❚ SONGWRITER GARY KEMP recalls the 2009-10 Reformation Tour by his pioneering New Romantic band Spandau Ballet, to be screened as a 2 hours 30 mins broadcast on Sky Arts this weekend:
“ The Reformation Tour was a coming back together I never thought would happen. After years of fighting, this tour taught us that being Spandau Ballet is a thing to be proud of. It turned out to be the best and most successful tour we ever did. If there’s one piece of evidence I’d like to leave for posterity it would be this film. ”
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❚ WHAT’S THE CULTIEST ROLE in all of television, the one that’s just been given to the cultiest madman in all of TV comedy? Yes the new Doctor Who is announced as Peter Capaldi, aka Malcolm Tucker, foul-mouthed spin-doctor from the multi-award-winning political satire, The Thick of It. The part won him the 2010 BAFTA Award for Best Performance in a Comedy Role.
The 55-year-old Scot will be the 12th actor to play the Doctor, a new hero for a new generation. It is not the first time Capaldi has appeared on the show – he played a Roman merchant in the 2008 Doctor Who adventure The Fires of Pompeii.
But few people seem to know how he got his big acting break in Bill Forsyth’s 1983 movie Local Hero. As a student at the Glasgow School of Art, Capaldi had been the vocalist in a post-punk band called The Dreamboys. He also took to stand-up comedy and was invited to support Spandau Ballet on their first UK tour in 1982. The famously anti-rock clubland band did not want the usual rock support act and decided a comedian would add piquancy to the uniqueness of their own approach to new music.
Spandau songwriter Gary Kemp is reluctant to take any credit as talent scout, but it just so happened that he spent quite some time in Scotland that year romantically smitten by Clare Grogan, the cute 20-year-old singer in the Glasgow pop group Altered Images.
Kemp, himself then 22, recalls vaguely how Capaldi came to his attention at the age of 23: “It was through Gerry McElhone who managed Altered Images. Maybe he played me a tape, or something.” Clearly he had other more important things on his mind at the time. Gig archives tell us that in May 1981 The Dreamboys played on the same bill as Altered Images at Edinburgh’s Nite Club, and in September Capaldi gave his stand-up routine, so there’s every chance Kemp met him at the bar.
The point was Grogan had starred in Forsyth’s 1981 cinema smash, Gregory’s Girl, and Spandau’s Diamond tour launched in March 1982 with three dates in Scotland and Capaldi live onstage as the warm-up.
Spandau’s brief tour ended at the Winter Gardens Bournemouth [my pix are previously unpublished] but a year later, when Local Hero was released, Capaldi told me that he got the part only because Bill Forsyth had seen him at the Spandau show in Glasgow. The rest is history: a brilliantly versatile career as an actor of comedy and drama has included a cameo dad in the 2007 series of Skins, and the repressed head of news in last year’s electric BBC series, The Hour.
Steven Moffat, executive producer of Doctor Who, described casting Capaldi as an incendiary combination: “One of the most talented actors of his generation is about to play the best part on television.”
Capaldi said yesterday: “Being asked to play the Doctor is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can’t wait to get started.” Filming begins in the autumn.
The Thick of It writer Armando Ianucci tweeted: “There can’t be a funnier, wiser, more exciting Time Lord than Peter Capaldi. The universe is in great hands.”
❏ PETER CAPALDI DELIVERS Bela Lugosi’s Birthday, the A-side song from the 7-inch single by Scottish rockers, The Dreamboys, on the St Vitus label about 1980 – before Craig Ferguson joined as drummer. YouTuber Ashley Harrison writes: “A little post-punk, goth and power pop, it is reminiscent at times of Bauhaus, Joy Division, Wire, The Fall, The Damned.” Scotland had a fierce underground music scene in the early 80s and I’ve often said a weekend in Glasgow felt as if you were in the trendiest city in the UK, and at least on a par with London.
Capaldi in 1983: introducing Sade’s TV debut on Loose Talk
“ John Wilson talks to leading performers and songwriters about the album that made them or changed them. Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in two episodes, Wilson initially quizzes the artist about the album in question, and then the audience puts the questions.
“ Thirty years ago Spandau Ballet released their third album True. It peaked at number one in UK on May 14 and became a worldwide smash hit featuring tracks such as Gold, Pleasure, Communication and the title track, which spent four weeks at the top of the charts. Singer Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp, the man who wrote all of these songs, both went to the BBC Maida Vale studios last Thursday to discuss their inspiration and influence.
“ Released in 1983, True became one of the stand-out albums of the New Romantic movement. It was recorded at the Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, where producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain gave the band a slicker, more R&B sound aimed at squarely at the charts. The B-side of the programme, where it’s the turn of the audience to ask the questions, can be heard on Tuesday June 25 at 3.30pm. ”
➢ Tony Hadley will release a DVD + CD package titled Live from Metropolis Studios in September, recorded in front of only 100 fans. A deluxe limited edition features pictures and an authentic signed picture for pre-orders before July 26.
❚ YES IT’S 30 YEARS SINCE Spandau Ballet scored their only No 1 chart hit single with True, coinciding with their epic “Spandau Over Britain Tour”. By May 3, True the album reached No 1, while the single remained at No 1 as well. The band’s official website is celebrating with a month of recollections from 1983 and asking UK fans to offer their own memories. Naturally Shapersofthe80s was there on the waterfront and has a few inside stories of its own.
The month-long tour ended in triumph at London’s Royal Festival Hall 30 years ago today, on Friday April 29, because True hit the top spot in the UK singles chart and the night before Spandau topped the bill on Top of the Pops – only two weeks after its release. After the London gig there followed a right old knees-up for friends and family aboard a Thames riverboat. As it cast off Shapersofthe80s was onboard and snapped a True romance as Steve “Spiny” Norman took to the dance floor with bass-player Martin Kemp, while Steve’s mum Sheila tried to muscle in. Here are our snaps, never seen before.
CLICK ANY PIC TO LAUNCH CAROUSEL:
Aboard Spandau’s True riverboat: Steve Norman and Martin Kemp take to the dancefloor, while Sheila Norman asks to join in
Steve and Martin are in heaven… See anybody else you know? Of course: future Spandau biographer Paul Simper in dog-tooth suit from Robot with added Wham!
Steve’s mum Sheila joins the chorus line, and backing singer Sam Brown joins Martin
At last, mother and son get to boogey together
The band’s third album True, produced by Tony Swain and Steve Jolley, had preceded the tour and was to yield several chart hits across the world, Gold among them. The tour moved on to Europe in the summer and to North America in the autumn, when Shapersofthe80s will have some wild eye-witness scenes to report – laters…
➢ Photographer Neil Matthews, another friend of Spandau from their earliest days, has been celebrating with an exhibition of his popstar photos titled My 80s Through the Lens, at The Great British Restaurant, 14 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE. All images can be viewed online and are for sale in limited editions printed on smart archival paper. As well as Spandau, his subjects include Bananarama, Blue Rondo, Bauhaus, Haysi Fantayzee, Malcolm McLaren, The Jam, Nick Heyward, Bow Wow Wow and more.
❚ BEING REVEALED currently on Facebook, two major Spandau Ballet announcements. First the biography of the band, a superior coffee-table photobook, Spandau the True Story, which records the entire career of the Angel Boys from Islingon, penned by their longtime shadow Paul “Scoop” Simper and published by the prestige celebrity publisher Genesis. It features unseen pictures taken not only by clubland mate Graham “Heroes” Smith, but also by Shapersofthe80s – the team who were there from the start of the New Romantic story.
A second announcement tonight heralds the movie Soul Boys of The Western World, a feature-length documentary containing much unseen vintage footage, produced by Grammy Award-winner Scott Millaney who was a founding member of the promo video company MGMM in the 80s just as the British music industry boomed. His company produced over 1,000 pop promos including Video Killed the Radio Star, Vienna, Dancing in the Street and Rio.
“Scoop” Simper, today an executive celebrity writer at The Sun who wrote the film’s treatment, said tonight: “There is wonderful footage of the Spandau mums and dads when they were all still with us. And never-before-seen footage from Los Angeles and Australia when the band were in their pop pomp. All the band have contributed voiceovers.”
Spandau manager Steve Dagger reveals that a case full of early film footage of the band has been discovered recently. This includes offcuts not used in a prominent TV item just before release of the band’s third single Musclebound in March 1981, and aired on the BBC teatime news magazine Nationwide. Just as the phrase New Romantics was coming into wider use by both media and an emerging generation of UK image bands, including Duran Duran, the BBC cameras capture what Dagger calls “priceless cavortings” within Soho’s heaving Beat Route club.
There’s also a whole film sequence in Jon “Mole” Baker’s shop off Carnaby Street, where Spandau members are seen trying on a variety of outfits by the Axiom collective of designers, which were to be shown in a New York runway show two months later, in what became the “First Blitz invasion” of the US, organised by both the band and the former Blitz Kid fashionistas. These Axiom collections received another runway show at Steve Strange’s Club for Heroes in London in the autumn of ’81, by which time the charts were ablaze with new slipstream bands and British street style began to explode.
❏ On tonight’sJonathan Ross Show Gary and Martin Kemp (pictured below) were talking about their new TV series Gangs of Britain, due to air on the Crime & Investigation Network (Sky 553 and Virgin 237) on Sundays from April 21 at 9pm BST. It’s three years since Spandau Ballet played live together so the killer question is whether they might reunite for another tour? Gary told Ross: “I pretty much guarantee we’ll do it again next year.” Martin added: “I hope so. I’ve never laughed as much as that year [on the Reformation Tour]. Just to have that year of getting your best friends back together was so lovely. I would say it was the best year of my life.”
❏ Tomorrow night, if you’re viewing the 1990 British movie The Krays on ITV4 at 9pm BST, Martin and Gary Kemp will be tweeting along with the film. Viewers can take part by using the hashtag #KraysLive while watching the brothers recreating the villainy of the English gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray who led organised crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. ➢ Follow Martin @ Twitter ➢ Follow Gary @ Twitter
EXCLUSIVE PRINTS OF TRUE ARTWORK
❏ New on sale at theSpandau store is a limited edition 20 x 20-inch lithographic print embossed onto the highest quality 270gsm uncoated paper of the True album artwork by Spandau friend David Band, a Scottish artist who also designed sleeves for Altered Images and Aztec Camera and sadly died in Australia in 2011. Reproduced to celebrate Spandau’s 30th anniversary of their No 1 hit, each print is hand-signed (not reproduction signatures) by all members of Spandau Ballet, and hand-numbered by a professional scribe in a run of only 500 prints.
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
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
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ 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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