❚ ON THIS DAY IN 1980 Spandau Ballet, the houseband of the Blitz club, saw their first single To Cut a Long Story Short reach its highest chart position, No 5 in the UK. Crucially, its nine-week stay in the top 40 guaranteed weekly exposure on Top Of The Pops, the UK’s leading TV show for music, which pulled 15m viewers in those days (among the week’s highest audiences) when the No 1 single typically sold 150,000 vinyl records per week.
Ahead of Spandau this week were Madness, The Boomtown Rats, Blondie and, at No 1, Abba with Super Trouper. Below them making waves for the new British pop were Eddy Grant, David Bowie, Roxy Music, OMD, Adam & the Ants, Kate Bush and The Clash. In the next four years, 54 new image bands and acts from UK clubland would flood the charts with a new British sound, plus 34 others from the clubbing slipstream. The Swinging 80s were about to crank themselves into gear.
Representing yesterday’s men in that week’s top 40 were Rod Stewart, Queen, Status Quo and Robert Palmer. From the 80s onward, rock was no longer to be the dominant form of music and the rhythm of the charts changed for ever to the bass and the drum. The giant tragedy that loomed over this week, however, was the shooting dead of ex-Beatle John Lennon. He was in the charts singing Starting Over.
The Band Aid band, Nov 25, 1984: most of the pop stars who performed, plus artist Peter Blake who created the record sleeve for Do They Know It’s Christmas?
◼︎ TODAY WAS THE DAY IN 1984 THEY RECORDED the song that became, for 13 years, the biggest selling UK single of all time. Do They Know It’s Christmas was released four days later, stayed at No 1 for five weeks, sold over three million copies and raised significant funds for famine relief in Africa. The project lead naturally the next year to Live Aid, the biggest globally televised rock concerts ever, viewed by two billion people in 60 countries, who coughed up still more dollars. It is estimated that Live Aid raised £150m (about $283m). Last year a poll of 5,000 people, who were surveyed across Europe, named Live Aid as the most important music event of the past 30 years. The hit single sold for £1.35, of which 96 pence went to the fund. Rerecordings of the song charted again in 1985 and 1989.
The idea for Band Aid was proposed by one man, Bob Geldof, since granted an honorary knighthood but in 1984 a musician down on his luck, who enlisted the much more successful go-getter, Ultravox’s Midge Ure (who remains unknighted for no good reason), to bring the dream to fruition as its producer. They created a megagroup from 45 of the biggest hitters in British music, who included the supergroups dominating world charts at the time — Culture Club, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Wham! — plus AOR giants Sting, Genesis and U2, plus Kool and the Gang from the States. In a sea of mullets and bleached highlights, rival musicians united under the name Band Aid in a daring act of charity that was unprecedented in the competitive commercial arena.
The enterprise marked the end of an era, as this website documents. The Band Aid collaboration signalled the final chapter of the innovation which Shapersofthe80s believes defined the Swinging 80s as six dynamic years of subcultural initiative between 1978 and 1984. Britain’s visual kaleidoscope of cults was exactly what fed MTV from its launch in 1982 and loosened the stranglehold that music radio had previously enjoyed in the USA. The unlikely Band Aid scrum of Britain’s rival image bands who had risen on the same new wave substantially defined a new show-business elite who had come to epitomise mainstream tastes.
Michael Buerk in his BBC report from Ethiopia
Nobody can doubt the uniqueness of the pop fraternity’s gasp of altruism through Band Aid. Geldof had been genuinely distressed by the now landmark teatime TV report broadcast on October 23, 1984, by Michael Buerk, a popular BBC journalist. It still makes for grim viewing. In Ethiopia 7m people were threatened by famine, and 40,000 refugees had converged on the town of Korem in the hope of finding food and medical aid.
The film footage shocked the world and Buerk’s opening words still resonate today: “Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a Biblical famine, now, in the 20th century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth…”
CONTRARY VERDICTS ON BAND AID
Morrissey, 1985 — “I’m not afraid to say that I think Band Aid was diabolical. Or to say that I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I’ll say it as loud as anyone wants me to. In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it’s another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. And it wasn’t done shyly, it was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.”
The World Development Movement described the Band Aid lyrics in 2004 as “patronising, false and out of date” and regretted it did not “provide a more accurate reflection of Africa and its problems”.
❏ IN THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, Ultravox’s Midge Ure and Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp provide entertaining and detailed accounts of the Band Aid venture, spiced with the frankness that comes from hindsight . . .
❚ HIT ACT, HOT VIDS SHOT BY YOURS TRULY. Here’s the first public sighting of livepop band of the moment Paradise Point, in concert on Friday at Steve Strange’s club-night in Soho. Those crazy Neo Romantics were larging it at The Face, along with a bunch of proud parents from the previous showbiz generation. These concert vids capture two of PP’s four debut singles, Run in Circles, and Tears, all tracks downloadable at their MySpace page. Aren’t the kids doing well!
“…The singer swivels 90 degrees, one hand grips his thigh, his legs are a-tremble, his arms stretch to there measuring the extent of his despair, his entire body emotes its socks off. He’s intense, handsome and fit, as his gymnastics confirm. He is the vocal storm at the centre of a pool-table-sized stage at the club Punk in central London, and the energy beaming off it is fierce…”
“… PP’s music is the magnet and their lyrics are your reward. Wait till you get home and play the band’s downloads and pay attention to the words. They prick the teen heart and they pull at everyone’s. These lyrics share some of the emotional intelligence of Morrissey & Marr, who can reduce you to jelly in a phrase, yet PP avoid the confessional mode and so spare us the Mancunian melancholy.”
Paradise Point in rehearsal, above: Roman, Johnnie, Cameron, Adam
❚ “I’M THRILLED FOR ROMAN’S BAND. It’s one of the most exciting bands I’ve heard for a while. They’ve been rehearsing downstairs in my games room for the past year and they’ve turned out really well. Their sound reminds me a lot of Duran Duran, but the singer Cameron looks like Tony Hadley when he was younger and he’s got the vibe of Tony. He’s got a great voice, very expressive — he’s got a long way to go this boy.”
OK, if that sounds like a doting father, yes it is. Martin Kemp is best known as one of British TV’s most popular actors after his stint as a villain in the leading soap, EastEnders, but the past year of course was spent touring as bass player with Spandau Ballet, his reformed 80s supergroup.
This Friday, the fourpiece called Paradise Point is unveiled at London’s coolest club-night, The Face, and Martin’s 17-year-old son Roman Kemp follows his father by opting to play bass. This group’s claim to novelty is that they all play their instruments live and their music is pop. They are the vanguard for a return to real Brit pop.
Martin says: “I’m just pleased for Roman that he’s in a proper band, rather than a boyband where five people stand up singing while working out when they’re going to sit on the stools. His band is very polished. If I think of the level Spandau had reached at their age, they’re well ahead of us, much more polished than Spandau were then.
“They look fantastic as well. It’s a band that’s made for girls to pin on their walls, which we haven’t had for a long time. That’s what needs to come around again.
“The whole thing of saying ‘Let’s be famous’ before you have a reason to be famous has meant being in a boyband is much easier than putting in the time and effort, learning to play your instrument, then finding mates who can play bass and the drums, bringing round the gear. That whole thing is a slog. But what you get out of that setup is a bonding experience with your band, which you’ve all been through. And that has disappeared at the moment. For me, it’s nice to see Roman inside a band where he’s got some real mates.”
Paradise Point are determined to return credibility to teen pop music by playing their own instruments live onstage. They offer a determined farewell to the X-culture inflicted on the singles charts by Simon Cowell and his cloned songbirds. PP have had enough of manufactured pop idols and prancing boybands
Spandau Ballet had already broken up by the time Roman was born but with a pop-star mother too — Shirlie Holliman from Wham! — there was always music in the house. Martin says: “I taught him to play guitar when he was about six, then he got into rap for a while. Like all kids, this killed learning any kind of instrument, because they’re into the gangsta rap words.
“Then he picked up his guitar again and now he’s playing bass. He’s doing all right. He’s got a much better ear than I have, it’s brilliant. To tell you truth, when I was going back on tour with Spandau, after 19 years out, I couldn’t work out how I used to do some of the riffs. So I got Roman down to listen to the Spandau track to work out the fingering.
“He’s turning into a good bass player, a lot like John Taylor. Yes, from Duran! I don’t mind who he wants to turn into. If your kids go into the entertainment business, success isn’t about how much money you make — it’s about turning your hobby into your job. For me, that is success. If he can do that fantastic.”
So, Martin, are you coming down to The Face to see Paradise Point? “Absolutely. I’ll be roadying. Back to my original job with Spandau.”
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MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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