The Hadley band in Las Vegas last week: John Keeble (drums), Phil Williams (bass guitar), Big Tone, Richie Barrett (guitar), Phil Taylor (keyboards)
❚ EXACTLY WHAT SPANDAU BALLET FANS don’t want to hear! Yesterday as the 80s supergroup’s vocalist Tony Hadley was taking a well-earned rest following his American solo tour, he delivered the bombshell. Fans who want to see him singing again with his onetime schoolmates in Spandau “could be waiting 20 years”!
The shocking prospect came yesterday in an interview with TNT, the Australian backpacker magazine, anticipating his imminent tour down under. Before his US dates earlier this month he’d been much more circumspect about another Spandau reunion, using the phrase “maybe one day in the future” to American music magazine ConcertLivewire. Tony’s new forecast for a rendezvous with Spandau means the already portly singer would have passed his 71st birthday — along with many of Spandau’s original fans, ear trumpets at the ready.
Remember, an argument over royalties split Spandau asunder in 1990 and Tony didn’t speak to songwriter Gary Kemp for 19 years until their sudden reunion tour in 2009. Even so, the singer tells TNT: “It was only ever meant to be a one-off. After 20 years of squabbling we buried our differences. But after our last show in 2010, you know, I had a band waiting around for me on a retainer for six months. I’ve had no time off and I’m trying to finish the new album so at the moment there aren’t plans to do Spandau again. You could be waiting 20 years.”
Tony has pursued an active solo career ever since the split and his current band has backed him for 13 years, with John Keeble of Spandau playing drums. This month’s American tour was an investment, and Tony told Windy City Times they “want to come back next year and do 20 or 30 shows”.
His big news is about his solo album, due next year. He tells TNT: “I’m doing some writing with Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. I went round his house and had a little cup of tea and said, let’s get together and do some songs. For me, that is a major wow.
“2012 will be busy with the Olympics. My manager has been talking to various people about an orchestral version of Gold [the Spandau Ballet hit] for the games — doing it with an 80-piece orchestra would be amazing.”
➢ Sept 11 in New York, 13h30 — Tony sings at the memorial concert for 9/11 in The British Garden, Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan, NYC, created with the endorsement of the British Consulate-General to honour the 67 British subjects lost in the 2001 attacks
➢ Tony’s Australia dates 2011 — Oct 26, Hindmarsh, South Australia; Oct 27, South Morang, Victoria; Oct 28, Doncaster, Victoria; Oct 29, Chelsea Heights, Victoria; Oct 30, Rewind Australia, Wollongong, NSW; Nov 3, Coolangatta, Queensland; Nov 4, Penrith NSW.
+++ ❚ SPANDAU BALLET VOCALIST TONY HADLEY displays his own considerable songwriting skills on video for the first time as he performs his own rocking new song My Imagination at House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, Ca, on August 16. This was his third solo gig, backed by his own band that includes drummer John Keeble, during their first US tour this week. (Video by mmmmpopmuzik)
Tony Hadley in Rome, spring 2011: a busy year as a solo artist. Photograph by Riccardo Arena
❚ ON SATURDAY SUAVE BRITISH SINGER Tony Hadley debuts his solo show in the United States, his first professional visit since winning the British TV reality show Reborn in the USA in 2003. Otherwise American audiences haven’t seen him live since he visited in 1985 as vocalist with Spandau Ballet, onetime New Romantics turned pomp-rockers. Following a busy summer of festival appearances, the American tour represents one of the biggest and long-awaited challenges in his career. The first of his six big-city dates is at New York’s Irving Plaza, after which the divorced but happily remarried father of four then plays the Rivers Casino Stage as part of a gay street festival in Chicago.
John Keeble: Spandau pal whose drums drive the Hadley band too. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
He’s backed by his long-standing band featuring Spandau’s John Keeble (drums) plus Phil Taylor (keyboards), Phil Williams (bass guitar), Richie Barrett (guitar). In October they head down-under to Australia for seven more shows, with Go West in support at three.
Hadley split acrimoniously from his school-mates Spandau Ballet in 1990, since when the singer with the mighty and melodious voice has pursued a vigorous solo career which often involves 200 live shows a year. It has yielded six albums, the last in 2006 titled Passing Strangers moving into jazz-swing territory, though his 15 singles have seen only minimal chart success. In live concert he loves covering pop standards by Bowie and even Duran Duran. Today he’s a declared fan of The Killers and My Chemical Romance. He also enjoyed a stint in the musical Chicago in London’s West End.
In 2004 Hadley wrote an autobiography called To Cut A Long Story Short which made clear how his worldview had always been markedly different from the other members of Spandau even at their peak of success. Hadley wrote: “I’m busier now [2004] than I was then [1983]… A couple of times I suggested we bring in a more experienced manager. I just thought it made sense to have someone working with us who knew more about the business than we did. No one else saw it that way.” In describing 1988, he devoted pages to a nit-picking analysis of the many cracks splitting the band, the last straw being the Kemp brothers, Gary and Martin, absenting themselves to star in the film about The Krays (notorious London gangsters), when all Tony wanted to do was sing his heart out on a stage. Then in 1999 the old school-mates found themselves daggers-drawn in an ugly court case over royalty payments, which Tony’s side lost. For years, the feud seemed irreconcilable. In 2005 Tony told me that by then he reckoned he personally was owed “about £2 million” to include interest.
Out of the blue in 2009 Spandau Ballet resolved their differences after Tony’s son Tom and Gary’s son Fin had met up in a pub and agreed to knock their dads’ heads together. The band reunited, they insisted, well, because all families have their squabbles and the old band of brothers from schooldays were really one big happy family again. It seemed just as pragmatic to assume that, as they were all approaching 50, the band knew a world tour might be their last chance to secure their pensions. What they agreed, though, was a one-year deal and it ended with an open-air show for 19,000 people at Newmarket racecourse on June 25 last year.
Hadley was always the non-Labour voter among the Spandaus and today at 51 he is a supporter of Conservative prime minister David Cameron. In recent years the singer harboured ambitions of becoming an MP. Given the horrendous violence that erupted this week on the streets of Britain, a remark he made in 2007 seems prescient. Tone was talking tough on crime to The Independent while attending the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool: “The fabric of society is torn. I walked through Blackpool and there were gangs walking the backstreets and 16-year-old pregnant women everywhere. What we need is Cameron to be like Thatcher, to say enough is enough, things have gone too far.”
This week as he packed for the States, Big Tone has given three lively online interviews, and here are some teaser quotes from him, which include news that his new solo album is now delayed …
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Liverpool Empire 1982: a fan and her handbag shin up a drainpipe to gain access to Spandau Ballet’s dressing room. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
TH There’s so many. OK. We were playing the Liverpool Empire in 1983 [Actually 1982, Tony — Shapersofthe80s]. The dressing rooms were on the second floor and there were screaming girls outside going absolutely ballistic. So all the windows were shut and we’d just done the show. Suddenly there was a strange tap on the window. We opened the window and two fans had climbed up a drain pipe and shimmied up two floors just to get to us! If they’d have fallen, they would have been killed. We invited them in, signed all of their stuff and gave them something to drink. It was pretty wild.
QLeaving for the United States soon? TH I can’t wait. For some reason it has been very difficult to get into the States. An American agent saw my band in Europe and wanted to get us over there. We want to come to the States and prove ourselves. We are doing a handful of shows, then come back next year and do 20 or 30 shows.
QYou have a new album coming out this year, right? TH No, next year; I am a little behind on it. It will be the first album that is written by me. It will be 12 tracks that are classic pop rock. A few weeks ago I was in Miami for a private show and I was introduced to Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. We are going to write together so I have to factor that in as well. How bloody brilliant is that?
Spandau Ballet reunited 2009: their first live performance for 19 years was on the Jonathan Ross TV show. (BBC)
QWill the Spandau reunion be ongoing? TH It was only meant to be a one-off, and from my point of view, it was just a one-off. But I always say ‘Never say never’. At the moment, I’m touring Britain, the States, Australia, New Zealand and Germany before Christmas, plus with the new album, there’s a lot going on, but maybe one day in the future.
QWhat would you say to more casual fans in the States that only know the softer side of Spandau Ballet? TH In America [in the 80s], Spandau really cocked it up unfortunately. America’s a country where you have to tour and tour and tour to prove yourself and we didn’t do that. For whatever reason, whether it was management, thinking we were clever or whatever, we just didn’t play it right. I love playing live, and the thing is now I want to prove myself in America. Some people will think “This guy sang that sweet little song True” but when they see us live, they might be surprised that it’s a lot heavier than they imagined.
➢ Tony’s US dates 2011 — Aug 13 Irving Plaza, New York; Aug 14 Northalsted Market Days Festival, Halsted Street, Chicago; Aug 16 House Of Blues, West Hollywood, Los Angeles; Aug 18 Ramona Mainstage, San Diego, CA; Aug 20 Fremont Experience, Fremont Street, Las Vegas; Aug 21 Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco.
➢ Tony’s Australia dates 2011 — Oct 26 Hindmarsh, South Australia; Oct 27 South Morang, Victoria; Oct 28 Doncaster, Victoria; Oct 29 Chelsea Heights, Victoria; Oct 30 Rewind Australia, Wollongong, NSW; Nov 3 Coolangatta, Queensland; Nov 4 Penrith NSW.
❚ STEVE NORMAN GIVES A THUMBS-UP to Shapersofthe80s during one of his dirrrty sax solos on Friday in the closing stages of the European leg of Spandau Ballet’s Reformation world tour. The band had to take in Spain, obviously, and we were there along with their families who weren’t going to miss a weekend in Barcelona – and that included two grannies, Steve’s mum Sheila and Tony Hadley’s mum Josie, both of whom once cut fine figures on the dance floors of yore.
During the Swinging 80s the cosmopolitan and leafy capital of the “autonomous community” of Catalonia – proud to have its own language and its own parliament – became the hippest city on the continent. Any number of London’s pop cognoscenti from Sade to writer Robert Elms made their homes in Barcelona and those who didn’t made this global city a civilised holiday destination to rival the naked hedonism of Ibiza or the Costa Brava. For the Spanish, Spandau enlivened the pop scene at exactly the right moment…
Hell had frozen over, Tony Hadley said in 2007, and ruled out any chance of reunion for his band. So it’s all the more magnanimous that today he can say onstage “We are very happy boys”…
❚ EXTRAORDINARY. UNEXPECTED. From the off, the Dubliners roared a loud, exuberant and warm welcome to the band that hadn’t played together for 19 years. They cheered the best bits by each musician – John, Steve, Gary, Martin and vocalist Tony. They cheered whenever closeups appeared on the monster live video backdrop. Within a day, amateur videos on YouTube [see below] were vividly testifying to the energy the event generated.
Spandau Ballet’s comeback Reformation tour began at the O2 arena in Ireland’s capital city on October 13, 2009, with a huge flickering video montage to remind us of the way the world was when they set the style as electro-pop innovators in 1980. Headlines announced “Recession”, “Unemployment” … “and Dreams”. Then a jabbing finger on an early synthesiser triggered a chugging high-octane version of their oh-so-cool first hit, To Cut a Long Story Short…
➢ 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
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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
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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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