Monday lunch with The Human League – recorded in Torino on March 16, 1982 by RAI in Rome.
The Human League were one of the bands responsible for what became largely known as Synthpop, as well as an indelible part of the 80s, not to mention wall-to-wall favorites of early MTV.
At a time when Punk was being shaken loose from its stranglehold on Pop music in the UK, the gates flew wide open and a veritable flood of new genres and new bands arrived, taking what was known earlier as The Second British Invasion of the 1970s and extending on it into the 80s.
With The Human League also came Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark, the revamped and restructured Ultravox and Gary Numan among others.
Largely targets of disdain by the likes of Johnny Rotten, The Human League and others became instant darlings of the fledgling MTV.
Together since 1977 (and still going strong), Human League had fits and starts until Don’t You Want Me was released from their third album, Dare. Coinciding with one of the landmark music videos of the period, it cemented Human League’s stature with this new genre.
“Don’t You Want Me” became the band’s biggest hit, selling almost 1.5 million copies in the UK. Dare has since been labelled as one of pop music’s most influential albums. In a retrospective review of the album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor for AllMusic, gave Dare a five-star rating. He wrote: “The technology may have dated, synths and drum machines may have become more advanced, but few have manipulated technology in such an emotionally effective way.” Although the group has been retrospectively identified with the New Romantic movement of this period, according to Dave Rimmer, author of New Romantics: The Look, “at the time [they] were no such thing.” The band themselves have also consistently and strenuously rejected the label. The Sheffield scene in which The Human League formed predated New Romanticism and took more influence from Kraftwerk. Bands in the Sheffield scene were also referred to as Futurists.
Capitalizing on the success of the album and their recent #1 hit single, “Being Boiled” was re-released and became a Top 10 hit in early 1982. The band toured for the first time together internationally. Concurrently, Dare (later renamed Dare!) was released in the US by A&M Records and “Don’t You Want Me” also reached #1 there in the summer of 1982. A remix album of Dare entitled Love and Dancing was released under the group name “The League Unlimited Orchestra” (a tribute to Barry White‘s Love Unlimited Orchestra), reaching #3 on the UK album chart. In 1982, the band received the Best British Newcomer award at the annual Brit Music awards, and Rushent also took Best Producer for his work on Dare. In February 1983, the band was nominated for the Best New Artist award at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards (though the award eventually went to Men at Work).
In November 1982, the Motown influenced electropop single “Mirror Man” reached #2 in the UK chart, just missing another Christmas #1, which was taken by “Save Your Love” by Renée and Renato.[21] The follow-up single, “(Keep Feeling) Fascination“, was released in April 1983, and peaked at #2 in the UK and #8 on the Billboard Charts in the USA. The following months proved to be difficult ones for the band as they struggled to record a follow-up album to Dare under immense pressure from Virgin. A six-song EP called Fascination!, composed of the singles “Mirror Man” and “Fascination” together with the new track “I Love You Too Much”, was released in America as a stop-gap and also became a strong seller as an import in the UK.
To get an idea what they sounded like in 1982, here is one of the concerts during Human League’s tour of that year.
Enjoy.
