From the Human League split of 1980, Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware formed a company called the British Electric Foundation, and the commercial arm of this became Heaven 17, (the name taken from the film A Clockwork Orange) with Glenn Gregory on vocals.
"The band's politically charged first single, '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,' spurred interest for it's first album, 1981's Penthouse and Pavement. Despite being named Record of the Year by the British music magazine Melody Maker, the LP stiffed."
1983's The Luxury Gap gave us the great singles "Who'll Stop The Rain," "Let Me Go," and "Temptation."
April 2005 saw "the release of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart,' the stunning new single from Honeyroot. A re-working of Joy Division's seminal 1980 track, this is widely regarded as one of the most moving songs ever penned. It was in fact written just two months before the tragic suicide of Joy Division's vocalist Ian Curtis, the song exposing his own desperate torment."
Honeyroot, former Heaven 17 front man Glenn Gregory and Keith Lowndes, "made a brave decision to cover such a timeless classic but their stripped down version, featuring Glenn's haunting vocals, became one of the most anticipated releases of 2005. Receiving it's first radio airplay a week before Christmas (2004) 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' prompted remarks like 'Breathtaking' (Janice Long, BBC Radio 2) and 'Jawdropping' (Eddy Temple-Morris, XFM and currently at the top of Eddy's Top 5) and received strong support from die-hard Joy Division fans across the UK."
Material courtesy: lexiconmagazine.com, heaven17.de, and vh1.com
Photo courtesy: lexiconmagazine.com
