Tag Archives: Martin Kemp

1983 ➤ A True romance aboard Spandau’s triumphal Thames riverboat

Posted on 29 Apr 2023 | 1 comment

Spandau over Bournemouth, 1 April 1983: Gary Kemp teases the screamers at the Good Friday show in the Pavilion Theatre. © Shapersofthe80s

40
YEARS
ON

❚ YES IT’S 30 40 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
AND NAME THE FACES:

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…

➢ May 1 update: all five members of Spandau Ballet have agreed to an individual ‘TRUE’ Twitter Q&A session with fans, according to the official Spandau website – Q&A sessions start at 8pm (BST) on the official Spandau Twitter account, not their personal accounts, as follows: Gary May 3, Martin May 6, John May 7, Steve May 9, Tony tbc.

➢ 30th anniversary interview with Gary Kemp
at UK Official Charts website

The Observer Music Monthly Oct 4, 2009

HOW IT ALL BEGAN FOR
THE ANGEL BOYS

➢ Read the story of Spandau Ballet,
the Blitz Kids and the birth of the New Romantics
in my feature at The Observer

➢ 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.

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Posted in Clubbing, London, Pop music

Tagged Blitz Kids, Gary Kemp, George Michael, Interview, Martin Kemp, Neil Matthews, New Romantics, photography, Spandau Ballet, Steve Norman, Twitter, UK tour

2023➤ Kemp Bros keep tongues firmly in their cheeks

Posted on 24 Feb 2023 | Leave a comment

Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, comedy, documentary, pop music, television, biopic, Spandau Ballet,

Who Do They Think They Are? Their spoof TV doc traces the Kemp Brothers’ origins back to the inventor of the clothes peg

❚ THREE YEARS AGO the critics divided over a TV “mockumentary” about Spandau Ballet’s Kemp brothers, which Martin summed up as “French and Saunders do Gary and Martin Kemp”. Gary added: “Our traits, but highlighted”. The unexpectedly oddball hour is being repeated on BBC2 tonight.

Their contemporary, Eighties musician Andy Polaris, declared himself a bit of a fan in his own review:

“ The Kemps All True is a surprisingly deft spoof documentary based on the Spandau Ballet stars’ ill-fated revamp revolving solely around the two charismatic brothers. Chock-full of well-known British cameos (Christopher Eccleston, Daniel Mays, Anna Maxwell Martin), it follows their attempted relaunch including a guest star covers album where ‘Sia’ and the gruff-voiced ‘Rag and Bone Guy’ both murder True, a song they had reserved for a popular girl band.

Exclusive preview of new album cover (BBC)

“ Interwoven are real clips from the band’s history leading up to the current 40th anniversary where they are rudderless and searching for new streams of income including an unappealing-sounding meat replacement vegan product called Wonge and a charitable retirement project. The hour whizzes by due to a cavalcade of witty observations about vintage pop stars (ie, playing private parties for oligarchs for considerable financial rewards and celebrity endorsements for dodgy products), piercing their Photoshop vanity and pretentious public images… ” ➢ Continued at Apolarisview.com

Shapersofthe80s published another candid appreciation of the Kemps’ venture into comic territory, which was conceived by its director and writer Rhys Thomas, here:
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: Knife-edge TV doc shows Kemp tongues firmly in their cheeks

Followed up almost inevitably by Spandau’s former vocalist Tony Hadley telling The Sun: “I wasn’t approached and would not have anything to do with it. I’m done. They want me back for good but it ain’t going to happen. I’d rather be happy on my own than be in that band again.”
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: Vocalist Hadley hammers final nail into the coffin of Spandau Ballet

Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, Rhys Thomas, BBC2, documentary,

Preview of Gary Kemp’s latest work as a portrait painter (BBC)

➢ Click for the quite funny Kemp Bros trailer

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2022 ➤ Martin Kemp on a life full of love but lacking two vital apologies

Posted on 7 Nov 2022 | Leave a comment

Martin Kemp, Spandau Ballet, Los Angeles, pop music, live concerts,

Golden years: Martin Kemp escaping fans after Spandau Ballet played at The Palace, Los Angeles, in 1983

❚ MARTIN IS THE YOUNGER BROTHER of the two Kemps, the good-looking one with the easy charm that has opened doors into a television career that included EastEnders. Gary is the older one with such a strong sense of self that as recently as 2017 it wrecked the last of several reunions for Spandau Ballet, by shedding their talented and popular singer Tony Hadley who now thrives with his own band. In 1978 Gary had invited Martin to learn to play bass then join his former school band the Makers 18 months before it was renamed Spandau Ballet and went on to international success.

Today The Guardian interviews Martin Kemp aged 61 about his third book, Ticket to the World: My 80s Story (HarperCollins £11), which sounds more cosy than you might expect following Kemp’s distressing surgery to remove two brain tumours during the 1990s. He can’t stop telling us how much he loves everybody in his life, even after fist fights with Gary. What does he have to say about why Tony Hadley left the band in 2017, after several previous break-ups? ➢ The interviewer Paula Cocozza reports:

“ “It’s something that I’d never spoken to him about. But I do feel guilty when I look back.” In the book, Kemp stops short of an apology. “Oh, listen,” he says immediately. “I would apologise to Tony, absolutely, for the way that he was treated. I think it was really poor.”

Why doesn’t he pick up the phone and say all this to Hadley? He really sounds as if he wants to. But he says: “I haven’t spoken to Tony for ages. I reach out to him, but I rarely hear back. I send little messages” – he mimes texting – “if I get two words back, I’m happy.

“Tony is lovely,” he says. “He is a lovely man. I will always, always love him, in the same way I love all the rest of the band. But you drift apart, don’t you?” ”

Nowhere in the interview does the name of Ross William Wild get mentioned, the singer who succeeded Hadley during 2018 following Martin Kemp’s recommendation, and was silently dumped after a trial series of concerts and subsequently contemplated suicide. When might he, too, expect an apology from the band who blanked him?

Spandau Ballet, Ross William Wild, Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Steve Norman, pop music,

October 2018: What proved to be vocalist Ross William Wild’s last outing with Spandau Ballet at the Hammersmith Apollo

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s: 2020, Singer Ross reveals how Spandau drove him to try ending it all

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2021 ➤ Spandau’s Gary Kemp goes solo with a love song for the Radio 2 audience

Posted on 7 Apr 2021 | 2 comments

InSolo, Ahead Of The Game, Gary Kemp, solo, Spandau Ballet, pop music,

Gary Kemp at 61: new suit too on his taster for the solo single

“Don’t you love it when your heart isn’t making sense?
Running on the power of innocence…”

❚ TODAY WE GOT TO HEAR Ahead Of The Game, the new single from singer-songwriter Gary Kemp who goes solo more than two years after his pioneering 80s band Spandau Ballet last performed live. At the age of 61, Kemp describes the song as a love-song for his wife, inspired by Yacht Rock – previously known in the 1970s-80s as West Coast AOR – in other words yuppy escapism with a lush orchestral presence. “I wanted to write a big feelgood song. I unashamedly love elements of Yacht Rock. I don’t like writing songs unless I feel they’ve got a hook in there somewhere so they’ve got hooks. There is a big sound on the album.”

The single was premiered today before Kemp was interviewed by Steve Wright during In The Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 (fast forward online to 2h40m). An album titled InSolo follows on in July on the Columbia label, only Kemp’s second since Little Bruises in 1995.

LISTEN HERE TO Ahead Of The Game

+++

TWEET FROM CRITIC NEIL MCCORMICK

❏ That was a really lovely dive into Gary Kemp’s very long awaited forthcoming sophomore solo album (just 26 years after the first). Shades of Steely Dan, Pink Floyd & Gary Moore mixing it up with the smooth Spandau prog soul. Lush.

➢ Pre-order Gary Kemp’s album InSolo at Amazon
➢ InSolo group at Facebook

SPANDAU BROTHERS LORD IT
ON THE HIGH STREET

Marks & Spencer, Martin Kemp, Roman Kemp, modelling

In a Marks & Spencer window: Father and son Martin and Roman Kemp model shirts

In the Waitrose Weekend magazine: Gary Kemp at home in his library

Posted on 21 June 2021
❚ FROM HUMBLE WORKING-CLASS BOYS to self-made taste-makers. . . Above, we see Martin Kemp looking snappy in the window of Marks & Spencer with his Capital Radio deejay son Roman, while their own unique double act finds other outlets advertising Volkswagen cars, chatting on their Weekend Best show for ITV and Channel 4’s Celebrity Gogglebox. . . Further along the high street Mart’s brother Gary Kemp marks his 60th year with an intensely personal solo album and this interview in the current Waitrose Weekend magazine, pictured here at home in his library. . . Onwards and upwards.

GARY KEMP SEES HIS SOLO ALBUM
AS SEVERING THE PAST

Gary Kemp today: “If I write lyrics first then they’re for me”

Posted on 7 July 2021
❚ INTERVIEWED ON TODAY’S BBC Breakfast show Gary Kemp – essentially promoting his new album InSolo – explained why it’s been 25 years since his last solo album:

“ I didn’t feel the need to do that… I always felt connected with Spandau Ballet, and even though we went through all those troubles and fights then getting back together, everything I was writing was put away for them. And it wasn’t until I started working with Nick Mason from Pink Floyd that I really felt I could sever the past and while on that tour I started writing lots of lyrics and if I write lyrics first then they’re for me and they were about me. Then when I got back from tour I set them to music. I wasn’t going to make the album but when lockdown came it was, Right I’d better finish this.

I was at home working remotely and getting in touch with artists which no one had ever done before – Roger Taylor from Queen said Yes I’ll play on one of your tracks. So I worked remotely with him and other bass players and started to build the album and when the studios reopened in the summer we managed to get in and do a lot of stuff for real. ”
➢ Watch today’s nine-minute interview with
Gary Kemp on BBC Breakfast

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Posted in albums, interviews, singer-songwriter, singles, videos

Tagged Ahead Of The Game, Gary Kemp, InSolo, Marks & Spencer, Martin Kemp, Radio2, Roman Kemp, solo, Spandau Ballet, Steve Wright, Waitrose, Yacht Rock

2020 ➤ Premiering tonight: Spandau’s Parade tour from the Swinging 80s

Posted on 4 Dec 2020 | Leave a comment

Blitz Kids, New Romantics, pop music, Swinging 80s, Spandau Ballet, Parade World Tour,

Spandau Ballet in 1985: dressed to impress for their Parade World Tour

❚ THIS WEEK 40 YEARS AGO Spandau Ballet’s first single peaked at No 5 in the UK chart three weeks after its release and exactly one year after the unknown band’s debut at the legendary Blitz Club. More amazingly, in their first year Spandau had been booked to play live on only 10 occasions (two of those on TV, the last being Top of The Pops)! That’s how sudden was their rise during 1980. That’s how phenomenal was their fan base powered by the New Romantics movement.

40
YEARS
ON

Tonight at 8pm GMT the band celebrate by premiering online the video Rockpop In Concert which evokes the Parade Tour of 1984-85, their biggest globally, launched with five nights in Tokyo and its UK leg culminating in December ’84 with six nights at London’s Wembley Arena (one more than Duran Duran achieved). These were Spandau’s international glory years, fronted by the dazzling vocals of Tony Hadley. This rare 45-minute video captures their taste for flamboyant designer-fashion in their performance at Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle arena, filmed for the German TV show Rockpop and aired in January 1985.

Also marking their 40th anniversary, Spandau have released a choice new compilation album titled 40 Years – The Greatest Hits, as a triple CD set and as double vinyl LPs.

Sax-player Steve Norman says: “I hadn’t heard these mixes for almost 40 years. I’d actually forgotten that we did two 12-inch mixes of ‘Story’. The band’s energy is all over it, which is how I remembered it sounding.” In a promo vid drummer John Keeble notes: “Oh, and I’ve got a credit for backing vocals… about time too!”

➢ Watch tonight’s streaming of Spandau’s Rockpop In Concert video at You Tube: 4 December 8PM GMT / 12PM PST / 3PM EST. The show will continue streaming for the next 48 hours

➢ Order Spandau’s new album 40 Years – The Greatest Hits, plus new items of merch

➢ View Spandau’s first appearance on Top Of The Pops playing To Cut a Long Story Short, on 13 Nov 1980

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
1980, The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s accounts for the unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet

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