Heaven 17

Drawing its moniker from Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange, the British techno-pop trio Heaven 17 emerged from the experimental dance collective known as the British Electric Foundation, an offshoot of the electro-pop ensemble Human League. At its center stood Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, two former computer operators who had first collaborated in 1977 under the name Dead Daughters, a project that fused synthesizer lines with extensive use of tape loops. Philip Oakey and Adi Newton soon joined them, prompting a name change to the Human League, from which Ware and Marsh departed together in 1980.

Intent on demonstrating the synthesizer’s capacity for emotional expression, Marsh and Ware launched the British Electric Foundation as a production vehicle that enlisted an array of performers, among them Tina Turner, Sandie Shaw, and Gary Glitter. Their first release, the 1980 album Music of Quality and Distinction, Vol. 1, featured vocalist Glenn Gregory, a onetime photographer whom Ware and Marsh had encountered at a Sheffield drama center. In 1981 the pair recruited Gregory to front Heaven 17, the most enduring and prominent of the B.E.F. side projects, which made its entrance with the single “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” a modest success promptly barred from BBC airplay because of its title; the album Penthouse and Pavement appeared later that year.

With the arrival of 1983’s The Luxury Gap, the British Electric Foundation receded while Heaven 17 became Ware and Marsh’s central concern. The record achieved strong commercial results, yielding the hit singles “Temptation,” “Come Live with Me,” “Crushed by the Wheels of Industry,” and “Let Me Go.” Its successor, How Men Are, also charted well in Britain, yet the group’s visibility declined afterward. When Heaven 17 resurfaced in 1986 with Pleasure One, the sessions incorporated numerous guest musicians and vocalists. The commercial disappointment of 1988’s Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho led to the trio’s formal dissolution, after which Ware concentrated on production work, notably shaping Terence Trent D’Arby’s debut album, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby. In 1990 Ware and Marsh revived the B.E.F. banner, issuing Music of Quality and Distinction, Vol. 2 the next year.

A reconstituted Heaven 17 reappeared in 1996 with Bigger Than America and undertook a tour later preserved on the 1999 live album Live at Last. The studio release Before After followed in 2005. The subsequent year Marsh withdrew from live performances, and by 2008 his departure from the band was confirmed. Ware and Gregory continued under the Heaven 17 name, now with an increased role for longtime backing vocalist Billie Godfrey, and delivered the 2009 collection Naked as Advertised on the Just Music label. The album mixed one original track with fresh recordings of earlier material from both Heaven 17 and the Human League, issued after a tour completed in December 2008.