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Philip Oakey, vocals, songwriter
I had meant to recruit only one feminine backing singer however once I walked into the Loopy Daisy nightclub in Sheffield, the very first thing I noticed was Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley dancing. They in some way appeared like a unit whereas being clearly completely different people. I knew they had been proper.
The band began work on what turned the Dare album. Our music was so easy: we’d all snicker when Adrian Wright moved only one finger on the synthesiser and it sounded nice. We primarily wrote the songs in a horrible disused vets in Sheffield. Ian Burden, our keyboard participant, wrote our first two hits, Love Motion and The Sound of the Crowd. Don’t You Need Me began off as a vocal melody from Adrian. Jo Callis, our different synth participant, funked it up but it surely didn’t have a refrain. Once we had been recording at Genetic studios in Studying, producer Martin Rushent instructed me to enter one other room. “Don’t come out till you’ve bought a refrain.” Two hours later I got here out with: “Don’t you need me, child.”
The primary verse got here kind of wholesale from a photograph romance journal I used to be studying. The primary line was: “You had been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.” Our former member Martyn Ware’s girlfriend labored in Sheffield’s solely cocktail joint, Sinatra’s Type Bar, so perhaps cocktail bars had been on my thoughts. I believed pubs and pickled eggs had been the work of the satan, however cocktail bars appeared glamorous.
I recorded the vocals in the bathroom. David Allen, the engineer, flushed the toilet behind me. We left that off the file. We’d been doing exhibits with left-field bands similar to Gang of 4 and Pleasure Division, so I believed Don’t You Need Me was too easy. When it turned the Christmas No 1, it felt weirdly hole. I believed: “How on earth are we ever gonna beat this?” However the tune has given us 40 years of world success. I had at all times assumed that I’d find yourself carrying my belongings by way of Sheffield in a service bag with folks saying: “That man thought he was good in 1980.”
Susan Ann Sulley, vocals
When Philip came to visit to ask if we’d wish to audition, we instructed him we had been doing our A-levels so must ask our dads. My dad thought it might be intercourse, medicine and rock’n’roll, and each units of oldsters refused, however we secretly auditioned anyway after which organized for Philip to come back over to satisfy our dad and mom, however didn’t inform them he was coming till the final minute. He turned up totally made up with pink lipstick and excessive heels, however very businesslike. My dad locked himself within the bed room and refused to come back out. Years later I discovered that my grandma instructed him: “When you don’t go downstairs and provides your daughter this opportunity, she’s going to by no means forgive you.” And my dad then bundled us over to Joanne’s to steer her father.
Weirdly, Joanne and I had purchased tickets to see the Human League in Doncaster, which turned out to be our first present with the band. We had been used to posing on the dancefloor, so simply added a little bit of singing. We went on tour in a white Transit van, so it wasn’t very glamorous, however I bear in mind staring on the cathedral in Cologne and considering: “I can’t consider I’m right here.” Earlier than we knew it, we had been in an enormous studio recording Don’t You Need Me. I laid down the feminine vocal half in the midst of the evening.
The video was a tackle The French Lieutenant’s Girl, which was a movie about making a movie. Duran Duran had shot their Rio video on a yacht within the Indian Ocean – we bought a humid night in Slough. Jo was speculated to be driving a Rover however he couldn’t drive, so he pretended to steer whereas folks behind him had been pushing it.
When the tune went to the highest of the charts in Britain and the US, I believed: “This doesn’t occur to schoolgirls from Sheffield.” If we had anticipated it might be the Christmas No 1, we would have put bells on. Once I hear it on the radio immediately, I nonetheless want I’d sung it higher, however I used to be an odd lady doing her greatest and I feel that resonated. I’ve spent 40 years telling folks I by no means labored in a cocktail bar.
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