Phil Oakey
From March 2021
A strong contender for Worst Film Ever is the 1984 romantic comedy Electric Dreams.
Like Lasse Hallström's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012), I've not seen it but the plot suggests a film that might not be worth watching from the comfort of your sofa let alone one for which a trip to the cinema is required (and my nearest cinema is a little over 300 metres away). A love triangle between a man, a woman and ... a personal computer. It doesn't sound too bad, I mean in the context of a fictional narrative it doesn't sound too bad and I can sort of imagine it working today with the advances of artificial intelligence (Spike Jones made a good stab at this in 2013 with Her).
But in 1984 I was studying computer science at Heriot-Watt University. The computers were huge and immoveable. You had to book a timeslot to use one and output was delivered to you 24 hours later on green & white stripey paper having been couriered from the huge and immoveable printer situated at an out of town location. That's no way to conduct an affair of the heart.
The film's saving grace is a cracking theme song, Together In Electric Dreams written and performed by Italian disco giant Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey out of the Human League. By this time the Human League had enjoyed phenomenal success with their third album Dare which spawned four singles including the million seller Don't You Want Me. Much as I love the song - all 3'53" of its electronic dreaminess - at the time I thought the Moroder / Oakey an odd combination.
The BBC Four documentary Synth Britannia charts the evolution of electronic music from the late 1970s onwards, how bands like New Order, OMD and Soft Cell emerged from the ashes of punk. It's fascinating and there is some amazing archive footage of Depeche Mode - who now regularly play stadiums - playing in a tiny disco in their hometown of Basildon. Almost without exception everyone involved quotes German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk as an influence.
The Human League are there too but Phil Oakey's take is different: he acknowledges Kraftwerk in as much other people said to him "you sound like Kraftwerk" but explains that they always wanted to be a pop band. The musical style of Giorgio Moroder - who at the time the Human League formed, had recently recorded the sublime I Feel Love with Donna Summer - was what they were aiming for.
This was when the Human League were knocking out stuff like Life Kills, Circus of Death and Blind Youth ("Dehumanisation is such a big word / It's been around since Richard III"), long before Phil met Joanne and Susan in a cocktail bar and turned them into something new. It was hardly I Feel Love but a comparison to Kraftwerk was wide of the mark too. Both bands used synthesisers but that's a bit like saying portraits by Rembrandt and Picasso are the same because they both used paint.
The fact that I now know that Oakey wrote the lyrics on the back of a fag packet in a taxi on the way to the recording studio doesn't diminish the song’s greatness. Every time I hear Together In Electric Dreams – it was on the radio a couple of days ago - I think about that interview with Phil Oakey. He wanted to sound like Giorgio Moroder; and he ended up recording with him. As an accountant it's hard to for me to get to grips with that concept. I mean, I've worked with the greats - Fiona Greig, Jude Cook, Jim Keough - but being an artist and working with those that you respect and have influenced you? That must be a very special feeling.
We'll always be together
However far it seems
We'll always be together
Together in Electric Dreams