Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast channel about electronic music and all things synth.  I'm Rob Puricelli and in this episode I talk to musician, producer, fellow podcaster and activist Martin Ware. 

Martin has been at the forefront of the British synth pop scene since its inception during the last days of Parliament.  founding the hugely influential Human League with his friends Phil Oakey and Ian Craig Marsh.  That band, for many, laid the foundations of what was to come with their stark, minimalist instrumentation and balladean lyrics, fused with catchy, danceable rhythms. 

After a much publicised split, Martin and Ian went on to establish the British Electric Foundation from which Heaven 17 emerged, along with the beginnings of Martin's career as a producer for the likes of Tina Turner and Sananda Maitreya, then known as Terrence Trent Darby.  Since then, Martin has solidified his status as a respected statesman of British pop music and ventured into the worlds of immersive audio through his collaborations with Vince Clark.

As well as being a principal at the Tile Yard Academy, a visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London and a board member at the Ivers Academy.  This year, Martin released his biography entitled Electronically Yours, Volume 1, and I managed to catch up with him recently to have a chat with him about it. 

After such a long and illustrious career, I started off our conversation by asking him why he felt now was the right time to begin his memoirs. 

Finding the time to do it because I'm always busy doing loads of different kind of portfolio career things, you know, uh, as you know, um, if you follow me on social media, so, um, it's only really when lockdown came along that I thought, well, the ball has fallen into the correct hole here. I am a fidget. I have to be doing something creative.

So, um, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. And that's why. So, I want to sort of start where the book starts, well maybe not quite where the book starts, I'll come to that in a moment, but I want to talk about Sheffield, um, the city of Sheffield and how important it was to you shaping the young Martin Ware, I mean do you think that you As an individual and a musician may have been may have turned out differently had you not been in Sheffield at that time Do you think that Sheffield's music scene made you or did were you part of making it both really?

Um, it's it's an interesting background that I don't think could have happened  It's unlikely to have happened anywhere else, because, firstly, when I was little, growing up in the middle of, uh, of Sheffield, I could hear the sounds of manufacturing going on everywhere, so I thought that was normal, I thought every city, uh, was like that.

Um, secondly, I used to hear the dropforges, which are the giant hammers, basically,  um, which would send infrasound down the, down the valleys. That is sound like on a heartbeat thing So there's that from a kind of soundscape point of view which probably wouldn't have happened in any other circumstance And then  we were surrounded by a lot of empty buildings.

So it meant there was plenty of space to rehearse  It was quite cheap, and also, fortunately for me, there was a, uh, an organization called Meatwhistle, where I met Glenn and Ian, and many of my longest term friends, which is a kind of drama cum arts based, council endorsed, uh, youth club, really, where you could just mess about.

And we're encouraged to experiment.  And it was during that period where I went to there, which probably about two or three years where we do little performances for each other,  never thinking for a second that anybody would ever, you know, would ever be in the, in the kind of Asgard of pop stars that, you know, it was messing about basically.

And, you know, I bought a dual stylus stylophone and thought I was Eno.  And, uh, bands like Underpants, VDK, The Studs, Big,  uh, Dick Velcro and The  Astronets, The Dead Daughters, uh, Mutal Vomit, you know,  most of these just existed for one day only.  But, you know, looking back on it now, I think,  It was really a kind of confidence building exercise.

I mean, you're not to know what's going to come in the future.  We were friends with people at the art college. None of us went to art college, right, or university. That's one thing you have to understand.  But we were asked to come up and support, um,  a couple of punk bands at the art college. And said, you can do what you want, but it's only like, you know, 15 minutes or whatever.

So they said, all right, we can do that. So we, we got together with our mates from Cabaret Voltaire and our mates from 2. 3 or another punk band around at the time in Sheffield and Addy Newton, who was, uh, I was in with the future at that point, together with Ian Marsh. I always joked that we had a super group before we were a group, you know, which is quite funny.

So we rehearsed, uh, three numbers, Cock in my Pocket by Edie Pop, the Doctor Who theme, which I played on the stylophone. And Lou Reed's, uh, Sweet Jane, because it's easy to play, basically. So anyway, we had a one to hour rehearsal. We went on stage, cutting a long story short, our drummer was wearing a boiler suit with cut student grants on the back, and he was carrying a bucket full of pig's ears, which he threw at the audience, because he thought it was very punk.

These big lads,  And we did the three numbers, basically got chucked off stage, because we were so terrible.  And then the drones from Manchester came on. And they were even worse than us. And this is like a kind of lightbulb moment thinking, Hold on a second, they've got a record contract. We were definitely no worse than them.

We're both terrible. And then Slaughter and the Dogs came on and they were even worse!  And we're going, you know, at least we were kind of futuristic rubbish rather than just kind of rehashed pub rock, which is what we thought a lot of punk was actually, apart from people like The Damned who we loved and stuff like that.

Anyway, so um, we did that gig and really from that moment on we started half thinking there might be a possibility we might get some kind of record out.  Uh, even if we had to favorite it ourselves, but hopefully not. I want, I wanted to come on to about, you know, there's a chapter in the book called Why Electronic Music.

And, and one of the things that I, I like about the way the book is structured is that you've got these little intermissions, so you're telling a story and then, you know, we can have a little break and you, you go into a bit more specific detail about certain things, and I, I want to come on to a couple of those.

But you, you say, uh, you know, you ask the question, why electronic music? And you go on to explain what inspired you to sort of seek out that route. And I'm guessing it's because you were a child of the space age. And that, that era was, you know, people going to the moon. It was, the future was, was the future.

It was just an amazing prospect. And I guess that was a big influence. For people with no money in a miserable, dingy, post industrial Sheffield.  With very little entertainment.  That you could go to, even if you had money. The space race, and America in general, just seemed to offer such a potential for a golden future.

The TV was flooded with American imports, uh, series. And some really good ones as well, science fictiony ones, you know. My favorite Martian and early kind of science fiction series and Time Tunnel and so it was really a time of Looking forward  kind of hard to imagine now for young people. I think that  so even though you know It's the classic in the gutter looking at the stars  There's also that I guess the influence of writers like Ballard.

Yeah with that dystopian future And I guess that tied in quite heavily with, um, with Sheffield, I guess. Yeah, we were, you could say that. We, we were very, I mean, when I say we, at this point, me and Phil Oakey were best friends. And we were discovering the world of culture, and well, the world in general together, really, from the age of about 16 when we met.

Up to 20, I suppose. And they are the most formative years, aren't they, really? So, uh, Phil was extremely well read, extremely knowledgeable about different kinds of, of maverick types of music, and I learned so much from him. I mean, we were discovering things together as well. I'm not saying he was my guru, I mean, but he, he just got a bit of a start on me, because his parents were rich. 

We both went to the same school. But science fiction was a massive influence on us. So, uh, yeah. Yeah. We used to read voraciously, so our favorite authors were J. G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury. We just couldn't get enough, because when I was growing up, going back a bit further, uh, in my  first ten years of my life, we literally didn't have any books in the house apart from a few bits of Encyclopedia Britannica.

That was it. I mean, literally, we had, I think, six books in our house.  So Everything was just this world of knowledge that just, I've always had this voracious appetite for learning things. And that can't be taught. You've, I think that's something inside you, but also that turned into a voracious appetite for different types of music.

And. Living unusual types of music as well early on in the book you you cover your ancestry which I was absolutely fascinated by and you've  You know, it really goes back a long way. How did that come about and and what amazing things? Did you kind of learn about your ancestors? Wow, I've got to be careful because my wife's here at low 

She was doing some research into my ancestry and her ancestry for,  because we wanted to get an Irish passport and you have to prove something, right, so going back a certain way. And then she became kind of hooked on the whole notion of it. And I, I, I foolishly said to her that it'd be nice if she could maybe go back a little bit further and just come up with some interesting people.

Because it's, you know, between you and me, if you go back far enough, we're all connected to lots of various people.  I just remember I was lying half asleep in bed at two o'clock in the morning one night, she'd be working on it into the night,  and she came up to me and she whispered in my ear,  Genghis Khan. 

And I went,  what? Okay, I think most of us are related to Genghis Khan. But then going further, you know, there's people like saints, crusaders, you know.  Some great names. I can't remember most of them now. You've probably got it in front of you. But yeah  Yeah, an atlas king of Pergamon. Yeah Ptolemy Alexander the Great's right hand man  Wow, I mean,  I mean like you say, I mean, I guess if you go back, you know far enough We're all going to be related to someone rather famous, but you know, there are some amazing I mean like Andrew Warner your tenth great grandfather One of the earliest settlers in America And then, and then John Carrington, the first male witch to be hanged.

Yeah, that's just a fascinating thing. Yeah, and there's so many other names in there, which I won't spoil, because I want people to go and read that, and it is very impressive, as you say, in the book. Um, and well done to, to Lansley for, for digging that up, because Ha, ha, ha, don't tell her that, she won't pay for it.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Um, so let's, let's move on to, um, two of your greatest passions, I guess, outside of, of music, and that's politics.  Two things that you're incredibly passionate about and of course, uh, incredibly involved in, uh, with your beloved Sheffield Wednesday, of course, and of course, your, um, socialist politics.

How are those passions, in particular, informed in your life? Your work in the music industry, both from a compositional point of view in the songs that you've written and how you work in that industry, which is, you know, notoriously cutthroat and big business and corporate. Let's start with socialism. So  my view on socialism is ethical business is not to be derided.

We all have to make a living and that's fine. And if you're 

That's the world that we live in. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is greed and people exploiting things when they're not earning money. And secondly, uh, this constant,  really lazy trope of, uh, champagne socialists and all this, you know, somehow, if you, if you earn money and you're successful, you're not meant to care for your fellow man.

I think it's nonsense. I mean, I just don't understand how people can think like that. In fact, the more money you earn, the more you should look after your fellow man, because you're more able to do it. And that's my, uh, brand of socialism.  Uh, it's got nothing whatsoever to do with the, you know, the grand, dismissive,  oh, they're all Trotskyist Marxists.

Nobody's saying that, you know, nobody's going to take your cars away from you. Don't worry. We all need to be taxed properly, and we're not being taxed properly at the moment. Or else society of the kind that we prefer cannot exist. And I'm talking about local government, national government, and everything.

I believe that's the case. I always stood to be an MP. Uh, during the Corbyn era, but I thought very carefully about it and I was I eventually came to the conclusion that for me to do it to my own satisfaction, I'd have to give up music, and I didn't really want to do that.  So, uh, I thought I'd rather be an activist, and I've actually gone round during that period.

I was knocking on doors with everyone else, getting stuff thrown at me out of windows. Socialism is so wrapped up into everything that I do artistically.  I'm a humanist, really, ultimately,  and I think that, it actually, in today's world, requires a bit of, uh, courage to be that, uh, publicly, because, you know, I mean, I, you know, I'm not moaning, but I do get a lot of,  you know, kind of trolling stuff, I just block everyone immediately, I don't, I don't warn them, anybody who's coming at me from any direction, I don't care whether they're Wednesdayites, I don't care if they're I don't care if they've followed us for 20 years.

I'm going, look,  our first release with Hem 17 was We Don't Need This Fascist Crew Thing.  Pretty much, that's the definition of laying your cards on the table. If you don't agree with what we're saying, or you want to criticise it,  do it somewhere else. Don't do it to me. I'm just not going to make the slightest bit of difference.

It's wasting your time and my time. And also, I want to fight for underrepresented people generally.  And I think a lot more people should.  Regarding football, it's just my roots, really.  I love football, but I love the social infrastructure that it maintains in my life. And for my son, who's equally cursed.

And, I don't know if you've been watching the Wrexham,  I feel such love for those guys, because they kind of get it. I know they're doing it, and they've got their own reasons for doing it, and I can understand why people would be mistrustful. But I genuinely believe they like the idea of it. And good luck to them. 

Absolutely. I mean, it's a great club to do it with, as well. You know, a great historical football club. It's fantastic. I'm just a big fan of Ryan. One thing that I really enjoyed about,  Particularly Heaven 17's music, and you, you said there that, you know, your first single was We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thing.

So it was obvious where you guys were coming from on a social, political direction. But all of your music, particularly those kind of first two albums, there's a dual level to it. There's Yeah, if you listen closely to the lyrics, you can hear the political message, the social commentary, but at the same time, there's great hooks, there's great beats, it's danceable.

So, it's like those films that they make for kids and there's always something there for the adults. Well, this is the same with the music. There's something there for the, the social, uh, political thing, but there's also just, you know, damn good fun. Yeah, I mean, there are, I think that's fair comment. 

Funnily enough, they were playing, um, a kind of playlist of our stuff in the background while I was doing a signing session at the British Music Experience in Liverpool yesterday. And I was kind of distracted by it. I'm going, that band sounds great. It was just quite low level. I thought, that's exactly the kind of music that I like.

And then I realized, quickly, it was us.  You know, what are our influences? Soul, Northern Soul, um, yeah. Black American imported music. Experimental music. Soundscape y music. Ambient music. Beats. Uh, especially kind of Kraftwerk ian kraut rock type stuff.  All these things. It's a rich mix of different influences, really.

Together with the lyrical content, which is, and also our love of our genuine love of pop music.  Not looking down on pop music as an inferior art form  or like, you know, you have to be too cool for school You you have to kind of avoid sounding like a pop band, you know I mean pop is almost like a dirty word now, right?

So sad,  but we you know, we love pop and in fact  one of the key things with the early human leap was just when Disco was falling completely out of fashion Internationally we clung on to that because we loved it so much You  So the interviews we were doing around about that time, you know, enemy and sounds and all the ultra white kind of journalist types.

We're going, Oh, you don't like this stuff, do you? You know, they look down on the record mirror dance charts from America.  You know, we loved all the Michael Jackson stuff. We loved all that important stuff. I mean, when we were going to nightclubs at that time, we're going to places like the Wag Club in Soho, which was, you know, kind of. 

Kind of rare a groove kind of, you know, Chris Sullivan,  uh, but also Latin influences as well And they call it world music. I don't like that term world music because it makes it sound like a ghettoized thing  I mean music from around the world that all had a big influence on us There's a lot of not just funk but it's kind of syncopation in a lot of the early human league stuff And well, I've had some team as well So people kind of missed that kind of helped the fact that we were a white band But you know john wilson was  Extremely black bass player and we're very proud of his work and and featured it heavily All those influences.

I think there aren't enough bands around now who absorb All and re and re reinterpret and recombine those influences. There aren't so many now are there? I don't know Do you think  no, I agree? I agree And I was I was actually listening to uh crushed by the wheels yesterday and it just reminded what a great bass line that is Yeah, it's just so good.

And that's really a kind of a  key 17 sound Is where it's all it's all your base Yeah, absolutely and I I was wondering just to sort of  After Human League, which we're going to speak about, um, hopefully in just a moment, but after that you started the British Electric Foundation and then Heaven 17 kind of followed on from that.

And I know that you have a big passion for soul music. Uh, you know, I, I follow you on Facebook and you're forever posting links to great funk tracks and soul tracks. And I'm always thinking, Oh wow, he loves that too. That's really good. Yeah. Did that kind of freeing up from the Human League, which was, I think, from the outside viewed as a very futuristic electronic band, did the release from that band allow you to really indulge yourself more in your passion for that kind of soul music?

I think it was like all the rules were ripped up. We wanted to establish a new house style, and it wasn't like turning our back on  electronics. We wanted to make that the kind of  substrate on which you built other things. So rather than starting from being a rock band, where you'd all be in a room rehearsing, and then you wrote a song and then maybe you added a synth player on the end, this was more about coming at it from pure synthesis, because that's how I learned music.

I don't read or write music. I'd never studied it.  Coming at it from a kind of sound basis, uh, electronic sound basis, but then using traditional instruments. As the seasoning  now where uh, where I think we went wrong is the proportions went out a bit as we went on to Pleasure one and teddy bear duke and psycho It was just  it started sounding too normal and we kind of we didn't take our eye off the ball We were just being pushed at that point into um, trying to broaden our appeal  Let's go back to Human League and I want to ask you about the split.

There's a brilliant document of how that went down and it's often been reported and misreported about what happened between you, the management, Phil, the rest of the band, and I guess it's one of the most infamous splits in British pop history.  But looking back, Was it actually a good thing for you? Do you now see it, you know, looking back and thinking, Yeah, that had to happen, because look at what's happened since. 

Or do you ever think, I wonder what might have happened if?  Right, so, I've been asked this quite a lot. And I've thought about it a lot. And, uh, I think,  Right, we'd already written half of the next Human League album when the split happened.  But not the top line. So all the instrumentals on this, on the, uh, on the second side of penthouse and pavement  were written for the next human legal. 

So we took those away with us  and wrote different things over the top. So the new direction was the first side, obviously with the, with the Lindrum and the bass and female vocals and all that stuff. And, uh, I don't think that could have evolved. We did the men,  uh, which was like an experiment.  Uh, we put it out in Drosudan because we didn't want to break the rules of using synths and drum machines only.

So, but that kind of was like a de facto template for what we did with M17.  Because it wasn't a success, I don't think the record company would have encouraged us to go in that direction.  Looking back on what I was feeling before the split unexpectedly happened, I was happy in the direction we were heading in creatively.

I thought we were building up our audience. The problem for the record company was that the sales were growing, but not fast enough.  They were looking at these two graph lines and going, this ain't gonna work. You know, we're pumping more money in than we're getting back. And, and, and another factor of that was we were doing a lot of these high profile tours.

And in those days you had to.  paid to get onto these tours. What we didn't realize at the time is that that got put on our, on our bill, on our unrecouped amount. So of course, when the, when the split happened, we're going, that's one of the reasons why we didn't want to perform live. We're just pumping money into the ether and we're never going to get it back. 

And it just coincided with MTV starting. So we thought, look, we don't mind spending money, but let's spend money on something that can service.  All the territories simultaneously, you know, so that's that's why that, uh, that's why we became a studio band. But what would Human League been like? I think we just, we'd have gone on and we'd have grown slowly and we'd have kind of, we might have run out of steam  and we might have split anyway. 

I don't know. I wasn't ready for that split to happen at that point, that's for sure. It is, you know, reading through it, it must have been a gut wrenching moment. I've been in it. bands, obviously very, very small provincial pub bands. And I got kicked out of one band and that kicked me in the gut, but you're in a successful pop band with a career that, you know, has so much potential and your friends now turn on you essentially.

But what, what really stood out was Ian's solidarity at that moment. He's admitted to me since that he literally  Hadn't made a decision about that until the, until the day.  Because he was privy to what was going on.  The assumption was, it was just that, cause Ian's quite a quiet lad, but, uh,  he's surprisingly strong and determined. 

Uh, so he's, in other words, his demeanor belies his inner strength.  So they just assumed he'd roll over and go with the plot, you know,  Without really taking into consideration, and well, they were treating him like a fool really, and uh, he said no I can't, I'm going with Martin. I can't be doing with this. 

The interesting thing, it wasn't just really about creativity, because we always got on well, and we started the human league, you know. It was really, I think, on a moral basis, it couldn't deal with Phil and Adrian's duplicitousness.  I think, at the end of the day, from a consumer perspective, we got two bands for the price of one, eventually.

Um, you know, we got The Human League and they were great in their own right, but we also then got Heaven 17 and BEF and everything else you've done since, so I guess Yeah, I've got a bit of an exclusive for you, actually.  Uh, I was talking to Bob last, last night. No, it wasn't. It was two nights ago, and we had a drink after the book signing, and we had a chat, and he said, Did you realize? 

And I've never known this before, and it wasn't, I didn't know it for the book. He said, do you, did you realize that you were very nearly, uh, dropped even before that meeting?  And was nearly dropped. And there was a guy called Nick Powell,  who was a Virgin director who went on to form Palace Pictures. 

Anyway, he was like one of the co directors.  At that time we had nothing to do with him. We know only I've met him once before I think but for some reason he took against us  and uh, bob told me that he was in a meeting where He was having a stand up argument with simon draper who defended us to the hillies and eventually simon said look If you if you sack the the league off then i'm going as well  I've never told this publicly ever. 

So that's the kind of pressure that was going on in the background  I think that was a couple of weeks before the actual split happened. We knew nothing of this, of course, because Bob was protecting us. Thank you for that, because I know that, you know, the split is obviously, uh, must be, even today, probably is still a hurtful thing, but I was wondering, I mean, you've been on tour with Phil since, you know, the Steel City tour stuff.

Are you still in touch? Do you, have you patched things up over the years or is it just Yeah, we, we, we did, we did, uh, make, kiss and make up a bit, um, round about the time that the,  there was a documentary that was on BBC2 about, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, can't remember now, and, you know, it's great reconnecting.

I still love him, you know, we, we had a, we had an amazing time together.  And it was really poignant, actually, and then we had a lunch and said, Oh, maybe it'd be nice to do some stuff together, and then,  uh, left it a little bit, didn't hear anything, and then started emailing and ringing, never got a response.

And we were trying to persuade him to do the reproduction and travelogue shows for about eight years. And eventually his management said over my dead body publicly.  So, um, that's why we ended up doing it with, with, um, Glenn. But, there seems to be another Thor potentially happening, uh, via his management at the moment.

Uh, so watch this space.  I can't really divulge what the, uh, what it's about, but this, uh, well, I can actually. There's, there's some kind of, I don't know, very early stage thoughts that there might be some interest in another Steel City tour. But, I mean, whenever we meet them, we see them at, uh, occasionally at, um, Bill's that we share but normally they're on top of the bill and we're kind of halfway down.

So sometimes we don't cross I hold no bitterness at all I think it destroys your soul if you do  if they'll turn around tomorrow and said would you like to do something together? I'd be on it in no time. I'd be up for that. I think a lot of people would enjoy that  But of course, because of that, we got BEF, which initially started out as kind of like a, you wanted to be almost like a Motown kind of thing, producing records and putting stuff out, and then Heaven 17 kind of followed on from that.

Tell us a bit about what that plan was, once the Human League for you was over,  what was the The plan behind B. E. F. and then eventually Heaven 17. Well,  after the split. I was still in shock, of course. And, and Bob, uh, Bob last invited us up to Edinburgh to discuss how to proceed. But what's clear is Bob had had an idea in his head.

This was all planned ahead. You know, the split was planned ahead.  He knew what, what the league wanted to look like and he was privy to those discussions, but also he'd had a thought about. What was going to happen to me? And in this case, Ian as well, he'd not planned for that. He didn't know what was going to happen.

And he'd had this idea for a, uh, production identity, which would enable us to work non stop and provide the funding to create multiple band identities, which we would write and produce. And we had this ludicrous contract  where it's, you know, they would fund up to six different bands a year. On different three year contracts,  so could it be like within three years we'd have 18 banners?

It's just ridiculous,  but I love the madness of it. So we signed the contract me and ian  And the first project was HEM 17, which went on, obviously, to take all our time, more or less.  But we did, we did make the first BEF, Music Quality and Distinction album, and Penthouse and Pavement, simultaneously.

Because the BEF album was meant to be a kind of calling card, a menu of possibilities, of, you know, like, electronic soul, Cover versions just to show what a different approach could do for existing songs I think it's an easy. It's an easy way with famous people and famous songs. It's an easy way for people to Understand, you know the difference,  you know, for a perfect example is Tina Turner's version of ball of confusion  That was as far away from anything She was ever gonna decide to do or a management was gonna decide to do  Because it was originally created for James Brown, and he backed out at the last minute.

Had that not happened, I would have never got to work with Tina Turner.  So there, there you go, that's like fate, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Because I was going to ask about Tina Turner, I mean Was that kind of  comeback moment or the catalyst for the, you know, the bigger comeback moment, which of course you had a hand in and that must have been, I mean, the very opening part of the book you talk about your appearance.

I think it's on the tube and, you know, Tina bursting into the. The changing rooms while you're still getting changed and telling you this is what I want. I've got these two girls and they're going to fall down on their knees and caress you. And you know, you're already on edge because you're going about to go on stage and sing live with Tina Turner.

So we turned that opportunity down. It was very exciting, but very nerve wracking. But to be honest, that was the kind of, uh, blue touch paper which lit her career in Europe.  And therefore,  Roger Davis, the manager's, um,  Tactics was to, you know, to relaunch her in Europe and then take her back to the U. S. and it worked perfectly.

Let's stay together. Maxi single was released in America, and it was the biggest selling maxi single. in American history at that point. And that then leads you into, you know, even more production work, and a little bit later in the decade, you end up producing Sananda Maitreya, as he was then known, uh, Terence Trent Darby, uh, his amazing debut album, which still, you know, sounds incredible today.

You need to listen to the Darby Atmos version of it. I have. It's stunning. Incredible, isn't it? Absolutely stunning. I mean, even, you know, even today, the material he produces is just incredible. And that voice is still just, yeah, it's just goosebumps. But that must have been a really great moment because to go and work with an established star like Tina Turner and effectively, you know, help relaunch her career, then to move on to someone who was brand new.

And had instant success with, you know, massive singles and this massive album, which I remember buying, you know, in back in the day. And we just listened to it nonstop. How do you feel about having that kind of success? Is that more satisfying taking a new, fresh artist, launching them on the world and having it, you know, hit number one all around the world?

Yeah, I mean, it kind of, uh, it was another one of those fake things. I mean, I was doing quite a few productions after Tina Turner, because obviously I was suddenly being propelled into the, uh, Champions League of, uh, producers worldwide. And, um, so I was getting a lot, I was turning down a lot of stuff. I turned down a Bette Midler album because I thought she was finished, and then she went on to have an unimaginable amount of hits, and film, and Oscars, and, you know, anyway.

But, uh, I don't always get it right, but, um, I was doing a continuous stream of things, and then one day, a courier turned up.  I got a phone call from a young guy at Sony called, uh, Lincoln Elias, who was like a kind of intern, almost, uh, and a protégé  of Muff Wynwood,  famous A& R man. And, um,  they just signed this young artist, Terence, and they didn't know what to do with him, but, um, So they sent a cassette over of his demos, and I'm going,  I'd already agreed to do it, I think it was wet, wet, wet or something, I didn't particularly want to do him, but it was good money.

And then this cassette came over, I listened to it, I went, I'm dropping everything. And I rang him up immediately, I said, can we have a meeting tomorrow?  And so, next morning, turned up,  and the first thing I said to him, Was, Terrence, I know the album you want to make, because I understand that kind of music.

It's in my soul, forgive the pun. And, uh, but I can put it into a more contemporary framework.  And I can, I will make it us versus the world. I can protect you from the record company interfering. I can, we can make, between us, we'll create a team.  And we will make, uh, an album that will shake the world.  The songwriting was just literally incredible.

Couldn't believe it.  Before I met him, I didn't even know what he looked like. And I was, I wanted to do it. And then I saw what he looked like. I thought, oh, full package. And then I saw him dance. And I thought, oh my God,  this is a superstar straight out of the box, fully formed, right?  But even saying that when we were making the album and we'd done it, I thought, this is great.

I really like this album. It might be the best thing I've ever done, produced. But. I said, I remember sitting down with Sananda and saying,  You know, people probably aren't going to buy this in America because there's so many soul singers out there and it's like, calls to Newcastle as they say. And um, next thing I know he's on the front page of Rolling Stone saying I'm a genius.

And uh, and he sold like 8 million copies in America in the first six months. So what do I know? Just to draw things to a close the the book is called electronically yours Volume one. Yeah, so that implies that there's at least an another volume to come because this goes up to  1992 with the aptly named fall and rise of heaven 17 because obviously heaven 17 now are You're busy as as you probably ever have been all over the world and you keep touring America soon.

What's what's next? What's volume two when can we expect it? Well, this one's got to sell first.  Go out and buy it. What do they say? Use it or lose it.  You've got to vote for it, or else, uh, there's not going to be enough demand from the publishers to put out a volume 2. I'm not going to, I 2 if I were you.

Uh, as a vanity project, because it's a lot of work. I mean, I'm struggling to kind of comprehend where I'm gonna find the time to do it. I mean, it took me 18 months on and off to write the first one, because I wanted to do it properly.  The same one will be easier, I think, because there's a lot of very interesting stuff in that.

But, um, and a lot of, you know, amazing stories and stuff. But it takes a lot of time and effort, you know. It's not, I'm not a professional author. But I'm now, actually,  it's not 'cause I don't want to do it, but people have to pay for my time basically. And I, I also wanna mention at the back of the book there are these, uh, epilogues, uh, where you go track by track through pretty much everything that's discussed in this book and also your electronic music influences, you know, from, uh, it's, it really is a synth geeks heaven.

Was there a, was that just you indulging us or was that something that you really wanted to kind of get across to, to everyone about, you know, what was behind Martin Ware? I think, actually, Peter Hook maybe did some like that.  Uh, his, his autobiographies were a bit of an inspiration, because we're good mates.

But I, I've not read many books where you get to really dig deep into the inspiration behind the different tracks.  And I think because we've always regarded M17 and, uh, in particular, as being, um, a kind of conceptual art project. So we leave a lot of wriggle room for people to form their own interpretations of the lyrics, for instance.

Especially on something like how many are, for instance, there's a lot of kind of allegorical, metaphorical kind of stuff going on there, which can be interpreted in different ways deliberately. So I just wanted people to, if they wanted to appreciate the tracks more, if they loved the tracks, then I wanted them to be able to understand what the inspiration was behind it, I think rather than just kind of, you know, toss it off.

I thought it'd be good to do it in detail. And then over the years, I, you know, as you know, I do loads of interviews and stuff and  I get asked all the time, what are my favorite electronic tracks? I thought that one's a bed. I could just direct him at the book now. That's great. And then also apart from the appendices, I wanted to talk at the end about how much I love Ian and how important he has been to the band, not just to kind of box tick or virtue signal, but.

Just wanted people to understand what his role was in the band and how important he was, and how none of it could have ever happened without him.  The, the book is called Electronically Yours, Volume 1. Uh, it's out now, published by Constable. Uh, it's zooming up a lot of the charts. Congratulations on what is a, a really wonderful read.

Oh, thanks, man. And I really hope, you know, if you can't read this, there's the audiobook version as well. The audiobook, I think, is again another layer of kind of interpretation you can, that I lay on top of it, because I read it, obviously. Uh, it doesn't have the appendices in it, though, so, courses for courses, you know.

By both. By both! Martin, thank you ever so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure and an honour as always and continue to success with the book and with the band. Thanks, mate. Cheers. Thank you.  Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. 

Before you go, make sure you visit the Sound On Sound podcast page at soundonsound. com forward slash podcasts, where you can explore all the other great content playing across the other channels.  I'm Rob Puricelli, and this has been a Failed Muso production for Sound On Sound.