The Extraordinary Human League of Ladies and Gentleman

Gigwise's Zoë Street talks to Susan Sulley of  The Human League about their recent return to the music industry.

G:  The hordes loved you at the recent V Festival, how  was it for you guys?

S: Fantastic! We were more nervous than we’ve ever been, we thought it’d be a disaster, that we wouldn’t fit in, but I can’t tell you… I cried when I came off stage, I was so relieved that it had gone down well. It was fabulous. It was probably the first proper festival in this country that we’ve ever done, and it  all went so well we couldn’t quite believe it!

G: You’re also working towards your UK tour coming up in November/December. As well as all the favourites in your back catalogue, what else can we expect from the forthcoming show?

S: We’ll do some of the old stuff from Travelogue and Reproduction that me and Joanne weren’t involved in, that Philip will do on his own, and album tracks that maybe people haven’t heard, but there will still be most of the old favourites in there. It’s very difficult because if we just do the hits, that’s an hour, so we have to leave things out. You’ll always leave out somebody’s favourite, but there’s not much we can do about that, otherwise we’d be boring them to death for two hours, and we don’t want that!

G: Lots of people saw you on the 80’s nostalgia Here and Now tour. What was that like to work on?

S: It was alright! We do these things because they come up and the opportunity is too good to miss, but we prefer to play on our own. You can’t give people a proper stage set, the time doesn’t allow it. Everyone’s always really nice though, so they’re quite enjoyable.

G: Not something you’d consider again in the future then?

S: We’ll consider anything, if it looks worth doing then we’ll do it…we’re not very good planners, things sort of come up and we say , ‘Oh alright, we’ll do that then!’. Like about three weeks ago we went to South Africa for a week, and that literally came up at the last minute. We’d never been to South Africa, so we couldn’t turn it down!

G: Looking back to the album ‘Octopus’, there’s quite a left wing political voice coming through on some of the tracks in response to Thatcherism and the issues that were going on then. What’s the band’s stance now, in light of the current political climate?

S: I don’t think we’re in pop music to voice anything politically anymore. We all have our different views. But I think that the most political song we ever wrote was ‘The Lebanon’, which was just talking about the ordinary people, little Joe Bloggs down the street who runs a shop, and gets shot at, but doesn’t really know why it’s going on.

G: What’s on the horizon for The Human League? Any new releases on the cards?

S: I’d like to think that we’d do some more recording, we have the means - we have our own studio in Sheffield, but like I say, we’re not very good at planning! Christmas will come along, we’ll do the tour at the end of the year, and see what the new year brings!