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Perth MusicHuman Nature Interview
The guys from Human Nature have been together for 18 years and sold over 1.7 million albums. The last two albums that Toby Allen, Phil Burton, Andrew Tierney and Michael Tierney released were the extremely successful Motown influenced albums Reach Out and Dancing in the Street. To round out and conclude the Motown trilogy Human Nature have just released Get Ready which is not only influenced by Motown but has special appearances by Motown greats Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and The Supremes’ Mary Wilson. Phil Burton caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.
Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (10:03 - 1.1Mb)
“When it came time to record this third one we actually thought to ourselves that we aren’t going to do a third one unless there is a special element to it. We did the first two, and they were great, but we just figured that we didn’t really want to just do the same thing again. So we thought the best way to do it would be to get some sort of original superstars on there and we basically just got in touch with them (Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and Mary Wilson). They had heard the first two records and they were really impressed with what we had done on those and they were all really happy to be a part of it. It was fantastic. We found out that when they were recording their bits, they were all sorta doing it within a week to a week and a half of each other, so we jumped on a plane and went over to The States and visited them all. It was fate I guess.” Phil explained about how Get Ready came about.
The first Human Nature Motown album, Reach Out, was released in November 2005, has gone 5 times platinum and won the group their first ARIA award after being previously nominated 17 times without success. The second Motown album, Dancing in the Street, debuted at number 1 on the ARIA Chart and has gone 3 times platinum. I asked Phil if a trilogy of Motown albums was always the plan. Phil answered “Actually no. Originally it was just one but when we recorded that first one there were so many songs that we actually had to leave off it because, let’s face it, Motown’s got a massive amount of hits. We thought ‘Wouldn’t it be great if this one did really well and we got the chance to do a second one.’ And we did get the chance to do a second one and from there it was just a natural progression to finish it off and make it a nice trilogy and finish it off in a big way.”
Smokey Robinson is a legend of Motown and not only did he give complete support to Human Nature in the creation of Get Ready but he also came out to Australia to help them launch the album. Phil says “The week that Smokey spent with us we were in a hotel in Sydney swapping between interviews and we had been singing one of his songs ‘Ooh Baby Baby’ in the interviews because he actually thought it was the best version of the song he had ever heard. We were between two interviews and just standing in the corridor and we just started singing ‘The Way You Do The Things You Do’ which he wrote for The Temptations. And all these people started popping their heads into the corridor going ‘Oh my god! Human Nature and Smokey Robinson are just singing in the corridor!’ It was something you’re just not going to forget.”
Get Ready is out now.
