Photo: Simon Fowler
Howard Jones burst onto the scene in the early 1980s with a collection of era‑defining synth‑pop hits such as ‘What Is Love’, ‘No One Is To Blame’ and ‘Things Can Only Get Better’. Asked to select a favourite sound, he circles back to the first of these.
“It starts off with a Yamaha DX7 bass sound — a synthesizer that had just come out at the time. I think I’m right in saying that ‘What Is Love?’ was the first hit song that had featured the DX7. I know that other people had used it on ‘B’ sides and things like that, but ‘What Is Love?’ was the first big hit song that actually featured the DX7.
Howard Jones: The DX7 was impossible to program, so I’m not going to say that I used anything except the preset, which is the cardinal sin among synth players.
“The bass sound is such a great, solid bass sound, courtesy of the the DX7. But the DX7 was impossible to program, so I’m not going to say that I used anything except the preset, which is the cardinal sin among synth players. But I didn’t have time to do 10 years’ research to be able to program it. There’s also a brass sound that I used on the DX7 as well, that ‘da da da da da da da da da’ melody. And then there is the arpeggio background figure, which was done on a Roland Juno‑60.
“The drums were done on an E‑mu Drumulator, and we kept the tom sound from that, and then [engineer] Steve Tayler and Rupert [Hine, producer] had an AMS digital delay, and they would trigger a more beefy, substantial snare sound and bass drum sound in the AMS unit. I think they had 16 seconds of sampling back then, as this was the early days of sampling. Then there’s the shakahachi sound, which was done on an Emulator II. The initial brass fanfare pads were a combination of a Juno‑60 and a Roland Jupiter‑8, which obviously were my bespoke sounds for all those things.”
Tales Of The Unexpected
“There’s a little 12‑note melodic sequence that was done on an SCI Pro One. When we get to the mid section, it is really unexpected, as the song goes totally off‑piste, into a really weird area, which is one of my favourite parts of the song. I did that on the Moog Prodigy. They cost 250 quid at the time and I had two of them, one for bass and one for leads. There is also an amazing synth sound, a raucous, crazy synth sound in the middle of that section that I got by using the mod wheel when I paired the two oscillators.
“The hi‑hat part you hear wasn’t programmed. That was Trevor Morais, who owned Farmyard Studios, and put together the two‑bar hi‑hat pattern by sampling it in the AMS. He gave it a bit of a 16th‑note swing, which gave the whole song a really cool groove. It was just a two‑bar loop that repeated, being retriggered all the time. But it’s quite a significant part of the groove of the song. The big vocal sections were multitracked, which we did via a slave reel in order to multitrack all the vocals. And Rupert sang with me too, and it gave another texture to the backing vocals.
“At the Farmyard, they had one of the first SSLs, and ‘What Is Love?’ — and Human’s Lib — was the first thing that Rupert and Steve had actually recorded and mixed on an SSL. They used the built‑in compressor on the SSL, to really give the sounds an extra punch. When I listen back to that record now, and when you hear it on the radio, it just absolutely kicks out. It really is a fantastic‑sounding record and a tribute to Steven and Rupert.”