On a recent episode of his excellent Electronically Yours podcast, Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware singled out Let Me Go as the best Heaven 17 track, and after revisiting it based on that proposition, I wholeheartedly agree.
The lead single from Heaven 17’s second album The Luxury Gap, Let Me Go stalled at #41 and was eclipsed by the massive success of follow-up Temptation. There’s no question that Temptation is a 24-carat solid gold pop classic, but it is Let Me Go which best encapsulates what Heaven 17 are all about.
It effortlessly walks the tightrope between the band’s left-field influences (Kraftwerk, Roxy Music and even Ware & Ian Craig Marsh’s own Mk1 Human League) and their more mainstream pop aspirations.
The first half of the song is Heaven 17 for the purist; the early verses are sparse, almost desolate; Glenn Gregory’s commanding vocals dominate a backing comprising of a robotic frog bassline and a synth motif which sounds like a police siren being fired out of a cannon. The real passion kicks in with the chorus, with Gregory’s almost desperate “And YET!” line boiling the song’s “enough is enough” theme into two words.
The second half of the song takes us into pop territory with a lovely bit of Chic-like guitar, leading into the “bap-a-do-bap” refrain which is simply a work of genius - and all the better for being held back for delayed gratification. Many other acts - probably including Mk 2 Human League - would have used this refrain throughout the track, even opened with it, and one wonders if Let Me Go would have been a bigger hit had Ware, Gregory and Ian Craig Marsh taken that route. But perhaps that’s not a very Heaven 17 thing to do.
Lyrically, the song moves from wistful memories of a love which has fallen away, through to anger then exploration about its loss, and ending with reluctant acceptance, culminating in the heartbreaking “Found guilty of no crime / They were the best years of our lives” couplet. The Kubler-Ross Change Curve in 4 and a half minutes, basically.
In the aforementioned podcast, Ware explained how the band desperately tried to persuade Virgin Records to go with Temptation as the lead single from The Luxury Gap but they were overruled. There is no doubt in mind Temptation would have been a hit whether it went first or second but part of me regrets that, by being first out of the traps, Let Me Go was not given its true moment in the sun.
Written by Gregory/Marsh/Ware
Produced by B.E.F./Greg Walsh
Virgin Records - VS532 / #41, 1982
