Gary Kemp Reflects on Spandau Ballet’s True and Touring with the Twelfth Doctor

Here’s hoping the members of Spandau Ballet are planning to spend a significant amount of this week catching up on their beauty sleep, because they’re really going to need to be rested, ready, and at the top of their game when next week rolls around:

• On March 12, all five members of the band – if you haven’t had to remember their names for awhile, that’s Tony Hadley, Gary Kemp, Steve Norman, John Keeble, and Martin Kemp – will be at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, attending the world premiere of their documentary, Soul Boys of the Western World, which is in competition in the 24 Beats per Second category.

• Just after it becomes March 13 – at 12:30 AM, to be precise – the band will perform at the Vulcan Gas Company, which will be a decidedly momentous occasion, as it’ll be their first U.S. performance in 28 years.

• At 3:30 PM on the 13th, the fivesome will sit down for an interview at the SXSW Music Conference.

• Finally, on March 14 they’ll be back onstage again, this time as participants in the Official SXSW Tribute to Lou Reed.

Yep, it’s gonna be a pretty exhausting few days for Spandau Ballet…but you’d be hard pressed to find Gary Kemp complaining about a single bit of it.

A few days ago, we hopped on the phone with Mr. Kemp in order to discuss the band’s seminal album, 1983’s True – the reissue of which hits stores today, precisely 31 years after its initial release – and while we had him on the line, we also chatted a bit about their belated return to the States in conjunction with Soul Boys of the Western World. During the course of the conversation, we got a fair amount of insight into how Spandau Ballet’s sound evolved over the course of their career, dug a bit deeper into the importance of True to their U.S. profile, and found out why it may or may not be a coincidence that the new promo photos for Doctor Who find the Twelfth Doctor wearing a jacket which looks like it could’ve been swiped from Mr. Hadley’s wardrobe.

Rhino: Based on the phrasing in your autobiography, I Know This Much, it seems as though the True album might well have been produced by Trevor Horn, if only he hadn’t been such a stickler for perfection.

Gary Kemp: Yeah, that’s true! He started that album. He was the first person I played all those songs to... when I was still living with my parents, believe it or not, at age 22! [Laughs.] I had half a dozen hit records, and I’m still living with my parents. I think that says something more about my working-class background than anything else, but...

You know what, though? I don’t think he was about being a stickler for perfection. I think he was… He was never really good at recording bands. He always needed in his production to really have control of the music, which often meant programmed drums or bringing in some major session players, and I think with Spandau, you know, we could all stand up and play those songs. And I think he needed more power than that, so I think his thing was about making an excuse, really, why he couldn’t carry on. Years later, he told me that I didn’t play “True” to him, and if he’d heard “True,” he would’ve carried on doing the whole album. [Laughs.] He’d gotten that wrong. But I do think we did better off with (Tony) Swain and (Steve) Jolley, really, because they really allowed us to become the band we are and to help us find our sound. Also, the reason we picked Swain and Jolley was because they had a pop sensibility. They were white boys who understood black music, and I think we quite liked that connection.

So set the stage a bit, if you would: where did Spandau Ballet stand before the band went in to record True?

Well, you know, to sort of voice in a nutshell where we were coming from, we were obviously very much the band that represented the new youth movement coming out of London, in the same way that the (Sex) Pistols were representing punk or (David) Bowie glam or Pink Floyd psychedelia, etc., etc. We were representing this new wave of dressing up, dancing, attitude, and club culture. We were starting off from an electronic base because obviously Kraftwerk and those bands out of Berlin had been a big influence – probably because of the blessing David Bowie gave their city! – and then we started moving more toward funk and our roots as soul boys with “Chant No. 1 (We Don’t Need This Pressure On).”

And then there came a stage when… I think it was a little drop in the bucket with a track called “She Loved Like Diamond,” and then Trevor Horn picking us back up again with the remix of “Instinction” and some re-recording, that it was, like, “Now, if we want to move on and we want to make hit records and we want to last as a band, we can’t just focus on the club culture of London. We can’t be a cult band anymore. We have to think way outside of the UK.” And even thought we’d had hits in Europe with “To Cut a Long Story Short,” “Chant No. 1,” etc., I really felt a sense of freedom that I didn’t have to worry about the groove anymore. [Laughs.] Or worry, “Is this a hit sound?” I could just scurry off to my bedroom, pick up my guitar and write songs.

Now, we had no shame in writing what I call pop songs, because I’d grown up buying singles and grown up loving pop music. The middle classes – and when I say “middle class,” I mean wealthier than your version of middle class in America – who were into the prog-rock and, oh, let’s say college music. You know, I grew up wanting to buy David Bowie records, Marc Bolan records… The charts meant everything to me. They were like a football league…and I wanted my team to be at the top! [Laughs.] So I wanted to be part of that. Like Roxy Music. Or like Marvin Gaye or the soul records we used to buy. At that time, I’d been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Al Green, and I naively thought, “I’d like to make a blue-eyed soul record.” I mean, that’s just how the songs were coming out.

“True,” in a way, was a sort of homage to Al Green, but lyrically it was obviously about trying to write a love song. It was actually about the process of trying to be honest in a love song: “Why do I find it hard to write the next line / When I want the truth to be said?” You know, it was me sitting in my room, listening to Marvin Gaye, wanting to be part of that…and it was with incredible pride that we eventually made it onto Soul Train! [Laughs.]

That’s funny you mention that. Ever since we found out about that appearance, we’ve been trying to find a clip, but to no avail.

Well, you’ll pleased to know that we’re putting together a trailer for the movie at the moment – I think it’ll be finished on Monday, and it’s getting an exclusive on the USA today website – and when the trailer proper ends… You know how often there’s a witty tag at the end of a trailer? Well, ours is an interview between us and Don Cornelius on Soul Train. I think he said something like, “Don’t these guys talk funny?” [Laughs.] But it was a great honor to be on that program.

But to get back to True, I wrote these songs, but then we decided not to make the album in London. We decided to go to Compass Point in the Bahamas, a studio that had made records that we’d liked, like all those Robert Palmer records. I think in those days, the early ‘80s, for white boys to attempt an amalgamation of black music and white music was – believe it or not – subversive. It was not what everybody was doing. Soul music was sort of frowned upon by the inky press, by the NME, by Melody Maker. It was seen as sort of aspirational working-class music and therefore not politically correct, maybe. But it was the sound of working-class kids in London. And I wanted to make a record that had something that sat in that world. And then right around then is when Steve Norman had just discovered the saxophone, and…

You know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? You think: in two years, we’d gone from “To Cut a Long Story Short” to “True”! And I think it’s because we were kids just looking for different music. We’d just get bored really quickly. “We want to play this! We want to try this!” But always trying to be, like, one step ahead of the gang. But I think it was with “True” that we found our sound. We developed into a much rockier sound, and...well, really, playing live was what Spandau were about. I always feel like the records never really quite do us justice. But I think we found with that album a kind of continuity where the whole album has a kind of...almost like a musical concept to it. And Nassau helped. You know, that sort of seeped into the music.

True: Track by Track

“Pleasure”

Rhino: So was “Pleasure” the first song you wrote for the album?

GK: I think it was, yeah. And there’s actually a short clip in the movie – from a Super 8 camera, with sound – of Steve Norman ‘round my house filming me playing it for him for the first time on acoustic guitar. Yeah, that was the first, and I think in a way there was a kind of philosophy about that song. There was a kind of bright hedonism about the lyric that I wanted to infiltrate the entire record. You know, “Chant No. 1” and the previous album had a sort of...amphetamine-related paranoia. [Laughs.] It was very urban. And this was an album I wanted the sun to shine out of, so that was the first track. I was also going through probably my first powerful love experience, albeit slightly frustratingly unrequited...or certainly unfulfilled! So a lot of that was infiltrating the music, and, as I said, there was listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, etc., as well as bands like Talking Heads...who, brilliantly, when we arrived in Nassau to do our album, they were in the studio next door making their record!

“Communication”

Rhino: “Communication” was the single that immediately preceded the release of the album, but “Lifeline” actually came first, correct?

GK: Yeah. “Communication” grew out of a kind of jive-type rockabilly beat, really – a bit Stray Cats-y, in a way – and it’s me just playing around with a load of words about communication. And it’s obviously incredibly dated, because there’s no mention of email, and it actually mentions Telex! We shot a video for that that didn’t have the band in it – it just had Tony in it, and Tony didn’t actually do any lip-synch in it – and then we shot another video for America, ‘cause we had to do some lip-synching, so we intercut it. There’s a funny bit in the movie where I’m being interviewed about that, and I say, “Yeah, you know, I really want to be behind the camera. Tony’s the one who wants to act.” And Tony says, “Yeah, in a few years’ time, I’ll probably give this up and become an actor.” [Laughs.]

“Code of Love”

GK: That was almost sort of a reggae feel, and I think the biggest influence Compass Point had was upon that track, the general feel of that track. That was the first thing we recorded when we went to Compass Point.

“Gold”

Rhino: Meanwhile, “Gold” was actually the last song you recorded, right?

GK: Well, “Gold” was... I wrote that in London, and I think it was one of the earliest songs I wrote, actually. One of them, anyway. And it’s the least soulful on the album. It’s one where I was trying to write a James Bond theme tune, I think, pretty much. It was inspired by John Barry, without a doubt. And it’s actually now become our biggest song. It completely overpowers “True” live. When we got back together, I said, “Oh, Tone, you know, we’ll probably have to do ‘True’ as the encore,” and he said, “No way, ‘Gold’ is the biggest record.”

GK: “Gold” has become a massive sort of people’s anthem in this country. [Laughs.] When the Olympics happened here, it was played every single night on the BBC...and the Mexican football team sang it on the pitch after we’d got the gold medal! Because we won 28 gold medals, one of the radio stations here played it 28 times on their breakfast show on the following Monday, each one accompanied by the commentary of whoever had won the gold medal. It’s a big record for us, and I’ll tell you, wait ‘til you see it live. It’s rocking live. There’s a clip on YouTube of us doing “Gold” four years ago at the Isle of Wight Festival, and when you see the audience – and that’s not specifically our audience, that’s a festival audience – you’ll get a sense of how well people know it!

“Lifeline”

GK: That was the first single of the True album in the UK, before “Communication.”

Rhino: Do you see that as a transitional single for the band?

It was a transitional single. It was me writing a pop record. It had a feel-good, out-and-out pop sound to it. It was me discovering the backing vocals that became rather a hook for the group…and that’s me on BVs on my own. I think Steve’s playing alto on it. That’s one of the first time he played saxophone ever in the group. And I think that was recorded in London. Yeah, that was recorded at Red Bus Studios in London, before we went off to Nassau to do the album proper.

“Heaven Is a Secret”

GK: Lyrically, I think I had a lot of fun with that. I really like that tune. That almost became… Believe it or not, the record company wanted to release it as the fifth single. And, you know, releasing four singles in those days was pretty rare, but they wanted to release it as a fifth single…and I wish they had now, because I really like that! [Laughs.] I think it came out in one country in Europe, but we actually said no. We thought it was too much and that we really should get on and do another album. But it’s actually one of my favorite songs on the record, and I think when we go out live again on the next tour, I’d really like to incorporate it somehow.

“Foundation”

GK: Yeah, that’s based around what I think of as a very Chic guitar. That’s me trying to do Nile Rodgers on that beginning bit. [Laughs.] I was just loving those kinds of tracks. Again, a really upbeat, positive lyric, so a lot of sort of chanting on it, as it were. Very four-on-the-floor.

“True”

GK: Oh, my God, are we there already? [Laughs.] Can you believe there’s only eight tracks on the album? Of course, those were the days, you see, when people couldn’t pack records with endless tracks. We had to think about what was really good for this record. Albums were made for vinyl, not for CDs, so they were two-act pieces, and you had to go, “What will end Act One? What will begin Act Two?” And who would dream of putting their biggest record as the last track on their album? But we felt that was the right place to put “True,” the final track of the album, because it was six and a half minutes long. And it didn’t matter that it was there. Nowadays they stack it all up the front, ‘cause they’re only listening to the first few tracks on iTunes to decide if they’re going to buy it.

As for the song, as I said, I was trying to pay homage to Al Green, Marvin Gaye is mentioned in it… Tony says he never thought it was a single, and I don’t think I thought it was a single when I wrote it. There’s a shot in the film of some home movie footage of us in Nassau, and I’d just put down the guitar, that sort of upbeat Motown guitar part that I didn’t discover ‘til I did the guitar in Nassau and thought, “You know what? That’s really cool!” And that really bright snare drum… I think I might’ve been listening to some Four Tops or something. And then I’d done the backing vocals, Tony had done a guide vocal, and we all went into the control room to listen to it. And everybody came in – all the road crew and everyone – and we all start singing it. And we’re just singing it and singing it. And someone filmed us doing it, and it’s in the movie. And we all knew at that point, “Christ, that’s the best song. That’s a hit. That has to be a single!”

But, obviously, we need to touch on the legacy of that one bloody song, don’t we? [Laughs.] Which is good and bad in many ways! I mean, we overcame it in the UK, because “Gold” was such a big hit, and we carried on having hits right through the ‘80s as we played up ‘til 1990. But I don’t regret the fact that “True” is so enormous in America. I mean, it keeps me financially secure, sure. It’s a wonderful thing for any songwriter, any band, to create a song that just kind of stays out there in the ether, with everyone from Steve Buscemi (in The Wedding Singer) to Ed Norton singing it. [Hesitates.] Have you seen that episode of Modern Family, then?

In fact, it literally reran last night as I was in the midst of putting together my list of questions for this interview. I took it as a sign that I needed to bring it up, but you’ve beaten me to it.

Yeah, well, what’s hysterical about it is the geeky research, which is typical of brilliant American writing, but the guy… I’ve forgotten his name!

Izzy LaFontaine.

[Laughs.] That’s right, yeah! When (Claire’s) introducing him, he said, “I was the bass player between Richard Miller and Martin Kemp.” And if you really know our history, you know that Richard Miller was our bass player in school, before we were even called Spandau Ballet! So I was just, like, “Wow…” I mean, that blew me away, it did. But obviously, you know, from P.M. Dawn through to the Black Eyed Peas and all the various different versions, covers, and interpolations, they’ve been immense for us. And it’s still out there! We do deals on publishing for that song in movies. It seems like every month there’s a movie that wants it.

You know, if I had to tell you the song I’m the most proud of, it’s actually “Through the Barricades.” I think that’s certainly Spandau Ballet at their best, in their pomp, and in Europe, it was our biggest record! I just think that, as a song, it’s got something about it that’s survived. But I think “True” has an American quality. Nelly used “True” for one of his songs, and I met him afterwards and said, “Why did you choose that?” I’m thinking, “Why does this really cool, hip black guy choose this guy by their older white guys?” And he said he just grew up with it. It just means that much to him. It got played on black radio. It transferred onto black radio. It made that crossover.

“True” has had more five million airplays in the U.S. now, but when I picked up the award for the song being played three million times, Paul McCartney was getting the award for one million for “I Feel Fine.” And, you know, I can’t find any sympathy there. [Laughs.] Listen, he has bigger records, trust me! But what I’m saying is that, because it made the crossover in American between white and black radio, it just sort of became something much bigger. And as a teenager who used to buy black music, it’s been a great honor for me.

To wrap up the discussion about the album, there’s a great quote in your book about how the recording sessions for True went long, and when you stepped out of the studio, you were met by Boy George, who had a few choice words for the band.

Yeah, well, you can just quote me straight out of the book on that one! (Per Kemp’s recollections in I Know This Much, George sneered, “Get the fuck out, Spandau Ballet! This is my studio time you’re wasting! I’ve got some decent music to record!”) But, you know, the irony of that… When we were all kids down at the Blitz Club, he was the hat check girl! [Laughs.] But he was just George back then! All that stuff, though, the mad stuff about hanging out back then, it’s incredible how many people came out of that little scene. But I suppose New York was very like that in the ‘70s as well, wasn’t it, with places like CBGBs and so forth.

From all reports, it seems like the screaming-girl quotient at Spandau’s shows started to kick into overdrive just before True.

Yeah, I suppose it started slightly during the Diamond tour. But True was the one that made it international for us. I think what a lot of it had to do with was the fact that we were entering the period of the video, with the power of the video. When we first went to America, the states that had MTV adored the band, and there were kids chasing us, and they were dressing like us. But then I remember we’d go to places like New York, who didn’t have MTV, believe it or not – this was in the early days – and we were sort of a bit of a mystery to them. Suddenly it was like a fashion vacuum. [Laughs.] But I had no shame in the screaming girls. To me, it was just part of the fun and part of the madness to be a band that was screamed at by girls.

But I think as our career developed through the ages, the screaming…well, that, uh, kind of died down a bit. [Laughs.] Even though the ticket sales went up, that died down. I think the audience got a bit older, there were more guys who came to like the band, and…I think everyone, all the bands that came out of Britain, had that at that time, from Boy George to Duran to us to Human League. I mean, young kids, especially girls, were just… That was their only obsession: buying music and seeing bands. And British bands were the most powerful bands in the world at that point. Live Aid would not have happened if it hadn’t been for the success of British bands internationally. The British charts were virtually reproduced in the American charts for certain periods of the ‘80s, and (Bob) Geldof was plugging into that power. It was the second British invasion…and I don’t think there’s been one since on such a scale. I mean, there’s been bands that’ve done well, obviously, but not so many.

Yeah, Britpop was great, but it was still ultimately just a niche thing in the States.

It really was. I mean, you know, Blur never really happened in that sense, and obviously Oasis had a couple of records, but, yeah, it wasn’t quite as big as the whole Duran / Culture Club / Spandau sort of era.

Spandau was – and remains – a pretty tremendous live act.

Well, playing live was really what we did, you know? We broke box office records here in the UK. At Wembley Arena, we were the first band to play six nights there, and we went on to do that again and again. Actually, when I was remixing a live DVD from 1986, from the Through the Barricades tour – this was about eight years ago – it just made me want to go out and do it again, ‘cause that was when we had the most amount of fun.

Funnily enough, even though we were making a kind of blue-eyed soul type music in those early days with True… I mean, it did develop into a much more arena sound as we played arenas, with Through the Barricades, etc., but the band that we all aspired to be – because we all loved them as kids – were the Faces, just because of how much fun the Faces used to have onstage just falling down. They were a real gang. And I think they were our blueprint, really, for our live work.

At one point, you had an opening act who’s gone on to considerably larger fame over the years, most notably with his latest gig: Peter Capaldi.

Yeah, actually, in the movie there’s a home movie clip of him – a very short clip – of him on the bus, traveling. Of course, he doesn’t say, “I’m going to be Doctor Who one day!” But it’s him! [Laughs.] I met him when I got to know the Altered Images guys and hung out a lot with Clare (Grogan) and David Band, who did the artwork for the True album and for the Parade album. He’s sadly no longer with us. He died. A lovely man. But I got to know Capaldi, and…I can’t quite think through who or how, but at that point he was a standup comedian.

And what a goofy, fantastic way of opening our show! ‘Cause we never liked to have bands supporting us, but I thought he would be really funny…so we took him on this tour! I actually have a tape somewhere, which I’ve heard recently, of him attempting to do his show over the shouting audience. And can I just say one other thing as well? Check out the new Doctor Who outfit that he’s wearing. If that isn’t a Tony Hadley True jacket, I don’t know what I’m talking about! [Laughs.]

Once Spandau arrived in America after True broke, you had to deal with a fair amount of hysteria.

Yeah, well, that was thanks to KROQ and MTV, the two together. There’s some footage in the film of us at Tower Records and at KROQ, and… You know, actually, I’d say if there was a lead table of the scariest of the screaming girls, then the Americans would be at the top. [Laughs.] I mean, thank God for them and bless them forever, but as you’ll see in the film, they’re some of the scariest of all! But their commitment was amazing.

Someone once asked me, “What’s the difference between the audiences around the world?” And I said, “Well, obviously, depending on where you are, sometimes you can just see that there’s a difference, but they’re all pretty much the same…apart from in America. In America, not only are they really frightening in the front row, but they’ve all got braces on their teeth!” [Laughs.]

During that time, around ’83 and ’84, there was a bigger knowledge of the band in the States. I mean, we sold out the Universal Amphitheater in 20 minutes or something. Unfortunately, we never really continued going back. We had a lot of success in Europe, and we sort of conceded America to Europe, and that became our focus, really. I had a funny dinner with John Taylor a couple of years ago, and it was like two old generals talking about the war. [Laughs.] He said, “Well, we had America, and you had Europe, and we decided not to worry about Europe because that’s where you were strongest.” It was nice to sort of think that, between 10 working-class lads from the UK, we had two whole continents!

You’re not exaggerating about conceding America to Europe: it’s amazing to think that, when Spandau Ballet plays in conjunction with your SXSW appearance for Soul Boys of the Western World, it’ll be the first time the band’s played in the States in 28 years.

Yeah, well, you know, you do have to consider that we didn’t play together for 19 of those years. We all went off and did different things. We fell out, we didn’t really want to play with each other again, and…time just flies. You know, we all started living the real world and having kids, and obviously I concentrated on acting for quite a bit, as did my brother. And then the court case was just incredible…and, of course, that’s part of our story as well, a part with much sadness involved. But it’s in the film.

When we got back together in 2009 and toured again, we sort of ran out of time before we made it to America. It was an arena show, and we did Europe and Australasia and Africa and various places, but we just never got over to the States on that tour. Tony was going off to do some solo work, and we drew a line in the sand of when we were finished. And I regret that. And I can’t wait to come and do some work in America. This is a really great way of putting our toe in the water and feeling the temperature, and what I really want – and what I think the band are hoping for – is that we can come back and begin our world tour in the States, hopefully towards the end of this year.

When Spandau got back together in 2009, the band also recorded a new album, Once More, where you revisited and reinterpreted several of your classic songs while also throwing a pair of new tracks into the mix.

Yeah, that was interesting. We did a chat show here – Jonathan Ross’s show – and Universal saw that and they said, “Look, can we quickly put an album together? Can you do an acoustic record?” And it was a fantastic piece of therapy for us, because we actually went and stayed in a residential studio…so we were living together! We went from hating each other to living with each other! [Laughs.] And as you say, we did two new songs for that record as well. But it was a wonderful experience.

You know, we rehearsed last week for the first time in four years, and I laughed more than I have done in four years. When we lived with each other doing the Once More album, we laughed and we laughed. We have so much history that I think, you know, the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff, and we’re past the bad stuff. We’ve put it away in a little area, and we don’t talk about it. But what we’ve achieved together and what we owe each other is so immense that I think we all respect it now. Now that we’ve reached a certain age, we respect what we owe each other much more than we did back in 1990.

And now you’ve got Soul Boys of the Western World to tell the whole tale.

I really can’t wait for people to see the film. It sets the band against the sort of social and political changes that were going on in the UK, but more than anything it’s about friendship, how friends can destroy each other sometimes, and then it’s ultimately about redemption. I’m really proud of it. I think it’s warts and all, and it’s pretty brave…but it was very uncomfortable when all five of us sat down and watched it together for the first time! I think people will really dig it, though. And it’s archive-only, so you haven’t got to watch any old, boring faces! [Laughs.] But I just really can’t wait to get back to America and show Americans that there’s more to us than just one song, and that Spandau Ballet is much bigger than “True.”