Spandau’s new boy Ross William Wild met Martin Kemp when they both appeared in Million Dollar Quartet
✭ The identity of the new Spandau vocalist has been cracked: He is a 30-year-old former Aberdeen Grammar School pupil, born in February 1988, whose original name is Ross William Davidson. He has a sister Lucy Indiana Wild living in Canada (and it’s sheer coincidence that today he has a friend called Will Davidson). Ross trained for the stage at Aberdeen Youth Music Theatre from the age of 10, and then studied Musical Theatre at Glasgow Academy of Music Theatre Arts.
Spandau’s new boy Ross William Wild with Nile Rogers at Abbey Road Studios this year – at Instagram
✭ His first instrument was guitar when he was 8 and the first chords that he struck were the blues chords.
✭ Describes himself as musician, singer, actor, writer and adventurer. Tweeted that he enjoyed the Charles II: Art and Power exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery.
Spandau’s new boy Ross William Wild – at Twitter
✭ In 2016 he released his debut solo album Wild Tracks which includes songs written with Trisha Ward.
✭ In 2016 Ross played Elvis Presley in the hit West End musical Million Dollar Quartet and shared the stage with Martin Kemp when he took over the role of record producer Sam Phillips who discovered Presley.
✭ Above, Ross featured as the popular and handsome Daniel in the raunchy 2011 film Downing, where he has sex scenes with a woman and a man. He speaks with a clear Scottish accent.
Face wanted in the Spandau Ballet lineup: from left, Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, John Keeble, Steve Norman. Might the new singer even be female? (Er, no.)
◼ EXPECT A NEWS TSUNAMI TODAY when Spandau Ballet, the New Romantic heroes of the 80s, announce who is going to replace the finally departed Tony Hadley as their singer. AND the date of their first gig together as a revitalised new line-up.
A shortlist of hot tips for the Spands’ new voice was discussed at Shapersofthe80s last summer. Since then we’ve learnt that he/she is not going to be an old 80s has-been. So who’s still in the frame for the key job without which Spandau’s legacy will remain all behind them? Could it really be Brandon Flowers who is known to have discussed a future with Spandau? Or Will Young whose recently acclaimed stage experience in Cabaret might bring a fresh note of theatre to Spandau performances?
Or could it be one of these burgeoning young talents?
* George Maguire, recently touring as Marc Bolan, who also won the Olivier Award for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical in 2015?
* Rami Malek, the 36-year-old star of Mr Robot?
* Layton Williams, who stole all the curtain calls as Angel in Rent, the touring musical?
* Mo Adeniran, the 21-year-old former hotel worker whose show-stopping performance of Iron Sky wowed judges in the blind auditions on The Voice UK?
* Giles Terera, the British actor and musician best known for originating the character of Aaron Burr in the London production of Hamilton for which he won the 2018 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical?
* Martin Lewis, who sang Gold brilliantly in Stars in Their Eyes?
* Adam J Bernard, who won Best actor in a supporting role in a musical for Dreamgirls at the Savoy Theatre?
* Tyrone Huntley, 2016 winner of the Standard’s Emerging Talent Award, also nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre?
The choice is yours! Sorry, no it’s not. The choice is Spandau’s. And he’s already been hired!
Prince Rogers Nelson
(7 June 1958 – 21 April 2016)
1979: I WANNA BE YOUR LOVER (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
1980: MIDNIGHT SPECIAL IN ZEBRA UNDERWEAR
➢ Above: For his first TV performance in January 1980 Prince sports zebra-print underwear, black leggings, stack-heeled boots, and long hair giving us the first two tracks from Prince the album, I Wanna Be Your Lover and Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad. On NBC’s The Midnight Special host Wolfman Jack says: “There’s nothing our next guest can’t do. He arranged, produced, composed, and performed his last album entirely by himself.”
1991: GETT OFF FOR MTV
Prince’s 1991 MTV Video Awards performance of Gett Off with The New Power Generation might be the sexiest thing ever aired on TV. Click on pic to run video in new window
2014: BREAKFAST CAN WAIT (OFFICIAL, almost as sexy)
1980: How Prince unveiled himself in Detroit months before his UK debut. His Dirty Mind album stirs controversy, while Uptown makes it to No 5 on the US R&B chart. (Photograph by Leni Sinclair)
Nile Rodgers: “RIP our dearly beloved Prince. Tears and love on our tour bus. I’ll never forget my brother. We’ve had good times.”
Quincy Jones: “RIP to prince… a true artist in every sense of the word. Gone way too soon.”
Mick Jagger: “Prince was a revolutionary artist, a great musician, composer, a wonderful lyricist, a startling guitar player… but most importantly, authentic in every way. Prince’s talent was limitless. He was one of the most unique and exciting artists of the last 30 years.”
Lenny Kravitz: “My musical brother… My friend… The one who showed me the possibilities within myself, changed everything, and kept his integrity until the end, is gone. I am heartbroken.”
Frank Ocean: “He was a straight black man who played his first televised set in bikini bottoms and knee-high heeled boots, epic. He made me feel more comfortable with how I identify sexually simply by his display of freedom from and irreverence for obviously archaic ideas like gender conformity.”
Barack Obama, who was flying from Saudi Arabia to London on Air Force One when the news broke, said he was mourning along with millions of fans. “Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all.”
Shaun Keaveny, BBC Radio 6 Music, deejay: “He’s a virtual Beethoven for the popular song.”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SHAPERS OF THE 80S
“ I met Prince in 1981 on his first UK trip when he was booked to play the Lyceum and faced a half-empty venue. In the Embassy club six days before, I spotted him standing quietly at the end of the bar on his own, while nobody else seemed to know who he was – and the occasion was after all Steve Strange’s 22nd birthday party, heaving with Blitz Kids. Prince was painfully shy yet intensely sexy and very receptive when I approached, clearly flattered that somebody in the place had put a name to the face (familiar from his Dirty Mind antics over the previous year). We chatted for a while, enthused about James Brown, obviously, but amazingly he also said he had laughed a lot at the new spoof version of Is That All There Is? by Cristina on the Ze label. Despite which, I can’t claim to have got a single quote from the quiet man of pop that was worth publishing! ” – Yrs Truly
Prince Rogers Nelson: uncovered on the cover of his 1988 Lovesexy album
Chuck D of Public Enemy: “He is walking music. He IS music.”
Alan Leeds, Paisley Park label president, speaking in 2011: “He has outpaced Madonna, he has outpaced Janet Jackson. There really isn’t another phenomenon on the planet like Prince these days.”
Prince: the latest passport picture, February 2016
➢ Prince’s lost Rolling Stone interview: “I don’t think about gone” – Ruminating on sex, music and death in a previously unpublished Q&A from 2014. . . “I can take you out there and hit this guitar for you, and then what you’ll hear is sex. You will hear something where you’d run out of adjectives like you do when you meet the finest woman.”
“I have a couple Revolution albums in the vault and two Time albums, one Vanity 6 album – and tons of stuff recorded in different periods.”
“I don’t think about gone. I just think about in the future when I don’t want to speak in real time.”
2 JUNE UPDATE: “Prince died of accidental overdose” expert says
➢ Accidental overdose – CNN: “Toxicology tests for Prince concluded that the entertainer died from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl, according to a report on his death by the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office. Fentanyl, prescribed by doctors for cancer treatment, can be made illicitly and is blamed for a spike in overdose deaths in the United States. It is 25 to 50 times more potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. . .” / Contd at CNN
➢ Music legend Prince was killed by an overdose of the powerful painkiller fentanyl – NBC News: “Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine that is used for severe pain such as advanced cancer, according the Centers for Disease Control. Although it can be obtained by prescription, many overdoses are linked to illegally made versions of the drug, officials say. . . ” / Contd at NBC News
❚ “JEAN PAUL GAULTIER SENT SADE LOOK-ALIKES down his Spring-Summer runway last month, and Olivier Rousteing borrowed her signature hoops and shoulder pads for his Balmain collection. The up-and-coming British soul star Jessie Ware owes everything to Sade, down to her painted lips and single braid.” So says the prestige fashion website Style.com today in its Beauty Icon spot. “As it turns out, fashion has played no small role in the life of Helen Folasade Adu,” it adds, while sketching her distinctive contribution to music and style.
Best of all, Style.com includes a classic early shot of Sade taken by Shapersofthe80s, long before she became a singer, when she modelled clothes by Melissa Caplan in New York during the now legendary invasion of America by London’s trend-setting Blitz Kids in 1981. Catch our eye-witness report inside:
Jean Paul Gaultier’s take on the Sade style of ponytail and hoop earrings: one of many 80s tributes in his Spring Summer 2013 runway show last month in Paris
➢ 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 articles.
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 2022
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm in 2021… Catch 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 800 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
LANDMARK FAREWELLS. . . HIT THE INDEX TAB UP TOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 