comes to mind as it unfolds, like the great MBMs and OBOs in the Guardian. This is how I choose to review music; because this is my blog, and not yours. Shall we?
Video
Review
00:00 “Louise” comes in at 4:06, which, whilst not exactly “Lord of the Rings”, is still on a par with “The Dark Knight Rises”. It’s black and white, which is shorthand for ‘arty’.
Apropos of nothing, probably my favourite musical film of the 1980s was also in black and white.
The film is basically a vehicle for the soundtrack, which is Prince’s “Parade” album. You know the one – “Kiss”, “Mountains”, “Anotherloverholenyohead”, total screaming genius. The film – and let’s be fair to it – is very much not a work of total screaming genius, but it does have charm and sparkle and the first leading role for Kristen Scott Thomas. She received two prestigious nominations for the role of Mary Sharon (Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress, Golden Raspberry for Worst Newcomer) and without Prince personally picking her out for the lead role we wouldn’t have had Fiona in “Four Weddings…”, Katherine in “The English Patient” or Belinda Friers in “Fleabag”. So now you have something else to thank Prince for.
Trailer #1 for “Under The Cherry Moon” however no one should even own up to, let alone be thankful for.
This video, as mentioned above, was directed by Steve Barron who also worked in various roles on a number of promotional videos for minor pop hits that you probably haven’t of, like “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, “Take On Me” by A-ha, and “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits. And, quite apart from working with The Human League and Def Leppard, Barron also worked on the videos for Heaven 17’s biggest hits, “Temptation” and “Come Live With Me”. The circle of life is complete.
00:04 As the “catchy lolloping bassline” (© Wikipedia) kicks in, a canal boat appears from under a bridge in aerial view and grows towards the top of the screen. I’ve decided to avoid mentioning the obvious erotic imagery in this scene, ie. it looking a lot like a growing erection. No mention of it at all, see.
And just because it took me a little while to find, here is where the “action” in this video takes place.
00:10 Art. Phil Oakey’s face is in complete darkness as the vocal starts, but as the canal boat emerges from beneath the bridge his face is revealed. Clever. Gone are the stark, asymmetrical haircuts of the early 80s (I always think they are the sort of haircuts that Kraftwerk would have made if they were hairdressers, which, in the case of The Human League at least, was almost entirely by design). This ‘do is less Kraftwerk, more Paul Young in his “Every Time You Go Away” period.
For reasons that I hope will be revealed shortly, Phil Oakey is speaking the lyrics into a CB-radio style handset. Possibly it’s just Art.
00:22 Two odd things happen. Firstly, a London AEC Routemaster double decker bus drives over the bridge at high speed and then performs a handbrake turn so that Susan Ann Sulley, wearing the same trench coat as in the video for “Don’t You Want Me” (so we are reliably informed by various Internet sources) can jump off. An advertisement on the back of the bus says, “Louise”. She is followed off the bus by some goyt (a general insult that the Urban Dictionary tells us is especially for people who are ‘very tall and have big chins’) played by ver League’s keyboardist Ian Burden. As the camera pans away it focuses on a large painted eye, on the advert on the side of the bus, because at this point why not?
And in a line that is definitely going to come back and bite him, Phil Oakey sings, “her face was older, just a little rough”.
For the sake of people who suffer from anxiety or an elevated heart condition, it should be noted that the stunt with the bus is the last high-action moment in the video.
00:30 Ah. The close-up on the eye was for the purposes of a ‘match cut’. This is a film transition where one thing in the frame is replaced by something similar, of a similar size and shape in a similar position, in the next frame, the something similar being Joanne Catherall’s left eye. See? Art.
She pins a grammatically-inept handwritten note saying, “Goodbye” (it’s underlined in the note, that’s not a hyperlink) to a wall where it joins many of a similar ilk: “IM GOING DONT FOLLOW”, “I HAVE LEFT YOU”, and so on. I’m sensing a bad break-up. I’m good at reading nonverbal cues, you know.
00:37 Ah, It was a reel-to-real tape recorder, not a CB radio, which means we’re not likely to encounter Kris Kristofferson in this video I guess. We see Phil Oakey’s canal boat is stacked with books in a manner that it pleases me to describe as “higgledy-piggledy”, a linguistic construction we should all make the effort to employ more. When I worked on North Wharf Road in Paddington there was a canal boat in the canal basin behind us that sold second hand books. I went one lunch with Charlotte Edwards (not the famous cricketer) but didn’t buy anything. That’s it, that’s the whole anecdote.
00:51 Joanne Catherall emerges from the living quarters of the canal boat and dives into the river. Possibly this is an allusion to Douglas Adam’s first Dirk Gently novel where Macduff dives into the water. I can’t think why it would be though and at the moment this remains a completely unexplained piece of lowkey action.
If you’re thinking about diving into any of the major waterways in London, I can only advise, “don’t”. It would be about as detrimental to one’s health as diving head first onto the Westway.
00:52 It was to cue up another match cut, apparently. As she emerges from the water in the canal, Catherall sits up in a hot tub in a bikini (she’s in the bikini, not the hot tub, which is a variation of the “why was the tiger in your pyjamas?” gag). Just like that gag, this edit fails too, because it cuts away from the canal scene too soon so the visual link is never established. Also falling under the category of things not yet established is why Catherall is in both a posh hot tub and a posh bikini.
01:04 If it turns out that this is the guy who got dumped in favour of the goyt, this will be the reason why. Of all the major crimes committed during the 1980s, names on windscreens was the worst. It’s not even like he’s put his own name, which is what you would normally have seen: “DARREN” and “SHARON”. He’s just put “ME”, which, given that he is not the character of Ashildr from Doctor Who, just makes him look like a twat.
01:14 ME drives past Phil Oakey on his singing Barge’O’Books (which we soon see is called “The Louise”) as Sulley and the Goyt (he really is, I know it’s the 80s but he’s basically wearing a Bolero jacket with a very low cut vest top underneath. The only other people who habitually flash this much cleavage in public are members of the Love Island cast a month after the show has ended) have a romantic stroll alongside the canal. In contrast with the Goyt’s flesh-flashing, Sulley is wearing said trench coat even though it’s the middle of the day in what looks like a black and white heatwave. Well, she is Northern.
01:25 I lied about the action but if you’re a sensitive disposition please note before reading on that he doesn’t get hurt. ME, hurtling along The Common next to Grand Union Canal Walk, is distracted by the sight of his former paramour and her new paramour and carelessly steers his Vauxhall Viva up the curb and almost into the canal! Gosh, this is exciting.
01:32 ME leaps out of the car and stars after them. For no reason other than Art, we see a close-up of the words “any bitterness bore” being typed on a typewriter, which is like a modern computer but with less RAM, as those words are being spoken by Phil Oakey. Proper art school, this.
01:45 Sulley stares back at ME from beneath that menacing fringe, her eyeliner ablaze with indignation. ME stares at Goyt. Goyt stares at ME. ME stares at Sulley (who is obviously the titular Louise). It’s all a bit like this scene in Rocky Horror Picture Show where they are chucking Eddie about just after they sing “Eddie’s Teddy”.
02:14 Despite being parked on perfectly flat ground 12 feet from the canal and having to mount the curb to do so, ME’s car throws itself headfirst into the canal. We see “LOUISE” on the windscreen as it’s about to be swallowed by the waves forever, which in the context of this video is still one of the more subtle metaphors employed.
02:20 I wish to revise my earlier opinion about the worst crimes of the 1980s. Here we have one which is worse still, a brass solo using a cheap synthesized brass sound rather than, you know, just a brass instrument. Sonically, it’s the one thing in the song that really anchors it to the 1980s and it’s cheaper than a Sinitta video.
The middle eight features some magnificent shots of Phil Oakey looking mean and moody in a 1980s pop video sort of way. Swoon!
02:44 Phil Okay now writes, “time heals all wounds” in a notebook, which I guess is a visual reference to the typewriter scene earlier but at this point, really, who can tell. Also, and I never really thought about this before even though it came out 35 years ago and I must have heard it in every single one the intervening years because hackchewelly I quite like The Human League, it does seem a little odd, possibly even indulgent, to have a spoken coda after the middle eight in a song that is basically a spoken monologue anyway, apart from the line, “as if we were still lovers” in the chorus. Huh.
02:59 Catherall is reading a book in the bath now. Talk about walking on the wild side. Phil Oakey, fully suited and booted, lies top’n’tail in the hot tub next to her. The book she is reading is called “Louise” even though the cover clearly features her eyes in close-up and not those of Sulley/Louise.
For some reason I’m getting strong Nick Cave vibes from Phil Oakey at this point.
03:27 Amazing. ME is sat atop his waterlogged Vauxhall in the middle of the canal, presumably delivering a withering satire on the epigram, “no man is an island”.
03:39 Phil Oakey and Catherall drive away on the Louise bus which now seems to be stacked with the books from the Barge’O’Books. As the song fades, ME is still marooned on top of the car, watching the book that Catherall was reading in the bath earlier as it floats past.
What’s the verdict?
I think it’s only fair to take the song and the video separately.
The song is indeed one of the standouts from the album. Alongside “Life on your Own”, they show a more wistful, melancholy and almost more mature take on pop than we’ve seen before from ver League. It isn’t the most subtle song lyrically, and there are points where Phil Oakey’s voice isn’t particularly strong – weirdly for someone with a voice that sounds like a Grenoside Bary White, he sometimes seems ill at ease with some of the slower, lower notes. But in itself the song is just brilliant pop music – it’s original, it has hooks, and it’s a little quirky. I’m not sure I would rate it as the best song on “Hysteria” – personally I would give that crown to “Life on your Own” – but it’s up there as one of The Human League’s best songs from their imperial phase (Dare/Hysteria). 8/10
There are two problems with the video. The first is that the video is not served by being in black and white. It’s not even particularly strong or expressive black and white, it’s the equivalent of the most basic stock camera app black and white filter. It looks cheap. The second, and most serious failure, is that it’s pretty aimless. It simultaneously follows the lyrics of the song too closely, and not closely enough. It intersperses arty shots that require interpretation (like the hot tub scenes) with really, awfully cheesy scenes (like the car crash and sitting on the car in the middle of the canal). It tries too hard to be arty and clever but comes across, as MTV dubbed it, as ‘drab’. 1/10
This single does represent the end of the group’s imperial phase. A fallow period followed up to the release of the “Crash” album in 1986. Produced by Jam & Lewis, it sounds like a second rate Jam & Lewis album with Phil Oakey singing – they even used different female backing vocalists in places, omitting Sully and Catherall.
And in what must be one of the most bizarre marketing decisions of all time, Phil Oakey decided he wanted French photographer Guy Bourdin to shoot the cover for “Crash”. Now, I have to say that I’m a photography fan and Bourdin is one of my favourites. His imagination and use of colour are incredible, but he is slightly notorious for his depiction of women in his shots – especially in the advertising shots he did for Charles Jourdan shoes, where the women are quite frequently just appendages of the shoes. He is not and has never really been a portrait photographer.
When I read that he wanted to omit Phil Oakey from the shots and tried to get Joanne Catherall to do handstands in a mini skirt, then I’m not surprised at all. I make no comment as to the rights and wrongs of that choice but it is entirely in keeping with a Guy Bourdin photograph. To hire Guy Bourdin to shoot a Guy Bourdin photograph and then complain when Guy Bourdin tried to shoot a Guy Bourdin photograph is a bit pointless. It’s like complaining that David Bailey took your photo in black and white against a white background, or that Ellen von Unwerth used high-contrast, saturated colours. If you don’t want a Guy Bourdin photograph, why hire Guy Bourdin?
Take this as an example. Are you really surprised when you don’t get a soft, Mario Testino portrait instead?
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