In The Kemps spoof TV doc: this portrait was supposedly painted by Gary Kemp (BBC)
❚ ANOTHER SUN EXCLUSIVE WENT ONLINE simultaneously with last night’s TV “mockumentary” about the Kemp brothers of Spandau Ballet, The Kemps: All True. It saw brothers Martin and Gary mock themselves and featured a portrait supposedly painted by Gary Kemp of Hadley with red eyes, red horns and fangs. Their former singer who reported quitting three years ago declared that he’d rather watch Broadchurch than their TV show. The Sun Online reports Hadley as saying:
Big Tone: “I’m done.” (Photo: Rex)
“ 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. If they want another lead singer, that’s their choice. But if you want to hear those songs sung by the original singer then you can only really see one bloke – and that’s me. ”
The Sun reports Hadley’s reaction to the Kemps using their hit Gold last month for a cheesy TV advert for the washing powder Bold. It saw Gold’s lyrics changed to “Bold”:
“ It’s embarrassing. I posted a social media disclaimer saying, ‘This was nothing to do with me’. Gary wrote Gold. It’s anthemic. When I sing it live, the audience sing back. To change the title is just weird. I thought it was in bad taste.”
June 2018: Spandau Ballet showcase their new recruit, vocalist Ross William Wild at their debut gig in Subterania
◼ TODAY’S SUN RUNS A GRIM ACCOUNT of how singer Ross William Wild was pushed into attempting suicide after being frozen out of Spandau Ballet last year. Only 11 months after he took over from frontman Tony Hadley, Ross took some pills and “crashed out” but thankfully a friend raised the alarm.
At that time in May 2019, Shapers of the 80s reported the whole curious background to Ross’s crisis of confidence. After his first impressive performances with Spandau he says he was “ignored” by management and claims he was banned from taking other music and theatre jobs, losing out on much needed income. The Sun reports today:
“ When he finally mustered the courage to quit, he was humiliated on national TV the next day when the band announced it would never perform again unless Tony rejoins — effectively sacking their young singer live on air. I couldn’t afford to be left on a shelf, not knowing where my next meal was coming from. Then the next day they forced Martin Kemp on This Morning and made him act like I was just being brushed aside. I never even got to say that I quit. I was so humiliated as they had treated me so badly for so long. It hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s when I tried to kill myself. ”
Shapers of the 80s revealed that Ross made the first move by tweeting that he had resigned, after which Martin Kemp went on ITV to flannel around the issue, barely mentioning Ross but yearning for the day Hadley would rejoin Spandau, saying this was “what people really want”. You can still hear this clip, below. Equally tactless had been Gary Kemp giving a killer “no future” interview to an American blogger only one month earlier. “There are no plans for Spandau going into 2020,” he’d said, and we reported that car-crash interview here too, in all its insulting detail.
LISTEN TO THE CRUCIAL PART OF MARTIN’S ITV INTERVIEW 2019:
+++
Within a couple of days Ross gave us his side of the saga, saying “the way things were put out on TV made me feel like crap”. His good friend sax player Steve Norman also got in touch to say: “I was neither involved in nor informed of any discussions or decision-making regarding the future of my band, least of all Ross’s position in it.” All of which still makes for a gob-smacking read.
Ross’s account in today’s Sun is well worth reading for its courageous candour. He says: “Spandau didn’t realise that they were dealing with a person. I’m not a titan of the music industry like these guys. They gave me a chance, little old Ross, and then they just brushed me aside.” There’s some consolation in knowing that last week Ross saw his new band Mercutio have its raunchy single Slap Bang! voted Classic Rock’s track of the week [see video at YouTube].
Is it a mockumentary? Spandau brothers reveal all to a Times Magazine journalist. (Photo: Mark Harrison)
◼ WE’VE SEEN A COUPLE OF GOSSIP ITEMS about the Kemp Brothers from Eighties supergroup Spandau Ballet making an oddball TV documentary, but now comes a cover story on a colour supplement no less, to spill more beans about it. Polly Vernon makes a neat job of interviewing the Angel bros, now aged 58 and 60, in Saturday’s Times Magazine, teasing out their lifelong sibling rivalries, keeping them on their toes as much as they return the challenge, songwriter Gary “less inclined toward affability”, she reports, and bass-player Martin “as gentle and affable as he is handsome”. Oh, by the way, did Polly mention he was handsome…? Here are some vital facts about the film satirically titled The Kemps: All True in an extract from her article…
“POLLY VERNON WRITES: We have met so that Gary and Martin might promote the 60-minute film made for the BBC in which they play themselves – except, not really – going about their everyday lives (except, not at all). It’s a confusing proposition; part scripted, part improv, part biopic, part nonsense fabrication. Half-truths about the Kemps’ actual characters, histories, relationships and physical attributes meld with overblown fantasies about multiple kidneys and long-lost half-brothers called Ross Kemp.
UPDATE: Exclusive preview of new album cover (BBC)
By definition, All True has none of the honesty of 2018’s Bros documentary, that heart-breaking, cringe-inducing, nostalgia-triggering film that documented Matt and Luke Goss’s real attempts to navigate their fraught sibling relationship, on which I’d assumed All True was based. (Gary is keen I know it definitely isn’t – All True was written before Bros: After the Screaming Stops was released – and he, Gary, hasn’t even seen that film. Martin has, mind. “It’s brilliant. That’s who they are, you know? I know them really well, and that’s who they are.”)
Furthermore, I can’t even really tell to which genre All True belongs. What are we calling it, I ask. A mockumentary?
“Hmmmm,” says Gary.
“Yes. That’s what it is,” says Martin, who is rapidly proving as gentle and affable as he is handsome.
“Oh, I’m not sure… Is it?” asks Gary, more interested in being perfectly, completely understood. “I don’t know. What else could you call a mockumentary?”
Uh, a comedy?
“Yeah, a comedy,” says Gary.
(“A comedy. Yeah!” says Martin.)
To be fair, despite it defying reason and categorisation, All True is very funny. Not all of it lands, nor is it precisely as Gary Kemp says he intended: “Like Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like the Steve Coogan-Rob Brydon thing [The Trip], you know.”
Some of it even ventures into comic genius territory… All True was conceived by director, writer and comedian Rhys Thomas (of Star Stories, The Fast Show and Nathan Barley). Thomas had worked with Martin Kemp, so when he approached Martin and Gary with a script for a show depicting a preposterous version of the brothers that, at the same time, wasn’t entirely removed from the truth, they said they’d do it. It seemed fun, they tell me – an opportunity to play with the world’s perceptions of them.
“French and Saunders do Gary and Martin Kemp,” says Martin.
“Our traits, but highlighted,” says Gary.
“Us, but on steroids!” says Martin… ” / Continued at Times Online
Singalong songs: Martin and Shirlie Kemp tell Lorraine theirs is happy music. (Click pic to run ITV video in a new window)
◼ AFTER 30 YEARS OF MARRIAGE Martin and Shirlie Kemp have joined forces to create a double act with an album, In The Swing Of It, set for release on 22nd November on Sony Music. For those who need reminding, both Mr & Mrs Kemp enjoyed chart success in the iconic 80s acts Spandau Ballet and Pepsi and Shirlie, not to mention Shirlie’s stint with Wham!.
The album majors on covering such Fifties classics as Fly Me To The Moon, The Way You Look Tonight, Nice Work If You Can Get It and The Tender Trap. Describing their musical choices, Martin told Lorraine Kelly in a TV interview last month: “It’s like an open love-letter where everybody can look in on our relationship. The words that we sing to each other are words that we say to each other.” While Shirlie added: “I feel this is the best thing I’ve ever done and doing it with Martin was like a dream the whole summer.”
The album was inspired by an impromptu recording session with Martin, whilst working with producer Brian Rawling (Cher, Tina Turner, One Direction). He invited Shirlie into the studio to help with a song and the session helped the couple realise how much they enjoyed recording together. They agreed on a list of uplifting Swing covers, chosen to reflect their relationship because, Martin says: “In the 50s with swing they made love songs that made you happy.”
Shirlie adds: “I feel happy when I listen to this music, I hope people dance and sing along to the album when they are in their homes doing the cleaning or cooking the Sunday roast. Singing is a happy drug.”
Oops, there goes another singer, airbrushed out of history. Denis O’Regan’s official photo of Spandau Ballet with their new recruit Ross William Wild, shot last summer at Subterania. Who’s laughing now?
[UPDATE 28 MAY: SEE RESPONSES BELOW
FROM BOTH ROSS AND STEVE NORMAN]
+++ ◼ SPANDAU BALLET HAVE FROZEN OUT Ross William Wild, the new vocalist they called a “perfect fit” when they recruited him last year. Following his first public performance last June, bass guitarist Martin Kemp declared: “We’re playing with more vigour than I’ve ever heard from us, and I think that’s because of the way he sings.” What Ross’s romantic stand-out voice brought to the samey old Spandau repertoire was some much-needed freshness. Now, a matter of months later, there are suddenly no plans for any more performances. And there hasn’t been one word of apology to Ross or the fans.
To add insult to injury, not one member of Spandau or its management has explained the events leading up to their furtive decision to freeze Ross out when it became sensationally but indirectly a major news story on Thursday. As an afterthought in a seven-minute interview on other topics for the ITV show This Morning, Spandau’s Mr Nice Guy Martin Kemp broke the news by implication, but without even saying out loud that Ross would no longer be working with them.
Giving only one reference to Ross as “a lovely man, lovely singer”, Martin just started musing out loud: “We tried [Ross] for about six or seven shows through Europe and it was great fun. But what I kind of started to realise was what people really want is the five of us together…” [Implying the five that includes Spandau’s original vocalist Tony Hadley, without even using his name]… “I think what we should do to be fair is to put it into a box and let it sit there until that happens.” Sorry, Martin. Did you really say all that? About a box?!?! (Answer: Yes. Listen to your interview below.)
LISTEN TO THE CRUCIAL 99 SECS OF MARTIN’S ITV INTERVIEW:
+++
This feeble stream of consciousness was about to wreck another man’s career, yet without any words of sympathy for Ross, Martin added: “If one day the five of us [meaning Hadley] can talk and get back together it would be wonderful.” He confirmed that they will not be touring Spandau “until Tony comes back”! (Fat chance, given Tony’s own frequent pronouncements.) Martin then rubbed yet more salt into Ross’s wound: “I would love it to happen because it is part of me. It is part of my soul. I would do it tomorrow. But it means all five of us saying yes at the same time.” Ouch, as the sixth man might have said again!
All of which forces us to assume that, oops, after a year recruiting and rehearsing this new vocalist into their 40-year repertoire, the band didn’t think much of Ross’s efforts despite having billed and cooed after his first showcase at Subterania last June when Martin said: “Ross is a perfect fit for Spandau, and brings a new younger energy to the band that we are all enjoying!” Ross attracted enthusiastic reviews from critics (including Shapers of the 80s), as did October’s major London gig at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo – the purpose of which was to impress the industry and fill Spandau’s 2019 diary with major festivals and prestige dates. One obstacle to this was that in May 2018 Gary Kemp had already started jamming with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, which offered him an alternative future.
========
ROSS PUTS HIS CASE
28 MAY UPDATE: Singer and actor Ross William Wild has been in touch with Shapers of the 80s to say that after months of being cold-shouldered, it was he who quit Spandau Ballet. He was still waiting for a response when Martin Kemp started talking about getting Tony Hadley back into Spandau during Thursday’s ITV interview. Ross says: “I’d put my whole life on hold and was sick of waiting around for them to make up their minds. I told the boys I was quitting and then never heard back from them, apart from Steve, who’s had my back since day one. I love Martin as a friend and always will do, but the way things were put out on TV made me feel like crap.” ========
28 MAY: Spandau’s sax player Steve Norman has also written to clarify his position: “With regard to these recent revelations from Spandau Ballet, I want to make clear that I was neither involved in nor informed of any discussions or decision-making regarding the future of my band, least of all Ross’s position in it. I will add that, as a founder member of Spandau Ballet and as a friend of all band members (past and present), I’m so very disappointed and saddened by the handling of it.
Ross has put a lot of work, love and dedication into our band and I have enjoyed immensely performing with him. He is not only an amazing singer and entertainer but has also became a dear friend. Therefore I will still be performing the odd gig with Ross in the future (eg, Berlin in September). And as for the future of Spandau Ballet? To quote my own lyrics from Once More: “Never say never…” ========
1 JUNE: Earlier this week Shapers of the 80s invited both Spandau’s drummer John Keeble and manager Steve Dagger to offer their versions of events but so far we have heard nothing. ========
❏ Back to Thursday. At 6:15am, Ross himself was the first to post the plain unadorned truth – with familiar echoes of Tony Hadley’s exit in 2017 – by also turning to Twitter to say: “I have formally quit the band Spandau Ballet to pursue my own music with my band Mercutio.” Ross added that its new single is pointedly titled Where the Pain Lives.
A collective howl of anger and indignation went up from Spandau fans and anybody else with a sense of decency. It took 24 hours before the band’s management confirmed the news officially on social media, by that stage prompted to offer belated thanks to Ross for his musical contribution last year. They had also removed Ross’s photo from the headers of their websites, though Ross’s own still say “Lead Singer @SpandauBallet”.
“Do I look bovvered?” – Today’s Facebook video of Ross aboard a swank yacht
Only two months ago, fans intuitively suspected a silent howl of pain from Ross when he suddenly announced that he had joined a new band called Mercutio, though insisting he was merely filling time before the next Spandau tour (read our exclusive report here at Shapers of the 80s). With hindsight, all these events smack of non-disclosure agreements having been signed, so let’s hope Ross has walked away with at least a thumping great payoff as some kind of compensation for his humiliation. Today Ross is putting on a brave face by showing a video at Facebook of himself aboard a swank yacht somewhere in the sun as if to say “Do I look bovvered?”
Tony Hadley will be laughing loudly at the irony of what we must assume was a yet another clash of egos back-stage. Last October he outflanked his former mates only days ahead of Spandau’s Next Line tour which showcased Ross. Big Tone packed out the legendary London Palladium and delivered a show of stonking musicianship. He and his Hadley band magnificently reinvented songwriter Gary Kemps’s own classics with fizzing new energy and melodic detail – matched by as many more numbers from his own consummate solo album, Talking to the Moon, plus a splash of Sinatra.
Tony Hadley and his band: making magic at the London Palladium, October 2018
In the fall-out, Spandau now find themselves in utter disarray, without any imaginable future. Other band members have assiduously invested in their solo careers over recent months, notably songwriter Gary Kemp who has spent a year working with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, with further plans to continue into next year. What both Kemp brothers seem to ignore is that the others don’t have champagne millions like their own to fall back on and might presumably prefer to be working.
There’s more, much more to report, below. But right now one other person is feeling the pain and shedding stinging tears over all this talent and time going to waste, and excuse me, dear reader, when I say that person is me. It saddens me to report any of this grizzly saga, as the journalist who was first to write about Spandau Ballet when they were brash and young and mounting their second live show at the Blitz club in 1980, and who created this website Shapers of the 80s to set in context both their long-awaited first reunion in 2009 as well as the New Romantic youthquake they once led.
I had laughed out loud when their savvy manager Steve Dagger took me for our first drink near my Fleet Street office to reveal all about his unknown band. “You did, you did, you laughed out loud: ha ha,” he has sworn ever since, in a wickedly accurate impersonation. He’d been describing to me the “really weird people” who followed the band. “The latest thing is romance, pushed over the top,” he’d said. “Chris Sullivan makes even the SS look normal”. . .
As somebody who was there in clubland’s social mix, I found myself playing a role behind the scenes that shaped Spandau’s lift-off from March to July 1980. A spooky domino ripple of my own strategic encounters landed them various newspaper headlines, a documentary by London Weekend TV’s 20th Century Box and their fortnight in the sunshine of St Tropez, most of which they’ve been largely unaware of.
Within a year Spandau found themselves setting the pace while London street fashion and new music swept round the world to define the Swinging 80s.
“A chance to front a band like I’ve never done before”: Spandau songwriter Gary Kemp, second right, touring the States with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets
❏ Amazingly, it was Martin’s brother Gary Kemp who hammered the first nail into the coffin of his own band by giving a killer “no future” interview to an American blogger, Mickey McCarter, just over a month ago. It came as Kemp ended his North American stint playing guitar on 30 dates with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets. So insouciant and tactless were the squibs he tossed into the public domain that they ignited fury among the Spandettes, an international coven of ultimate Spandau fans who travel air-miles to meet-and-greet their 80s pop heroes.
Imagine you were a devoted Spandette reading Kemp, your favourite band’s leader and songwriter, saying this in McCarter’s blog: “There are no plans for Spandau going into 2020.”
And this: “I have a lot of stuff going on outside of Spandau Ballet.”
Then imagine you were Ross William Wild, the newly auditioned and appointed lead vocalist of Spandau Ballet, critically acclaimed last summer and autumn when he inherited Tony Hadley’s role in six showcase public concerts. Bear in mind Kemp is approaching 60 while Ross is a mere 31. Here was his kick in the teeth: “When I listen to the lyrics of [my] new songs, they just seem to be about me. [Not] the kind of material that a younger man could sing.”
As if a practised songwriter couldn’t manage some new ones for his new singer… There was more: “I’m thinking about doing a solo record.” And yet: “There are no plans for Spandau.”
On top of which Ross had to take this whiplash: “I would still personally love to play on stage with Spandau Ballet, including Tony Hadley.”
“Spandau’s on hold, yeah.
There are no plans for Spandau.”
Now imagine you were any one of the remaining members of Spandau Ballet, John Keeble, Steve Norman or Martin Kemp, reading that Gary’s work with the Saucerful of Secrets is a continuing project: “There are lots of plans. There are plans for possibly some recordings. There’s another European tour we’re doing throughout July. We’re playing open-air amphitheatres, and we’re headlining a couple of festivals across Europe. After this tour, we go back to Britain, and we’ve got some more British dates as well. There are plans going into 2020.”
Next, all four members of Spandau could read of the joys of Gary’s travels with Saucerful: “I’m loving it, absolutely loving it. It gives me a chance to stretch out on stage like I’ve never done before. It gives me a chance to front a band like I’ve never done before. And the camaraderie and the musicianship are extraordinary in this group.” Slap!
Spandau’s finale at Ross Wild’s glorious debut, Subterania, June 2018: John Keeble takes the mic to say “Thank you very much: We are Spandau Ballet”
So his interviewer McCarter asked: Spandau is on hold while you’re doing this? “Spandau’s on hold, yeah. There are no plans for Spandau. So after this, I’ve got some more acting work coming up in September. We’ve been through quite a lot of disruption over the last few years. And I don’t know really where that’s left us, to be honest.”
His fan-boy interviewer says all this makes him feel rather sad. So Gary just turned the tourniquet some more: “Yeah. I don’t know. I still struggle to imagine Spandau Ballet without Tony Hadley. And whether that will ever happen again, I don’t know. . . I would still personally love to play on stage with Spandau Ballet, including Tony Hadley. I still think that’s the ultimate goal and it always will be.” OUCH !!!!!!!!!
By now fans were spitting tacks in social media, Ross probably gnawing his knuckles, and this US interviewer presumably needing a very stiff drink. Then the came the bombshell: “And if it doesn’t, then maybe that’s it. I don’t know at the moment.”
Maybe that’s it?!?! Gary “doesn’t know” at the moment! Martin “doesn’t know” either and wants “to put it into a box and let it sit there”! This Great British Blight has become known as Theresa May Syndrome and the only known cure is to quit the job.
“I would still love to play on stage with
Tony Hadley. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Zoom back to today, and here I am contemplating this internal drama the two brothers have been airing in public. By now I too am shedding tears for that original bunch of five bright and funny Angel Boys from Islington who made such natural music-makers at school. As a writer I’d believed in Spandau as pop pioneers and as a social historian I’d followed them as their riveting cult injected creativity into London’s bloodstream more effectively than any group since the Small Faces in the Sixties. Theirs was a social whirl driven by collaboration.
As brothers in arms Spandau knew their bonds of friendship were indestructible. For 20 years. Then came the first parting of ways, prompted by the Kemp brothers’ acting ambitions. Then silence, then the 1999 court case and more silence. Then suddenly in 2009 came a reunion, for one year, then silence. In 2014 another reunion which lasted one year. But no more silence, only bitter feuding and a bid for independence by Tony and the search for his replacement which led to Ross becoming the “perfect fit”! Apparently not.
And here are Spandau now in their 40th year, still tearing themselves apart and saying they “don’t know” about their future. Usually musicians want to do nothing but play their music. . . Either Spandau must refresh or quit because many of us haven’t the patience to endure yet more of this dithering while Tony Hadley embodies their music superbly in his own triumphant show. Far better for Spandau to call this The End, now. There: that’s my own bridge burnt. Oh, how true are the words of their old mates Blue Rondo a la Turk: “The heavens are crying”
❏ It took a full 24 hours before any official confirmation of Ross’s departure came in a short post on Spandau’s website where Ross’s photo has now been removed: “Spandau Ballet would like to thank Ross William Wild for his brilliant performances with them last year and wish him every success with his band, Mercutio, and the many other exciting projects he’s working on at the moment.” But still neither public explanation nor apology to either Ross or the fans.
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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
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