Ian Stanley (Producer); I started studio work in Sheffield with them and it seemed fairly straight forward once we got the  structure of who did what sorted out. As we know the League are fairly unique and one of their traits is although it can take time to be accepted, once they trust you, they are very loyal. I suppose I did make them work harder than they were used to, mainly as I had a lot of work in London at the same time, I think they responded well to the fact that if I was prepared to work hard and invest a lot of my time with them, it gave them self-worth which they were probably lacking in at that time. I remember it as one of the most enjoyable albums I made.

Protools was still in its infancy then but apart from a few crashes and usual hiccups, it was solid and vital given the amount of tracks we would use. A lot of credit should go to Andy Grey, who I brought in to program and to try and keep it all in some sort of sense. I always loved modulars, and I had a large selection as well as the band. I actually bought a Roland 700 series during the album and that is the most complete synth I ever played with. At times it got complex, more towards the end, but I quite like a  bit of chaos in the studio, you get more mistakes , which sometimes lead to more unusual roads. The band and especially Phil were very patient when it went wrong.

I can’t really remember if the 100m was used more than others. We used a lot of Roland gear, from the 100m, and 700 series to the SH101s, Jupiters etc. I would say we had at least 30-40 synths and used most of them. I think 90% of the songs would have changed in either -key, structure ,tempo, arrangement etc. Whether they changed 'drastically' is hard to define, but I suspect to most people they did.

Andy Gray (Programmer); I remember part of the album was sampling the analog synths to create drum sounds (SampleCell was great, no little LCD and the Mac to save your patches) and to be able to recall able patches created on the wicked 100m. So I guess one job was house keeping.. It’s funny as getting it to sync was the key! I had worked with vintage synths since my first SH09 at the start of the 80s but I was only about 9 myself. But I must say midi had been a big part of my life and going back to CV and Gate was funky, but after a while you work out the best way and crack on.

For me at the time the Expander Jupiter 4 were up there, the system100m sounded great, as did the 700. Never really liked the Juno's, I did have a Jupiter 8 at the time and Phil bought a Jupiter 6 which sounded more edge and cutting.

Chris Hughes (programmer); I was hanging out with Ian Stanley and Phil. I don't think I did much. My memory of the sessions I attended was that everything went pretty smoothly and according to the main plan. I don't recall any big deviations or any painfully difficult problems to overcome. All members present seemed very open to any ideas put forward as I recall. (Most fun was the) Matrix 12, Jupiter 8, Prophet 5, Lydian 3.

In retrospect It was crucial that the record got finished and released (otherwise things may have crumbled) and so to that effect it was successful. There was too much pressure in the air to allow it to be risky, or particularly dangerous, or different, but it WAS allowed to be Human League-ish. Which is what it is. I have listened to it over time and enjoy it but it hasn't entered the realms of "classic" for me (yet). I would talk to the guys / girls any time of the day or night just to catch up on what they are up to. They are great people and I'd love to hear what they are currently working on.

David Beevers (Engineer); I think we would have run up that amount (20) in demo’s and through a process of elimination got down to an albums worth. My memories are still painful of that session. I think the group had signed to East/West about 5 months before and we hadn’t moved very forward in finding a producer, then Ian Stanley (Tears For Fears) stepped in and said we had 3 months or so to record it all in.

For me personally it was tough as Ian had a different way of working. We had Andy Gray in a back room deconstructing our demos and programming and Ian in the control room programming too. After a few days elements from both sessions would be brought together and a track constructed. At this point we would be working on a track with most of the elements running live and very little on tape.

At one stage we had Andy in one room programming, Bob Kraushaar in our studio redoing vocals (but we used most of my original ones in the end) and Ian renting a studio next door (Axis) still programming. Every evening new sub mixes would be transferred from Axis to HL then in the morning I would drag the 24 track recorder to Axis and off load the previous days vocals into pro-tools, quite mad but we ended up with a great album.

Neil Sutton (band member); Ian produced it. He was serious about his synths, so the sounds were a top priority!! He had some very nice pieces himself, including a Prophet 10 and a Yamaha CS80!! He also bought a Roland System 700 whilst he was working on the album in The League's studio. He also brought along a device that consisted of 6 metal rods in a case, like guitar strings, that triggered MIDI notes. This allowed you to strum MIDI chords, giving the effect of strumming guitar chords!! It worked well!! Ian did have David synching everything to everything else, whether it was timecode DAT machines, CV + Gate synths or MIDI devices!! Then he would want to record it!!

Russell Dennett (band member); Octopus still sounds fresh, very good album. Ian Stanley is a brilliant producer, very hard working and really dedicated. I was away a lot but when I popped in it was a hive of activity. Dave Beevers worked hard too.

I used to watch Dave, Neil, Phillip and later Paul (Beckett) in awe because they were so good with the programming, Neill was good with multi function stuff, (and) a great keyboard player, still is, and was very pro active. Phillip was king of the analogue synths, Jupiter 8, Roland System 100m. We also liked Casio stuff. We didn’t like sampled sounds, we were quite organic. I could just about get my head round a Roland JXP8 if it had a programmer. Dave was great at getting his head round anything in the studio. We had a table tennis too.

Dave Bascombe (Mixer); I'm afraid i can't remember much about the sessions to be honest. I remember they were really good to work with and it was fun, but I don't think the mixing process was anything particularly different from most things I do.

TRACK-BY-TRACK GUIDE

TELL ME WHEN

Ian Stanley; It may be obvious but 'Tell Me When' turned into, I think, a great League single, that stands up with their best work. ’Tell me when’ is one of the records I am proudest of in my career. Apart from I love the song , again lyrically it just works so well in a club , so simple but every Boy/girl has asked that question- ‘ When will I see you again’? But I suppose Im pleased that it sounds so good on radio the most, the energy and the little musical teases in it are superb.

We spent a lot of time on it as I knew it had to be the first single and it had to be right. So there are countless tracked vocals and lots of swirling synths etc.  The track actually was completely flat sounding for a long time and I couldn’t get the rhythm right until in desperation I put the snare through a 16ths delay !Normally this would cause phase issues but for some reason , maybe analogue modulation , it didn’t and the track just took off like a rocket.

Interestingly I had it mixed by Dave Bascombe AND Mark ’Spike’ Stent, and ended up editing Spikes M8 into Daves version as it just had a little more X factor . Anyway it all worked and was A listed on Radio 1 for 3-4 weeks which really did bring the band back into the public arena and globally as well. Remember I am a huge League fan first and foremost and was thrilled to help them get back to where they deserved to be!

Dave Bascombe; I certainly thought Tell Me When was really strong but it's so difficult to guess these things, they'd been away for a while and it's hard to break back in.

Jez Willis (Remixer); We try and keep the essence of a song when we remix (The Utah Saints Remix), so we did try and keep it close in structure to the original. I had to buy copies of the single when it came out, that was just easier than chasing the record company (and helped chart positions!).

THESE ARE THE DAYS

Ian Stanley; The song is driven by Phil's fabulous bass line so the sound had to be perfect and LOUD ! Phil is a genius with synths so we would tweak it on the system 700 till we were happy. Im afraid I can’t remember the reference but it is very close to the opening track on Marvin Gaye’s Midnight Love. I think the vocals are superb on this track especially the sound of Suzanne and Joanne's blend. And as usual Phil’s lyrics could only be written by him.

There was never an organised way of writing . With ’These are the days’ it falls into the grey area where the production becomes more than producing the demo into an acceptable album track . Through working on the song I added a middle 8 , made some of the chorus 4/4 bars into 3/4 , and extended various sections . I think I persuaded Phil to add some of the answer lines in the choruses to enhance the overall duet feel between Phil and the girls.

It can be tricky sometimes to know where production , arrangement and writing cross over but there certainly was never an issue with the Human League. 

Russell Dennett; I think Jo and Sue sang really well.

ONE MAN IN MY HEART

Ian Stanley; One Man was difficult and took a lot of time to get right. This was mainly because we knew it had to be a single , and ballads are the trickiest to get right for radio etc. The synth motif that holds it together , I think that was done with a gated echo effect  I can’t remember the synth but it does sound like something I would have programmed, I could be wrong.

The hardest thing was getting the rhythm infectious enough which is why its very understated and just hints at 16s , which lets all the melodies and synths have a lot more space .Suzanne did great work on this because it has a large range of notes with a lot of scales being used. My favourite bit is Phil talking , its just classic pop!!

Neil Sutton; It was great having a Top 20 single. Radio 1 and 2 gave it a lot of plays as well as the commercial stations. Even though you have listened to the track a million times whilst it's being recorded and then again after it has been mixed and finally mastered, it was always exciting hearing it on the radio when driving in the car. The djs were very complimentary about it..... thank God.I must admit though, hearing it being played in the background on East Enders and Coronation Street (the 2 biggest soap operas on British TV ) was the biggest buzz!! Sad, but true!!

Oliver Davis (Roland collaborator); That pitch bending bassline and drum programming is just perfect - amazing song too!

WORDS

Ian Stanley; This one was never one of my favourites , so I felt we had to  change it up quite a bit to make it sit right on the album. Thus it’s all about the atmospherics of 100s of different sounds washing in and out. So that combined with a great Phil Oakey vocal makes it hang together quite well. Phil is always so committed when he sings , he sells the song brilliantly.

Also, one of his tricks he uses with his lyrics is in this song, ‘propaganda , Alexandra, memoranda,’ Who else gets away with those sort of rhymes? Still brings a smile to my face!! Also this is a great mix , and Im afraid I can’t remember who did it. I’m pretty sure I referenced a Massive Attack track for the rhythm, again can’t remember which one.

Andy Gray; Words is one of my favourites, I completely reworked that track, its almost 100% Oberhiem Expander. It was very different when I started with drums and a bass line. I changed it into a more spaced out ambient track, still really like the sound of it now. I just remember working on it for ages. Words changed the most, but they all had a lot of changes, arrangements and some killer new top line which Phil played on the 100M.

Russell Dennett; Changed a lot from when it was written. I was living in Spain when it was redone and it’s much better version than the one I did. Phillip was a very fair man with the writing (credits), Ithe track had lyrcis it went on the album, but I wish I had been a little more creative.

FILLING UP WITH HEAVEN

Ian Stanley; I really wanted to make a single out of this as I thought it was A , a great title and B, a great chorus. The demo had a fairly dull verse which basically pedalled forever!. I just wanted it to be full of joy and more expansive. Because we were creating the song in the studio we had to run it live for a long time until we settled on the structure and dynamics etc. So this involved a lot of synths being set up every time we would work on it until we could record it and get the vocals done. 

I absolutely remember the solo because I got a real insight into how Phil works.This was all him and he basically programmed it note by note. So he would program maybe 4 or 5 notes then listen to that and find the next note , put that in ,then listen to it and find the next note until he was happy . We had an argument about one note near the end where he put in a really jarring high note which I couldn’t bear , anyway I won that one .

Neil Sutton; Great pop song that are a bit different in it's approach and arrangement and perhaps my favourite from that album. The problem with those solos are that Philip wrote them by playing parts of it in, and then editing them with the software editor, moving notes around, which is responsible for it sounding so different!! Great pop song that are a bit different in their approach and their arrangements.

Andy Gray; One of my favourite 100M sounds was the trumpet on Filling Up With Heaven, classic. I remember Phil working on it, when he had it nailed we recorded it into Cubase Audio and I made a SampleCell patch as backup.

David Beevers; Great song and great sounds too, love those splashy hihats and Philips system 100 solo. During the recording there was the System 100m running live playing 2 sets of hihats which were being sent trough to the live room and put through a guitar amp then mic’d up. System 700 running sequencers and several of these being split into various effects boxes. Samplers running via Cubase and also other synths being triggered via midi or CV & Gate. Philip sat in a corner programming and playing the synth solo on the system 100. A timecode DAT machine being synched to the computer with vocals on it and Pro-tools audio tracks playing off the computer, and me having to keep it all running and in tune, very, very scary.

HOUSEFULL OF NOTHING

Ian Stanley; Houseful Of Nothing' developed pretty well. I assume Paul Beckett and Phil must have made the demo together. This song changed a lot from demo to finished version and developed pretty well. The rhythm and arrangement and most apparent the tempo were completely re-worked with a new m8 etc . I can’t say for sure but the section (2 third in) does sound like something I would have tried to inject a new dynamic to shift the song up a gear!

I wouldn’t say there was a particular focus on bass sounds , just that obviously when a whole album is made from synthesisers there is a vast scope for possibilities . Also given that it’s important that a Human League track should sound great in clubs , the bass sound is always vital to it sounding great.

Russell Dennett; I love Houseful Of Nothing

JOHN CLEESE: IS HE FUNNY?

Ian Stanley; Phil had this tune pretty much fully formed and I’m not sure the album version is any better than the demo! What was interesting about it is that I thought it should be a b-side but Phil explained the ‘human League ‘ rules .These were that all sounds on an album should come from synthesizers , that Suzanne should always sing a song and that there should always be an instrumental. I’m sure over the years there may have been exceptions but I think it’s a very interesting concept that has its roots in various avant garde musical movements . Giving the band a deeper intellectual depth that many might not be aware of.

Andy Gray; I don’t think I did hardly anything to (the track), apart from thinking the title was brilliant.

NEVER AGAIN

Ian Stanley; It was an old track that had been reworked (for the album). This was fairly straightforward to make in the studio as it just needed editing from the demo and the addition of the girls vocals. In retrospect it is probably a key too high as you can hear how high they have to sing near the end !! We were definitely short of songs so this is why there are 2 ballads but Never Again holds up anyway and deserves a place on the album.

I never met Jo (Callis, co-writer of the song), unfortunately , but I know he was hugely valued in the band and a very talented writer. I’m not sure but I think he wrote mainly on the guitar which when arranged on synths etc usually gives a slightl change as to how the inversions or chord changes work when played on keyboards.

Jo Callis (Co-song writer); It wasn't a redeveloped old song. As I recall, I was in the Human League's studio with Philip on one of my frequent trips down to Sheffield. I'd be knocking up some chord sequences on a synth whilst Phil would probably be tinkering with some complimentary rhythmic parts. most likely on a new bit of kit he'd just bought, and we came up with what sounded like a promising start to a 'balladry' type tune. We likely would have recorded the basics into the studio computer and developed it from there into a seminal backing track, we would have had a few of these basic 'work in progess' backing tracks which we would play to all concerned as they drifted in and out of the studio, to see if they gained approval and might be worthy of developing further for possible inclusion on what would become the 'Octopus' album.

As I recall, Suzanne particularly liked the nascent backing track, and with Joanne and Suzanne generally being 'objective' arbiters of taste this was a good sign as they had a good ear for a tune. So 'Never Again', as the song would ultimately be called, had the official seal of approval! The backing track sat there for a while untilone evening whilst I was staying at Philips in Sheffield he said; "well, I suppose we'd better try writing some words for that song". "A good idea I concurred", as there wasn't much worth watching on the telly that evening, and with us both being tv addicts, what else are we gonna do? - our jobs I guess! So we sat there for a while pens and notebooks in hand scrathing our heads. After a lot of pondering Phil eventually started to come up with a few lines which got the ball rolling, Phil was wuite good at pulling something out of the bag when the preassure was on as memory serves he pretty much came up with most of the final lyric, I probably would have flung in the odd line here and there, but by the nights end the lyric were as good as done. The rest was hardly history but the song went on to be recorded, appearing on 'Octopus'.

Much Of The Original programming from the writng stage would probably have been retained a the song morphed from original demo idea to finished product, as tended to be the way with digitally recorded music. I can't remember that much about the overall process, but I would have been there in stops and starts (with Oakey) and Ian Stanley, the eventual producer of 'Octopus' would have developed the song to completion.

As I hadn't listened to the finished result for years, or perhaps evendecaed, I tried to refresh my memory, by having another listen; So, it's a fair ballad I guess, almost sounding like it could've been a track off 'Hysteria'. I don't think I would have been present at the final stages of production as I'd forgotten about the 'bridge' sections which feature Joanne and Suzanne - and are a highlight of the song I think. Phil's main vocal seems quite 'bare' with little effect on it at all, and there aren't many who could pull that off, but Phil has really good pitching and a distinctive sounding voice so no probs there!

I remember some years back reading somewhere that "Never Again" was a bit of a fan favourite (for them to play) at live shows when The League began touring more extensively - which was nice, but they never seem to have played it at any of their shows I've been to in recent years. Mind you, when I went to see them in Birmingham with my partner just last year (2024) they didn't even include "Human" in their set!

CRUEL YOUNG LOVER

Ian Stanley; One of my favourites. I remember being very adamant that the vocal and thus the song was as hard as it could be, like trying to make a rock song, which as you point out, for the league was a new area. It was tough, but as ever Phil tried his hardest and delivered. The key was tricky to pin down and I think Phil had a cold at the time which helped the rough vocal.

Andy Gray; If I remember right the arpeggiator sound is the Xpander sampled with my SampleCell. I still have the patch, love that line, sounds a bit Orb-y.

Russel Dennett; I want to re work Cruel Young Lover as a country song.