Paul Rabiger (Engineer); I had met the producer Colin Thurston once as a fourteen year old. I was taken to "Red Bus" recording studio by a friend of mines father (Alan Mair of the Only Ones), it was the first time I had seen the inside of a studio and I was so impressed I sort of knew at that point that I would like to end up working in that environment in some form or other. Colin actually remembered me, even by name after having only met him for 10 minutes some years before. I was very flattered and surprised to say the least. Colin was extremely kind in a gentlemanly way I would say. He was really happy to have me as his assistant on the session with "The League" as he called them, and confided in me to an extent. He had recently gotten married and was itching to go away on his honeymoon which he said he had planned way before. The band were somewhat skeptical. In the end Colin said to me "well Paul, Im going on my honeymoon next week and Id like you to take over for a while, do you think you can do that for me" these were pretty much his exact words because this doesnt happen everyday. I felt awful actually, first of all it was clear to me that Colin was running out of patience with the project because things had being going on for a long time and perhaps he was used to a different way of working, the sessions had a somewhat vague atmosphere at times. Adrian was hardly there and I sensed that these were difficult times for the band, personally as well as creatively simply because of the lack of vitality with the sessions and I seem to remember Adrian being missed by the others .

I hasten to add that this was one of the first sessions -  well, the first, that I had ever engineered -  I had worked with Tim and Pete and others as an assistant and so I knew what a creative positive atmosphere could or should be like as those two producers had and still have great vitality. I have to add that between the band there was a good atmosphere and everyone was incredibly kind to me. I was treated by the band with unusual respect, despite my being very young. I felt awkward actually because I was a bit of a novice really. What use could I be to the band?! I could operate the desk which was an old Neve and quite complex in its own way but I wasnt a producer, however, I could play keyboards and think of some arrangements at least. I could also let them take the driving seat with me helping out in any way I could (or in any way that they would let me, ha!) . But really the mood was constructive and the whole thing was held together by Phil and Jim Russel and I guess myself.

Jam and Lewis made great mixes, they didnt want to dwell on the tracks that they hadnt produced or recorded, so the sparseness and the parts we developed in Studio B at Utopia studios were mostly all kept. The room was called the "remix" room by the engineers there. It was quite small, a tiny vocal booth to the left where we recorded all the vocals. and it was hardly capable of housing all their gear,  There was quite a bit of smiling off to the AMS DDL which had a 16 second memory in stereo, we would then tune the samples a bit - or a lot, and re-trigger them by hand , punching the hash tag on the numerical keypad. The point was that the sound was digital and at a high sample rate , so it sounded better than most other options at the time.

Eventually, as the band gained more confidence in the recording process and in me I guess, we went into the larger main studio and the atmosphere eased because of the increased space and I think because the band were able to sense some kind of progress, being without a producer actually gave them some reprieve. The band were also all people I took an instant liking to, I had closest contact with Phil and Jim Russell with whom basically everything was happening. So here we were. me having just turned twenty, having worked at the studio for just nine months and the band, the producer absent. We got on with the various things that needed doing like sampling backing vocals and retriggering them, recording vocals and adding keyboard and drum parts, creating some sounds etc.

Behind the large old Neve mixing desk with its separate monitoring section in the middle and huge patchy, there was just enough room for a few keyboard stands with the necessary keyboards for that session. We spent some days only in the larger studio , I remember Phil creating a four voice synth pad on the Roland system 100 ( not 700 ) in that room on one session. The sessions were very democratic and I remember Adrian coming and going until one day he didnt return. The mood was okay but the progress was slow and the band were rather peeved with Colin Thurston for leaving them with the assistant ( me ) until they found out I could perform all the fixes on the vocal AMS sampling side of things and could play in the keyboards faster than we could sequence them.

Probably we would have started around 10 am and sort of worked ad hoc, making constructive things happen according to who was there and what lyrics were finalized. There wasnt really a producer who was directing the band, instead there was just me with my slightly apologetic manner and my well meant suggestions. Phil was really in charge in a very non-authoritarian way, because he is such friendly relaxed and generally lovely person, knowing his character, how could it have been any other way? Jim was the catalyst between the band and the studio I guess, he was incredibly supportive to me, something I have never forgotten. Eventually it would be clear that the day would best be spent on recording vocals, or adding musical parts to tracks that were unusually sparse, I say unusually because the music definitely had a more dance-floor type of approach, there werent the sort of arranged approach that had been heard on ‘Dare’ for example, by that I mean that there werent those kinds of instrumental passages where the music took over for a time. That was my impression, I found it a departure from the music that I knew and liked of theirs: this music had soul to it but it wasnt as conceptual as the "Dare" album somehow. Maybe the idea was more on a dance-floor music level and less "conceptual".

What was very entertaining and also endearing were our sometimes long conversations about all sorts of things, musical, political , creative, our different histories. How the band began etc.. I would say the atmosphere was incredibly open and friendly – these were very special people I remember thinking:  to be so kind everyone at the studio and to be so relaxed in such a pressured situation like the one they were in - and also to be so trusting in my abilities. I contributed to (Money, Party, Love On The Run, Jam, Are You Ever Coming Back and The Real Thing) in terms of playing some keyboards and recoding various drum and keyboard parts and their vocals of course ..

I remember there were a lot of drums programmed with the Linn Drum 9000 believe - I think it was even Colin’s machine …. The Linn 9000 was the main sequencer and drum machine for all tracks The tracks were quite sparse and lacked the counterpoint and voicing’s of the ‘Dare’ album. It’s true, Colin was an established producer and had recorded many bands - I actually liked his sound and especially the rawness of the ‘Only Ones’ records which seemed to me to be very honest representations of a band. The electronic music scene was very new and I guess new to him. You have to remember that there was a revolution going on: people would program at home and then come into the studio, eventually program in the studio, suddenly there was less for an engineer/producer to do if he wasn’t involved in that side of things.

This was very much the case here and I hope that Colin would agree with me if he would read this. Back in those days it was all about the syncing up to tape of the sequencers which read the SMPTE code and converted that into midi. So there were always issues - or often issues with the condition of the sync code on tape and the machines. Reading the code without the so called ‘drop outs’ which occurred as the tape was played back more often.

I was such a fan of ‘Dare’ that I found myself looking for the same vitality somehow. For me too it was really hard to know what could be the answer at some level. I had played in bands, guitar bands from my early teens but I had no real experience concerning entire albums or electronic music for that matter. I had quite a bit of experience with my own synthesizer’s which were simple Korg and Roland synths – I also had some knowledge of the PPG Wave . The Human League were there with a large Roland System 100 and various other pieces of gear which were quite alien to me, but all the same, this gear was part of their sound- so it was really an unknown what would or should come out of our combined efforts. It seemed obvious to me that Phil was going for a more groove thing rather than great orchestrations of Synths and instrumental melodies – the drums all sounded kind of similar because of the Linn Drum 9000 – that sort of coloured everything . So I would say that the results of the Colin Thurston production were sort of lacking in musical detail – I think if Phil would comment now, he would say that was a fair judgment- at least I hope so.

Perhaps there was a lack of counter melody, that struck me first because their other material was so full of sing-able counter-melody! – think of ‘Love Action (I Believe In Love)’ for example. But again, I think that there was a move towards a more dance music type of direction – that meant groove and rhythm, not the kind of more unusual and original approach that they had started with. Here the sound was much more mainstream. Where it really works well is actually the single ‘Human’ which is pure genius I think. Perhaps that was what the vagueness was all about- the main focus was missing in terms of an outright ‘hit’ single? There were good tracks like ‘Jam’ and ‘Are You Ever Coming Back ‘ ‘Love On The Run’ but there wasn’t that clear and obvious ‘Single’ .

I remember us waiting for Phil to program a four voice sound on the system 100 which took him most part of a day. I think the band members and I laughed a bit and made fun of him because in the end it sounded like quite a normal sort of synth brass type sound that could have been called up on a JP8 or something. They might well have had a JP8 there as well, that was a favourite of mine, definitely a Juno 106. The PPG I found fascinating and I’m almost certain Colin had a PPG there on the session. There were also FM synths like the Yamaha range, I think an expander as well. There were more synths in flight-cases than you could ever imagine actually - they filled the live room and the studio at Utopia Studios.

Phil called me after they had returned to the UK and said that they were going to give me a credit on the album which I was very grateful for, and I felt honoured to say the least - this was my first real credit on a record as a musician or arranger. I was amazed and reassured that Jam & Lewis had kept all (as far as I could tell) the parts that I had added to the tracks – so that was indeed a complement! I thought that in the end, they had mixed the tracks well and they were pretty much as we’d left them back in London (I hasten to add that I never left London- sadly!) The mixes are really fabulous I think. This music needed to be mixed with that kind of wetness and smack. 

This is 41 years ago for me but as I was actually such a fan of the ‘Dare’ album , I was totally into working with them. It did teach me that Martin Rushand - the producer of 'Dare ‘ was an absolute genius …. I found the Linn 900 drum sounds they were using , rather cold and characterless . The album was such a departure from ‘Dare’ in terms of the backing tracks. It felt a bit lifeless at times. The fact that Jam & Lewis contacted the band with their song ‘Human’ saved the whole project in my opinion.

The album wasn’t called’Crash’ for nothing I guess …. Adrian sort of left, Colin Thurston went on his honeymoon in the middle of recording .

Ian Burden (Band member); It was a Jam and Lewis album. Me and Adrian played a lot of table-tennis. I didn't play anything on it, apart from a few vocal parts. Jimmy Jam played all the keyboard parts I'd written, although they allowed me to sing a few parts. They focused on the songs they'd written themselves, and on another song written by one of their pals. Minneapolis was under sub-zero temperatures, and I just wished we were back in Berkshire making a Human League album with Martin. I don't know why the (earlier) recordings with Colin (Thurston) were binned. I have a cassette tape of the work-in-progress which I found a couple of years ago whilst clearing a basement. Sounds good to me . . . even though it's only monitor mixes.

(The Crash Tour) It was okay. Y'know . . . maybe slightly more fun than sitting at home doing nothing! The sense of novelty and adventure seemed to have gone. We all played very well, but it felt very perfunctory. I suddenly found myself doing a lot of shopping for clothes, as if each concert could be enlivened by sweating into another outfit. Americans are large people, so it was easy to mix and match with women's clothing that fitted my tall frame. I stuck with European clothes on the male side, since the choices in America are too much plaid, jeans, baseball caps and sportswear. I don't know where the likes of Prince go shopping. So yeah . . . it was that sort of tour. I found it strange to turn round on stage and NOT see Adrian's slide show -- something I'd hoped we could've developed in a new world of emerging technologies.

(After the Crash Tour) as one-forth of the remaining partnership I found myself consistently out-voted by Susan, Joanne and Philip. The more I disagreed with decisions, the more I found myself being by-passed. My voice was definitely no longer a part of the crowd. Glad to have done it, although I think in many ways it set me back. But now that I've passed the 50 mark I reckon it was better to have a whole bunch of experiences at that youngish sort of age. My continuing happiness has probably been helped by it -- amongst a whole load of other things, of course. I can't be objective about my own contribution, except to say that I was a part of it.

Neil Sutton (Band member); I do think that Crash was under appreciated. There are some great songs on there, apart from obviously Human, such as Money, Party and Love On The Run. I suppose that album will always have a happy place in my memory, as it was at the time when I joined the band for the (Crash) tour in 1986/7. (The tour) was a fantastic experience!!! I mean, doing what you do, being flown all over the world, including to countries and regions that perhaps you would never really choose as a holiday destination, staying in five star hotels......and being paid handsomely to do it!!!! I remember waking up one morning in Nagoya, Japan and thinking.....now THIS really is pay back for all those hours and hours, of often tedious, piano practice as a boy !!!

I also remember the band's first set of shows, in the UK, for the Crash tour, which consisted of either 4 or maybe even 5 little 'try out different sets' shows in an infamous venue in Sheffield called The Limit, sadly demolished many years ago. You can perhaps appreciate that to fans of the band, the idea of being able to see them play LIVE in such a small venue, sort of 'up close and personal', meant that the 'buzz' about those little shows was amazing!! I'm not sure what the capacity of The Limit was but, there were DEFINITELY at least TWICE as many people in there than there should have been!! During one of those shows, the P.A. started tipping forwards on my side and a disaster was only prevented by a couple of the club's door security guys pushing up against the stack, for the rest of the show !!!

The funny thing was, Philip, Joanne and Susan were apparently really quite anxious and nervous about going out and touring on that larger scale, but never let on with me!! I'm glad they didn't, because I thought that they were super confident and laid-back, and if I had known what they were thinking, I think I would have been VERY panicky!!!!

Richard Hermitage (Manager); Jam & Lewis were the band’s choice of producers and it had been agreed that they would write 4 tracks for the album. It was very cold. When we went over in early February it was minus 42 C. The recording and mixing took about 4 months which is a long time to spend in Minneapolis. I went over 3 or 4 times for about a week at a time.

Bob Last (Manager); I think I was around for some of the work with Colin, (but) I don’t really recall and shared their view that it wasn’t really working. Didn’t have the musical personality. Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam were crucial talents and it was just cool to see this gang from Sheffield pull it off. There is a soul in those machines.

Simon Draper (Virgin Records Director); I don’t recall that a new album was ready but everyone agreed that the work with Colin Thurston was not good enough. I went for a meeting with the band and asked them who In all the world they would like to work with, to try and save their careers. Phil suggested Jam and Lewis which I must say seemed an unlikely idea at the time because musically and culturally they seemed miles apart. However, Minneapolis and Sheffield had more in common than I expected. With the essential help of Jordan Harris and John McClean at A&M, Human League’s American label and our Licensee, I was able to meet Jam & Lewis’s manager and a deal was done. At this time, Jam and Lewis were the most sought after producers in the world because of their success with Janet Jackson and they gave the Human League a massive number one hit with Human. But I am sure the band, though grateful, were dissatisfied because the best songs on the album were written by Jam &Lewis, virtually everything was played by them and they felt they weren’t in control.

SELECTED TRACKS

THE REAL THING

Paul Rabiger;  Phil’s vocals were great, the girls needed sampling and tuning, They insisted on singing together which caused all manner of tuning problems.

It was one of those tracks which I think we changed some of the drum sounds, programming I remember Jim Russel endlessly tweaking around with the drums .  I’m pretty sure I recorded all the vocals again. The key was raised as you can hear.

The B part are my keyboards I believe. The brass stabs are probably Jam and Lewis’s . You can hear that the keys on the B part sound like brit electro pop of that period so I’m almost certain that those are mine. The organ part and the organ slides I think are played in by me.

MONEY

Neil Sutton; Great parts and chords.

SWANG

Ian Burden; I went trudging around in the deep snows and freezing temperatures in Minneapolis – removing myself from the studio in the hope of avoiding any attempts to get me singing on this. Sadly, I didn't escape from having to sing on the equally awful piece of nonsense "I Need Your Loving". But I was young then, and very loyal to the band. So please forgive me.

(Taken form the Human League online Facebook Fanforum)

HUMAN

Paul Rabiger; Towards the end of our recording sessions which went on for months, I remember Phil mentioning in the studio that the band had been contacted by Jam & Lewis’s management specifically about the song ‘Human’. I also remember Phil’s positive reaction to this, its all a bit of a haze now but as I understood it, they had this song and thought that the band could best perform it. Human’ was a revelation to me, when I heard that song for the first time I was extremely happy for the band – I think Jam & Lewis also really got the point of what the band were creating – it was that big American sound that the band were after - and they captured that for them.. The song communicated so much and is so soul-full .

Richard Hermitage; Great start, it walked on to radio everywhere.

Russell Dennett; When Human came out it blew me away,

Ian Widgery (Remixer); Hans Ebert contacted us about the concept of doing more than just another remix, which are usually lost after a short space of time.... remixes tend to be lost after a year or so, our objective was to create a version which would stand the test of time and take the entire composition to a new direction -something EMI London could not do. That's how the project began and we both completed the sessions  in 4 lengthy but creative days. The spirit of "The Human League" was in the studio! The mix contains many authentic Asian instruments Ghzen, Erhu, Sitar Guitar, Tablas and a few authentic analogue synths from the early 80's. Our ambitions were not to remix but to redefine the song. A straight forward "East meets (a very) modern West" Schtung music are globally renowned for that musical philosophy.

This mix contained a Roland Jupiter 8, Nord 2  and a Roland JP-8080, Chinese instruments and the new vocal. At the time I was working using Cubase 5, no virtual synths, and Waves plugins and some nice Foland FX boxes from the early '80's. The track was mixed on NS10's and Schtung Music have an amazing set of Quested monitors which were essential for getting the beats right. We even included and created new arrangements of traditional Chinese instruments such as Ghzen, Erhu, Tablas and Sitar guitar in the mix which involved a handful of amazing musicians from Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. After the new recording sessions, we decided to take the whole vocal arrangement to another level. We figured that because the song is a kind of "I am sorry" song, we thought it would be essential to make it a semi-duet and that is how Li Ya stepped in. Her voice is amazing and works with Phil's perfectly. We even had edited the content of the vocal arrangement to add some creative space.

The beats are all custom as I don't use sound library loops including live Tablas from Mutt in Singapore. The booming power of the new beats just enhances the shimmering new instrumentation and the vocals just glide above the mix with some beautiful complex delays. Stepping through master tapes is like listening to a time capsule and there are so many possibilities with these parts. We used and replayed the original Rhodes chords, vocals and of course the beautiful hand played Cymbal Rolls, The original version in terms of content was pretty simple and Morton and I wished to stay true to that. Our objective was to create musical beauty and bring out the musical message. The arrangement is tight, the mix has my trademark spacious sound and the final production is timeless, it's complete in the fullest sense of the word. We did 2 mixes of "Human", all slightly different arrangements and of course a special edit for the new music video that was created. MTV Asia did a special documentary on the recording of the project which included Morton and I in session at Schtung Music talking about our thoughts and impressions on the session and project. We were lucky enough to have the documentary opened by Phil introducing the project! -Thanks Phil. It would be nice if the fully extended mix was released, as the arrangement is extended and the space and speed of how the arrangement builds is longer. Perhaps on the next pressing of the "Greatest Hits" release you may see it! 

Bob Last; Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam were crucial talents and it was just cool to see this gang from Sheffield pull it off. There is a soul in those machines.

Simon Best (Former manager); Just a great song beautifully produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at their peak.

Ross Cullum (later on demo producer); (Favourite song) for it’s touching vocal.

I NEED YOUR LOVING

Richard Hermitage; The band wanted I Need Your Loving against all advice, but I still think Radio One should have supported the record.

LOVE ON THE RUN

Ian Burden; The best was Love On The Run. It should've been released as a single, as per our wishes and also at the urging of our management. But A&M were more interested in promoting Jam and Lewis, and didn't really care about HL. So they chose to release I Need Your Loving. It's sad ... I'm proud of all the keyboard parts I wrote for on Love On The Run, and which I'd played on the demo. But Jimmy Jam took them from me and insisted on playing them himself during the studio sessions. So ... on top of that humiliation, one of the best songs I'd worked on with Philip was relegated to being an album 'filler'.

Martin Rushent would've heard the song and immediately helped us turn it into a strong production. He understood HL in a way that Jam and Lewis didn't comprehend. He was the only co-producer/engineer who was a true partner of HL. IMHO.

(Taken form the Human League online Facebook Fanforum)

Paul Rabiger; I can’t really remember much about the development of that song . It was pretty much finished as I started working with them

Richard Hermitage; Love On The Run should have been released instead (of I Need Your Loving)

Russell Dennett (band member); My favourite song (to perform) live, it should have been a single.

Neil Sutton; I wish we could again play songs such as 'Love On The Run', great song