Number One Albums: #2

• HOWARD JONES Human’s Lib (WEA)
• Week Ending March 17th (for 10 weeks)
• Week Ending June 23rd (for 2 weeks)
• Total Weeks On The Top 30 – 40

Well, here we are once more.

(Chorus of “Oh No!” from the stalls).

Yep, it’s that man again with that album again. What more can I possibly find to say about Howard Jones and Human’s Lib? Previously, we covered the album as part of my Top 100 Albums Of All-Time, plus individual write-ups for the singles which topped my chart (What Is Love?, Hide & Seek and Pearl In The Shell). On top of that, I kicked off the popular Fantasy Deluxe series with a 4-disc take on the album.

Let’s rewind to March 1984, and the week of its release. I’d got into the album-buying swing of things with Into The Gap, and enjoyed everything about it, but the prospect of a whole album from the artist I was really, properly obsessed with, was something else completely. The excitement!

Then, somehow I got wind of an in-store signing at the then-“flagship” HMV in Oxford Street. The one with endless steep staircases. Not sure where I read or heard about it, there’s nothing in the Smash Hits or No.1 Magazines of the period, but nevertheless I simply HAD to be there. Howard Jones, in the flesh, signing this album I’d not even heard yet. The excitement!

HMV Oxford Street, sometime in the mid-1980s.

Come the day, I arranged for Mum and Dad to pick me up after school instead of coming home on the bus, and we set off by Tube to London. I’d already been to the multi-storey music store in the past, owing to my Dad’s passion for classical music, but that was pre-1983 and I hadn’t taken much notice (I have memories of Queen’s Hot Space album cover everywhere at the front, so I’m guessing it was mid-1982).

Unfortunately, upon arrival there was no sign of a signing about to take place. Enquiries revealed that the event had been cancelled. HoJo was a No Show. The disappointment!

I still bought a copy of the album that evening, regardless. I wasn’t going to deprive myself of that, especially after such an effort to get there. As soon as I was back home, I put it on and the opening bars of Conditioning had me hooked; to my delight (and relief) the entire record was fantastic. Obviously I would eventually discover that not all albums were as flawless as the first two I had chosen to purchase!

Human’s Lib unsurprisingly topped my album chart for that week, with Thompson Twins down to #2 and Simple Minds holding steady at #3 after someone at school had kindly lent me the LP to listen to overnight and I became transfixed by Side One’s brilliance.

Since the previous featured chart, a few notable new entries had appeared…..albums from Queen, The Smiths, Nik Kershaw and Madness, and they were still in my Top 10 (even though I’d not actually heard anything on them except the hits). But looking back, what a selection that is. Those are all albums I still regularly listen to.

It would be late May before anything could topple the mighty Human’s Lib, and it returned to the top in June after Pearl In The Shell‘s release as its fourth and final single.

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