We interviewed Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for our year end Power Play List magazine. The magazine will be available online next week. Here is an excerpt from that interview done by TheIndustry.biz CEO Kevin Ross
KEVIN ROSS: I’ve always wanted to ask my absolute favorite song. Well, I have several favorite songs by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. But my absolute favorite song is Human.
That is not just a song that is like a huge movie score production. I mean, if The Human League didn’t even sing on it, I would have still loved it. It’s so powerful, it’s some of your absolute best work, in my opinion. What do you think about the song?
JIMMY JAM: It was an interesting experience because there were a lot of shocks. I think on the Human League’s part and really on both of our parts, because that was once again, John McClain, the person that hooked us up with Janet initially.
And Human League was making a record and the record that they were trying to make, basically they were trying to make a Jam and Lewis record. And John McClain said, well, if you’re trying to make a Jam and Lewis record, why don’t you just get Jam and Lewis to do it? And so he was the one that put us together and they were from Sheffield, England.
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jimmy: So they came to Minneapolis in the middle of the winter and cold weather which was a shock. But then it was just kind of a lot of culture shock or whatever you want to call it.
It was interesting, but they were good and we enjoyed it but when it came to Human, it was interesting because we had done the track. Terry did the amazing vocal with Phil Oakey, who was the lead singer. And the whole thing, if you knew any of The Human League music before Human, it was very robotic, right? Like “Don’t You Want Me,” which was a big hit.
Kevin: It was a very New Wave
Jimmy: And the whole idea was to do something that sounded human-like, you know, with some soul to it.
And I remember Terry worked on that lead vocal for probably a week, every day he just was in there, grinding, grinding, grinding, he finally played the lead vocal, it sounded great. So then Terry did the backgrounds, you know the part Ooooooooh huuuuuuuuuuman, that’s Terry doing that.
Kevin: Oh wow. Okay.
Jimmy: Mr. Background. But then we had a girl named Lisa Keith, people may know from this song “Making Love In The Rain.’ She’s the lead singer on that and
