Spandau Ballet - The Neo-Romantic Soul Boys

… so come to me when I’m asleep

we’ll cross the lines and dance upon the street

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet? A conundrum that's still hard to solve today. Anyone who was around in the Eighties will remember well how this question troubled the sleep of an entire generation, but will also know that behind a quiz so convenient for marketing and the record industry lies an answer, whatever it may be, of outstanding musical quality. Often dismissed as idols for teenagers, the two most talked-about and misunderstood bands of the decade have, over time, earned the justice and credibility they deserved, with interest. But while we know practically everything about the wild boys from Birmingham, whether due to more intense studio work or a longer-lasting career, a few dark spots still remain to be illuminated in the story of these talented “Western soul souls,” as filmmaker John Henken called them in a 2014 film centered on their biography. Starting with the band's name, which conceals a macabre meaning.

Late 1970s: From Islington to the Blitz

Spandau today is a green pedestrian district located ten kilometres west of Berlin, at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers. In the past, the citadel housed a penitentiary notoriously used to detain criminals convicted at Nuremberg, demolished for good in 1987 after the death of its last inmate, Rudolf Hess, in order to prevent it from becoming a kind of pilgrimage site for neo-Nazi movements. According to some, the "ballet" refers to the harrowing final series of spasms and contortions of hanged bodies dangling from the rope, a last grasp at life a moment before it ends. According to others, instead, the bodies in question were those torn apart, again during the First World War, by bursts fired from Maschinegewehr 08 machine guns, manufactured in a factory located near the prison. What is certain is that British music journalist and BBC Radio London DJ Robert Elms, passing through Berlin in 1979, read the words "Spandau Ballet" scrawled on the wall of a nightclub toilet and immediately suggested it to the lads, of whom he was a close friend even before becoming a fan. A truly cool name for a band, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman, John Keeble and brothers Martin and Gary Kemp must have thought at once, having spent that period cutting their teeth under a string of provisional names before finally claiming the moniker that would go down in history.

Both students at "Dame Alice Owen's Secondary School" in Islington, a suburb in north London, Gary and Steve decided to form a band after seeing a Sex Pistols gig in 1976. Gary Kemp (16 October 1959) comes from a working class family and, after building up considerable experience as a child actor in a children's theatre company and in a few "Children's Film Foundation" films, developed a teenage passion for glam rock and progressive. Steve Norman (25 March 1960), on the other hand, grew up in Stepney, a district in east London, and is considered a genuine prodigy, able to play guitar, keyboards, percussion and saxophone. They were soon joined by three more schoolmates: John Keeble (6 July 1959), an athletic drummer with a past as a promising cricketer, the charismatic vocalist Anthony Patrick "Tony" Hadley (2 June 1960), son of a Daily Mail electrical engineer, and bassist Michael Ellison, completing a line-up that in this embryonic phase called itself The Roots (after one of Gary Kemp's earliest compositions, titled "I've Got The Roots", which the fledgling quintet used to play in the school's music room during lunch breaks, alongside covers of popular bands of the day, including "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Beatles, "Silver Train" by the Rolling Stones and "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place" by the Animals).

Ellison left a few months later and the Roots became The Cut, with Steve Norman filling in on bass until Richard Miller was brought in for that role: it's 1977 and now The Makers are born, earning favourable reviews from the specialist press and making a name for themselves on the local circuit with an enjoyable Sixties-style power-pop.

The real turning point, however, came roughly a year later, in 1978, when their manager Steve Dagger, another old boy of Dame Alice Owen's School, suggested that Martin Kemp (10 October 1961), Gary's younger and rather good-looking, dashing brother, take Richard's place, having noticed a certain enthusiasm for him among female fans. Martin had in fact often tagged along with the rest of the gang as a roadie, and once he joined the band they renamed themselves Gentry, officially debuting on 1 July 1978 with a gig at Middlesex Polytechnic in Cockfosters.

To recap, there are now five of them: Tony Hadley on vocals, Steve Norman on percussion, John Keeble on drums, Martin Kemp on bass and Gary Kemp on guitar. Reorganised this way, the line-up would remain virtually unchanged right up to the present day, save for the occasional addition of session players and backing vocals, with a special mention due to the ever-present Toby Chapman, a curiously uncredited sixth effective member of the core quintet. Strongly influenced by London's new underground scene, they paid for a Yamaha CS10 synthesizer in instalments and every Tuesday night gathered in the smoky basement of Billy's, a seedy Soho nightclub set up beneath a brothel for the wealthy, the Gargoyle, which stood right above it. It was the ideal habitat for an unruly horde, made up mainly of art students from outlying schools, who sought and found new stimuli and energy in the proto-wave nights organised by future Visage members Steve Strange and Rusty Egan. Among the regulars was also the then barely-known Boy George, Marilyn, Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama and other notable wannabes who were shaping the path ahead, sowing the seeds of a new glamour aesthetic.

We believed in fashion as if it were a religion. Wear the wrong shoes and nobody will speak to you, wear the same pair twice in a row and nobody will ever look at you again

(Gary Kemp)

In that stifling basement, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk mixed with rave culture and ambition, MTV and no future. Our protagonists breathed in this heady atmosphere and translated it into a futuristic new European dance music. From Soho to Covent Garden, the scene moved to number 4 Great Queen Street: the appointment was Tuesday night at the Blitz, with little word spread beyond a tacit agreement to show up dressed in the most eye-catching way possible. Punk was no longer trendy, and torn or flared jeans were left at the door; the green light was given to outlandish outfits, jewellery, eyeliner and inventive hairstyles, kitsch shoes and pirate shirts, gay and effeminate looks: anything was fashionable except anonymity.

Elms's decisive assist came right around this time, and so on 5 December 1979, at the club's Christmas party, they played their historic first gig as Spandau Ballet, followed by a series of exclusive shows in unusual venues, such as the Scala cinema or on the Thames aboard the cruiser HMS Belfast. Strange sensed their potential and made them a fixture, and curiosity around them grew. Word of mouth set off a bidding war for their signature, won by Chrysalis Records, who made them the jewel in the crown of a roster that at the time also distributed, among others, the Waterboys, Ultravox, Generation X and Pere Ubu.

1981: Journey to Glory

Produced by former Landscape mastermind Richard James Burgess, Spandau Ballet's debut single "To Cut A Long Story Short" came out on 31 October 1980 and leapt to number five in the charts, paving the way for the debut album Journeys To Glory, a genuine monolith that four months later, on 27 February 1981, opened the door to the second British Invasion. It was the dawn of a new era that dubbed itself new romantic, in homage to the line "some new romantic looking for the Tv sound" coined in "Planet Earth" by Duran Duran, with whom the band would go on to wage a healthy rivalry, born among posters pinned up in bedrooms and culminating in a highly creative head-to-head. The discus thrower with an amputated arm depicted on the cover by graphic designer Graham Smith reflects the clear intent to offer the world a marble-like work, not a passing fancy but something built to last forever, while the overlaid Cyrillic lettering somehow anticipated the left-leaning bent of the lyrics' content, much to the chagrin of those who, because of the name, kept accusing them of Nazi sympathies.

They are handsome, innovative and can actually play: annihilating the nihilists, punk is already behind them and post-punk takes on a new guise. This is the guiding principle of an album that stands as a symbol of rebirth for an old Europe now in decay.

I am beautiful and clean and so very very young

to be standing in the street to be taken by someone

("To Cut A Long Story Short")

"To Cut A Long Story Short" is the story of a soldier returning from war, with life still going on all around, and Spandau Ballet certainly have no intention of sitting idle. 1981 is a particularly fertile year for the whole movement: within a few months come "Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret" by Soft Cell, "Rage In Eden" by Ultravox, "In The Garden" by Eurythmics, "Travelogue" by Human League and "Computer World" by Kraftwerk. Gary Kemp, who wrote all the songs, thinks big and rises to the challenge, transfiguring electronic music into a white disco with a romantic, decadent pulse, where the driving groove is no longer icy and geometric but is instead carried by bass, rhythm guitar and snare drum. In this way the band's image stays faithfully anchored to the unpredictable codes of the "Visa Age", where Ziggy Stardust and Debbie Harry share the stage with Giorgio Moroder and Ian Curtis, while at the same time the emphasis shifts to clothing and self-care as an idealised celebration of the sensuality of youth. The budget for the video is tight, just 5,000 pounds, and director Brian Grant wraps filming at the London Dungeon in half a day: the future is in their sights, with Tony scanning it through binoculars while the others play cards wearing Scottish military regalia that they would later also sport on Top Of The Pops. The result is irresistible, and even Depeche Mode's keyboardist at the time, Vince Clarke, takes notice, later candidly admitting that he drew inspiration from "To Cut A Long Story Short" to write his epoch-making "Just Can't Get Enough".

But it's the class-conscious anthem "Reformation" that is the true manifesto track of Journeys To Glory: a would-be medical student, Hadley is an elegant, refined singer with gospel training, though at this early stage of his career he has dynamite in his vocal cords, and the obsessive cry "shattered glass reflects elation/ reformation!/reformation!" comes down like an axe over a martial, marching keyboard pulse strongly reminiscent of Litfiba's "Guerra". The intriguing neo-melodic elegy "Mandolin" alternates sinister minimal arrangements with sumptuous synth openings, releasing the accumulated tension at just the right moment and guiding the listener through a surreal flashback across time, while the second single "The Freeze" is another dancefloor-filling whirl of driving bass and two-finger rhythmic arpeggios. "With the guitar I tried to fill the gaps in the lyrics," recalls Steve Norman about a track that, chart-wise, only reaching number seventeen, represents a small step back compared to "To Cut A Long Story Short". "It didn't have a proper chorus, but what I liked most was that, in the end, it didn't even need one. We could count on a legion of fans who felt exactly the same way we did, which is why we felt so confident and free to experiment." The single's cover art was again entrusted to Graham Smith, who, at Kemp's specific request, tried to fit every piece of the puzzle according to a common visual thread. This time it's a chariot borrowed from Egyptian imagery, while for the other key track on the album, "Musclebound", the inspiration for the artwork comes from John Flaxman's neoclassical busts.

Work 'til you're musclebound all night long!

("Musclebound")

“Musclebound” is a kind of proletarian electro-folk call to arms that anticipates by a couple of years the working-class Depeche Mode amid the smokestacks of “Construction Time Again” (it brings to mind “Pipeline”). Its hypnotic, repetitive groove weaves insidious metallic jingles with Caucasian-tinged sonorities, and it's no accident that the video was shot in Cumbria, among the peaks of Kirkstone Pass, precisely because the vegetation resembled the Russian steppe. The band is captured during a grueling horseback excursion, interrupted several times by a prolonged snowstorm. When Gary passed out after being thrown from his thoroughbred, drummer John Keeble refused to carry on and convinced the other members to call it quits as well. So director Russell Mulcahy was forced to shell out double his original budget: from then on costs would only keep rising, since with “Musclebound” Spandau Ballet seem to kick off a contest for the most expensive video with Duran Duran (also under Mulcahy's direction, who a year later would opt instead for sun-soaked, exotic locations in Sri Lanka for “Hungry Like The Wolf”, “Save A Prayer” and “Rio”).

Dizzying and sickly, “Toys” has the alienating cadences of Simple Minds's “Empires And Dance” beneath the Berlin Wall (“This Fear Of Gods”), while “Confused”, joyous only on the surface, borrows the typically darkwave sound of Sisters Of Mercy or Diaframma's “Elena”, only to blossom into synth phrases that are never dark or depressive, but instead speak the sun-drenched language of the less genetically-inclined OMD on “Bunker Soldiers”. Finally, there's “Age Of Blows”, an instrumental trifle haunted by the ghosts of David Bowie's “Warszawa” (“Low” dates from 1977), and the drum-pounding Seventies B-movie disco-funk of “Glow”, a single with echoes of INXS and Japan. “Glow” would be released as a double A-side with “Musclebound”, sealing the deal on a brash, narcissistic and irreverent debut.

It's probably not the best yardstick for judging the band's artistic trajectory, since from here on they'd embrace a very different sound, but Journeys To Glory remains an unmissable snapshot of the counterculture of its time. Spandau Ballet aren't exactly fond of new wave, but they prove they can hold their own in it just fine.

New York, Diamond

On the back of this breakthrough, many other Blitz Kids land deals and lay siege to the US charts, London becomes the new world capital of fashion, and its offspring invade America. In May, the designers at Axiom, the radical-chic label founded by Jo Baker, organize a parade in New York that couldn't be more fashionable. Interviews, photo sessions, nightclubs, booze and sweat: twenty-one people in all, including Sade Adu, Mandy Smith and Toyah Wilcox, and the week of Yankee revelry closes with an exclusive Spandau Ballet set at the Underground Club, between Broadway and 17th Street.

On March 4, 1982, Diamond is released, showcasing some of the chromosomes that would prove crucial in the band's transition toward the radio-friendly DNA of the years to come. Synthesizers take a back seat in favor of wild, tribal rhythms, headlined by “Chant No.1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)”, which bursts into third place on the UK Singles Chart and breaks into the Top 20 in the United States. The track, destined to remain one of their signature songs, blends funk horns with warm, tropical percussion, Afro tom-toms with rap verses and party choruses, featuring guest horns courtesy of fellow musicians Beggar & C. and graphic symbolism drawn from Native American imagery. The result is a fun and in its own way pioneering mix, not unlike the ramshackle early experiments of Wham! in holiday-camp mode — “Young Guns (Go For It!)” — or the jungle contaminations of Bow Wow Wow.

Along the same lines are the muscular bass lines of “Paint Me Down” and “Coffee Club”, while “Instinction”, originally not intended as a single, is delivered at the last minute to Trevor Horn, who touches it up with skill.

Reasons, reasons were here from the start

it’s my instinction

(“Instinction”)

Fresh off his work with vocal duo Dollar, the electronics guru overdubs extra keyboards and harp, rescuing at the eleventh hour the fate of an album (and a career…) that had seemed doomed to oblivion after the flop of “She Loved Like Diamond”, which only reached number forty-nine despite a lavish clip filmed at the Roman baths in Bath.

The near-title track was meant to be the other big highlight, but critics turned up their noses at some overly reckless vocal flourishes. What's more, a certain fondness for Hebrew-American mysticism clashes with the sexually charged themes, emphasized by the fire-red lips of the woman on the cover. Rounding things out are the three boldest tracks in the band's entire catalogue: the excellent, Middle Eastern-flavored “Pharaoh”, the somewhat more convoluted seven minutes of “Missionary”, and the cherry-blossom bloom of “Innocence And Science”, like a Sakamoto-esque watercolor.

Overall Diamond remains an unfinished, perhaps misunderstood LP, but one well worth rediscovering nonetheless, rich in ideas backed by relentless experimentation and increasingly inventive, less minimal arrangements. Hadley is a charismatic frontman rooted in soul and swing, and his voice is a major asset for the band. “We listened to jazz and black music, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke and Barry White”: these influences surface forcefully on the following True, released on March 4, 1983, marking a point of no return toward a cosmopolitan sound. From here on, the “Spands” would move away from their underground masonic leanings and gradually drift toward territory closer to blue-eyed soul or a certain sophisti-pop à la Simply Red, Prefab Sprout, Deacon Blue and Scritti Politti; it's no surprise some cried betrayal, not least because of the wardrobe, which swapped costumes and makeup for tight suits and cleanser. But the metamorphosis was necessary, and every detail was a lifeline, since in this decade more than any other, only those who know how to ride the tides stay afloat.

True and Parade: a calling card for the world

If Journeys To Glory and Diamond had earned Spandau Ballet a certain visibility in Britain and the rest of Europe, True turns them into global superstars thanks to a couple of formidable hits. Guitarist Gary Kemp, as ever the author of all the songs, has no wish to disappoint the Tuesday-night crowd, but the staff point out that if they want to achieve anything meaningful, they can't keep drifting along as a cult band, especially since the Chrysalis boss can't wait to drop them, and even Trevor Horn jumps ship, unable to stomach the rest of the crew. So Dagger puts forward the names of Steve Jolley and Tony Swain, fresh off launching “Deep Sea Skiving” by Bananarama and “Body Talk” by Imagination.

I’ve bought a ticket to the world, but now I’ve come back again

(“True”)

The entry into the jet-set happens in a logical and natural way: Gary falls for Altered Images singer Clare Grogan after meeting her backstage at Top Of The Pops, so he gets his father to drive him all the way to Scotland just to have tea with her. The rest is the story of the most famous unconsummated love affair of the Eighties: they are 22 and 18 respectively and live too far apart to see each other romantically, so the fearless blond lad goes home empty-handed, but at least pockets his longed-for ticket to the world. The girl, in fact, gives him a copy of “Lolita”, and Kemp turns it into a soft Motown-style ballad in G major running about six minutes, “True”, packed with references to Nabokov's novel (“take your seaside arms” and “with a thrill in my head and a pill in my tongue”), coded messages to his beloved (“always in time/ but never in line for dreams”) and a line (“listening to Marvin all night long/ this is the sound of my soul”) paying tribute to the master Gaye, who would die brutally just a year later. The track spends four weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the biggest smash in Spandau's history.

Recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the Bahamas, the album also tops the charts, boosted by the other monster single “Gold”, a genuine generational anthem that has to settle, tongue firmly in cheek, for the silver medal behind only “Give It Up” by KC And The Sunshine Band. Tony now manages to calibrate the punk fervour of his roots with pinpoint precision into unmistakable crooner skills, Steve Norman turns into a top-notch saxophonist, and from this point on reels off some of the most memorable solos of the decade.

Gold! Always believe in your soul

You got the power to know you’re indestructible, always believe in…

The James Bond-style spy video was shot partly in Carmona, Spain, and partly at Leighton House in Holland Park, London (the same location used by the Stranglers for “Golden Brown”): the swelling intro and the pompous piano arpeggios, combined with a world-class performance, seal a pop masterpiece that only partly follows conventional easy-listening structures. The funky “Pleasure” follows the golden rule and opens a tracklist with a lively, dreamy mood, of which the jazzy midtempo “Code Of Love” (which flirts with friend Sade's contemporary “Smooth Operator”) and the soft-disco “Communication” are two of the best highlights.

“Heaven Is A Secret” aims for the ear without losing sight of rhythms that are only comfortable on the surface, while “Foundation” and the lead single “Lifeline” (a hit at home regardless) are less incisive, trying to ward off a certain sense of repetitiveness (which will be a leitmotif of the years to come…) by adding frivolous yet still pleasant backing choruses.

The risk of slipping into blandness is high, but setting aside boy-band prejudices, the new direction taken with Jolley and Swain proves a winner. On these grounds, Parade is the mature album: 1984 is the year of “Mirror Moves” by the Psychedelic Furs, “Sparkle In The Rain” by Simple Minds, “Heartbeat City” by Cars and “No Sense Of Sin” by the Lotus Eaters, and Spandau Ballet need to deliver if they don't want to be cut out of the game that matters. Now they too are among the “in” names on the international scene, the fearsome Duran Duran officially become wild boys with the release of “Arena”, and the singles “Only When You Leave”, “Highly Strung”, “I'll Fly For You” and “Round And Round” provide a fresh, appealing antidote for anyone who sees Simon Le Bon as the enemy to fight. A rivalry flares up between the two bands over who gets the best photo spread, and if anyone dog-ears the page of the “Spands” (as the frenzied girls now call them, and there's an army of them), a share of the credit certainly belongs to Parade, which offers more than one solid tune, eight to be exact, starting with “Only When You Leave”, another Top Ten flash that on 28 May 1984 paves the way for what is not their best album but is certainly their most fluid.

Polished in Munich at the legendary Musicland studios of Giorgio Moroder, stylistically it picks up the thread laid down by its predecessor True: nothing convoluted or overworked, choruses that aren't even all that exuberant, just clean, distinctive, graceful songs that make formal accuracy their genetic code. The only flaw, once again, is a certain sameness of melody, which on one hand exposes some limits to the songwriting, but on the other perhaps finally confirms its credibility, given that Kemp's standard rarely dips below decent.

In short, all of it is good, with the beautiful “I'll Fly For You” a cut above the rest, the song with which the band for the first time knocks on the door of the Italian charts too (sixth place, never achieved before). Italy takes notice of them (“Only When You Leave” becomes the theme tune for the Mediaset film show “Ciak News”), happily seduced by a sweeping full-length vision: the knockout blow is missing, but the lively “Highly Strung” (shot in Hong Kong with a dedication to little Jo and a few clichés fitting the Year of the Dragon), the soothing ballad “Round And Round” (another instant classic) and the powerful “With The Pride” come together into a cohesive, organic whole, forgoing one-hit-wonder sensationalism in favour of an affable, authorial weave.

“Nature Of The Beast” dusts off epic-toned synths that turn the clock back to good old wave, in the same vein as “Always In The Back Of My Mind” (scratched by an energetic guitar riff) and the convincing “Revenge For Love”, both steeped in a dramatic veil of romance and melancholy.

The coffers are overflowing and the tour that follows is a triumph; the icing on the cake, seven consecutive sold-out nights at Wembley Arena, is the call-up to the Band Aid squad for the charity single “Do They Know It's Christmas?”, conceived in December by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds against famine in Ethiopia. The following 13 July, Tony Hadley and co. take to the stage at Live Aid alongside trusty Toby Chapman and backing singers Shirley Lewis and Ruby James. After “Vienna” by Ultravox, it's their turn, and at 1.46pm precisely they launch into “Only When You Leave”, then unveil the eagerly awaited new track “Virgin” (which we'll get to shortly) and close the set in style with “True”, sending the seventy-two thousand people in the stadium into raptures, along with a potential audience of around two billion glued to their screens across five continents.

At the end of the month the Parade Tour caravan resumes its trip around the world, but during a stopover in Los Angeles Steve Norman tears his cruciate ligaments and the band is forced to cancel the remaining dates on the schedule. To make up for the lost earnings, Chrysalis promptly decides to put The Singles Collection on the market, a double-platinum compilation that the band nonetheless vetoes. The dispute between the two parties ends up in court, and before the final split the label fires off one last shot, The Twelve Inch Mixes, which collects the long versions of the singles from Journey To Glory, plus “Diamond” and “True”, already released at the time as B-sides. The split from Chrysalis brings with it a rich contract with CBS/Epic and a new album that is, admittedly, not transcendent, but contains a track that sends Spandau Ballet straight into legend.

Pop dreams beyond the barricades

1986 is a particularly lucrative year for bar and beach-resort owners, since between “Lessons In Love” by Level 42, “One Step” by Kissing The Pink, “Geil” by Bruce And Bongo, or “Easy Lady” by Spagna, there's nothing left to do but keep feeding the jukebox coins. Not everyone, however, is able to grasp the vast difference between a faded jukebox entry and a bestseller of historic importance. “Through The Barricades” is not just any song, but who we were and what we've become, the memory of our fathers and what they fought for, the innocence of youth and the fear of not making it. Listening to it forty years on means coming to terms with broken promises and a dream still waiting to be realised, which is why Spandau Ballet, for those who were there, will never be just another band.

Mother doesn’t know where love has gone

she says it must be youth that keeps us feeling strong

Father made my history

he fought for what he thought would set us somehow free

Now I know what they’re saying, it’s a terrible beauty we’ve made

so we make our love on wasteland and through the barricades

The gentle, confiding acoustic guitar and a light marching drumbeat frame the story of a star-crossed love without a happy ending, set against the bloody conflict in Ulster, torn apart in those days by civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Modern-day Juliet and Romeo, two kids of opposing faiths who leap over the barricades of belief and defy their own families to meet secretly "in no man's land". Gary wrote it in a few hours, swept up by the emotion of the death of Thomas "Kidso" Reilly, a 22-year-old merchandise seller on the "True Tour" to whom the Bananarama — for whom he had been road manager — had already dedicated "Rough Justice" (on their eponymous 1984 LP). He was treacherously killed in his native Belfast, and at the end of a grueling trial, soldier Ian Thain was found guilty of murder. Jim Reilly, brother of the unfortunate Thomas, played drums in Stiff Little Fingers, and when Kemp traveled to Northern Ireland, Jim took him to Falls Road to visit the grave. "As we drove I could see the barricades dividing the streets in two, and I felt those vibrations firsthand. Around two in the morning the lyrics started taking shape in my mind, it was as if the song itself were asking to be written", the guitarist would tell the BBC, though he was careful to add that "the lyrics weren't meant to commemorate Reilly, just to talk about love, which is what I do best".

And there's no denying it, this time he truly nailed it: it would be their last Top Ten hit, thanks to a masterful performance and an indelible melody. In Italy it would climb all the way to number two, but let's not kid ourselves: aside from the other smash single "Fight For Ourselves", previewed at the Sanremo Festival and launched into orbit by a chorus that calling "killer" would even be an understatement, the fifth album Through The Barricades betrays expectations and settles into a stadium-sized hybrid, polished but lacking any real spark.

During this period the gang relocates to Dublin for tax reasons, the Second British Invasion is drawing to a close, and new producer Gary Langan — co-founder of Art Of Noise and the man behind the success of Abc's "Beauty Stab" — opts for a rougher, grittier sound, following the recent model set by Simple Minds and U2, who with "Once Upon A Time" and "Rattle And Hum" are just completing their transformation into arena-sized lions. Still, there are bright spots, such as the splashes of sax that light up the textures of "Man In Chains" and the third single "How Many Lies?", wielded by a player few in rock can match — Steve Norman (think of the Cure on "A Night Like This" or Eurythmics' "Revenge") — along with confident, spirited choral performances, as on "Virgin" (still one of the most requested songs live).

The tracklist opens with "Barricades – Introduction", a one-minute-sixteen solo-piano mini-suite that quotes the title track, then "Cross The Line" brings the first jab of electric guitar: the five make no secret of being heavy drinkers (Tony even sells his own craft beer brand, "Hadley's Gold") and openly admire Bon Jovi and the thriving hair-metal scene. But they don't have the metal stigmata, so the negligible filler tracks "Snakes And Lovers" and "Swept" (whose pathos deserves credit, though it's doled out sparingly) just coast along on an innocuous adult-contemporary vibe that flickers on and off.

In any case, the "Through The Barricades – Across The Borders Tour" is a box-office smash: the two six-night indoor residencies at Rotterdam's Ahoy and Wembley Arena set record attendances, and eighty thousand fans give them a jubilant welcome at Madrid's Casa de Campo. In Italy it's pure celebration: from Palermo to Misano Adriatica, from Catanzaro to Lignano Sabbiadoro, the shrewd promoter David Zard takes them just about everywhere; Treviso declares itself "Spandau City" and marks their arrival by releasing white doves, fireworks and thousands of coloured balloons into the air.

After the big feast, the band takes a year off, during which they first play in Barcelona for King Juan Carlos as part of the campaign to promote the Olympics (set to be held in the Catalan city in 1992), then return to the fray with new material running at a lower adrenaline voltage, which would inevitably turn out to be their swan song as well.

1989: Heart Like A Sky and the breakup

The sixth album Heart Like A Sky is born under the bad star of some odd marketing strategies, and tensions within the group surface and gradually intensify, leading to an irreparable split. This time Kemp uses a portable multitrack to program bass, keyboards and drum machine together with his right-hand man Toby Chapman, but someone isn't willing to be displaced in the decision-making hierarchy by what, after all, remains a session player — however undeniably active a part he'd been in the band's accumulated fortunes. Polished in London between Townhouse, Mayfair and AIR Studios under the working title "Home", the album comes out on 24 September 1989 but flops in Europe, while in the US it isn't even released. It had been brewing for a while and was bound to happen sooner or later; better, in the end, that the one to pay the price for this ongoing downward spiral be an album that wouldn't have had much to offer anyway, doomed from the start by delusions of self-importance and absenteeism at rehearsals. The material isn't thin, but it's rushed and half-hearted, marred by a presumption of omnipotence that, when unwarranted, can cost dearly.

The tracklist throws together, higgledy-piggledy, the blandest eighties flavours: "Handful Of Dust" suspiciously echoes Kiss's "Reason To Live", "Crashed Into Love" shuffles sentiment and sequins without ever drawing the joker from the deck (you'll find yourself missing Johnny Hates Jazz's "Shattered Dreams" and Belinda Carlisle's "I Get Weak"), while "A Matter Of Time" is the kind of ballad that could work on Boyzone's debut album or, why not, on the Bee Gees' farewell one. Slightly more impassioned are "Windy Town" and the atmospheric "Empty Spaces", but the formula has gone stale and surprises no one anymore. Best forgotten is "Big Feeling", despite its come-hither backing vocals in a Power Station vein; the aptly-named "Motivator" at least lives up to its title and tries to lift spirits with crowd-pleasing rhythms (written by Steve Norman, it's the first track not credited to Kemp since the days of The Makers).

We've deliberately saved the best for last, so that the word "end" on this otherwise illustrious arc might be written in as painless and least dispiriting a way as possible: the evergreen "Be Free With Your Love" pleases the audience by pairing a Caribbean lilt with a carefree, gospel-flavoured refrain, and the driving single "Raw" is also strong, oozing warm sensuality and dancefloor R&B.

After Heart Like A Sky, Spandau Ballet fall apart and threatening shadows loom over their future. Tony, Gary, Martin, John and Steve decide to go their separate ways, some more so than others, and before the sun sets for good on the band, each of them at least has time to set off down his own road.

Beyond Spandau Ballet: Tony Hadley

Among the big-name vocalists of the Eighties, Tony Hadley is one of the very few to have actually taken singing lessons, which led him to sign a deal with EMI and release his first solo work in 1992. Backing him in this stimulating new venture were Jerry Stevenson on guitar and Kevin Miller on bass, but above all his old bandmates John Keeble and Toby Chapman: despite the familiar surroundings, however, The State Of Play doesn't replicate the glories of the Spandau era, settling instead for commercial pop-rock with no great highs or lows, made purely for consumption. He wrote five of the twelve songs himself, but in truth few would actually consume them, given that, despite the flawless performances – of which the single "For Your Blue Eyes Only", "One Good Reason" and "Just The Thought Of You" are the sharpest snapshots – it passed almost completely unnoticed on the charts.

But Tony doesn't give up, and sets up his own label, SlipStream Records, through which he releases the track "Build Me Up" in 1996, which ends up in the soundtrack of Maria Giese's film "When Saturday Comes" (incidentally, the singer is a diehard Arsenal fan). Barely twelve months later, the German label Polygram gives him a new opportunity, convinced of his huge untapped potential: so in 1997 comes the self-titled Tony Hadley, a collection of covers of some classics from the Seventies and Eighties such as Black's "Wonderful Life", Bryan Ferry's "Slave To Love", Tears For Fears's "Woman In Chains" and "Save A Prayer" by old foes/friends Duran Duran. Also worth noting is the unreleased "She", with an auspicious dedication to little Toni, just born to his wife Leonie Lawson: the couple have been married since February 1983 and have two other children, MacKenzie and Thomas.

Results, however, continue to be scarce, and while waiting for more favourable times, Hadley keeps his magnificent voice in shape by lending it to collaborations of varying plausibility (for instance, Brian May, Paul Young, Alice Cooper and Jon Anderson of Yes, but also dance acts like Tin Tin Out, Eddie Lock and Disco Bros). After a quick appearance on Alan Parsons's album "The Time Machine" with "Out Of the Blue", Debut toasts the new millennium with the best of his solo output revisited in live form (released in 2000, though the recordings were made during a concert held in Cologne in March '92). On the romantic front, his life takes a hit in 2003, and after nearly twenty years his marriage to Leonie Lawson collapses because of another woman: Tony falls in love with the woman who would shortly after become his second (and current) wife, Alison Evers, with whom he would go on to have two more daughters, Zara and Genevieve.

Around the same time, Hadley's appeal comes back into fashion thanks to his win on the reality show "Reborn In The Usa", and he swiftly takes advantage of it to launch True Ballads, which, alongside covers of Alphaville's "Dance With Me", Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" and Sting's "All This Time", brings together three of his old band's biggest hits ("True", "Through The Barricades" and "Only When You Leave").

The live dimension clearly still suits him perfectly, and in 2005 a tour with Peter Cox of Go West, followed by another alongside Martin Fry of ABC, show him in great form and in the role that suits him best.

Returning to studio work, in 2006 it's the turn of Passing Strangers, on which he tackles a refined jazz-swing repertoire. "There Must Be A Way" by Frankie Vaughan, "Just A Gigolo" by Pistoia-born Nello Casucci and Rodgers & Hart's "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered" finally deliver a couple of standout moments, all orchestrated with the fine assistance of the Paul Moran Big Band. The experience earns him a bow tie at the Cambridge Theatre in the musical "Chicago", after which he turns to broadcasting, presenting Friday and Saturday night shows on Virgin Radio in Britain.

Much loved here in Italy, in 2008 he flies to Sanremo where he duets on "Grande" with Paolo Meneguzzi, while in 2011 he records the bilingual single "Goodbye Malinconia" with Caparezza, singing the chorus and final verse in English (it can be found on the Apulian rapper's album "Il sogno eretico"). Italy now becomes something of an adopted home for him, and it's no coincidence that he chooses to settle in and mark his stay with The Christmas Album. As one might easily guess, this is a compilation of Christmas songs scored by a formidable squad of Italian musicians (Giorgio Secco, Luca Scarpa, Paolo Costa, Danilo Madonia, Aldo Tagliapietra and many others). Here too there's nothing much to highlight beyond the usual formally flawless renditions of the traditionals "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", "White Christmas" and "Ave Maria", and two new tracks proudly waving the Italian flag ("Every Second I'm Away" is co-written with Annalisa Scarrone and the project's producer Claudio Guidetti, while "Fairy Tale Of New York" is sung with Piacenza-born Nina Zilli).

Talking To The Moon, released in 2018 via MoonStone Music, doesn't stray too far from the well-established blueprint of moody, smooth crooning, which finds in the little gems "What Am I?", "Unwanted" and "Tonight Belongs To Us" some of its most refined moments. The tracklist also includes more danceable, bolder pieces, like the opener "Take Back Everything" or "Accident Waiting To Happen", but they're content to cautiously go through the motions, nothing more.

Decidedly more interesting is the sixth album, The Mood I'm In, from April 2024, where the basic script remains roughly unchanged but the artistic bar is raised. Hadley now inhabits the role with such conviction that the ten tracks sound as polished as if they were his own original creations. In reality, with the exception of the previously unreleased "Walk Of Shame", most of them are, once again, revisitations of great classics. What does change compared to the past is precisely the mood: the opening track "Touch Me" keeps intact the horns of the 1969 psychedelic rock version written by Robbie Krieger of the Doors and enriches them with a powerful symphonic performance, while "Walk Of Shame" is a strong contender for radio hit thanks to its wild Caribbean grooves. Also excellent are the sunny "That's Life", famously carried to glory by Frank Sinatra and reinterpreted here with top-of-the-class swagger, and "Feeling Good", which shines with positive energy, turning the original's restless meaning on its head. "One For My Baby", written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the 1943 comedy "The Sky Is A Limit", is another delightful tribute to Frank Sinatra, after which the second half of the album begins, marked instead by more intimate, reflective tones. Worth appreciating here are "Wait For You", the sentimental jazz-club nocturne "I Wanna Be Around" and the delicate "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered", as well as the bolder, more playful cadences of "Just A Gigolo" and the title track "The Mood I'm In".

Brothers: Gary and Martin Kemp

Once the Spandau Ballet saga came to an end, Gary Kemp claimed the royalties for himself, effectively putting obstacles in the way of his former bandmates' ambitions, who would try on several occasions to press legal claims. In vain, since, with the exception of "Motivator", every song bears his pen alone. The guitarist had already had some acting experience as a child, so alongside his work with the band he pursued a well-regarded acting career. In 1989, Barry Samson cast him in "Ice Pawn", a dramatic film about the exploits of an ice-skating champion. In 1990, he and his brother Martin starred in Peter Medak's "The Krays", in which they played Ronald and Reginald Kray, two gangsters of Swinging London. But the most prestigious role given to Gary is undoubtedly that of Sy Spector in the 1992 blockbuster "The Bodyguard", in which Kevin Costner's former presidential security agent, alias Frank Farmer, is hired to protect the frightened Whitney Houston (here playing pop star Rachel Marron) from a stalker.

A cyclist, keen hiker and fellow Arsenal supporter, Kemp had his first son, Finlay, in 1990 with actress Sadie Frost, whom he later divorced in 1995. It was in that very year that he decided to console himself for the bitter disappointment by releasing his first solo album, Little Bruises, a kind of inner catharsis and confessional j'accuse that dwells bitterly on the end of the relationship. "An Inexperienced Man", "She Said" and "Ophelia Drowning" combine soul-jazz influences with Irish music, an unusual blend not too far removed from what, around the same time, Midge Ure was attempting on "Breathe" or Sting on "Mercury Falling".

In 2003 he remarries, to designer Lauren Barber, with whom he has three more children, Milo Wolf, Kit and Rex; meanwhile he co-writes with Guy Pratt the musicals "A Terrible Beauty" (based on a book by Shane Connaughton) and "The Bedbug" (from a piece by Mayakovsky), and in 2009 publishes his autobiography "I Know This Much: From Soho To Spandau". Since 2018 he has been the singer of Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets, the psychedelic-rock band put together by the former Pink Floyd drummer, which tours playing "The Dark Side Of The Moon" and other gems from the band's early catalogue.

Finally, in 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic, his second album Solo career came out, a dark but thoroughly worthwhile work that this time builds its raison d'être around an obsession with the past and existential anguish. The poignant title track, "Too Much" (featuring Roger Taylor of Queen on drums) and "I Am The Past" nod to Supertramp and Scott Walker with Seventies-style theatricality; also notable are the semi-orchestral "Our Light", the reggae-tinged single "Ahead Of The Game" and the closing "The Haunted".

His brother Martin Kemp has a CV that, in many ways, mirrors his own, and which nearly came to an abrupt end in 1995 when he was diagnosed with two brain tumours. Since then he can consider himself one of the lucky ones, living with a metal plate inserted in his skull, which he has described as "the best thing that ever happened to me", since it paradoxically gave him the chance to mature and shake off his excesses. Unlike the other former Spandau members, the bassist has no particular vocal talents to offer nor any partnership requests, so after the break-up he never records another album and chooses to fill the gap by throwing himself headlong into film and television too, amassing an even more prolific haul than his alter ego Gary. The aforementioned "The Krays" is followed by "Embrace Of The Vampire" (by Canadian director Carl Bessai), "Cyber Bandits", "Sugar Town" (alongside John Taylor of Duran Duran and John Doe of X), Chris Munro's "Back In Business" and Neil Jones's "Age Of Kill", not to mention a host of TV series appearances too numerous to list here, three of the most notable being "Tales From The Crypt", "Love Lies Bleeding" and the more recent 2021 series "McDonald & Dodds".

Martin has been married since 1988 to singer Shirlie Holliman, one half of the female duo "Pepsi&Shirlie" and a former backing vocalist for the Wham!, whom he met through their mutual friendship with George Michael.

Steve Norman and John Keeble

In the early '90s, Steve Norman tries to rebuild a life for himself in Ibiza, where he collaborates with Nacho Sotomayor, Dj Pippi, Lenny Krarup and other musicians who had settled on the island. With producer and songwriter Rafa Peletey, he composes "A Journey Through Savannah", then in 2001 they recruit Bucks Fizz's Shelley Preston on vocals and rename themselves Cloudfish. They're very active live and appear on the eponymous debut of Tuscan act Quintessenza, but altogether they only ever produce one genuine original track, "So High", included on the compilation "Dome Ibiza: The Chillout Session Vol. 2".

Meanwhile Steve keeps performing session gigs across the UK, lending his unmistakable sax to a string of acid-leaning mixed bills, as well as to Bruce Foxton's "Back In The Room" and James Stevenson's "Everything's Getting Closer To Be Over".

Finally, in 2009 he opens and closes a brief chapter with Martin Ikin and Dj John Johnes for the remix EP "Promised Land", credited to "The Collective".

We close out this roundup with drummer John Keeble, who staves off early retirement by splitting his remaining energy evenly between Tony Hadley's solo discography and that of Fish of Marillion. Keeble had gotten to know the latter backstage at Live Aid, and the two would form such a genuine bond that in 1988 the singer even acted as best man at his wedding to Leaflyn, who remains his wife to this day. Later on he'd also have the chance to work with 69 Daze, the Herbs and Tim Deluxe, as well as forming his own band, called I Play Rock, alongside Richie B and Chris Paulo Dale, in which he proves he's not just handy with the drumsticks but also has a decent set of pipes.

One last time

As with every self-respecting saga, twenty years after their split there's also room for an ill-fated Spandau Ballet reunion best glossed over, despite the grand unveiling held right where it all began, which will still bring a tear to the eye of the most nostalgic fans. Once More is announced in 2009 with a press conference held aboard that same HMS Belfast, moored on the Thames, where on 26 June 1980 they'd played one of their earliest gigs. The album amounts to little more than a half-acoustic facelift of eleven of their best-loved songs, plus a couple of forgettable, anachronistic and dated new tracks (the title track "Once More" and "Love Is All", penned by Tony Hadley). Slightly better, all things considered, are "She Loved Like Diamond", "Through The Barricades" and "I'll Fly For You", but only because they already had traits suited to an eventual unplugged treatment; the rest barely manages to relaunch the brand ahead of a few money-spinning live dates (in April 2010 they tour Australia alongside Tears For Fears).

Five years later, in 2014, the documentary "Soul Boys Of The Western World" is released, the debut feature by film-maker George Hencken, which delves into the Spandau universe, retracing their entire rise and fall. Sadly, no resurrection has followed: on 3 April 2017, Hadley, tired of the endless back-and-forth, announces his definitive farewell via a terse tweet, and not even the talented Ross William Wild, born in '88 and strongly backed as his replacement by Gary Kemp (who'd been bewitched after seeing him perform in the musical "Million Dollar Quartet"), can ever truly replace him in fans' hearts. The young man shows what he's made of, but barely has time to put his name on the books before he too decides to step down to devote himself body and soul to his band "Mercutio". With him on vocals, Spandau Ballet complete a single European tour which, in October 2018, also stops in Italy at the Fabrique in Milan, the Atlantico in Rome and the Gran Teatro Geox in Padua. But it's not the same, at least for those who were there...

Photo by Chris Boland

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