JOANNE CATHERALL Vocalist with The Human League
The image people remember is of you standing at the side of the road in your fur coat in the 'Don't You Want Me' video
Yeah, that scene was shot in the middle of the night. I was standing in mud and it was freezing cold, so it wasn't a very pleasant experience. We'd done a video for a previous single, Open Your Heart. But there weren't too many places other than Saturday morning kids' shows to get it shown. With Don't You Want Me, we were very fortunate because MTV had just started and we had a really great video. That was definitely one of our lucky breaks.
Of course, you weren't actually working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. You were only 18 years old
That's right. Phil [Oakley] had to visit my mum and dad to convince them to allow me go on tour in Germany. Then my parents had to go and see the head teacher in my school. I think everyone assumed that it would be a one-off. The school eventually decided it would be a worthwhile cultural experience, which is one way of looking at it!
You then did a single about the civil war in Lebanon
That song [The Lebanon] wasn't so much about the situation there - it was more about ordinary people caught up in conflict.
Still, it's hard to imagine today Lil' Wayne rapping about the conflict in Georgia or, you know, Girls Aloud tackling the unrest in Waziristan
It's true that other artists do tend to avoid those kinds of subjects. And they're probably right, too - we were voted Worst Lyric Ever for that song! (laughs)
You were far from a one-hit wonder band though. Five years later, you sang the lead vocal on 'Human', which went to number one in America
Yeah, that was a weird one. You'd think we would have been jumping up and down saying "Yippee!", but when we got the phone call, we were all just sort of miserable.
Why?
I don't know. We'd just cracked the biggest market in the world. I suppose, at the back of our minds, we were wondering where we could go from there. So we sank into a kind of depression. But the great thing is that there are three of us in the band. So even if two are down, the other one will rally the troops. It doesn't happen so much anymore now. We've found our niche.
Is performing on the 1980s nostalgia circuit something you're comfortable with?
Well, we don't see ourselves as part of an "1980s revival" because we never stopped touring. We prefer to see ourselves as just the old fogies of pop music! But you know, you have 1970s and 1980s revival nights in pubs and clubs where you go along and think, "Oh yeah, I remember that song!" But, actually, a lot of it is total rubbish.
Even the idea of a decade as a marketable commodity is rather odd, isn't it?
Of course, because things just get lumped together!
Do you think that, in 20 years time, people will be reminiscing about iPods, reality TV and Osama Bin Laden as though they were almost interchangeable commodities?
Ha ha . . . Yes, that seems to be the way it works alright.
Do you enjoy playing live? Do you enjoy playing 'Don't You Want Me' after 28 years?
Yes, of course. When we do a show, people are there because they want to see you. They've bought the tickets and they're out to have a good time. And, of course, we enjoy playing that song because, wherever we go in the world, all we have to do is play the first two notes and the whole place is guaranteed to go insane!
Interview: Eoin Butler